LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
MR. GLADSTONE AND HOMER.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.'] MY DEAR Simi—In your interesting article of to-day on the- study of Homer, you have quoted from a report of some remarks made by me at the meeting on Tuesday last of the Society of Biblical Archaeology the words, "Every day must begin for me with my old friend Homer." I wish to say that the reporter has been led, probably by some careless or indistinct expression of mine, into an error. What I said was that every effort to examine the question raised on that day must begin for me with. Homer. The Homeric Poems are in my opinion firmly based, as a record of races, religion, arts, and manners, in a rather remote antiquity, and thus they form a natural point of connection with all prior studies : and. the agency of the people known to us through Greece as Phoenicians connects Greece itself with that Asayrian plain which yielded the record under discussion, and which was either the earliest seat, or one of the two earliest seats, of civilisation.
But as to my beginning every day with Homer, as such a phrase conveys to the world a very untrue impression of the demands of my present office, I think it right to mention that, so far as mrmemory serves me, I have not read Homer for fifty lines or for a quarter of an hour consecutively during the last four years, and any dealings of mine with Homeric subjects have been confined to a number of days which could readily be counted on the fingers. Forgive my troubling you with this explanation, and allow me to remain very faithfully yours,
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