MR. MERRY'S ODYSSEY.*
MR. MERRY modestly says in his preface that he has " not ventured to increase the bulk of the present volume by any Pro- legomena." Of course, we know nothing of any restrictions that may have been imposed upon him from without. This considera- tion apart, his abstinence is certainly to be regretted. There are several subjects on which it is well to have a preliminary under- standing before we enter on the study of the Odyssey. To mention one only of these, we should have been glad to hear what Mr- Merry has to say about the heresy of the XedpgCorre. Some of his annotations would seem to show that he is not disinclined to it. The duty of a commentator, however, compels him from time to time to point out words and syntactical usages that are peculiar to either this or that of the Homeric poems. It is another matter to draw a general inference from such peculiarities as to a single or divided authorship. To judge from our own experience, the effect of a careful study of the text, especially where the. two poems have been read in fairly rapid consecution, is to dis- pose the judgment to the thesis of the Xrd4orrEc. When the effect of these peculiarities, not to say contrarieties, is somewhat worn out, we are apt to return to the old belief, which has so strong- an a priori probability, that one man of commanding genius wrote the two, and that where there is any very striking and inexplicable discrepancy, the cause is to be found in the work of interpolators.
Though Mr. Merry has not given us Prolegomena, he has furnished us with Appendices, three in number, and all of them interesting and valuable. The first deals with the " Homeric Ship." The substance of it appeared, if we remember right, in the "School Edition" of the Odyssey which Mr. Merry brought out some years ago. We need only repeat what we then said,. that the explanation is a model of clearness and precision. Mr. Merry writes as if he had built such a ship himself, and his descriptions, which are illustrated by drawings, are as different as possible from the vague and unpractical treatment which such subjects commonly receive. He uses nautical terms with precision, and has evidently observed actual details with care. We may note, as an instance, the paragraph on the s-natixioy, or rudder, the somewhat peculiar nature and position, of which—not a rudder fixed to the stern end of the ship, but an oar (with a broader blade than usual) plied from one side near the stern—are compared to the practice of steering in the modern lifeboat. A second appendix treats of " Some Various Forms of the Legend of the Blinded Cyclops." We are inclined to think that Mr. Merry is pushing his criticism too far when he says, " The character of the hero seems to have altered for the occa- sion. He may show cleverness in Polyphemus's cave, but his old caution has forsaken him ; he is foolhardy and thoughtless. The mantle of wisdom seems for once to have descended on his comrades. It is they who recommend him to take advantage of the absence of the Cyclops, and merely to drive his herds away. But Odysseus insists on seeing him and partaking of his hospitality. Nor is he less reckless when he taunts the Cyclops from ship-board, and incurs new perils after his deliverance." It must be remembered that it is the key-note of the character of Odysseus, struck at the very beginning of the story of his adventures, that he made acquaintance with the thoughts of many men, or, as Mr. Merry him- self translates the phrase YOOY gypo, " had experience of their disposition towards strangers." This prompted his perilous voyage of discovery in the Cyclops' land, and his determination to stay, in spite of its alarming aspect. Besides, the wanderings began in his dealings with the Cyclops, and the consequent wrath • Homer's Odyssey. Edited, with English Notes, Appendices, &c., by W. Walter Merry. M.A., Fellow and Lecturer of Lincoln College ; and the late James Riddell,
?LA, Fellow and Tutor of Balllol College, Oxford. Vol I. Books Oxford Clarendon Press. 18n.
of Poseidon. If prudence had ruled him, (was not his character- istic rather fertility of resource in danger ?) there would have been no Odyssey. The parallel legends, of which some are given us, are very curious. The best known of these is that of " Sinbad, the Sailor." The Tartars and the Finns have each a legend. The other four are of Aryan origin. Between them they reproduce all the features of the Cyclops adventure, but none of them singly is as complete. A third appendix discusses the geography of Ithaca. Mr. Merry takes the sensible view that Homer means an actual place, but was not personally acquainted with it ; that he therefore describes it at second-hand, and that, consequently, all attempts to identify this or that locality are labour in vain.
We have followed with considerable care the continuous anno. tation with -which Mr. Merry has furnished the text, and find little or nothing in it but what seems well worthy of praise. His text he takes, after the common fashion of English scholars, whose occupation as teachers leaves them but the very scantiest amount of leisure, from a foreign source, following the edition of Les Roches (Leipzig, 1867). His notes deal fully and clearly with grammatical difficulties, and they show, whenever any ethical or se.sthetical point occurs, that sympathy and taste of which a com- mentator on the Odyssey has a special need. We may take, as a specimen of his manner, a passage which will be familiar to all readers of the Odyssey, in the account of the land of Ltestrygonia (x., 82-86) :— "` avy.civx aotetnv .1-1a1;ti tivaciegy, 0 3i .72 iEsXciar "Even z carrot cev;2p ?otoiq iEripcci-o ✓ IY AY 501IX0X611., ,A1, apyvca iciatc ve1rrme' ▪ vicp vuzl-isn xee) pipanh uvt xixwAn."
With these lines the editor is peculiarly successful. He brings to bear on such questions a practical intelligence and a power of realising the poet's conception which do not always belong even to the most competent scholars. The outline of his interpretation of the passages quoted maybe given as follows. The word Trolp.is has the double sense of " shepherd " and " neatherd." The two greet each other as they pass, the one returning to and the other leaving home. But how does it happen that they should so pass ? Because,— "No sooner has Night stopped forth upon the scene, than Day re- appears too ; and so we may suppose that the interval of darkness between the two periods of light is actually inappreciable. Thus a man who has had his flock at pasture from morning until just the fall of evening, brings it home before the darkness sets in; but as he enters the city gate with his flock, he meets his fellow driving out his herd of oxen to pasture, for already daylight is beginning again,—the evening twilight is molting into the dawn. The notion then strikes the poet that if a man should take no sleep, he could play the part both of the ttvtxaar and the lEaciwy. Ho would bring home his sheep, change them for a herd of oxen, and be off again to pasture without delay, thus earning wages in the double capacity of neatherd and shepherd."
But whence this fancy of night and day so closely following each other? The poet has heard something of distant lands, with their long summer days. These lands he places in the West. And,—
" Naturally so, for it is evident that the apparent path of the Sun is, to his mind, like the course in the chariot-race, the starting-point being the last. The extreme western point in this course was to him also the ,twos, or turning-post, in the 44w, and when the Sun has reached this westernmost point, he naturally begins xdf.vsteci lagaeu thiTspa, x;Aav crebay. The city of Telepylus lies just at this point, so that the momentary passage of the Sun round the vt%cca is the only interval of darkness that is possible."
We have been obliged to abbreviate Mr. Merry's note, leaving out especially the authorities by which he fortifies his position. Nothing could be more clear or satisfactory.
The story of Nausicaa is a crux to commentators whose qualifi- cations do not extend beyond a critical mastery of the text. Mr. Merry's taste never fails him. It is curious to find such a writer as Plutarch seeing Opciao; and cixoTan'ex in the maiden's naif remark to her attendants,- " a; 7,4 ith,; TalOat a4o.; xlx?.nixivec tin "Evtia;56 vaisTo.wv, zai el Ian au. is 1.4;prur."
Another note may be quoted, relating to the line which describes the fate of the Lesser Ajax :—
'of 4 14,1.,g' 1"r"x", is-o; 914" 4x1"f" 13'14"
"The line requires no apology,—there is a grim humour in it ; a bitter irony about the contemptible end of a boastful hero. One moment he is sitting on the rocks, secure and self-complaisant; the next instant he gets a mouthful of salt water, and dies then and there."
We have spoken of Mr. Merry throughout, but the reader will perceive that the title-page bears also another name,—that of the late James Riddell, one of the most elegant and accomplished scholars that England has ever produced. We are not for-
getful of him, when we thank Mr. Merry for his admirable -volume.
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