CURRENT LITERATURE.
Familiar Studies in Homer. By Agnes M. Clerke. (Longmans.) —This is an interesting book, showing careful study, but some- what spoilt by a pompous style. Here, for instance, is a quota- tion from what Miss Clerke gives as the Iliadic conception of the dog : "The foul outrager of the sanctities of death, the ravenous and indiscriminating violator of the precious casket of the human soul." Elsewhere we hear of the "adipose perfections" of "a noble hog." On the difference of the dog in the Iliad and the Odyssey, Miss Clerks builds an argument in the interests of the Chorizontes. But, after all, is the difference so great? In the Iliad the dog is the companion of the hunter and the herdsman, and the household pet,—witness the hounds which Patroclus kept. Miss Clerke has a hankering after sun-myths and the other fancies of the "atmospherists." But she has written a book well worth study. She gives in a full adhesion to the theory of an early, i.e., pre-Dorian date for the poems ; and though she holds with the heretical Chorizontes, who, after all, have a great deal to say for themselves, she rejects, we gather, the fancy of a largely divided Homer.
Previous page
