matron who could write it? The same applies to Book xxiv. What man or middle-aged woman could have written the ineffably lovely scene between Ulysses and Laertes in the garden? or have made Ulysses eat along with Dolius, whose son and daughter he had killed on the preceding day? A man would have been certain to make Ulysses tell Dolius that he was very sorry, but there had been nothing for it but to hang his daughter and to cut his son's nose and ears off, draw out his vitals, and then cut off his hands and feet. Probably, however, he would have kept Dolius and his sons out of the Book altogether.

When Ulysses and Penelope are in bed (xxiii, 300-343) and are telling their stories to one another, Penelope tells hers first. I believe a male writer would have made Ulysses' story come first and Penelope's second.

CHAPTER EIGHT: THAT ITHACA AND SCHERIA ARE BOTH OF THEM DRAWN FROM TRAPANI AND ITS IMMEDIATE NEIGH

BOURHOOD

HAVE NOW GIVEN, THOUGH FAR MORE briefly than the subject requires, some of my reasons for believing that from the first Book of the Odyssey to the last we are in the hands of a young woman. Who, then, was she? Where did she live and write? She was of flesh and blood, lived in time and place, looked on sea and sky, came and went somewhither and somewhen-but where? and when? and above all, who? It will be my object to throw what light I can upon these subjects in the following chapters.

I will follow the same course that I have taken earlier, and retrace the steps whereby I was led to my conclusions.

By the time I had finished Book x I was satisfied that the Odyssey was not a man's work, but I had seen nothing to make me think that it was written rather at one place than at another. When, however, I reached xiii, 159-164, in which passage Neptune turns the Phaeacian ship into a rock at the entrance of the Scherian harbour, I felt sure that an actual feature was being drawn from, and made a note that no place, however much it might lie between two harbours, would do for Scheria, unless at the end of one of them there was a small half sunken rock. Presently I set myself to consider what combination of natural features I ought to look for on the supposition that Scheria was a real place, and made a list of them as follows:

1. The town must be placed on a point of land jutting out as a land's end into the sea between two harbours, or bays in which ships could ride (vi, 263); it must be connected with the mainland by a narrow neck of land, and as I have just said, must have a half sunken formidable rock at the entrance of one of the harbours.

2. There must be no river running into either harbour, or Nausicaa would not have had to go so far to wash her clothes. The river when reached might be nothing but a lagoon with a spring or two of fresh water running into it, for the clothes

were not, so it would seem, washed in a river; they were washed in public washing cisterns (Od., vi, 40, 86, 92) which a small spring would keep full enough of water

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to wash clothes even though they were very dirty." The scene is laid close on the sea shore, for the clothes are put out to dry on a high bank of shingle which the sea had raised, and Nausicaa's maidens fly from Ulysses along the beach and spits that run into the sea.

3. There must be a notable mountain at no great distance from the town so as to give point to Neptune's threat that he would bury it under a high mountain. Furthermore, the whole combination above described must lie greatly further west of Euboea than Ithaca was, and hence greatly west of Ithaca (vii, 321). Surely, if a real place is being drawn from, these indications are ample to ensure its being easily found. Men of science, so far as I have observed them, are apt in their fear of jumping to a conclusion to forget that there is such a thing as jumping away from one, and Homeric scholars seem to have taken a leaf out of their book in this respect. How many striking points of correspondence, I wonder, between an actual place and one described in a novel, would be enough to create a reasonable assurance that the place in which they were combined was the one that was drawn from? I should say four well marked ones would be sufficient to make it extremely improbable that a like combination could be found elsewhere; make it five and unless we find something to outweigh the considerations which so close a correspondence between the actual place and the one described in the novel would suggest, or unless by some strange coincidence the same combination in all its details can be shown to occur in some other and more probable locality, we may be sure that the novel was drawn from the place; for every fresh detail in the combination required decreases the probability of error in geometrical ratio if it be duly complied with.

Let us suppose that a policeman is told to look out for an elderly gentleman of about sixty; he is a foreigner, speaks a

little English but not much, is lame in his left foot, has blue eyes, a bottle nose, and is about 5 ft. 10 in. high. How many of these features will the policeman require before he feels pretty sure that he has found his man? If he sees any foreigner he will look at him. If he sees one who is about's ft. 10 in. high he will note his age, if this proves to be about sixty years, and further, if the man limps on his left foot, he will probably feel safe in stopping him. If, as he is sure to do, he finds he has a bottle nose, he will leave the blue eyes and broken English alone, and will bring the man before the magistrate.

If it is then found that the man's eyes are hazel, and that he either speaks English fluently or does not speak it at allis the magistrate likely to discharge the prisoner on account of these small discrepancies between him and the description given of him, when so many other of the required characteristics are found present? Will he not rather require the prisoner to bring forward very convincing proof that it is a case of mistaken identity?

Or to take another illustration, which is perhaps more strictly to the point as involving comparison between an actual place and one described in a novel. Here is an extract from a novel:

Grammerton, like other fair cities, was built on a hill. The highest point was the fine old Elizabethan School, then, and now, of European reputation. Opposite it was the old shattered and ruined castle, overlooking the bubbling and boiling shallows of the broad and rapid river Saber. From the hill the town sloped rapidly down on every side towards the river, which made it a peninsula studded with habitations." (The Beauclercs, Father and Son, by Charles Clarke. Chapman and Hall, vol. i, p. 28.)

Is there any man of ordinary intelligence and acquainted with Shrewsbury who will doubt that Shrewsbury was the place that Mr. Clarke was drawing from?

When I have urged the much more numerous and weightier points of agreement between Scheria as described in the

Odyssey, and Trapani as it still exists, eminent Homeric scholars have told me, not once nor twice-and not meekly, but with an air as though they were crushing me-that my case rests in the main on geographical features that are not unknown to other parts of the coast, and upon legends which also belong to other places.

Grammerton, they argue-to return to my illustrationmust not be held as Shrewsbury, for at Harrow as well as Shrewsbury the School is on the highest part of the town. There is a river, again, at Eton, so that Eton may very well have been the place intended. It is highly fanciful to suppose that the name Saber may have been a mere literary travesty of Sabrina. At Nottingham there is a castle which was in ruins but a few years since, and from which one can see the Trent. Nottingham, therefore, is quite as likely to be the original of Grammerton as Shrewsbury is.

And so on ad infinitum. This line of argument consists in ignoring that the force of the one opposed to it lies in the demonstrable existence of a highly complex combination, the component items of which are potent when they are all found in the same place, but impotent unless combined. It is a line which eminent Homeric scholars almost invariably take when discussing my Odyssean theory, but it is not one which will satisfy those before whom even the most eminent of Homeric scholars must in the end bow-I mean, men of ordinary common sense. These last will know that Grammerton can only be dislodged from Shrewsbury on proof either that the features of Shrewsbury do not in reality correspond with those of Grammerton, or else that there is another town in England which offers the same combination, and is otherwise more acceptable.

So with Trapani and Scheria. Eminent Homeric scholars must show that I have exaggerated the points of correspondence between the two places-which in the face of Admiralty charts and of the Odyssey they will hardly venture; or they must bring forward some other place in which the same points of correspondence are found combined-which they