"It would shock me to think that I have done anything to impair the sense of that beauty which I trust I share in even measure with himself; but surely if the 'Odyssey' has charmed us as a man's work, its charm and its wonder are infinitely increased when we see it as a woman's."
Still there were some competent judges who approved. The late Lord Grimthorpe interested himself in the problem, accepted Butler's views, and gave him valuable suggestions about the description in the poem of the hanging of those maidservants in Ithaca who had disgraced themselves. Mr. Justice Wills also expressed agreement, but he did it in a letter to me after Butler's death. These names are mentioned in the Memoir, and there is another name which ought to have appeared there, but I overlooked the note at the right moment.
Butler delivered at the Fabian Society a lecture entitled, "Was the 'Odyssey' written by a Woman?" At the close of the lecture Mr. Bernard Shaw got up and said that when he had first heard of the title he supposed it was some fad or fancy of Butler's, but that on turning to the "Odyssey" to see what could have induced him to take it up he had not read a hundred lines before he found himself saying: "Why, of course it was!" And he spoke so strongly that people who had only laughed all though the lecture began to think there might be something in it after all.
These, however, were not the eminent Homeric scholars to whom Butler looked for sympathy. He was disappointed by the silence of the orthodox, and it was here that Charles Lamb got in his revenge, for the situation never would have arisen if it had not been for that fatal reading of "Charles Lamb's translation of parts of the 'Odyssey' in Ainger's book."
When Keats first looked into Chapman's Homer the result was the famous sonnet. When Lamb did the same thing the result was "a juvenile book, The Adventures of Ulysses." He wrote to Manning, 26th February, 1808:
"It is done out of the 'Odyssey,' not from the Greek (I would not mislead you), nor yet from Pope's 'Odyssey,' but from an older translation of one Chapman. The Shakespeare Tales suggested the doing of it."
I suppose that by "Ainger's book" Butler means Charles Lamb in the "English Men of Letters Series," edited by John Morley and published by Macmillan in 1878; at least I do not find any other book by Ainger about Lamb which contains any mention of The Adventures of Ulysses between that date and the date of Butler's letter to his sister in 1886. If I remember right Butler saw "Ainger's book" at Shrewsbury when he was staying with his sisters, and I like to think that it was a copy given to them by the author. But I doubt whether he can have done more than look into it; if he had read it with attention he would scarcely have spoken of Lamb's work as translation. I imagine that he listlessly took the book up off the drawing-room table, and, happening to open it at page 68, saw that Lamb had written The Adventures of Ulysses; this would be enough to suggest the story of the "Odyssey" to him, and he must have missed or forgotten Ainger's statement that Lamb said to Bernard Barton: "Chapman is divine and my abridgement has not quite emptied him of his divinity." What concerns us now, however, is to note the result on Butler, which was that he embarked upon all this apparently fruitless labour. It is interesting to note also that as Lamb, by writing the Tales from Shakespeare, had been led to the "Odyssey," so Butler, by choosing Ulysses as the hero of our oratorio, was led, in a contrary direction, to the Sonnets.
We must now come nearer to modern times. The Authoress of the Odyssey appeared in 1897, and Butler's Translation in 1900-that is about twenty years ago; during which period, sympathy or no sympathy, the books must have had a good many readers, perhaps among the general public rather than among classical scholars, for now, in 1921, the stock is exhausted and new editions of both are wanted. They have been reset entirely, misprints and obvious mistakes have been corrected, the index has been revised, and there are a few minor typographical changes; but nothing has been done which could be called editing, bringing up to date, adding supplementary matter, dissenting or recording dissent from any of the author's views. The size of the original page has been reduced so as to make the books uniform with Butler's other works; and, fortunately, it has generally been possible, by using a smaller type, to get the same number of words into each page, so that the pagination is scarcely altered and the references remain good. Except for the alterations about to be noted (in respect of The Authoress), the books are faithful reprints of the original editions.
(a) About three lines have been interpolated on page 207 which upsets the pagination until page 209. The interpolation, which is taken from a note by Butler in his copy of the work, is to the effect that the authoress, in Book vii, line 137, almost calls her countrymen scoundrels by saying that they made their final drink-offerings not to Jove but to Mercury, the god of thieves. On this passage there is a note in the Translation saying that the poet here intends hidden malice; but, except for this interpolation, attention does not appear to be called to the malice anywhere else in The Authoress.
(b) The note on page 214 is so printed that the pagination is upset for one page.
(c) The illustration of the coin which shows the design of the brooch of Ulysses is now given on a separate page, whereas formerly it was in the text, therefore the pagination is thrown out from page 227 until the end of the chapter, page 231. Doubt has recently been cast upon the accuracy of the statement on pp. 226-7, that this coin certainly belongs to the Eryx and Segesta group.
(d) Some of the headlines have been shortened because of the reduction in the size of the page, and here advantage has been taken of various corrections of and additions to the headlines and shoulder-notes made by Butler in his own copies of the two books.
(e) For the most part each of the illustrations now occupies a page, whereas in the original editions they generally appeared two on one page. It has been necessary to reduce the plan of the House of Ulysses.
On page 31 this note occurs: "Scheria means Jutland-a piece of land jutting out into the sea." Butler afterwards found that Jutland means the land of the Jutes, and has nothing to do with jutting. A note to this effect is in The Notebooks of Samuel Butler, p. 350.
On page 153 Butler says: "No great poet would compare his hero to a paunch full of blood and fat cooking before the fire (xx, 24-28)." This passage is not given in the abridged "Story of the Odyssey" at the beginning of the book, but in Butler's Translation it occurs in these words:
"Thus he chided with his heart, and checked it into endurance, but he tossed about as one who turns a paunch full of blood and fat in front of a hot fire, doing it first on one side then on the other, that he may get it cooked as soon as possible; even so did he turn himself about from side to side, thinking all the time how, single-handed as he was, he should contrive to kill so large a body of men as the wicked suitors."
It looks as though in the interval between the publication of The Authoress (1897) and of the Translation (1900) Butler had changed his mind; for in the first case the comparison is between Ulysses and a paunch full, etc., and in the second it is between Ulysses and a man who turns a paunch full, etc. The second comparison is perhaps one which a great poet might make.
In seeing the works through the press I have had the invaluable assistance of Mr. A. T. Bartholomew of the University Library, Cambridge, and of Mr. Donald S. Robertson, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. To both these friends I give my most cordial thanks for the care and skill exercised by them. Mr. Robertson has found time for the labour of checking and correcting all the quotations from and references to the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," and I believe that it could not have been better performed. It was, I know, a pleasure for him; and it would have been a pleasure also for Butler if he could have known that his work was being shepherded by the son of his old friend, Mr. H. R. Robertson, who more than a half a century ago was a fellow-student with him at Cary's School of Art in Streatham Street, Bloomsbury.
120 Maida Vale, W.9.
4th December, 1921.
CHAPTER I
IMPORTANCE OF THE ENQUIRY – THE STEPS WHEREBY I WAS LED TO MY CONCLUSIONS – THE MULTITUDE OF EARLY GREEK POETESSES REMOVES ANY À PRIORI DIFFICULTY – THE MUSES AND MINERVA AS HEADS OF LITERATURE – MAN, RATHER THAN WOMAN,