n some foul den in a great city, but in such a design as this, we seem at first to be reminded of the inhuman satire of Swift.
To understand the picture we must go back to the beginnings* of history, for the conception of it is no new fancy struck out by some imaginative mind of the present day, but is based on a story between two and three thousand years old at least, a story so fascinating that men have gone on repeating it from generation to generation. Let us read this story as we know it first in the works of the oldest and greatest of European poets, Homer.
* Note: Professor Sayce's "Circe" should be studied after and not before a perusal of the poetry connected with her name. Every one will then want to know the origin of the Round Goddess of Moon Island.
In the tenth book of Homer's Odyssey, Ulysses and his comrades, on their way back from the Trojan war to Ithaca, land on an unknown island. A party is sent to explore it, and they reach a palace situated in a shady dale, inside of which they hear the voice of a woman plying her loom and singing as she weaves. The rest of the story is thus translated by Pope --
What voice celestial, chanting to the loom
The tale goes on to show how the crafty Ulysses, by the aid of a mystic herb called moly, overcame Circe's magic, rescued his companions, and reconverted them from swine into men. Turning once more to the picture we can see how faithfully the artist has rendered pictorially the charming story of the Odyssey. There is the beautiful enchantress surveying her victims with corn, while they look up to her with rapture and feed on the pigs' food in which they gloat. There is, however, something further conveyed to us in this picture, which I must now endeavor to bring out. Homer's tale, you will observe, contains no moral. It is like a fairy story told to a child, a tale of wonder unburthened (sic) with any serious thoughts. We pity from our hearts with poor wanderers in the midst of their undeserved troubles, and we rejoice with genuine sympathy when they are delivered from their misfortune. The story, however, obviously lends itself to a moral treatment, and it is not surprising that Plato, Plutarch, and many others should have made an allegory out of it. This is what our great poet Spenser has done in his Faery Queen, and we will next read the story as it appears in the second book of that poem. Here we read in the form of an allegory the character of a Christian gentleman as it was conceived by the moralist in the reign of Elizabeth. Sir Guyon, the hero, has overcome all the vices which in this poem are more or less personified. Among his adventures he comes to the abode of an enchantress called Acrasia, the Goddess of Intemperance. Aided by a palmer, Guyon dismantles the palace of this goddess and takes her prisoner; he finds that she is guarded by all sorts of beasts who try to rescue their mistress.
The knight asks the holy man to explain who these beasts might be. The rest of the story is thus given --
Said he, these seeming beasts are men indeed
Straightaway he with his virtuous staffe them strooke,
Said Guyon: See the mind of beastly man
What a difference between this conception and the earlier one in the Odyssey! It is easy to see that some two thousand years have elapsed. In Homer there was no conscious moral; in Spenser every verse has its moral. The men subdued by Acrasia are not the unfortunate subjects of a misadventure, but have themselves to thank for their condition, because they have been transformed into beasts by their intemperate lives. Again, their rescue is not effected by a stroke of good luck, through the virtues of the mystic moly, but by the wand of the palmer -- that is, by the warnings of religion. The last touch ending--
Let Grill be Grill and have his hoggish mind
is perhaps the furthest removed from Homeric ideas, because the hog grieves to find himself elevated to the rank of a human being again. The comment of the palmer, however, is cynical rather than Christian in spirit, because it exhibits a tolerance of evil rather than a determin