The Authoress of the Odyssey
The amount of pains which my reviewers have taken to understand this book is not so great as to encourage the belief that they would understand the Odyssey, however much they studied it. Again, the people who could read the Odyssey without coming to much the same conclusions as mine are not likely to admit that they ought to have done so.
If a man tells me that a house in which I have long lived is inconvenient, not to say unwholesome, and that I have been very stupid in not finding this out for myself, I should be apt in the first instance to tell him that he knew nothing about it, and that I was quite comfortable; by and by, I should begin to be aware that I was not so comfortable as I thought I was, and in the end I should probably make the suggested alterations in my house if, on reflection, I found them sensibly conceived. But I should kick hard at first.