March 11, 1808.

Dear Godwin,—The giant's vomit was perfectly nauseous, and I am glad you pointed it out. I have removed the objection. To the other passages I can find no other objection but what you may bring to numberless passages besides, such as of Scylla snatching up the six men, etc.,—that is to say, they are lively images of shocking things. If you want a book, which is not occasionally to shock, you should not have thought of a tale which was so full of anthropophagi and wonders. I cannot alter these things without enervating the Book, and I will not alter them if the penalty should be that you and all the London booksellers should refuse it. But speaking as author to author, I must say that I think the terrible in those two passages seems to me so much to preponderate over the nauseous, as to make them rather fine than disgusting. Who is to read them, I don't know: who is it that reads Tales of Terror and Mysteries of Udolpho? Such things sell. I only say that I will not consent to alter such passages, which I know to be some of the best in the book. As an author I say to you, an author, Touch not my work. As to a bookseller I say, Take the work such as it is, or refuse it. You are as free to refuse it as when we first talked of it. As to a friend I say, Don't plague yourself and me with nonsensical objections. I assure you I will not alter one more word.

As the reader will see, Lamb made only the one alteration; nor did he add a preface recommending the works of Homer.

I have set up The Adventures of Ulysses from the second edition, 1819, because it probably contains Lamb's final revision of the text. The punctuation differs considerably from that of the first edition, but there are, I think, only four changes of words. On page 251, line 34, "and" was inserted before "snout"; on page 257, line g, "does" was substituted for "do"; on page 266, line 7 from foot, "over" was substituted for "above"; and on page 276, line 5 from foot, "it" was inserted after "keep."

The suggestion has been made that, since Lamb states in the preface that this work was designed as a supplement to The Adventures of Telemachus, he was also the author of one of the versions of Fénélon's popular tale. But this, I think, has no foundation in fact. We know from Lamb's letter to Godwin that the impulse to write The Adventures of Ulysses came from Godwin, and it was natural that he, a bookseller, should wish to associate this new venture with a volume so well known and so acceptable as the Telemachus. Now and then in the story Lamb deliberately refers to Fénélon's work, as when in the fourth chapter he says:—

"It were useless to describe over again what has been so well told already; or to relate those soft arts of courtship which the goddess used to detain Ulysses; the same in kind which she afterwards practised upon his less wary son, whom Minerva, in the shape of Mentor, hardly preserved from her snares when they came to the Delightful Island together in search of the scarce departed Ulysses."

This is drawn not from Chapman or Homer, but from the Archbishop of Cambrai. Lamb introduced it in accordance with the first sentence of his preface.

Lamb adapted Chapman very freely. For the material in Chapter I. we must go to Chapman, Books IX. and X.; for Chapter II., to Books X. and XL; for Chapter III., to Book XII.; for Chapter IV., to the early books; for Chapters V., VI. and VII., to Chapman, Books V.-IX. and XIII.; for Chapter VIII., to Books XIII. and XIV.; and for Chapter IX. to the end, to Chapman, Book XVI. and onwards. It must be agreed that Lamb performed a difficult task with great skill and success, especially when we consider his want of interest, frequently admitted, in stories. But the pleasure of adding dignity and sweetness to the character of Ulysses seems to have been very considerable as he worked (or so I imagine), and he made practically a new thing, a very persuasive blend of ancient and modern. The book has not been so popular as the Tales from Shakespear, but it has, I think, finer literary merits and may perhaps be read by older intellects with more satisfaction.

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Page 316. MRS. LEICESTER'S SCHOOL.