[185]
[ Penelope having been now sufficiently whitewashed, disappears from the poem.]
[186]
[ So practised a washerwoman as our authoress doubtless knew that by this time the web must have become such a wreck that it would have gone to pieces in the wash.]
A lady points out to me, just as these sheets are leaving my hands, that no really good needlewoman—no one, indeed, whose work or character was worth consideration—could have endured, no matter for what reason, the unpicking of her day’s work, day after day for between three and four years.]
[187]
[ We must suppose Dolius not yet to know that his son Melanthius had been tortured, mutilated, and left to die by Ulysses’ orders on the preceding day, and that his daughter Melantho had been hanged. Dolius was probably exceptionally simple-minded, and his name was ironical. So on Mt. Eryx I was shown a man who was always called Sonza Malizia or “Guileless”—he being held exceptionally cunning.]