If it is then found that the man's eyes are hazel, and that he either speaks English fluently or does not speak it at all—is the magistrate likely to discharge the prisoner on account of these small discrepancies between him and the description given of him, when so many other of the required characteristics are found present? Will he not rather require the prisoner to bring forward very convincing proof that it is a case of mistaken identity?
Or to take another illustration, which is perhaps more strictly to the point as involving comparison between an actual place and one described in a novel. Here is an extract from a novel:—
Grammerton, like other fair cities, was built on a hill. The highest point was the fine old Elizabethan School, then, and now, of European reputation. Opposite it was the old shattered and ruined castle, overlooking the bubbling and boiling shallows of the broad and rapid river Saber.... From the hill the town sloped rapidly down on every side towards the river, which made it a peninsula studded with habitations. (The Beaucleres, father and son, by Charles Clarke, Chapman and Hall. Vol. I. p. 28.)
Is there any man of ordinary intelligence and acquainted with Shrewsbury who will doubt that Shrewsbury was the place that Mr. Clarke was drawing from?
When I have urged the much more numerous and weightier points of agreement between Scheria as described in the Odyssey, and Trapani as it still exists, eminent Homeric scholars have told me, not once nor twice—and not meekly, but with an air as though they were crushing me—that my case rests in the main on geographical features that are not unknown to other parts of the coast, and upon legends which also belong to other places.
Grammerton, they argue—to return to my illustration—must not be held as Shrewsbury, for at Harrow as well as Shrewsbury the School is on the highest part of the town. There is a river, again, at Eton, so that Eton may very well have been the place intended. It is highly fanciful to suppose that the name Saber may have been a mere literary travesty of Sabrina. At Nottingham there is a castle which was in ruins but a few years since, and from which one can see the Trent. Nottingham, therefore, is quite as likely to be the original of Grammerton as Shrewsbury is.
And so on ad infinitum. This line of argument consists in ignoring that the force of the one opposed to it lies in the demonstrable existence of a highly complex combination, the component items of which are potent when they are all found in the same place, but impotent unless combined. It is a line which eminent Homeric scholars almost invariably take when discussing my Odyssean theory, but it is not one which will satisfy those before whom even the most eminent of Homeric scholars must in the end bow—I mean, men of ordinary common sense. These last will know that Grammerton can only be dislodged from Shrewsbury on proof either that the features of Shrewsbury do not in reality correspond with those of Grammerton, or else that there is another town in England which offers the same combination, and is otherwise more acceptable.
So with Trapani and Scheria. Eminent Homeric scholars must show that I have exaggerated the points of correspondence between the two places—which in the face of Admiralty charts and of the Odyssey they will hardly venture; or they must bring forward some other place in which the same points of correspondence are found combined—which they will not attempt; or they must show reason for thinking that the very numerous and precise correspondences between Trapani and all Scherian and Ithacan scenes are referable to mere accident—and this will satisfy those only who will believe that a man has held thirteen trumps in his hand three deals running, without having tampered with the cards. I need not discuss this last supposition, and as for the other two, I can only assure the reader that no attempt has been made to establish either of them during the close on six years since my theory was first put before the public.
Neither will it ever be made. For Scheria should be looked for on some West coast to the West of Greece, and there are no such West coasts except those of Italy and Sicily, both of which I know well enough to be sure that if the Scherian combination could be found elsewhere than at Trapani I should long since have found it. Even could such a place be found with its rock Malconsiglio, legend and all, before it could compete with Trapani in claiming the Odyssey it would have to offer the Ithacan combination as well as the Scherian; for surely a place which provides us with both Ithacan and Scherian topography would have a greater right to be considered as that from which the Odyssey was drawn, than one which could only offer the details of Scheria.
Furthermore, could they find another place with all both Scherian and Ithacan features, my opponents would be only half way through their troubles; for Trapani could still hold its own against it, unless it also had four islands (neither more nor fewer) lying off it, one of them long and narrow, and all of them corresponding with the inaccurate Odyssean description of the Ionian islands. Nor would it even then begin to be on equal terms with Trapani, till it was shown that the effective part of the voyages of Ulysses begins and ends with it. When all this has been done, but not before, it will be time to weigh the comparative claims of the two sites.