STORIES FROM Beathen Mythology AND Greek History, FOR THE USE OF CHRISTIAN CHILDREN. BY THE LATE REV. J. M. NEALE, D.D. LONDON: JOSEPH MASTERS, ALDERSGATE STREET, AND NEW BOND STREET. NEW YORK: POTT AND AMERY. MDCCCLXIX. PREFACE. IT may be proper to state that the peculiar style of the following tales, which to an English reader might seem a mere imitation of the measured prose of Ossian, arises from the fact that many paragraphs are well-nigh only translations from Homer, whom, in his general style of narration, and (so to speak) technicalities of expression, the writer has endeavoured to imitate. It seemed desirable to familiarize those for whom this little book is intended, with the peculiar forms of language and expressions of sentiment which belong to the older Greek poets, so far as it might be done through the medium of a foreign language. Thus the Homeric conventionalisms for the coming on of morning and evening, the appearance of the gods, and the like, have been carefully retained. It seems hardly necessary to defend the tone which has been adopted in the tales, as inculcating rever→ ence for the truth and beauty of the myths them selves, disturbed though that truth and beauty too often are. If children are to be taught Mythology at all, and that they must be under the present state of things, none will deny, surely nothing can be more pernicious to their minds than the perpetual ridicule in which the general run of mythological books indulge, when treating on a subject which on the one hand shows the earnest yearning of the natural sense after the One True GOD; on the other, the depths of wickedness into which unilluminated human nature must of necessity fall; a subject, therefore, which, whether viewed from its bright or dark side, ought to excite every other emotion rather than ridicule. It has been most truly observed, that Mythology is one of the subjects which the Church has failed to turn to her own purposes. The writer would be most thankful if this little book should tend, in any degree, to obviate this difficulty with members of the English Church. In conclusion, the writer has only to observe that he should never have attempted the stories relating to Ulysses, had he been acquainted, at the time of writing them, with Charles Lamb's Tales from the Odyssey. Sackville College, |