No one ever lived who had not a little more to say for himself than any formal system of justice was likely to say for him.

It is scarcely necessary to point out how entirely the application of this principle would revolutionise the old heroic epic, in which the poet decided absolutely the moral relations and moral value of the characters.

Suppose, for example, that Homer had written the _Odyssey_ on the principle of _The Ring and the Book_, how disturbing, how weird an experience it would be to read the story from the point of view of Antinous! Without contradicting a single material fact, without telling a single deliberate lie, the narrative would so change the whole world around us, that we should scarcely know we were dealing with the same place and people.

The calm face of Penelope would, it may be, begin to grow meaner before our eyes, like a face changing in a dream.

She would begin to appear as a fickle and selfish woman, passing falsely as a widow, and playing a double game between the attentions of foolish but honourable young men, and the fitful appearances of a wandering and good-for-nothing sailor-husband; a man prepared to act that most well-worn of melodramatic roles, the conjugal bully and blackmailer, the man who uses marital rights as an instrument for the worse kind of wrongs.