Chapter Holles Street to Homespun of H by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Holy Maid of Kent, Elizabeth Barton, who incited the Roman Catholics to resist the progress of the Reformation, and pretended to act under divine inspiration. She was executed in 1534 for “predicting” that the king (Henry VIII.) would die a sudden death if he divorced queen Katharine and married Anne Boleyn. At one time she was thought to be inspired with a prophetic gift, and even the lord chancellor, sir Thomas More, was inclined to think so.

Holy Mother of the Russians. Moscow is so called.

Holy War (The), by John Bunyan (1684).

Holywell Street, London. So called from a spring of water “most sweet, salubrious, and clear, whoserunnels murmur over the shining stones.”

Other similar wells in the suburbs of London were Clerkenwell and St. Clement’s Well.

Home, Sweet Home. The words of this popular song are by John Howard Payne, an American. It is introduced in his melodrama called Clari, or The Maid of Milan. The music is by sir Henry Bishop.

Homer, a Greek epic poet, author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, in Greek hexameters. The Iliad is supposed to have been composed somewhere about B.C. 962, and the Odyssey about B.C.927. They were reduced to writing by Pisistratos of Athens, B.C. 531. They are not “Attic” Greek, but the Greek of Asia Minor. (For the tales, see Iliad and Odyssey.)

The following have translated into English verse bothpoems. The first date is for the Iliad, and the second date for the Odyssey:—

Bryant, 1870, 1871; Chapman, in Alexandrian metre, 1598, 1614; Collins, 1861, 1870; Conington and Worsley, in Spenserean metre, both in 1614; Cowper, in blank verse, both in 1791; Hobbes, both in 1677; Morgate, 1860, 1865; Ogilby, 1660, 1669; Pope, 1719, 1725.

The following have translated into English verse the Iliad only:—

Baxter, 1854; Brandreth, 1846; Cordery, 1870; Dart, 1865; Lord Derby, 1867; Hall, 1581; Herschel, 1866; Green, 1865; Macpherson, 1773; Merivale, 1869; Morrice, 1809; Newman, 1871; Selwyn, 1865; Simcox, 1865; Wright, 1859.

Tickle translated into English verse bk. i. of the Iliad.

The following have translated into English verse the Odyssey only:—

Cary, 1823; Edginton, 1869; Merry, 1871; Musgrave, 1869.

The British Homer. Milton is so called on Gray’s monument in Westminster Abbey.

No more the Grecian muse unrivalled reigns;
To Britain let the nations homage pay;
She felt a Homer’s fire in Milton’s strains,
A Pindar’s rapture in the lyre of Gray.

The Casket Homer, an edition of Homer corrected by A ristotle, which Alexander the Great carried about with him, and placed in a golden casket richly studded with gems, found in the tent of Darius. Alexander said there was but one thing in the world worthy to be kept in so precious a casket, and that was Aristotle’s Homer.

The Celtic Homer, Ossian, son of Fingal King of Morven.

The Oriental Homer, Ferdusi, the Persian poet, who wrote the Châah Nâameh, or history of the Persian kings. It contains 120,000 verses, and was the work of thirty years (940–1020).