Mr. Gell then proceeds to invalidate the authority of previous writers on the subject of Ithaca. Sir George Wheeler and M. le Chevalier fall under his severe animadversion; and, indeed, according to his account, neither of these gentlemen had visited the island, and the description of the latter is "absolutely too absurd for refutation." In another place, he speaks of M. le C. "disgracing a work of such merit by the introduction of such fabrications;" again, of the inaccuracy of the author's maps; and, lastly, of his inserting an island at the southern entry of the Channel between Cephalonia and Ithaca, which has no existence. This observation very nearly approaches to the use of that monosyllable which Gibbon[1], without expressing it, so adroitly applied to some assertion of his antagonist, Mr. Davies. In truth, our traveller's words are rather bitter towards his brother tourist: but we must conclude that their justice warrants their severity.
[Footnote 1: See his Vindication of the 15th and 16th chapters of the _Decline and Fall_, &c.]
In the second chapter, the author describes his landing in Ithaca, and arrival at the rock Korax and the fountain Arethusa, as he designates it with sufficient positiveness.--This rock, now known by the name of Korax, or Koraka Petra, he contends to be the same with that which Homer mentions as contiguous to the habitation of Eumæus, the faithful swine-herd of Ulysses.--We shall take the liberty of adding to our extracts from Mr. Gell some of the passages in Homer to which he _refers_ only, conceiving this to be the fairest method of exhibiting the strength or the weakness of his argument. "Ulysses," he observes, "came to the extremity of the isle to visit Eumusæ, and that extremity was the most southern; for Telemachus, coming from Pylos, touched at the first south-eastern part of Ithaca with the same intention."
[Greek: Kai tote dê r' Odusêa kakos pothen êgage daimôn Agrou ep' eschatiên, hothi domata naie subôtês; Enth' êlthen philos uios Odussêos theioio, Ek Pulou êmathoenios iôn sun nêi melainê; Odussei O.
Autar epên prôtên aktên Ithakês aphikêai, Nêa men es polin otrunai kai panlas hetairous; Autos de prôtisa subôtên eisaphikesthai, k.t.l. Odussei O.]