HOMER 



2822 



HOME RULE 



the latter is, however, it misses the majestic 

 spirit of the original, and one of Pope's appre- 

 ciative but frank friends said to him on its 

 publication, "It's a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, 

 but you must not call it Homer." C.W.K. 



Consult Seymour's Life in the Homeric Age; 

 Jebb's Introduction to Homer. A good book for 

 young people is Church's Stories from Homer. 



Related Subjects. The following articles in 

 these volumes may be consulted in connection 

 with this article on Homer : 

 Epic Mythology 



Greek Literature Odyssey 



Iliad Renaissance 



HOMER, LOUISE, an American contralto who 

 has won fame in grand opera. She was born 

 in Pittsburgh, Pa., and before her marriage 

 was LOUISE DILWORTHY BEATTY, the daughter 

 of a Presbyterian clergyman. Her talent was 

 early recognized, 

 and after witness- 

 ing her first grand 

 opera perform- 

 ance in Boston, 

 she heeded the 

 advice of her 

 teachers to study 

 abroad, with the 

 object of an oper- 

 atic stage career. 

 After three years 

 of earnest study 

 she was enabled 

 to sing in opera with the same stars whose 

 performance she viewed on the night which 

 marked the turning point of her career. She 

 made her first professional appearance in Paris 

 in 1898 as Leonora in Favorita. Since then 

 she has become a favorite in Paris, London 

 and Brussels and in the leading American 

 cities. Her repertoire includes many of the 

 leading operas, and her career has been one 

 of uninterrupted success. Although her pro- 

 fessional life absorbs much of her time, she is 

 the devoted mother of five children and takes 

 especial delight in managing her own 'home. 

 She is the wife of Sidney Homer, a song writer, 

 many of whose compositions she sings in her 

 recitals. 



HOME RULE, in British politics, a phrase 

 associated with Ireland's attempts to secure 

 self-government. Ever since the Act of Union 

 of 1801, which united Ireland and Great Brit- 

 ain under a single parliamentary government, 

 there has . been dissatisfaction in Ireland with 

 the existing government, at times reaching the 

 point of open rebellion. Ireland has, in fact, 



LOUISE HOMER 



been ruled from London, and the Lieutenant- 

 Governor and his subordinates stationed in 

 Ireland have usually done little except to obey 

 orders from home. Almost from the first there 

 have been Irishmen who wanted Home Rule, 

 the leading feature of which is a native Parlia- 

 ment, to pass all local and internal legislation; 

 the general political government of the Empire 

 would be left to the imperial Parliament, as 

 before. 



Ireland, in short, has never asked for a 

 greater degree of self-government than has 

 been given to the Dominion of Canada and 

 several other British dependencies. The argu- 

 ments in favor of Home Rule are those by 

 which any nation seeks to maintain its politi- 

 cal independence. Against Home Rule is the 

 fact that Scotland and Wales have no separate 

 Parliaments. There is in Ireland, moreover, 

 a strong Protestant minority which is bitterly 

 opposed to Home Rule because it prefers to 

 be ruled from London rather than by the 

 Catholic majority at home. This opposition is 

 greatest in Ulster, and particularly in the 

 vicinity of Belfast, where civil war had all but 

 broken out when Home Rule finally seemed 

 inevitable. 



Home Rule first became the dominant issue 

 in Irish politics about 1870. In that year the 

 Home Government Association was organized 

 at Dublin for the purpose of "taking Irish 

 affairs out of English hands." This association 

 represented all shades of religious and political 

 beliefs, with the Protestants and Conservatives 

 in control. In 1874 about sixty "Home Rul- 

 ers" were elected to Parliament, in which they 

 voted as a unit on Irish questions but fol- 

 lowed their personal inclinations on all other 

 matters. By 1881 there was a split among 

 the Irish members in Parliament, one faction 

 being conservative, the other, led by Charles 

 Stewart Parnell, adopting extreme views. The 

 Parnellites linked the Home Rule issue with 

 the economic issue of land reform, and in this 

 way antagonized the conservative land-owning 

 classes. Thus it happened that Home Rule, 

 supported by millions of Roman Catholic peas- 

 ants, lost the support of the Protestant middle 

 class which had first controlled the move- 

 ment. 



Parnell's tactics, however, were successful in 

 that the elections of 1885 gave him the balance 

 of power between the Liberals and the Con- 

 servatives. In the next year Gladstone and 

 other leading members of the Liberal party 

 announced their conversion to Home Rule 



