1883-92 THE GOD OF SLEEP 257 



of a night-bird which flies noiselessly ? " and then 

 added : "It was a beautiful idea of the Greeks to 

 give the God of Sleep wings which would enable 

 him to visit his patients without a murmur of 

 sound." 2 He knew the passage in the " Iliad" 

 where Hypnos takes the form of the bird which 

 " men call Chalkis but the gods Kumindis." I was 

 greatly struck by the observation, not so much 

 because of the identification of the wing of the 

 night-bird — that must have been easy for a 

 naturalist, and had indeed been once remarked 

 before, as I learned afterwards — but because of 

 what appeared to me the singularly poetic insight 

 which had led Professor Owen to note the noise- 

 lessness of the night-bird's wing and its beautiful 

 appropriateness to the God of Sleep. These were 

 two points which no archaeologist had dreamt of, 

 and yet this particular head of Hypnos had been 

 made the subject of an elaborate investigation by 

 the most practically minded of German critics, 

 Heinrich Braun. But surely the true beauty of 

 the conception was lost until we recognised what 

 Professor Owen was the first to point out.' 



Nor is this an isolated instance of the imagina- 

 tive faculty which is essential to any great exponent 

 of science. Owen was always a reader of poetry, 

 and drew from the stores of his retentive memory 



2 It is curious to contrast with the wings of a swan, one 

 with this the practice of modern of the most noisy of birds, 

 painters to represent angels 



VOL. II. S 



