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.” ^ 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. Rut 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 
^ 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 
