the older poets now circulating among a more learned public." In
accordance with this profound yet simple theory--from which we gather
that the Golden Age of the poets was that in which there were no
readers--the work is divided into two nearly equal parts, the first
dealing with poetry and the second with prose, and this "is now the
accepted order among the German writers on the subject."

In the first volume epic, lyric and dramatic poetry are dealt with in
the order in which they are here named, while in the second the
arrangement is strictly chronological, taking up historians,
philosophers and orators as they appeared upon the scene. Except in the
case of the epic and the drama there is no examination of the rise or
nature of any particular form of composition, and the exceptions merely
touch the familiar ground of the origin of the Homeric poems and the
rise of the AEschylean tragedy. Some account is given of the principal
authors, their works are more or less fully enumerated and some of them
analyzed, style and similar matters are discussed in a summary and
decisive tone--critics, ancient and modern, who have held different
views from those of Mr. Mahaffy being sharply reprehended--and the final
sections of some of the chapters are devoted to bibliography, including
modern imitations and translations. Although Mr. Mahaffy is never
otherwise than terse--or, more properly speaking, curt--he sometimes
condescends to repetition. Thus he tells us in three or four different
places that Sophocles and Thucydides "play at hide-and-seek with the
reader." These two authors, thus happily classed together, represent
"the artificial obscurity of the Attic epoch," in distinction from "the
pregnant obscurity" of Heracleitus and AEschylus and "the redundant
obscurity of some modern poets." The attempt of "Classen and others" to
explain the involutions and anacolutha of Thucydides by "the undeveloped
condition of Attic prose, and the difficulties of wrestling with an
unformed idiom to express adequately great and pregnant thoughts," is
triumphantly refuted by the statement that "Euripides and Cratinus had
already perfected the use of Attic Greek in dramatic dialogue," and "in
Attic prose Antiphon had already attained clearness, as we can see in
his extant speeches." As Classen, in his discussion of the question, has
not omitted to notice Antiphon, it may be doubted whether he would
accept this fact as conclusive. Another point i