ly are, but in
part to traditional prepossessions. When after a millennial occultation
the classics, and especially, with the fall of the Palaeologi, the Greek
classics burst upon Western Europe, there was no literature with which
to compare them. The Jewish Scriptures were not regarded as literature
by readers of the Vulgate. Dante, it is true, had given to the world his
immortal vision, and Boccaccio, its first expounder, had shown the
capabilities of Italian prose. But the light of Florentine culture was
even for Italy a partial illumination. On the whole, we may say that
modern literature did not exist, and the Oriental had not yet come to
light. What wonder that the classics were received with boundless
enthusiasm! It was through the influence of that enthusiasm that the
study of Greek was introduced into schools and universities with the
close of the fifteenth century. It was through that influence that
Latin, still a living language in the clerical world, was perpetuated,
instead of becoming an obsolete ecclesiasticism. The language of Livy
and Ovid derived fresh impulse from the reappearing stars of secular
Rome.

It is in vain to deny that those literatures have lost something of the
relative value they once possessed, and which made it a literary
necessity to study Greek and Latin for their sakes. The literary
necessity is in a measure superseded by translations, which, though they
may fail to communicate the aroma and the verbal felicities of the
original, reproduce its form and substance. It is furthermore superseded
by the rise of new literatures, and by introduction to those of other
and elder lands. The Greeks were masters of literary form, but other
nations have surpassed them in some particulars. There is but one Iliad,
and but one Odyssee; but also there is but one Job, but one Sakoontala,
but one Hafiz-Nameh, but one Gulistan, but one Divina Commedia, but one
Don Quixote, but one Faust. If the argument for the study of Greek and
Latin is grounded on the value of the literary treasures contained in
those tongues, the same argument applies to the Hebrew, to the Sanscrit,
to the Persian, to say nothing of the modern languages, to which the
College assigns a subordinate place.

But, above all, the literary importance of Greek and Latin for the
British and American scholar is greatly qualified by the richness and
superiority of the English literature which has come into being since
the Graecomania of the