Sea with Greek vessels, they
gave him the same idea of Greece as a cruise to Berwick in a Scotch
smack would of Johnny Groat's house. Upon what grounds then does he
arrogate the right of condemning by wholesale a body of men of whom he
can know little? It is rather a curious circumstance that Mr. Thornton,
who so lavishly dispraises Pouqueville on every occasion of mentioning
the Turks, has yet recourse to him as authority on the Greeks, and terms
him an impartial observer. Now, Dr. Pouqueville is as little entitled to
that appellation as Mr. Thornton to confer it on him.

The fact is, we are deplorably in want of information on the subject of
the Greeks, and in particular their literature; nor is there any
probability of our being better acquainted, till our intercourse becomes
more intimate, or their independence confirmed. The relations of
passing travellers are as little to be depended on as the invectives of
angry factors; but till something more can be attained, we must be
content with the little to be acquired from similar sources.[240]

However defective these may be, they are preferable to the parodoxes of
men who have read superficially of the ancients, and seen nothing of the
moderns, such as De Pauw; who, when he asserts that the British breed of
horses is ruined by Newmarket, and that the Spartans[241] were cowards
in the field,[242] betrays an equal knowledge of English horses and
Spartan men. His "philosophical observations" have a much better claim
to the title of "poetical." It could not be expected that he who so
liberally condemns some of the most celebrated institutions of the
ancient, should have mercy on the modern Greeks; and it fortunately
happens, that the absurdity of his hypothesis on their forefathers
refutes his sentence on themselves.

Let us trust, then, that, in spite of the prophecies of De Pauw, and the
doubts of Mr. Thornton, there is a reasonable hope of the redemption of
a race of men, who, whatever may be the errors of their religion and
policy, have been amply punished by three centuries and a half of
captivity.

III.[243]

Athens, Franciscan Convent, _March_ 17, 1811.

"I must have some talk with this learned Theban."[244]

Some time after my return from Constantinople to this city I received
the thirty-first number of the _Edinburgh Review_[245] as a great
favour, and certainly at this distance an acceptable one, from t