e contributed to mould
the literature of the modern world. The multitudinous votive
inscriptions, serious and sportive, connote the phases of Greek
religious sentiment, from pious awe to irreverent familiarity and
sarcastic scepticism; the moral tone of the nation at various periods is
mirrored with corresponding fidelity; the sepulchral inscriptions admit
us into the inmost sanctuary of family affection, and reveal a depth
and tenderness of feeling beyond the province of the historian to
depict, which we should not have surmised even from the dramatists; the
general tendency of the collection is to display antiquity on its most
human side, and to mitigate those contrasts with the modern world which
more ambitious modes of composition force into relief. The constant
reference to the details of private life renders the Anthology an
inexhaustible treasury for the student of archaeology; art, industry and
costume receive their fullest illustration from its pages. Its influence
on European literatures will be appreciated in proportion to the
inquirer's knowledge of each. The further his researches extend, the
greater will be his astonishment at the extent to which the Anthology
has been laid under contribution for thoughts which have become
household words in all cultivated languages, and at the beneficial
effect of the imitation of its brevity, simplicity, and absolute verbal
accuracy upon the undisciplined luxuriance of modern genius.

_Translations, Imitations, &c._--The best versions of the Anthology
ever made are the Latin renderings of select epigrams by Hugo Grotius.
They have not been printed separately, but will be found in Bosch and
Lennep's edition of the Planudean _Anthology_, in the Didot edition,
and in Dr Wellesley's _Anthologia Polyglotta_. The number of more or
less professed imitations in modern languages is infinite, that of
actual translations less considerable. French and Italian, indeed, are
ill adapted to this purpose, from their incapacity of approximating to
the form of the original, and their poets have usually contented
themselves with paraphrases or imitations, often exceedingly
felicitous. F.D. Deheque's French prose translation, however (1863),
is most excellent and valuable. The German language alone admits of
the preservation of the original metre--a circumstance advantageous to
the German translators, Herder and Jacobs, who have not, however,
compensated the los