A History of Ancient Greek Literature. By Harold N. Fowler,
Ph.D. (Hirschfeld Brothers. 6s. net.)—This is a useful text- book, as comprehensive and complete as anything that can be found of the same size and price, and adequate in respect both of knowledge of the subject and taste. The reasoning by which Professor Fowler would prove the composite nature of the Iliad seems to us inconclusive. Poets are not so logical as to make a " catalogue of the ships " unlikely even in the tenth year of the war; "tenth," too, is obviously a conventional number; the scene of Helen and Priam on the walls may be defended simply on account of its picturesqueness. The chapter on Euripides is a well-conceived and clearly expressed appreciation of the dramatist. A few lines might have been advantageously given to the inter- esting subject of the poet's metrical practice. The difference in the iambic verse between the early plays, the Alcestis and the Medea, and the later dramas, such as the Iphigenias, is so strongly marked that it cannot be accidental.
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