We lately recorded Lord Cromer's generous gift to the British
Academy to be used by them for the foundation of a prize to encourage the study of Greek. We admire and approve the gift from two points of view. Though we are opponents of compulsory Greek at our schools and Universities, since that means grinding the face of every urchin with a Greek grammar, we are whole- heartedly in favour of bringing men's minds, youth's minds, and even boys' minds into touch with the Greek spirit, for it is that spirit above any other which in the intellectual world quickeneth. We oontend, however, that the essential is not to teach men the grammar of a dead language, but to put them en rapport with Greek literature-- the place where the Greek spirit lies entombed though not dead, and ready to render up its secrets to those who go to the tomb with the passion of the quest. But to make two minds flow together, the English and the Greek, there is no actual need to know the dead language, though to do so is a counsel of perfection. Just as we can appreciate the glories of Isaiah's patriotic odes, the fiery lyrics or poignant elegies of the Psalms, or have our hearts stirred as by a trumpet by the war ballad of Deborah without knowing Hebrew, so we can imbibe the inspired social and political wisdom of Socrates or the saga of the Odyssey, or hoar Demosthenes " shako the Arsenal and fulmine over Greece," without being able to construe Greek.
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