MR. FROUDE'S " CIESAR."
Ere THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.'] Sa.,—Your reviewer of Mr. Froude's " Cwsar," objecting to his phrase "nothing less than," calls it "a German, not an English idiom." May I suggest that it is rather Latin ? The phrase is not uncommon in Elizabethan English, e.g., Lyly's Euphues," p. 329, "What mettall art thou made of, Philautus, that thinkest of nothing but love, and art rewarded with nothing less than love ?" &c.
The reviewer's quotation from Mr. Ward Curtins's "History "of Greece," "Marathon was nothing less than a complete victory," is not a quotation, but an incorrect remembrance. It would have been a curious thing to say of Marathon, which Curtius, II., 221, calls a " rout " and "decisive contest." The phrase is in Vol. II., p. 293, of "Salamis " :—" The naval force of the enemy was nothing less than annihilated. Altogether, he had probably lost not much more than the fifth part of his
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