THE PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Thirty years ago I returned from a campaign in Greece. It was a Sunday morning, and I took down my Greek Testa- ment to read the lesson for the day. One verse I read according to the pompous mispronunciation I had been taught at school
and at Cambridge.
Then I started again : and read the Greek as I had heard it in the market-place at Athens, from the mouths of shipinen on the Aegean Sca, from comrades under the fire of Turkish guns. At once the dead language quickened into life. The apostles were no longer dim shadows of a doubtful past, but real men with a living message to mankind. Our Saviour's own words ceased to be theological subtleties, and acquired a force and meaning I had never known before.
If " Greek" has become a discredited study, it is because it was not Greek that the grammarians taught. To under- stand and appreciate Greek literature aright one must read it in the living Greek.—I am, Sir, &c., D. R. F.
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