11ILE GREEK SPIRIT VERSUS GREEK GRAMMAR. (To Tan Emma or
nu "Sezmiima."1
Snr,—Your striking and thoughtful article (is it not an echo of a former one by the same writer in the Spectator some years ago?) on this subject has, I know, won approval from eminent classical scholars no less than from some of us who may have only " small Latin and leas Greek." Happening to read, for examination purposes, the chapter on " How Shakespeare Came to be" in Mr. Stanley Leathes's admirable and (in its way) unique history book, The People in Adventure. I was struck by t—se simple but cogent words:— " From the beginning of Elisabeth's reign translators were at work. The people wanted foreign books; there was a demand for translations among the unlearned. If Shakespeare wanted
to read Ovid, and Virgil and Homer., be could read them in English, and many other classical works beside. One transla- tion we know that he did read—North's translation of the Lives of Plutarch—for he noes its very words in Julius Caesar. Some of the translators of Elizabeth's day are famous; for they studied to give the full spirit and meaning of the great authors, and did not follow their turns of speech, like pedants. The translator put himself into the work as well as the author's self."
Mr. Loathes writes for youths such so it is the life-work of some of us to examine. His summing up of a brief discussion on the " new study " in his account of the Renaissance is admirably clear and just :— " We may be able to do without Greek now, though some of us would be sorry to miss it; but without Greek we could not have attained such wisdom as we now pmeess."
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