OP ARTS AND SCIENCES. 187 



ander R. Rangabes was the first to attempt this. In his tragedy, 

 Phrosjne, Meletios describes in hexameters the heart-rending catas- 

 trophe of Gardiki, perpetrated by the bloodthirsty Ali Pacha, and in 

 his poems since published there is a flowing translation of the first 

 rhapsodies of the Odyssey, and a dedicatory letter to Professor Doucas 

 written in hexameters. 



" ' I am not ashamed to confess that while reading these felicitous 

 attempts I felt for the first time all the charm of this measure, and now, 

 years after, I have dared to follow an example so worthy of imitation.' 



" The poem opens as follows : — 



KeiT v\lrr]\6s fxera^v ratv Qrj^av Koi tov Afjfiov rrjs Tlirpas 

 Hvpyos ^ap^dpov pvdpov, Trpbs bvapds Karappevaas ev pepet, 

 'Ex^av rrjv ^daiv eyyvs tcop ox^av ttjs KaXrjs KaTratbos, k. t. X. 



"Upon this state of things an old question comes up with new 

 urgency for the scholars of the present day to consider, and that is, 

 whether we ought to continue to pronounce the ancient Greek lan- 

 guage without quantity and with the Latin accent, or to attempt the 

 restoration of the ancient union of quantity and accent, or to adopt the 

 modern pronunciation. The question may not be one of vital impor- 

 tance, but it is one of practical convenience in teaching that classical 

 tongue. And it has called out much discussion among the scholars of 

 Europe. There is no doubt that the modern pronunciation is gaining 

 ground. The venerable Professor Thiersch, of Munich, has long ad- 

 vocated it, having many years ago visited Greece and learned the 

 spoken language of the country. Throughout Germany the Greek is 

 pronounced according to its own accents, and not according to the 

 Roman, though the modern sounds of the vowels have not been gen- 

 erally adopted. In England, Mr. G. J. Pennington published in 1844 

 an elaborate work in octavo, agreeing in his conclusions with those of 

 Mr. Pickering, and strongly advocating the Modern Greek pronuncia- 

 tion. Sir George F. Bowen, also an English scholar well known for 

 his travels in Greece, lately appointed Secretary to the Lord High 

 Commissioner of the Ionian Islands, and married to an accomplished 

 Greek lady of the noble family of Roma, is very naturally a warm 

 advocate of the Modern Greek pronunciation. Professor Blackie, of 

 the University of Edinburgh, the admirable translator of ^schylus, 

 has written several excellent essays on the same side. He, too, has 



