WILLIAM WATSON t;0()I)\VL\. Sll 



(1879)), the relation of the optative to the siihjuncti\e and other 

 moods, and the origin of the construction of ov /jlt] with the subjunctive 

 and the future inthcative. 



The author of the "]\Iood and Tenses," the doctor irrcfragahilis of 

 Greek syntax, as he has been called, would have been the last to 

 claim that he had, with Browning's grammarian, settled all of "on's 

 business." He had not been, like Tom Steady in "The Idler," "a 

 vehement assertor of uncontro\-erted truths; and by keeping himself 

 out of the reach of contradiction, had acquired all the confidence 

 which the consciousness of irresistible abilities could have given." 

 There is much in Greek svntax that is debatal)le territorv; but when- 

 ever Goodwin entered that territory — though he was not a statisti- 

 cian, as the earlier great scholars were not — his pre^'ailing soundness 

 of judgment and his range of illustration afford the controversialist 

 only rarely the luxury of holding a different opinion. 



Goodwin's "Greek Grammar" appeared ten years after the "Moods 

 and Tenses," and inherited as by right the distinction and the distinc- 

 tive features of the earlier work. The " Moods and Tenses " appealed 

 to the advanced student and the teacher; the "Grammar" brought 

 before the neophyte the facts of the language in exiact and clear form; 

 and showed that its author possessed the rare (and often underesti- 

 mated) faculty of making a good elementary book. Only he who has 

 himself followed in the tracks of Goodwin can adequately realize the 

 clarity and compactness of his statements that never err through undue 

 emphasis either on logical or on aesthetic relations. 



The Aery excellence and success of Goodwin's work in the depart- 

 ment of grammar made the wider public, and to a certain degree e\en 

 the Hellenists of this country, ignorant of the scope and the distinction 

 of his work in other fields. It is an altogether erroneous notion that 

 Goodwin was purely a grammarian, honorable as that title has been 

 made by many illustrious scholars. The range of his sympathies with 

 Greek literature was indicated early in his career. The " Greek Gram- 

 mar" appeared in 1870; in the same year was published Goodwin's 

 revision, in five volumes, of the translation of Plutarch's "Morals" 

 made by various hands in the seventeenth century. Innumerable 

 errors and infelicities of the old translation were cleared away by 

 Goodwin, whose work was termed a "vindication" of Plutarch by 

 Emerson, who contributed an Introduction to the revision. English 

 readers who would acquaint themselves with the deep and broad 

 humanity of the sage of Chaeronea, in whom the intellect was illumi- 

 nated by the force of morals, will long continue to use the translation 

 of the Cambridge scholar. 



