Jntro&uctfon, 



HILE, as a rule, it is impossible to speak with 

 too high appreciation of the busy, restless, 

 inquisitive intellect of ancient Greece, there is 

 one point in which it signally disappoints 

 reasonable expectation. It was incurious 

 respecting the literature of foreign nations. 

 The monuments of Egypt excited the wonder of Herodotus ; 

 the social condition of this nation and of Babylonia aroused 

 his intelligent interest ; we are infinitely indebted to him for 

 the facts which he has observed and recorded : and if his 

 survey of the history of these countries is inaccurate and 

 uncritical, it at least proves that he deemed the subject worthy 

 of his attention. But we should hardly have learned from him 

 that Egypt and Babylonia possessed a literature. If Plato really 

 sought the East in quest of mystic knowledge, his intercourse 

 with the Oriental mind was merely oral. Megasthenes spent 

 years in the industrious investigation of the natural conditions 

 and products of India, but he never gave a thought to Sanscrit, 

 about which the modern Italian traveller, Delia Valle, inquires 

 intelligently as soon as he sets foot in the country. Some 

 excuse may be made for this want of interest in strange speech 

 and unfamiliar thought ; but what can be said of the 

 phenomenon of Greeks dwelling for centuries under the 

 dominion of a kindred people, whose language is nearly akin to 

 theirs, whose literature is modelled upon and partly derived 

 from their own, in whose temples they may worship, whose 

 laws they must obey, whosa families they instruct, with whose 

 public and private life they are in daily contact, while yet their 

 literature is almost destitute of allusion to any evidence of 

 intellectual life among their rulers, pupils, and intimates? 



