PROBLEMS OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE 397 



these principles; secondly, in the coordination of the items of know- 

 ledge already won; and thirdly, especially with reference to the 

 lessons obtainable from comparative literature, in ascertaining 

 many new and essential items of knowledge. 



The mere statement of the principles has suggested obviously, in 

 large measure, the method of their application. The historian of 

 classical literature must above all be an artist; disaster and failure 

 will attend him if he allows his learning, or rather his mass of scien- 

 tific information, to confuse or obscure for him the simple and severe 

 outlines of his ideals, the clear manifestation of which is his aim. 

 His work in its final form must be marked by due proportion in all 

 its parts, and must be transfused by the vital spirit. 



The most difficult, because the most comprehensive, task is of 

 course that of writing general histories of classical literature. From 

 the failure to apply in the right way all these great principles, the 

 perfectly satisfactory general history of classical literature has yet 

 to be written. On the other hand, the successful application of these 

 principles, in work on certain classical authors or on special branches 

 or topics in the history of classical literature, has often been made, 

 though in outline. It may be invidious to name names; but I 

 would recall, of German scholars of recent date, among the dead 

 only Bernays, Ribbeck, Rohde; among the living, Usener, Diels, 

 Wilamowitz, Hirzel. In the ascertainment of essential items of 

 knowledge, how much these men, and countless others, have ac- 

 complished ! And yet how much remains to be done ! I will not ven- 

 ture to draw up a list of desiderata, but will only call attention to 

 a topic or two. We lack, for example, for certain phases of Greek 

 literary history, careful compilations of all the available ancient 

 data that relate to them. With all the investigation of sources (in 

 the narrow sense of the term) that has characterized the last half- 

 century, there is still a sorry absence, in much of our work, of that 

 careful discrimination of primary, secondary, and other mediate 

 sources, through which alone sound conclusions can be drawn. Are 

 there not many dark places yet to be explored in the relation, c. g., 

 of many Latin works to their originals? With the new light of all 

 sorts recently won, may not many a lost Greek play be more success- 

 fully reconstructed than has been possible in the past? Are the rela- 

 tions of certain of the Greek and Roman writers to their own times 

 so clearly apprehended as they might be? The history of certain 

 branches of literary expression need to be followed out, such as some 

 of those suggested by Ribbeck sixteen years ago: the forms and 

 principles of poetic narration from the Iliad down to Xonnus's 

 Dionysiaca, including the development of the epos, mythic-heroic 

 and historical. the narrative r/.u-os. the epyllion. and the idyll. 

 The history of the elegy or of the elegiac form of literary expression. 



