108 EMERITUS PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON THE 



of the three, was the fact that the Greek of the New Testament was the Greek which 

 regulated the services and the liturgies of the Greek Church, and which could no more be 

 profaned by the corruptions of the vulgar tongue than the existing Scottish language, 

 however excellent for popular ballads, could dare to show its face in a Scottish pulpit. 

 How potently these purifying and elevating forces have acted can be shown in a very 

 tangible way by merely taking a series of Greek publications in chronological order, and 

 counting their gradually lessening deviations from the pure type of classical antiquity. 

 Starting from the period previous to the great reform of Coraes, as a standard from which 

 to measure the stages of advance, I find in twelve lines of the Erotocritus, a popular 

 novel written in the Cretan dialect by Vicentius Kornares, published at Venice in 

 the year 1756, twenty-four deviations from correct Greek; in the same number of 

 lines of a Greek version of the Arabian Nights (Venice, 1792), nineteen deviations; 

 and in the first five verses of the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke (Athens, 1824), 

 covering about the same space, about the same number. Taking Coraes himself, in 

 twelve lines of his familiar correspondence with a Smyrniote merchant, I count twelve 

 deviations, and in another letter, only forty variations in three hundred and sixty lines, 

 the reason of this difference being, plainly, that as the points of variation affect rather 

 the connecting particles than the substantial material of the style, they are soon 

 exhausted, and, on occurring twice, do not require to be numbered as special points of 

 deviation. In Tricoupi's well-known History of the War of Independence (London, 

 1833), such was the advance in identification with the correct Greek style, that in 

 thirty- four lines I find only three marks of the influence of the vulgar tongue ; and in 

 Rangabes' Drama of Ducas (Athens, 1874), only four such instances in twelve lines ; in 

 a translation of Miss Agnes Smith's (now Mrs Lewis) Travels in Greece (Leipzig, 1885), 

 I find eight in twelve lines ; while in twenty-four lines of Paspates' History of the 

 taking of Constantinople by the Turks (Athens, 1890), only three deviations are found ; 

 and of two Greek newspapers, the 'A/c^oVoXt?, October 1891, and the"A<7Tu, of December 

 1891, the first shows only two variations in sixteen lines, and the second the same 

 number in thirty lines. To the same most recent date belong the translation of 

 Shakespeare's Hamlet, by Damirales (Athens, 1890), which, in twelve lines, shows only 

 five small peculiarities of the vulgar style ; the Xpio-Tiavacou MeXerai, a religious magazine, 

 at present issuiDg from the Athenian press, in which two whole pages, of forty lines each, 

 contain only five ; lastly, in the Romaic New Testament, published by the Bible Society 

 (Cambridge, 1890), I find in the first five verses of Luke ii. only six deviations from 

 the pure type, as contrasted with nineteen in the version above quoted, before the day 

 of political and literary regeneration. This is truly wonderful, and to be accounted for 

 only from the operation of the powerful forces above mentioned, taken along with the 

 spread of education in school and university, so characteristic of the intelligent Greek 

 people. Nor do we do full justice to the advance when we merely count the quantitative 

 amount of deviation from the pure style that occurs in this diminishing ratio ; we must 

 look also at the quality. Well, the first thing that strikes us in this regard is the 



