LATEST PHASES OF LITERARY STYLE IN GREECE. 113 



guide, 7rov ehai rj (3apKeTra — "Where is the boat?" " You should not say ^apKerra, sir," 

 was the reply, " but XeV/3o?," — the genuine Greek word used by Thucydides, not an 

 Italian word which reminded the little patriot of the departed days of Venetian domina- 

 tion in the Morea. Another instance of the same patriotic purism occurred to me last 

 spring in the case of a group of common schoolboys. I was standing on the pier of 

 Nauplia, beside a train of cabs, waiting to take me and my fellow-voyagers to Mycense, 

 when a crowd of these lively urchins, attracted by our appearance, gathered round us to 

 stare at the strangers. Wishing to show them that I could speak Greek, and Greek that 

 they could understand, not like the usual Englishmen's Greek, which, as old Thomas 

 Fuller said, nobody understands but themselves, I said, pointing to one of the horses in 

 the cab, 7ra>? ovo/ua^ei? to tyov touto — What is the name of this animal ? The reply 

 jumped out forthwith, not as I expected in the popular " a\oyo" the unreasoning brute, 

 but " tWo?," the old classical designation for the noble animal. Aev etvai '[-7nro$ elvai aXoyo, 

 was my reply ; but they had been taught too well, and parried my thrust as emphatically 

 as the little girl at the Piraeus. 



Of course, nothing in the above strictures should be interpreted to imply that the 

 vulgar Romaic dialect is to be disowned altogether, and consigned to a limbo of intolerable 

 barbarism. On the contrary, in its own sphere, in the sphere of the historical ballad and 

 popular song, it is invaluable, and is, in fact, too closely bound up with the best patriotic 

 recollections of 1821 to be willingly forgotten so long as (Greece remains Greece. 

 Polylas, therefore, is right so far ; and, while the style of the popular ballads may carry 

 with it associations which harmonise ill with the elevated style of such a serious and 

 thoughtful tragedy as Hamlet, it may for that very reason be the best neo-Hellenic form 

 in which to dress, as this author has done, the Odyssey of Homer (Athens, 1875), — a 

 poem which partakes more of the easy breadth of a series of popular ballads, than of the 

 sustained majesty of such lofty epics as those which have immortalised the names of 

 Virgil and Milton. 



In conclusion, as a practical man, and of half a century's experience in the educational 

 treatment of languages, I take the liberty to make the following threefold application of 

 the living power of the living Greek language as set forth in this paper : — (1) That our 

 great schools and universities should give up treating Greek as a dead language, and should 

 forthwith fling overboard their present fashion of pronouncing it in a barbarous and 

 arbitrary fashion, which nobody understands but themselves ; (2) that considerations of 

 policy, as well as of human sympathy, should induce all persons, whether inside or 

 outside the University, to cultivate a living familiarity with the living inheritors of 

 the noble Greek language ; and (3) that the Christian Churches, with whom Greek is 

 not only an intellectual luxury, but a professional tool, should institute travelling scholar- 

 ships for distinguished young theologians, for the purpose of getting in five months a 

 living hold of the language of St Luke and St Paul, with more pleasure and profit than, 

 under the present scholastic system of dead books and grammatical rules, can be achieved 

 in as many years. 



