GO EMERITUS PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON 



in the first eight lines only fourteen differential variations, and they are such as any clever 

 boy, trained at a classical school, would without difficulty understand. How far this 

 ratio is from that degree of corruption which turned Latin into Italian may be understood 

 at a glance by an analysis of any eight lines of a similar length from these languages ; 

 and here I find in the first eight lines of the first book of Tasso's Gerusalemme no less 

 than twenty-six variations from the classical Latin ; while in eight lines of Spanish I find 

 twenty-eight. It is plain, therefore, from this comparison, that, whereas the barbarous 

 Cretan Greek of the Erotocritus stood exactly at the point where favourable circumstances 

 might have enabled modern Greek to start into a new language, bearing the same relation 

 to ancient Greek that Italian and Spanish do to Latin, the less corrupted Greek which 

 Koraes had to manipulate was in a state which only required his skilful touch and a few 

 years of wise usage to make it shake hands with the classical Greek half-way, and present 

 to the world the great philological triumph which the flourishing literature of modern 

 Greece, since the grand social result of 1827, so imposingly exhibits. It must not be 

 supposed, however, that in this great triumph of the upper stream over the lower stream 

 of traditional Greek — for to this it substantially amounts — there has been any act 

 of violent injustice done to the popular Greek, the bearer of so much stout national 

 life, and the recorder of so many acts of peasant heroism ; on the contrary, for purely 

 popular purposes, the vulgar dialect still asserts itself pleasantly, just as the Dorsetshire 

 dialect, and the dialect of Ayrshire made classical by Burns, are heard purling sweetly 

 alongside the great rolling stream of the English language, not only without offence, but 

 with great enjoyment to all who know how near the language of the peasantry always 

 is to the heart of Nature, and how free the popular song knows to keep itself from the 

 false refinements and the pretty affectations so apt to be the concomitants of a high 

 state of culture in a literary class. 



What remains of the life of Koraes from this period till the great national up-rising 

 of 1822 brought his long-cherished patriotic dreams to an unexpected realisation is lightly 

 told. At his advanced age, being then past seventy, and not in very fair health, he was 

 not in a condition to gird himself, with young kilted Albanians, for the actual tug of 

 warfare in the field ; but, while denied his part in the strokes of the sword, the service of 

 his pen was ever ready to make his countrymen intellectually and morally worthy of what 

 political results their armed struggle might procure ; and accordingly, in the works edited 

 by him in the last decade of his life, we observe a choice of classical books with a distinct 

 moral and political colouring. Among these were Aristotle's Politics and Ethics, 

 Xenophon's Memorabilia, Plato's Gorgias, Lycurgus' Oration against Leocrates, 

 Onosander's Strategicus, the first elegy of Tyrt^eus, Plutarch's HoXirela, Epictetus' 

 'Eyxup idtov, Arrian's Ettiktiitov AiaTpifi-q, Cebet's Tabula, and the hymn of Cleanthes. 

 Besides these strictly scholarly labours, in his XweicSqtJLos lepariKog he came into collision 

 with that sacerdotal party which, in modern Greece as in modern England, has its delight 

 in magnifying the functions and giving a sort of sacrosanct inviolability to the persons of the 

 sacerdotal order. He also gave offence to certain of the Greek clergy by countenancing 



