Few, I will not say evil, were the days allowed to me
for such pursuits; and I was constrained, still young and an
unripe scholar to forego them for the duties of an active and
laborious profession. They are now amusements only, however
delightful and improving. For I am far from assuming to understand
all their riches, all their beauty, or all their power; yet I can
profoundly feel their immeasurable superiority in many important
respects to all we call modern; and I would fain think that there
are many even among my younger readers who can now, or will
hereafter, sympathise with the expression of my ardent admiration.
"Greek--the shrine of the genius of the old world; as universal as
our race, as individual as ourselves; of infinite flexibility, or
indefatigable strength, with the complication and the distinctness
of Nature herself; to which nothing was vulgar, from which nothing
was excluded; speaking to the ear like Italian, speaking to the
mind like English; with words like pictures, with words like the
gossamer films of the summer; at once the variety and
picturesqueness of Homer; the gloom and the intensity of AEschylus;
not compressed to the closest by Thucydides, nor fathomed to the
bottom by Plato; not sounding with all its thunders, nor lit up
with all its ardours even under the Promethean touch of
Demosthenes!
"And Latin--the voice of empire and of war, of law and of the
state, inferior to its half-parent and rival in the embodying of
passion and in the distinguishing of thought, but equal to it in
sustaining the measured march of history; and superior to it in
the indignant declamation of moral satire; stamped with the mark
of an imperial and despotising republic; rigid in its
construction, parsimonious in its synonyms; reluctantly yielding
to the flowery yoke of Horace, although opening glimpses of
Greek-like splendour in the occasional inspirations of Lucretius;
proved indeed, to the uttermost, by Cicero, and by him found
wanting; yet majestic in its bareness, impressive in its
conciseness; the true language of history, instinct with the
spirit of nations and not with the passions of individuals;
breathing the maxims of the world, and not the tenets of the
schools; one and uniform in its air and spirit, whether touched by
the stern and haughty Sallust, by the open and discursive Livy, by
the reserved and thoughtful Tacitus.
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