PREFACE.

WITH the present volume we bring to its completion that part of this series of FOREIGN CLASSICS IN ENGLISH which was devoted to the purpose of making accessible to English readers, in their own tongue, the treasures of Greek and Latin letters, as these treasures are disclosed to the average American student in the ordinary course of school and college education.

The preparation of this series of books has happened to coincide in time with vivid public discussion, experiencing its irregularly periodic revival among us, of the question whether after all classical culture ought not to be regarded now as a thing that has had its day. The fact of such discussion, rife anew at just this moment, may well awaken in the present writer's mind a somewhat serious consideration. Has he perhaps been doing work for the past rather than for the future? Is modern interest in ancient classic literature doomed presently to be extinguished? What, as to this point, are the signs of the times?

There is no disguising the fact that Greek and Latin are yielding some ground that once was theirs in the schools and the colleges. At Harvard, for example, it has been decided that Greek shall no longer be made a study indispensable for admission to full standing in the classes. This change now established, a Harvard student may very likely at graduation know nothing whatever of Greek. The Harvard

example, should it become a widely accepted precedent-a result which seems yet to be doubtful-would no doubt be found to have commenced an important innovation. The influence, however, to depress Greek culture, would not be so great as might at first be imagined. The chief difference would be only that those students would freely neglect Greek, who, under the system of compulsion, would learn it reluctantly. Such learners, probably, would never under any circumstances become good Greek scholars. They would grow up to hate Greek study, and to talk against it. Meantime, students that really wish to learn Greek would do so as under the old plan. It is out of the ranks of these students that good Greek scholars will come, in the future, as has been the case in the past. There would then be this positive gain to the cause of Greek culture, that there would be nobody to speak ill of it-nobody, that is, having the authority of ostensible qualification to do so. Sound Greek scholarship, enlightened interest in Greek literature, will thus lose little, and they will certainly stand a chance of gaining something, by the change of Greek from a compulsory to an elective study whether in school or college. It will simply mark a new importation of good common sense into the business of liberal education-a place in which, always, that not too abundant quality is as much needed as anywhere else in the world. Wise friends of Greek learning find, therefore, small occasion of fear in the prevalent tendency to leave Greek open to election or rejection at the will of the student. There is, however, in this tendency a reason why earnest efforts should be put forth to make the choice of students judicious. The present series of books will, it is hoped, contribute something to diffuse that general intelligence on the subject which is neces

sary in order to make the atmosphere of public opinion favorable to the right tendency in choosing.

Over against the apparent loss thus admitted to have befallen the cause of classic studies, is to be set a positive gain that more than compensates. Colleges for the education of women are multiplying Greek and Latin students among the gentler sex. Classic culture is thus unobservedly getting a new lease of life in this country. And the not very remote eventual result is destined to be incalculably large. For, through the influence exerted by the cultivated future mothers of the land, it may with confidence be expected that the coming generations of children will furnish a much more numerous proportion of students that will choose Greek and Latin, than could at present be counted in our colleges.

Another very significant fact pointing toward the persistence of classical studies at our seats of higher education is supplied in the result recently reached in Germany of an experiment tried with a view to the permanent relinquishment of Greek and Latin in the course appointed to be pursued by scientific students. These students, by exception, were recently, for a term of years, permitted to proceed without the preliminary training in Greek and Latin that had before been obligatory upon all university students alike. But the experiment proved unsatisfactory in its results, and the authorities published an elaborate report to the effect that scientific students in whose preparatory training the classic languages had, with a view to their greater advantage, been omitted, turned out-so far from being profited by the omission-to be not capable of even holding their own in scientific pursuits with their fellow-students that had been previously drilled in Greek and Latin.