C U RRENT LITERATURE.
SIR RICHARD JEBB'S ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES.
Essays and Addresses. By Sir R. C. Jebb, Litt.D., O.M. (Cam- bridge University Press. 10s. 6d. net.)—Just as oven most books nowadays "find their fate" in an early oblivion, so the countless throng of reviews, pamphlets, and addresses seem to be born only to perish. They have their hour and then pass, forgotten ghosts, to the unknown world. And yet the occasional and less formal work of a great scholar or writer can hardly fail to contain much that is both of personal interest and permanent value ; nor is the present volume wanting in either merit. All who admire—as who does not?—Jebb's "Attic Orators" and his marvellous " Sophocles" may justly place it beside them on their shelves, not merely from a sense of piety to a great teacher, but because of its independent value. Some of the articles, indeed, such as those on " The Sophoclean Trilogy " and "Delos," are of somewhat technical interest, but the majority are of general concern to every lover of the classics. The long essay, for instance, on Pindar, which is reprinted from an early volume of the Journal of Hellenic Studies, is of almost unique quality. Jebb had, perhaps, a truer knowledge of Pindar than any modern has ever possessed. His own Pindaric Odes stand by themselves in the world of scholarship, and seem to refute the saying of Horace that "to rival Pindar" in his flight is to court the fate of Icarus. He had penetrated to the very heart of ono of the greatest, though least commonly understood, of the Greek poets, and in this essay enables the reader in large measure to do the same, for along with rare poetic insight he also exhibits in it that faculty of taking pains and of illustrating- general remarks by exact instances without which criticism, however brilliant, is apt to be barren. Perhaps, indeed, Jebb's special distinction as a scholar is that he unites the finest artistic feeling with the most patient industry. He shrinks from no hard work, but his hand seems to gain from it only a " daintier sense," while to this com- bination of strength and delicacy he adds also a rare temperance. Excess and exaggeration are hateful to him, and he has an Attic simplicity of taste, so that his style may possibly at first appear cold, but in the end leaves a more lasting impression exactly because of its sobriety and reserve. The reader, for example, will find hero two sketches of Lucian and Erasmus which might easily have been coloured highly, but in which Jebb secures the effect of real portraiture, not by the use of rhetorical pigments, but by accuracy, sureness, and discrimination of drawing. And an address on "Samuel Johnson" delivered at Newnham shows like qualities. Possibly to some fair undergraduate the aspect of the
lecturer may have seemed incongruous with his subject ; but Jebb pierces through all externals straight to the inner self, and, exactly as Plato removed the " Silenus-mask " of Socrates to open up "the divine and golden images" within, so with almost equal art he makes us see clearly the beauty and nobility which were hidden by Johnson's rude exterior, his often harsh manners, and his too frequently cumbrous style. Nor is ho loss convincing in the field of historical criticism than in these literary essays. His article on " The Speeches of Thucydides " is a model of careful, judicial writing; and still more so is that on " Fronde's Caesar." Caesar is one of those figures which delight the " literary artist." He attracts the pen of tho historian as much as Lady Hamilton did the brush of Romney, but the misfortune is that different portraits convey widely different impressions. In all there are the same "magnificent outlines "; but every one fills them up "with a large freedom of discretion," so that what the real man was intimately and personally we can scarcely guess. Froude, like Mommsen, paints him as a hero, as the saviour of an almost dying world, and paints him brilliantly. The portrait as a work of art commands admiration. But is it lifelike ? Is it true? Is "Caesarism" as it is called, is "Imperialism " as Caesar conceived it, a noble and heroic thing at all? Those are questions which criticism is bound to answer, for the spirit of Caesar never dies, and these clear, calm pages will servo to correct many false estimates and foolish enthusiasms. In skilful use of opportunity, in genius, and "in love of power" Caesar was the equal of Napoleon, while the work he did was perhaps not less wonderful and certainly more lasting. Measured by any scale of magnitude, both men are "heroic," alike in themselves and in their achievements; but it is rather imagination than judgment which assigns the true qualities of a hero to either one or the other. We have no space to do more than refer to the con- cluding, and, many will think, the best, portion of this volume, which deals with the relation of classical, or rather " humane," studies to modern life, and, above all, to modern education. The writer is a whole-hearted advocate of literary culture, and of such culture, at least in its higher forms, ho regards classical study as the "indispensable" basis. But his advocacy is never one-sided, and ho recognises to the full the necessity of scientific and practical teaching. Indeed, he could hardly do otherwise without being false to his own position as an interpreter of Greek thought. The distinction of the Greek mind was "originating" power, not only in literature, but in art and science. Renan declares that "progress will eternally consist in developing what Greece conceived " ; the great Oxford scholar, Professor Green, makes "the will to know what is true " at once the foundation of ethics and the first in "the Greek classification of virtues "; while at the Renais- sance the revival of Greek learning was not an event of merely literary interest, but a reawakening of the spirit which " makes for intellectual light, for the advance of knowledge in every field." The intemperate zeal of scientists is apt to deride mere students of the "dead languages" ; but Jebb was a Greek Pro- fessor who united the learning of Person with the larger out- look of the great Italian humanists, and certainly the sane and temperate views he here puts forward cannot be neglected by any one who desires that higher education in England should be in any true sense " liberal."
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