Sm,—As one who has advocated elsewhere that Greek should take
the place of Latin as the first classical language to be learned, I have followed with interest the correspondence in your columns on this subject. To the excellent arguments adduced by your correspondents I have only one to add. It is that Greek literature is more worthy of study than Latin because the Greeks expressed themselves naturally in literature, the Romans by action. One can grasp the soul of Rome through a study of history and antiquities but, though I do not underrate the value of similar study of the ancient Greeks, and study of Greece that is confined to art and philosophy in translation is necessarily one-sided, for it takes no account of the Greeks as poets, and it is in poetry above all that the Greeks can give us something still fresh and of supreme value, which can be obtained in no other way.—
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