A history of classical Greek literature / by the Rev. J.P. Mahaffy.

  • John Pentland Mahaffy
Date:
1908
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: A history of classical Greek literature / by the Rev. J.P. Mahaffy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    for it is a well-known law of human progress that long before the discovery or use of writing, and long before ™e care to read or hear simple prose statements, they delight in rythmical song, which strikes their imagmationi with ^eate, force and is more easily retained in their memory. . be seen among us in the education of children, who pass in a ftw years through successive stages not unlike those ol munan- I X in its progress from mental infancy to mature thought We know that little children can be taught to repeat amf'remember rimes long before they will stmp -tnrv in nrose We must therefore expect to find the earliest efforts among the Greeks in their poetry. This is of course the case and the poems of Homer and Hesiod are mam- festlv older even as they stand, than any other books the Greeks have left us. For though we should concede to certain modern sceptics that the arangement, or bnngn^to Urg unities, of these poems was not competed ti l pretty latt^ their history—even this extreme theory must admit and quire that die materials of the poems, the short lays fro which they were put together, are older than any other species of Grnek li m ure. It must also be admitted that the hum- ber a„“ extmh of these shorter poems, which may have been worked into what we call Homer, was very considerable and that only a very small portion of this literature has been tr. When,therefore, we go back as :°he S^X^Jis called Epic poetry, S, of Which in earl/ days passed under the name .. The noblest and best of this poetry is in the opinion of aU critics ancient and modern, the Iliad; a poem of great len , of a definite plan and purpose, and composed with a perfect mastery both of style and language. The characters are pr tty insistently drawn, and our general impression of the whole work suggests {a) that its author was one master hand, us 0 both the legends of his people, and his own studies m human na ure to Produce a dramatic picture not since surpassed or perhaps equalled. If this be so, we may safely assert, u
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