PREFACE 3 THIS book is the fruit of nearly half a century's study of the subject of which it treats on the part of the writer; and if he thought that, notwithstanding that the nonus annus of the poet1 has long since come and gone, yet further delay would add substantial value to his work, he would not scruple to impose it upon himself. But he doubts any such policy of further hesitation. There is such a thing, as the Preacher warns us, as the "loosing of the silver cord" and the "breaking of the golden bowl." It has been remarked as a common "incident in artificers to be enamoured of their own works," which they are ever "still mending, never ending." It can be said of a writer, as Carlyle said of Schiller, that he “könnte nie fertig werden, never could get done." And if to get done is at the same time to expose the doer to the gaze of all as also the maker of mistakes, his consolation must be found in the wise reflection of the late American Minister Mr. Phelps, that "the man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything"; and in the consciousness that, whatever may have been his own mistakes, there are always Carlyle Critical and Miscellaneous Essays "Sir Walter Scott," ed. 1872, vol. vi. p. 73. 5 Speech at the Mansion House, Farewell Banquet to him, 24th January 1889, reported in the Times of the next day. at hand persons wiser than himself to supply the necessary antidote. "With all its imperfections on its head," 6 therefore, of which no one is more sincerely conscious than the writer himself, this volume at length sees the light. Composed, as it has been, in hours snatched from the avocations of an engrossing profession, hours often in that profession legitimately given up to recreation of a lighter kind, but seldom--to its honour be it said-wasted in that somno do ocio ignavo, the writer has yet spared no pains to render the result of his labours at once worthy of the dear memories to which he consecrates it, and acceptable to those who yet live to hand on in their turn the lamp of classical learning. 6 Shaksp. Hamlet act i. sc. 5. 7 Camoens Os Lusíadas ix. 92. 7. Whatever his defects in some other respects, Cicero was no idle lawyer as touching the off-hours of his profession. See his description of his mode of putting into practice Cato's maxim-" clarorum virorum atque magnorum non minus otii quam negotii rationem exstare oportere "-in pro Planc. 27. 66; pro Archia 6. 12 sqq. In our own country Lord Coke preserves to us (Co. Litt. p. 64 b) certain "advice" to the student of law, "given in these ancient verses, for the good spending of the day," in the lines-" sex horas somno, totidem des legibus aequis; I quattuor orabis, des epulisque duas; quod superest ultra sacris largire Camenis"; advice fully acted up to in its last particular by Sir Samuel Romilly, whose travelling carriage was "filled with the best books of the general literature of the day," and whose answer to his astonished friend was (see Lord Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors iv. p. 174 note †) "As soon as I found I was to be a busy lawyer for life, I strenuously resolved to keep up my habit of non-professional reading; for I had witnessed so much misery in the last years of many great lawyers whom I had known, from their loss of all taste for books, that I regarded their fate as my warning." According to the Corinthians at the Spartan Congress in B. C. 432 (Thuc. i. 70. 9) mere idleness was a thing abhorrent to the very genius of the whole Athenian people: ἀπολαύουσιν ἐλάχιστα τῶν ὑπαρχόντων διὰ τὸ ἀεὶ κτᾶσθαι καὶ μήτε ἑορτὴν ἄλλο τι ἡγεῖσθαι ἢ τὸ τὰ δέοντα πρᾶξαι, ξυμφοράν τε οὐχ ἧσσον ἡσυχίαν ἀπράγμονα ἢ ἀσχολίαν ἐπίπονον. ὥστε εἴ τις αὐτοὺς ξυνελὼν φαίη πεφυκέναι ἐπὶ τῷ μήτε αὐτοὺς ἔχειν ἡσυχίαν μήτε τοὺς ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους ἐᾶν ὀρθῶς ἂν εἴποι. It would be tedious, without at the same time serving any useful purpose, to advert in any detail to the process of evolution of the present essay from its embryonic form, in the writer's yet undergraduate days, or even from the form of its first public appearance in 1859.8 Many things have happened in the domain of scholarship since those days. Madvig, illustrious alike in the worlds of statesmanship and of letters, to whom his countrymen may with pride and with justice apply the eulogium of Cato — has sunk full of years and of honours to his rest at Copenhagen. Holland laments her brilliant, if withal eccentric and headstrong, Cobet. Germany is the poorer in the absence of its Dindorfs, its Ritschls, its Bergks. In our own country the places of the writer's fondly remembered instructors, Professors Key and Malden and Mr. Shilleto, know them no more. Cambridge scholars look round, too, in vain for their Kennedys, their Thompsons, their Munros; whilst at Oxford gaps difficult to supply have been made by the disappearance from the scene of scholars like Dr. Scott of Balliol, and Mr. W. E. Jelf of Christ Church. Alike on the banks of the Cam and of the Isis have new generations arisen to carry on the traditions of Porson, Monk, Dobree, John Wordsworth; of Elmsley, Arnold, Gaisford; to bear aloft the flag of classical culture and carry the cause to victory against the indifference, if not even the hostility, of modern sciolism. Nor have our 8 An Outline of the Theory of Conditional Sentences in Greek and Latin. For the Use of Students. By R. Horton Smith, M.A., Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and Classical Lecturer of King's College, London. Cambridge: Macmillan and Co. 1859. Lucan ix. 202. Transatlantic brethren been behind, and the publication in 1860 of Professor Goodwin's Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb marked a distinct epoch in the forward march of modern American classical scholarship. This last mentioned work contains matter germane to the Greek part of the subject of this present essay. Published, however, as the Professor's book was, after the present writer's former publication, and after the cessation of his official connection with the teaching of classics, an acquaintance on his part with the results of the American scholar's labours was unnecessary. And, in point of fact, they remained wholly unknown to him, except by reputation, until after the completion of this present work. Indeed, when the comparative leisure, which usually falls to the lot of a young "silk," enabled him, in 1879, to resume with something like seriousness his interrupted labours on Conditional Sentences in Greek and Latin, he preferred nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri 10. to do so with absolute independence, and to leave the issues to the arbitrament of an unbiassed investigation. Nor does he regret his determination. If, on the one hand, such knowledge as he has, since the completion of his own work, gained of that of Professor Goodwin has shown him that in more than one important point in the Greek part of his subject, even in matters of principle, his own views and those of the learned Professor are not always in accord, he is free to confess, on the other hand, that he has himself had very considerably—and that not in connection with Greek only-to modify his own preconceived ideas; to lay aside as destitute of adequate foundation many matters which in his own early training 10 Hor. Epp. i. 1. 14. |