period. Verbal analysis was not forgotten; rules of synonyms and homonyms and paronyms had to be mastered and remembered, with all the machinery of tropes and figures.

composi

required,

Before long the principles must be applied to Original compositions of their own, and essays and themes of tions were every kind became the order of the day. The pedagogues might lend their aid, and recall to memory the lecturer's hints, turn out the classical authors whose thoughts or images could be pressed into the service, or stimulate the flagging industry of their young charges. But the exercises must be brought in time under the Professor's eye, to be examined and corrected, and to serve as evidence of progress made. Their fluency of speech was trained meantime, and all the rules of dialectic learnt. It was not enough for them to bring their essays care

fully prepared on subjects long ago suggested; they must learn to improvise on any question laid before them, show their perfect self-possession and easy grace in an extempore debate.

They stored their memories for this purpose with a whole stock of common-places (xpɛía) which could readily be turned to good account; they studied their teacher's oratorical displays, which were published often for their use, that they too might learn to show off upon occasion with an elaborate harangue

and exer

cises in

logic and

elocution

But the Sophists professed to

aim at far more than

rhetoric. Greg. in

laud. Basil.

(midaığıs). They fancied themselves bidding adieu to friends upon a journey, and took leave in appropriate style (προπεμπτικοί λόγοι); or addressed complimentary speeches (προσφωνηματικοί) to the great men, ministers of state or generals, who might one day look in upon them at their work. Or they took their themes from ancient history, and declaimed, like the Roman lads of Juvenal's age, and gave their good advice to Sulla, or wrangled about the course of action which it would have been wiser for Hannibal to follow.

The lecturers were very far indeed from saying that their pupils needed only to have courses of rhetoric and logic. Their curriculum of study had a much more ambitious sound. Thus Gregory Nazianzen tells us that his friend Basil, little as he was in sympathy with the spirit of the place, traversed the whole round of academic study, not only mastered rhetoric and philology, but excelled all others in philosophy, including in the term ethics and metaphysics, as well as the rules of dialectic. Not content with that, he went on to mathematical inquiries, rising even to astronomy, after learning the properties of numbers and of figures. Then at last he studied medicine, both in theory and practice.

So too, when Himerius traces a sketch of the liberal education of his day in the person of his friend

Hermogenes, he made him speedily devote himself to the study of philosophy, in the several stages of morals, physics and theology. In so doing he mastered not merely the doctrines of a single school, but was at home alike in all the great systems of Greek thought. Like Basil, he too learnt astronomy, and also travelled far and wide to gain a practical acquaintance with the outer face of nature.

But, indeed, we need not be so much impressed with this encyclopædia of learning. With all their imposing names these sciences were something quite different from what we think them now. The experimental methods had not been applied as yet, and few of nature's secrets were discovered, as compared with the stores of information since amassed.

In place of careful study of the facts, men accepted principles unproven, oftentimes unprovable; they dealt with theories instead of things; and speculation in all the spheres of philosophy, morals, and religion tended to mystic reverie and edifying talk. In the academic schools, moreover, such grave studies were not pursued from any earnest love of truth, from the real desire to probe the mysteries of nature, or draw the veil a little further back; but rather as a source of varied illustration, to furnish the rhetorician's stock-in-trade, to give a glib assurance to the speaker, or a show of dignified omniscience.

But the

course of

study was

more im

posing than profound.

The evidence re

maining in the public lectures of dis

Armed with a large array of sounding phrases, and passing with ease from technicalities to commonplace, he could suit himself to every hearer, and hold. his own on every question in debate.

Is such a criticism thought too sweeping or severe ? We may turn, perhaps with interest, to see how far it is confirmed by the works which have come down to us tinguished from the masters of the schools. These are, as it is professors;

as, for example, of Himerius.

natural to suppose, their greater efforts: inaugural addresses at the opening of term, when the holidays of summer had passed by, and the lecturer met his class again. Often they were lectures of parade, delivered in the Long Vacation, when the daily catechisings were suspended, and time and energy were left entire for bolder flight of rhetoric. Or when distinguished visitors passed by, crowned heads, or ministers, or provincial governors, and the local magistrates came out in state to do them honour, the ceremony was not thought complete if the foremost orator did not grace it with a speech.

For purposes like these the talents of Himerius were always in request. An encomium or elegy from his pen was looked for as a thing of course on state occasions, as much as in later days an ode from a Poet Laureate, or an éloge from a French Academician. Take all, or any of these lectures—there are some volumes ready for our use by different

authors-read and re-read in search of the ripe fruit of all this varied study. Where are the new canons of literary taste, the fine theories of poetic art, the principles of historic method, the critical survey of great schools of moral thought. Now, if ever, surely might a large and learned eclecticism flourish, comparing and balancing the errors of one-sided systems, full of delicate sympathy and insight, if wanting in creative power. We turn over the pages, and we only feel the more how impossible it is to enter fully into the thoughts and feelings of the generations that are gone. We know that the charms of style are evanescent, and we must lose the graces of natural gesture and of modulated voice; but surely here is a poor outcome of all this earnest study, and all this gathered store of learning, in thought which hardly ever rises above the sameness of dull common-place, relieved but ill by tags of poetry and borrowed images, which to our modern taste seem often incongruous and insipid.

indeed, for

It may be urged, indeed, and with some show of It is hard, reason, that we have here only the works of rhetori- us to do cians, more intent on beauty of form than breadth of

thought, and that for the higher education of the age

we must turn to other teachers. It may be well to weigh both these objections. As to the first, it is quite true that there is a real danger of injustice in

justice

to the

rhetorical

beauties of Greek style.