[1] From Richard Hodgson’s Christmas Card, 1904, the Christmas before his death.

[2] To the readers of the Adelaide edition (which was issued only in Australia) I should explain why the book is now so much enlarged. The first issue was prepared hastily and without sufficient care. (The proceeds were to go to the Australian Repatriation Fund, and the book was hurriedly put together and printed to be ready for a Repatriation Day which was announced but actually was never held.) It was my first experience in publishing, and I did not realize the care and consideration required in issuing a book even of this character. Hence (1) part of my manuscript was entirely overlooked; (2) I failed to see that many quotations would be improved by adding their context; (3) I did not go properly through the great mass of Hodgson’s correspondence; and (4) I, wrongly, as I now think, excluded many quotations because I thought certain subjects were unsuitable for the book. Besides extending the scope of the collection by including those subjects I now have no longer restricted myself to the seventy-eighty period. The notes also add materially to the size of this volume.

[3] See Tennyson’s “Princess”:—

[4] I occasionally thought I had hit on something new, but usually discovered that I had been anticipated—and then deeply sympathized with St. Jerome’s old tutor, Donatus. It will be remembered that Jerome, in his commentary on “There is no new thing under the sun,” tells us that Donatus used to say, Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt, “Confound the fellows who anticipated us!”

[5] The flippancy is at times amusing, as when he says: “The account of the whale swallowing Jonah, though the whale may have been large enough to do so, borders greatly on the marvellous; but it would have approached nearer to the just idea of a miracle if Jonah had swallowed the whale.”

[6] Altered from “That,” which may be a misprint. “Thou” gives the same meaning and runs more smoothly.

[7] Compare “I never nursed a dear gazelle” (p. 181).

[8] See Milton’s imitation of a fugue. Par. Lost XI.

[9] “I take the risk,” or “Mine the risk.”

[10] The above is a concrete illustration of Browning’s meaning in the preceding quotation, but a far wider illustration is seen in the terrible cruelties inflicted on the one side by the Inquisition and on the other by the Protestants. This was again due to the introduction of intellectualism, which distorted the Religion of Love into a Religion of Hate.

[11] Cf. Coleridge, p. 313.

[12] The girls are bathing.

[13] The information in this note comes partly from Notes and Queries.

[14] See p. 40.

[15] It is unfortunate that this word is often used in the sense of something unreal as mere idle fancy instead of an active creative faculty, see pp. 357, 358.

[16] In 1843 Mrs. Browning’s fine appeal, “The Cry of the Children.” appeared in “Blackwood,” but I presume had little effect. So also Hood’s “Song of the Shirt,” “Bridge of Sighs,” and “Song of the Labourer,” were written about the same time, but could have made little real impression.

[17] The family name is now apparently pronounced as it is spelt (see “An English Pronouncing Dictionary,” by Daniel Jones, and the “Century” and “Webster”). Such a change must often happen. I have cousins named Colclough, who in Australia became so tired of correcting people that they finally resigned themselves to the loss of the old pronunciation “Cokely” and accepted the less euphonious “Colclo.”

[18] Was a phrase of Cowper’s in Bentham’s mind? The latter wrote to Christopher Rowley, “We are strange creatures, my little friend; everything that we do is in reality important, though half that we do seems to be push-pin.”

[19] “Squyer” is a dissyllable. The final e at the end of a line is always sounded like a in “China.” “Lokkes,” “sleves” and “faire” are also dissyllables, because e, ed, en, es are sounded as syllables, except before vowels and certain words beginning with h.

[20] Micah vi. 8.

[21] One certainly protests. There is a great mass of medical and other evidence to the contrary. Sir William Osler made notes of about 500 cases, and says, “To the great majority their death, like their birth, was a sleep and a forgetting.”

[22] The “Summit,” completion or end.

[23] The eyes, smile, etc., referred to in the intermediate verses.

[24] No doubt one reason would be that given by the Australian black woman for leaving her baby in the bush, “him too much cry.” The Greeks had numerous slaves, and were fond of comfort; and their houses were, of course, small and cramped compared with our own.

[25] Black care, Horace, Od. 3, 1, 40.

[26] Water-clocks, used like an hour-glass.

[27] When “Balder the Beautiful” was published in the Contemporary (March-May, 1877), Buchanan had the following note, which he has not repeated in his collected works: “Balder (in this poem) is the divine spirit of earthly beauty and joy, and the only one of the gods who loves and pities men. Sick of the darkness of heaven, he returns to the earth which fostered him, and of which he is beloved, and now for the first time he becomes conscious of that Shadow of Death, which darkens the lot of all mortal things.”

[28] Quoted in E. Clodd’s Story of Creation.

[29] Italics mine.

[30] See, for instance, Kipling’s beautiful poem “A Dedication”

[31] Milton’s sonnet, “To the Lady Margaret Ley.”

[32] “They say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him” (John xx. 13). The sermon is on the subject of the growth of religious ideas.

[33] This standing by itself may give a somewhat wrong impression of Menzies’ thought. As a matter of fact, the text of the sermon is: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John x. 10).

[34] So we speak of a “sea of heads”, “sea of faces,” “sea of sand,” “sea of clouds,” “sea of vegetation,” etc.

[35] See sub-note at the end of this note.

[36] We can, however, agree that the language of all three poets, Shelley, Sappho, and Simonides, is exquisitely beautiful. Professor Naylor points out that it is a characteristic of the early Greek poets to compress a description into a series of epithets full of expression, without connecting words—compare Tennyson (“The Passing of Arthur”).

[37] As Professor Darnley Naylor’s name appears at times in this book it is necessary to mention that he is so qualified and, therefore, is not one of the gentlemen referred to.

I may mention here that Mr. Livingstone deserves censure for not giving us an index to his valuable book. This neglect, being greatly provocative of profanity, is an offence against morality. Much loss of time and irritation have been caused to me in looking up passages I remembered in his book—and I have at times given up the search in despair.

[38] See interesting remarks on Matthew Arnold and Addison in Herbert Spencer’s “Study of Sociology,” Note 20 to Ch. 10. Professor Naylor also in the preface to his Latin and English Idiom, points out that verbally accurate translation of the Classics tends to ruin the English of a student.

[39] For example: Miss Jane Harrison (Mythology of Ancient Athens) says “all sweetness and love” come to mortals from the “holy” Charites who “were in the fullest sense ‘givers of all grace.’” (That is to say, these deities have the attributes of God, who is, of course, the sole giver of all grace! Compare with this Professor Gilbert Murray on the god Dionysus, p. 374.)

[40] Unshriven, without having received the sacrament.

[41] Crucifix.

[42] Homer tells us that Apollo and Poseidon “built” the walls of Troy; the legend that Apollo moved stones into their places by music is of a later date. See Ovid, Heroid, 16, 181; Propertius 3, 9, 39. See also Tennyson’s “Oenone.”

[43] “Physician, heal thyself,” Luke iv, 23. Also, although it is not very apropos, see the following from Nicharchus in the Greek Anthology (G. B. Grundy’s translation):—

MEDICAL ATTENDANCE

[44] This probably came from Erasmus. Compare:—

[45] Lincoln is alleged to have said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

[46] Showing that Sterne’s “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb” (Sentimental Journey) was his rendering of an older saying.

[47] “Kubla Khan.”

[48] An aromatic herb with yellow flowers.

[49] See p. XVIII.

[50] Curiously enough, they do not recognize this, but rather pride themselves upon being shrewd, commonsense, practical business-men, “a nation of shopkeepers”—although their entire history shows the contrary. That history is epitomized in such an expression as “England the Unready,” or, in the King’s appeal, “Wake up, England!” That they are idealists and dreamers can be shown by numberless facts. For example, what have they supported in the sacred name of Liberty? The laissez-faire doctrine, that law is an infringement of freedom, and, therefore, that cruelty, abuses, and absurdities must not be interfered with; the theory that England should be the home of freedom, and, therefore, that the scum of Europe shall infect the nation; the “Palladium of English Liberty,” Trial by Jury, which means the appointment of inexperienced, irresponsible, and easily-biassed judges; the economic policy, which, because it is falsely labelled Free Trade, becomes a fetish against which no practical objection must be urged and no lesson learned from the experience of other countries. On the other hand, our experience in the present war is a proof that the imaginative faculties are more powerful than mere intellect: for, when the Englishman bends his energies to the business of war, he soon surpasses the German for all his fifty years’ preparation. See p. 39.

[51] “What is life, what gladness without the golden Aphrodite? May death be mine when these joys no longer please me!”

[52] In the notes on the Greeks in this book it was necessary to keep to one State and a particular period. Greece consisted of a number of States of which Attica was one, with Athens as its centre. It comprised only seven hundred square miles, and, allowing for its colonies, would be about half the size of Lancashire. Its great and brilliant period corresponded roughly with the middle half of the Fifth Century B.C. A large proportion of the finest Greek art and literature was produced by this tiny state in that short period. This is the miracle of antiquity. It is to Attica during this period that my remarks mainly refer.

The reader will not be able to follow this note properly, unless he has read the other notes on the same subject (see Index of Subjects).

[53] The second is not by Praxilla. It is to be found in Athenaeus (XV. 695), and is written in the masculine. Most curiously the same mistake is made in the Parnasse des Dames, an 18th Century French book in which Myers would not have been interested.

[54] One at least of the Sappho enthusiasts still survives. See Professor T. G. Tucker’s Sappho.

[55] “The Greek Genius and its meaning to us.”

[56] It should be remembered, however, that this is largely the history of Prussia also.

[57] See Mr. Livingstone’s book.

[58] But see p. 374 as to Dionysiac sect.

[59] See an interesting passage in Plato’s Republic, I, 330. See also p. 173 as to Herodotus.

[60] This should be taken into account in interpreting the plays of Euripides, who was probably a sceptic. The case of Aristophanes was different—he was known to be orthodox and almost any licence was permitted on the Comic Stage.

[61] Perhaps these woodcutters would not have entirely appreciated what Mr. G. Lowes Dickinson (The Greek View of Life) says of the Greek divinities. He tells us that the Greek originally felt “bewilderment and terror in the presence of the powers of nature,” but his religion developed “till at last from the womb of the dark enigma that haunted him in the beginning there emerged into the charmed light of a world of ideal grace a pantheon of fair and concrete personalities.” (The italics are mine). The classical enthusiast always pictures the Greeks as living in fairyland: actually the gods and lesser divinities were to them for the most part objects of awe and dread. In this “world of ideal grace” there would be, for example, the horrible Furies who dwelt in their grotto in Athens!

[62] I think it correct to say this, although there were political reasons also for prosecuting Socrates and, if he had shown less contempt for his judges, he might have been acquitted.

[63] I do not know how far unnatural vice extended among other peoples; but the statement in Plato’s “Symposium” that the Ionians and most of the barbarians held it in evil repute is strongly condemnatory of the Greeks.

[64] See how this idea pervades the whole of the famous Funeral Speech of Pericles, and how he defines what is “the good life” of a citizen.

[65] See Theoc. VII, 57, and what the Scholiast says. As to the subject generally see the references given by Mr. Rogers in The Birds of Aristophanes.

[66] Modern Painters, IV, XIII, 17.

[67] A few days after writing the above I was walking along the sea-beach with friends, and we came to a man and boy who were drawing in a net. It was a beautifully clear day, and no seagull or other bird could be seen anywhere. I pointed this out to my friends, and said, “You’ll see the patrol-bird arrive presently.” In a few minutes a gull appeared from nowhere, flew round the net, and then, as though the business was unimportant, flew away. The net when drawn in was empty! This is how the bird probably appeared to the Greeks. When the net brought in a haul, and the birds clamoured round it for their share, how very reasonable would this again appear to the Greeks.

[68] See also as to the so-called “purification rites” in the mysteries, p. 374.

[69] The same pious Athenians who so enjoyed the Bacchae!

[70] It is necessary to emphasize this, lest the reader should think that these illustrations are exceptional and the result of prolonged research. Actually I had no memoranda or other material when I began the many notes to this book, and those notes were all completed in ten months. For this note I simply took two books, Professor Murray’s and Mr. Zimmern’s, to illustrate my thesis. I might have chosen far more “enthusiastic” works than Mr. Zimmern’s excellent book.

[71] The whole argument seems to have little foundation. Are we to assume, for example, that the “average ability” of the Greeks before and after their great period, or of the English before and after the Elizabethan age, was enormously inferior because the proportion of very illustrious men was so much less? Why should not the average be higher, the ability (through intermarriage) being more equally distributed?

[72] If Galton had referred only to the Athenians of the great period, as Wallace imagined, the statement would have been even more absurd. It would then mean that an African tribe of blacks might suddenly become as intelligent as ourselves, continue so for two generations, and then relapse at once into their old barbarism. Yet Dr. Verrall went some distance in this direction, for he says the Athenians of the great period “had plainly an immense superiority of mind in comparison with their predecessors.” (The Bacchants of Euripides, p. 168).

[73] I may add, however, one personal remark. I am quite well aware—and my friends persistently and painfully impress the fact upon me—that this book will be reviewed by gentlemen who have been imbued from youth with even greater enthusiasm, seeing that the tendency has grown stronger and stronger since that time. Those reviewers will probably feel shocked that the naked facts should be set before the general public. I can quite understand this feeling, but I do not sympathize with it. Truth comes first, and I have no sympathy with the feminine view of truth (see p. 343), which is the same as the Jesuitical view. I do, however, sympathize with them in one respect, that the truth should be stated at an unfortunate time, when the beautiful Greek language and its glorious literature seem likely to be put on a back shelf with Hebrew and Sanskrit. It will be a sad thing if this should happen (I would much prefer to sacrifice the inferior Latin, in spite of the special reasons for its study), but the first and last word always is—Truth.

[74] “May moderation befriend me, the finest gift of the gods.”

[75] It would be interesting to trace the earliest references to love of Nature. They may, perhaps, be found in the Bible. In the Song of Solomon (which, however, in its present form is now supposed to date back only to the Fourth Century, B.C., and, therefore not to be by Solomon) we have the spring-song of love, with flowers and budding trees and vines and the singing of birds (II, 10-13). Professor Naylor also reminds me of our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, “Consider the lilies, etc.”

I repeat here what I say in the Preface that Professor Naylor takes no responsibility for any of the views I express in my notes on the Greeks.

[76] Their actual life was of course indescribably squalid and filthy, as could only be expected in a primitive race.

[77] Even as regards the human form Greek art is limited, as is seen in the Laocoon where the boys are simply miniature men. (The Laocoon, although of very late date, is nevertheless Greek with all the traditions of the art behind it.) I know very little on this subject, but it seems to me that something of much importance yet remains to be discovered about Greek sculpture.

[78] An excessive importance is attached to the cold conventional foliated designs.