That a second edition of Professor Butcher’s essays on _Some Aspects of the Greek Genius_ should have been called for so soon is assuredly a very significant fact. And it is significant in more ways than one. It not only goes far to refute Lord Coleridge’s theory that Greek has lost its hold on modern life, but it furnishes one of the many proofs, which we have recently had, that people are beginning to understand what is now to be expected from classical scholars, if classical scholars are to hold their own in the world of to-day, and that scholars are, in their turn, aware that they no longer constitute an esoteric guild for esoteric studies. The task of the purely philological labourer has been accomplished. During more than four centuries, succeeding schools of literal critics have been toiling to furnish mankind with the means of unlocking the treasures of classical Greece. Till within comparatively recent times, the power of reading the Greek classics with accuracy and ease was an accomplishment beyond the reach of any but specialists. Unless a student was prepared to grapple with the difficulties of unsettled and often unintelligible texts, to make his own grammar--nay, his own dictionary--to choose between conflicting and contradictory interpretations, and, in a word, to possess all that now would be required in a classical editor, it would be impossible for him to read, with any comfort, a chorus of Æschylus or Sophocles, an ode of Pindar, or a speech in Thucydides. But now all these difficulties have vanished. Excellent lexicons, grammars, commentaries, and translations, with settled texts, and editions of the principal Greek classics so satisfactory that practically they leave nothing to be desired, have rendered what was once the monopoly of mere scholars common property. The power of reading Greek with accuracy and comfort is now, indeed, within the reach of any person of average intelligence and industry.