We do not know what ideal Mr. Mahaffy may have formed of the task he has undertaken or of the qualities demanded for it. His preface gives no intimation on this point, and his "introduction" affords only negative evidence in his refusal to follow "the usual practice with historians of Greek literature" and "begin with a survey of the character and genius of the race, the peculiar features of the language, and the action which physical circumstances have produced upon the development of all these things." Instead of any discussions of this nature, which "in many German books are," it appears, "so long and so vague that the student is wearied before he arrives at a single fact," the natural division of literature into poetry and prose is made the starting-point. The former, in accordance with "a well-known law of human progress," precedes the latter, but is gradually supplanted by it. "This may be seen among us in the education of children, who pass in a few years through successive stages not unlike those of humanity at large in its progress from mental infancy to mature thought. We know that little children can be taught to repeat and remember rhymes long before they will listen to the simplest story in prose." On the other hand, "when the majority of people begin to read, poetry loses its hold upon the public, and the prose-writer, who composes with greater simplicity and less labor, at last obtains an advantage over his rival the poet, who is put into competition with all the older poets now circulating among a more learned public." In accordance with this profound yet simple theory--from which we gather that the Golden Age of the poets was that in which there were no readers--the work is divided into two nearly equal parts, the first dealing with poetry and the second with prose, and this "is now the accepted order among the German writers on the subject."