Very few Greek authors found early translators here beyond the selections prepared for schools; but it is remarkable that the example in this way was set by a citizen of London, and a member of the Goldsmiths' Company, Thomas Niccols, who in 1550, at the instance of Sir John Cheke, undertook to put into English the History of Thucydides. This was almost a century before the version by Hobbes of Malmesbury. The partial translation of the _Iliad_ by Arthur Hall of Grantham, 1581, was taken from the French. But Chapman accomplished the feat of rendering the whole of Homer, as well as the _Georgics_ of Hesiod and the Neo-Greek _Hero and Leander_. At a later date, Thomas Grantham, a schoolmaster in Lothbury, who seems to have been in a state of perpetual warfare with his critics as to the merits of his fashion of teaching, brought out at his own expense, and possibly for the use of his own pupils, the first, second, and third books of the _Iliad_. The grand work of Herodotus was approached in 1584 by an anonymous writer, who completed only _Clio_ and _Euterpe_. But these intermittent and isolated cases shew how languid the feeling for Hellenic literature and history long remained in England; nor, when we regard the unsatisfactory character of the translations from the Greek, with rare exceptions, down to the present day, is it hard to see that the want was at least as largely due to incapacity on the part of scholars as to indifference on that of the public. Many of the schools employed a small elementary selection from the Greek writers, of which a fifth edition was printed in 1771. When Charles Lamb was at the Blue Coat School (1782-9), the Greek authors read there appear to have been Lucian and Xenophon, the former in a Selection from the _Dialogues_. The present writer, who was at Merchant Taylors' School from 1842 to 1850, used Xenophon, Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, and some volume of _Analecta_. When the school was founded in 1561, it was difficult to find a boy to read Greek; but in the following century it enters rather prominently into the prospectus on Examination-day. All the great seminaries differ in their lists; the choice depends on the personal taste of the masters from time to time; and there is a certain virtue in traditional names. But the truth is that in England, after all, although this language has continued to be taught in all schools of any standing or pretension, the critical study and genuine appreciation of it have always been confined to a narrow circle of scholars; and nowadays there is a growing tendency to prefer the living languages, as they are called, to the dead. XVIII. Ancient French school-books for English learners--Their historical and philological interest--Succession of writers and teachers--Hollyband, Florio, Delamothe, and others--Sketches of their work--Their imperfect acquaintance with our language--Other publications of an educational cast.