The Greek anthology offers to our view, in the main, a body of national sentiment and local costume. The witticisms or smart turns are generally so much a part of the life of the country and period to which they immediately appertain, that an English reader might be apt scarcely to become aware of their true drift, of the inner satirical or humorous sense in the mind and intention of their composers, if he could forget that he had under his eyes the most important productions of ancient Hellas in the way of Epigram and Epigrammatic Inscription collected together for his edification and amusement. It is perfectly natural and fit that the facetious literature of the Greeks should partake in tone and odour of the genius, climate and society which produced it. We may not appreciate a Greek joke, because the train of associations is broken; but if it does not come home to us exactly as it was meant by the author, it remains as a contributory factor to our knowledge of a never-to-be-forgotten people. All that I seek to urge here is, that the English school of wit has barely any archaic foreign _substrata_, but is, to a very large and leading extent, as my learned American acquaintance, Mr. Phelps, lately observed of our law, a product of the region which gave it birth and development. There are certain broad and general features common to all humanity at all times, and independent of conditions and place:-- “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,” and there are cases, of course, where the same happy thought has presented itself _bonâ fide_ to different persons at different periods, to men chronologically and geographically as far removed as an Athenian of the age of Pericles and an Englishman of the age of George III. The same circumstances have a proneness to gravitate to the same issues, where it is some normal trait of human nature that is concerned, or some incident of habitual recurrence. But the pages of this Greek Anthology, of which I employ for convenience the ordinary English version, have to be winnowed in the same proportion as those of the other classical or quasi-classical books which we have just left behind us, in order to extract matter which is perfectly intelligible without the context. For everybody must feel that a translation has no chemical virtue beyond the exchange of terms. A Greek epigram, in nine instances out of ten, is a Greek epigram none the less though it be clothed in an English dress. It is like a keyless cipher, unless the reader takes up the volume where it occurs with a mastery of the surrounding conditions, which nine Englishmen out of ten do not possess. On the other hand, how free from temporary feeling and interest are some of the flowers in this poetical chaplet! How superior to all the mutations and vicissitudes which the land of their birth has since suffered! Their motto is _Perennis et fragrans_. Take a few illustrations:--