Nor is the study of Greek a danger to our national genius. Contact with highly developed foreign models may warp or cramp a literature in its infancy, but cannot harm it when full grown and robust. The native character is then too firmly established to be corrupted, and it is pure gain to have another standard for comparison, for detection of weaknesses and their cure. A reference to English literature will support this view and show that though the influence of Greek there has often been great, it has not been distorting. Consider the English poets who owe most to Greece--Milton, Gray, Shelley, Keats, Landor, Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Swinburne, Bridges. It would puzzle any critic to find a common denominator between these men, or to trace back to Greece any universal feature in their poetry, except perhaps perfection of form. Technical perfection is not so serious or frequent a vice in English writers, that it can be complained of, and even this common element vanishes, if we add to the poets already quoted the Brownings, who prized and understood Greek and the Greek spirit as well as any of them. At first sight it may seem strange that Shelley and Keats, Arnold and Swinburne, who were not merely passionate admirers of Greece but drew their chief inspiration from her, should be so different in style and matter. The explanation is simple. Some influences are tyrannous; they impose themselves, they dominate, they enslave. But there is a better and rarer type of influence, which stimulates and inspires yet leaves the poet free to develop his own genius with enlarged horizons and quickened sensibilities. Greek influence on our writers has been of this kind; perhaps because its literature is singularly free from the artifice and mannerism which lend themselves to mimicry and seems like Nature with her many voices speaking. R. W. LIVINGSTONE. HISTORY I _The Relationship between Ancient Greek and Modern Western Civilization_