We know nothing, alas! of the cradles of the lyric poetry of Archilochus, of Alcæus, of Sappho; we can tell you nothing of the _incunabula_ of that great and varied development which comprised several schools. Over the whole surface of those primeval waters, which cover the world of Greek literature down to the 7th century B.C., we have but the one great solitary beacon, the poetry of Homer, which tells us, like the Nantucket light-ship, that we are far, and yet not far, from the utterances of a literary age: As the tall ship, that many a dreary year, Knit to some dismal sandbank far at sea, All thro’ the livelong hours of utter dark Showers slanting light upon the dolorous wave! But so much the scanty lyric fragments do tell us with a clear voice: these poets were thoroughly and even elaborately artistic, and their very careful workmanship, if it did arise from an appeal to the songs of the people, shows the very same fastidious care which we find in Theocritus, to purify their art from the clay or the dross of everyday language. Hence follows as a natural consequence, among a people of genius like the Greeks, a perfection both in form and in spirit, which we justly call classical and which forms the model for almost all subsequent poetry. There are no vagaries of metre or diction; there are no exaggerations of sentiment. Every civilised man of any epoch, every critic of judgment, who masters the poetry in the original, finds in it models of taste which have not since been excelled and only seldom equalled. I need not delay long over a few apparent or real exceptions, so few that they are only enough for cavil, not for serious criticism. We have recovered recently the _Persians_ of Timotheus, whose musical performances were very popular in his day. The poem is the worst that we know coming from its age and country. But we also know that we should merely regard it as the libretto of a musical performance, such as the libretti of the Italian operas we used to frequent in our youth, in which the text was not of the slightest importance and was generally very bad. The music was the only part of the performance we criticised. So the _Persians_ of Timotheus is ridiculous as a poem on the great battle of Salamis, but even so is pronounced by the authorities on metre, such as Wilamowitz, to be very careful and polished in that respect. The _Mimes_ of Herondas, another recent discovery, are also bad poetry, but then they are mere versifications of prose pieces, such as those of Sophron were, and meant, I believe, for acting on a cheap stage or for dramatic recitation. They can hardly be called poetry. In much earlier days, there was a good deal of tame moral teaching and proverbial philosophy expressed in verse. But that also was so, because as yet prose had not become an ordinary vehicle of writing, and any man who desired to teach, such as Solon, or Theognis, or Empedocles, must express himself in verse.