And now that you have before you the actual problem raised by the extant remnants of Greek music, let us turn to the Greeks themselves, and see what light their writings throw upon the matter. In the first place music was not only popular but universal among the Greeks. Those who did not cultivate it were worse than Shakspere’s “man that has not music in his soul.” All Greek poetry, even the epic of Homer, was recited musically; the lyric poets were as much musicians as poets; great tragedians composed the music for their choral odes, and indeed a Greek tragedy when performed must have far more resembled an Italian opera than a play in our sense. This is the combination which Richard Wagner strove to realise. But to be gifted in two directions of art is indeed very rare. The music of Æschylus and Sophocles was probably as inferior to their text as Wagner’s text is inferior to his music. All Greek educators imply that every boy can learn music; we never hear a word about want of ear, a want of musical faculty. This was to me in former years a great puzzle, for, like all of you, I was brought up in a society where a few had gifts for music, and the remainder were incapable of singing in time or in tune, or of learning to play an instrument with intelligence--and so we drifted away from the older fashion of making at least every girl play or sing as an inevitable infliction on society, and now only those who show a keen desire for it spend their time at music. But in the new schools, where choirs are taught on the tonic _sol-fa_ system, I am informed by the most competent teachers that an inability to appreciate music, or to sing in tune, is quite rare, and that the great body of our children can be taught to make and to appreciate good music. If this be so, the Greeks were again right, and we in our older generation less wise than they.