The consistency which is prized in a savant is pedantry if applied to the Greeks.
94
(THE GREEKS AND THE PHILOLOGISTS.)
| THE GREEKS: | THE PHILOLOGISTS are: |
|
render homage to beauty, develop the body, speak clearly, are religious transfigurers of everyday occurrences, are listeners and observers, have an aptitude for the symbolical, are in full possession of their freedom as men, can look innocently out into the world, are the pessimists of thought. |
babblers and triflers, ugly-looking creatures, stammerers, filthy pedants, quibblers and scarecrows, unfitted for the symbolical, ardent slaves of the State, Christians in disguise, philistines. |
95
Bergk's "History of Literature": Not a spark of Greek fire or Greek sense.
96
People really do compare our own age with that of Pericles, and congratulate themselves on the reawakening of the feeling of patriotism: I remember a parody on the funeral oration of Pericles by G. Freytag,[10] in which this prim and strait-laced "poet" depicted the happiness now experienced by sixty-year-old men.—All pure and simple caricature! So this is the result! And sorrow and irony and seclusion are all that remain for him who has seen more of antiquity than this.
[10] See note on p. 149.—TR.