he might see little in it but a prosaic want of colour. This exceeding simplicity or economy is a stumbling-block to those who are accustomed to the expansive modern manner. Yet such a reader would have been making the acquaintance of some of the finest things in Greek literature, which is always at its greatest when most simple, and he would have been face to face with a characteristic quality of it.

The contrast with the usual English manner may be illustrated by quoting a famous epigram—Ben Jonson’s epitaph on a boy actor:

Weep with me, all you that read
This little story;
And know, for whom a tear you shed,
Death’s self is sorry.

’Twas a child that so did thrive
In grace and feature,
As heaven and nature seemed to strive
Which owned the creature.

Years he numbered scarce thirteen
When Fates turned cruel,
Yet three filled zodiacs had he been
The stage’s jewel;

And did act (what now we moan)
Old men so duly,
As sooth the Parcae thought him one,
He played so truly.

So, by error, to his fate
They all consented;
But, viewing him since, alas, too late!
They have repented.

These lines—and they are not the whole of the poem—are enough to illustrate the difference between the Greek method and the English, the latter rich and profuse, following the flow of an opulent fancy, the former reticent and restrained, leaving the reader’s imagination room and need to play its part. There are materials for half-a-dozen epigrams in Ben Jonson’s poem. Had he been Simonides or Plato, he would have stopped after the fourth line and, in the opinion of some critics, by saving his paper he would have improved his poem.

In their theory and in their practice the Greek writers were true to this principle of Economy. Their proverbs proclaim it ‘the half is greater than the whole’: ‘sow with the hand and not with the whole sack.’ The great passages of their literature illustrate it. It is to be found no less in Thucydides’ account of the siege of Syracuse and in the close of the Phaedo or the Republic than in the death of Hector or the meeting of Priam and Achilles. The Greek writers may have emotions that would seem to demand vehement and extended expression, topics to inspire a poet and tempt him to amplify them; but resisting the temptation they set the facts down quietly and pass on practically without comment. The close of the Phaedo exemplifies this restraint. Plato has just related with severe economy of detail the death of his master. His comment on the event which saddened and confounded his whole life is but this: ‘Such, Echecrates, was the death of our friend, the best man, I think, that I have ever known, the wisest too and the most just.’[114]

There are noble examples of reticence and economy in English literature, some of the most conspicuous of which can be traced to classical influence; but no one would contend that these qualities are the rule in our great writers. The English genius is rich and lavish rather than restrained. It is less in its nature to write like Sappho,