cowards in the field,[1] betrays an equal knowledge of English horses and Spartan men. His "philosophical observations" have a much better claim to the title of "poetical." It could not be expected that he who so liberally condemns some of the most celebrated institutions of the ancient, should have mercy on the modern Greeks; and it fortunately happens, that the absurdity of his hypothesis on their forefathers refutes his sentence on themselves.
Let us trust, then, that, in spite of the prophecies of De Pauw, and the doubts of Mr. Thornton, there is a reasonable hope of the redemption of a race of men, who, whatever may be the errors of their religion and policy, have been amply punished by three centuries and a half of captivity.
III.[2]
Athens, Franciscan Convent, March 17, 1811.
"I must have some talk with this learned Theban."[3]
Some time after my return from Constantinople to this city I received the thirty-first number of the Edinburgh Review[4] as a great favour, and certainly at this distance an acceptable one, from the captain of an English frigate off Salamis. In that number, Art. 3, containing the review of a French translation of Strabo,[5] there are introduced some remarks on the modern Greeks and their literature, with a
- ↑ [De Pauw (Rech. Phil. sur les Grecs, 1788, ii. 293), in repeating Plato's statement (Laches, 191), that the Lacedæmonians at Platæa first fled from the Persians, and then, when the Persians were broken, turned upon them and won the battle, misapplies to them the term Θρασύδειλοι (Arist., Eth. Nic., iii. 9.7)—men, that is, who affect the hero, but play the poltroon.]
- ↑ [Attached as a note to line 562 of Hints from Horace (MS. M.).]
- ↑
["I'll talk a word with this same learned Theban."
Shakespeare, King Lear, act iii. sc. 4, line 150.] - ↑ [For April, 1810: vol. xvi. pp. 55, sq.]
- ↑ [Diamant or Adamantius Coray (1748-1833), scholar and phil-Hellenist, declared his views on the future of the Greeks in the preface to a translation of Beccaria Bonesani's treatise, Dei Delitti e delle Pene (1764), which was published in Paris in 1802. He began to publish his Bibliothèque Hellénique, in 17 vols., in 1805. He was of Chian parentage, but was born at Smyrna. Κοραη Αὐτοβιογραφια, Athens, 1891.]
