In his study of the Greek spirit or "genius" within the limits thus laid down Mr. Livingstone marks certain "notes" of Hellenism, to each of which a chapter is devoted. First comes the note of beauty, as a diffused characteristic of Greek life; not divorced from ordinary conduct by being made a separate pursuit, but to some degree excluding or inconsistent with the Christian sense of sin and the predominant interest assigned by Christianity (and by the later schools of Greek philosophy likewise) to the moral side of man's nature. Secondly, there is the note of freedom, both religious and political. This is worked out mainly in connection with two matters of profound and permanent interest; on the one hand, the attitude of the Greek mind towards the superhuman or divine Powers, the complete absence of any Bible or Creed, and the comparative absence (which the few notorious exceptions really make more striking) of any persecution of free thought; on the other hand, the ideal politics of Athens, as shown in the Periclean conception of the free State and the free citizen. This was formally opposed to the rigid State discipline of Sparta; but it also was a conception wholly different from the Roman civic doctrine as set forth by Plutarch, "that they should stand in fear to be reproved and inquired of by the magistrates, and that it was not good to give every one liberty to do what they would, following his own lust and fancy." The Greek genius denied, expressly or implicitly, the obligation to practise restraint and selfsuppression. For restraint it substituted balance; for self-suppression, selfrealization.

Then there is the note of directness; the instinct towards getting face to face with facts, which kept the Greek mind on the whole free from mysticism, romanticism, and sentimentality. This note pervades the whole of Greek

In

life and letters; in literature it is specially notable in their attitude towards nature and the affections. It marks, partly, a boundedness which we may incline to think insensitive until we realize the intense sensitiveness which accompanied it within its limits, partly an absence of extravagance (the Periclean Euteleia carried through the whole of life), and a simple and healthy acceptance of common things, Wordsworth without Wordsworthianism. close connection with this is the note of humanism, which makes man, man as he is, the "centre and measure" of all things; which lays perpetual stress on bodily and intellectual excellence; which made Athens in her great days, and centuries before she dwindled away into a mere University town, something like an ideal University for all her citizens. This Greek humanism is well illustrated from the Greek definition of happiness, as given in different terms and through widely different minds, yet surprisingly consistent in its upshot, by Solon, Pindar, and Aristotle. From this point of view Xenophon, the intelligent man of action, not Plato, the unpractical mystic, is the Greek type; is even, in some sense, the Greek ideal.

Lastly, and somewhat oddly reckoned as one until we realize that the two things are really one thing seen from different points of view, comes the note of sanity and manysidedness. For sanity means harmonious functioning of the whole nature; it implies adaptability, capacity of responding to, of meeting adequately, any call made on the organism by its complex and ever-shifting environment. It is akin to diffusion more than to concentration; at its best a high-possibly the highest -ideal, it always tends in practice to degenerate, to become weakness, and from weakness to lapse into vice or futility. In the decadence it produced the Graeculus of the Roman satirist.

Even in the great period it shows us its effects in the squalid tragedies which ended the career of a Themistocles or an Alcibiades; it led the Greek genius to create not only the great trinity of truth, beauty, and freedom, but, as the shadow of these, vulgarity. Yet this may be claimed for it, that it helped to keep the Greek spirit in touch with reality and postponed, if it did not prevent, the divorce of life from its principles, of thought from action. In the authentic Greek life there was no such thing as art for art's sake; nor, indeed, until the transforming cosmopolitan movement began to affect it, as intellect for intellect's sake. The presence of this last element in Euripides is what makes him what he was, the symbol of the breakdown, soon followed by the extinction, of the specific Greek genius.

It will be seen that Mr. Livingstone's book is a spirited and thoughtful attempt at evaluating that genius, and one which fully attains its object of stimulating thought and attracting attention to its subject. Such discussions, however, tend to become abstract; and he has done well in adding two chapters in which he applies his generalizations to concrete instances. The validity of his conclusions may largely be tested by these chapters; one on Pindar and Herodotus as two authors in whom, with great differences, he finds types of Greek humanism; the other on Plato as the great exception, as something essentially un-Hellenic, with his "gospel of another world." Perhaps it is with regard to Pindar that the defects of his method, the gaps which it leaves, are most evident: but the truth about Pindar is that he is essentially illusive, and in some ways, like Thebes itself, hardly Hellenic. Mr. Livingstone is fully conscious that to the problem of the Greek genius there is no master-key, no complete solution. Here we may quote the final words of

Authoritarianism,

the chapter significantly headed "Some Exceptions"-it is a wise and a necessary caution-"Yet while we insist on the pre-eminence of these qualities, let us not forget that Greece shows also the first beginnings of their opposites. Hers is the very chest of Pandora. mysticism, other worldliness, romanticism, are lying ready for us at its bottom." Perhaps too, an error in his view of Greece is the stress laid by him on the note of beauty. This is markedly overstated; or, at all events (as indeed he himself points out), the Greek sense of the word "beauty" was so different from ours that confusion arises if we pass from one to the other as convertible terms.

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If we are to name one word as summing up the Greek genius, it would be the word of intelligence. This is already attained in Homer. It is equally marked in two authors so different in scope and calibre as Herodotus and Thucydides. It is the lesson -if such a word as lesson may be used in this connection-of Sophocles. riously enough, Mr. Livingstone almost leaves Sophocles out of account, but for one pregnant sentence in a passage where he is seeking for the exhibition of the Greek spirit in some typical Greek. "Sophocles," he says, "perhaps comes nearer to what we want, but his personality is hidden under his art." Yes, and this is just what makes him SO Greek. The "personality," the "genius" of Greece is hidden under its art; and that is why we have always to be re-testing our im. pressions, and why the search after the "genius" is endless. But here, as elsewhere, it is the search that counts, not the capture. Even after Athens, the dominant note of intelligence remains: it finds its consummation in Aristotle. Theôria, clear-eyed vision, was what the Greek spirit applied to life. From Homer through Herodotus and Thucy

dides to Aristotle the word passes through all its immense range of meaning; the vision of a drama, of a pageant, of a struggle, of a universe. This Greek sense of vision was lost only with the decay and absorption of Greece; and it reappeared once more, strangely and for the last time, in the ghostly renascence of Neo-Platonism.

Two words of caution may be added for those who will take the modern interpreters of Greek as guides. One is the danger of neglecting Latin. It is a mistake as great as that of studying Latin and ignoring the Middle Ages. For Greece reached us through Rome, and Latin is the way back to her. The modern spirit is impatient of delay and eager for short-cuts.

But short-cuts

are apt to turn into short-circuits; and he who "in at the window creeps or o'er the tiles" may indeed find himself, somehow or other, within the house, but will hardly be a welcome or an appreciative visitor. In the volume before us the one really unsatisfactory passage is the two pages (99-101) on the Latin poets. It is unappreciative and conventional. But failure to appreciate Latin poetry means a certain defect in appreciation of that GræcoLatin civilization to whose supreme products the world has, rightly and irreversibly, given the name of the classics. The other caution to be suggested is against the danger of facile modernization. To translate the spirit of Greece into modern language is, indeed, not only right but necessary, if that spirit is to be for us something real, actual and vital.

The Times.

But it is a

task which requires infinite tact and skill and, beyond these, the wisdom which only comes (if it does come) of long experience and the practice not only of reading but of living. Especially is this so where the grasp of modern life and letters is imperfect (as when we are told that in a history of the English genius we should say little of Keats, but much of Borrow), and where the grasp of Greek literature itself leaves something to be desired, as when we are told that "we shall not learn mercy and righteousness from Achilles or Odysseus." The temptation to make things easy, or to make things attractive, by modern analogies is subtle, but it has to be resisted, or at least to be carefully guarded. In this volume we have noted about a dozen references to Mr. Galsworthy, Mr. Shaw, and Mr. H. G. Wells. Their relevance may be maintained; but when this sort of thing is done too much it insensibly produces the impression that these authors are somehow or other equivalent to, or substitutes for, the Greek classics. This is a more insidious danger than the danger (though that is a serious one also) of forcing an antithesis between Greek and modern life.

These cautions are not meant in disparagement; nor do they in fact seriously detract from the value of the work being done, in books like the one before us, towards the revival of Greek. Yet even that phrase must be taken with a caution of its own; for in truth it is not Greek that needs reviving, or that is being revived; it is ourselves.

A popular edition of "The Land of Heart's Desire" suggests rather some reflections on Mr. Yeats and popularity, than any reconsideration of so famous and finally assured a poem. As every one who loves fine verse knows by heart, it describes a girl lured away from home, human love and religion, by a thirst for unearthly beauty symbolized by fairyland. The fresher interest really is in the reprint rather than the book. For if this cheap version happened to miss a large sale, the critics would certainly say it showed, once again, that the public does not like literature. The critics would be wrong. Mr. Yeats's poetry is not only good, but obviously good. It is his point of view that might be dubious or disappointing. Any one could enjoy the fable; but any one may doubt the moral. The strange inversions of the modern thinker, who has holes in his head instead of bumps on it, have no stranger example than the trick of talking about subjects being "uncontroversial," about "unsectarian teaching" or "non-contentious measures": as if these adjectives were intrinsic qualities in the thing itself, instead of in its reception: as if there could be such a thing as an "unhissable" play or an "unslateable" book. A boy could see, one would suppose, that whether certain teaching is unsectarian or not depends on what sects there are; and whether a Government Bill is non-contentious or not depends on whether any one has the sense to contend with it. Now somewhat akin to this confusion is a mistake sometimes made about great artists: and this may have been the perverted truth in the Art for Art's Sake position. There is one situation in which we do treat an artist too much a moralist and partisan. It is By W. B.

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1 "The Land of Heart's Desire." Yeats. T. Fisher Unwin, 1s. edition.

when some attitude of his, though start. ling to us is quite natural to him, because natural to another society than ours; and though natural to him, is not perhaps specially important to him. So Protestants might think some fiddler superstitious, when he was only a careless Italian bred a Catholic. Or Quakers might think a cook a swashbuckler, because being a Frenchman he had once been a soldier. So at times a writer's attitude is not controversial in him, but becomes controversial through our attitude. Whenever anything like this happens, the result is always an entire perversion of the man's real personality. For example: Mid-Victorian England had an insular political dogma that the only safe statesmanship was to prevent the State doing anything. So when Matthew Arnold, well read in French and German and free from this prejudice, talked about State dictionaries and standards, the English got one idea stuck in their heads and couldn't get it out again: he wanted to found a French Academy in England. He didn't want to found an academy; he didn't want to found anything. The real fault of his mind, the real failure of his intervention, lay exactly in the fact that he would not become creative; that he thought man could remain critical for infinity. He, and not the poet he said it of, was the ineffectual angel. But because he ignored the Manchester taboo, and taiked of the State as they all do on the Continent, as normally connected with education and public art-the English insisted that poor Arnold had his trunks stuffed with plans for the Academy buildings.

The case of Mr. Yeats is more subtle: but in one way his case is the same. His figure is seen a little crooked, his true temperament is not felt; because he was first prominently associated

with a thing which was not peculiar to him; but the denial of which is peculiar to us. And when I say "us" here I do not mean merely the English; but I do mean a certain industrial and rationalistic world, of which the English were probably the pioneers, though the Eastern Americans, the Lowland Scotch or some of the Germans may even have marched further along that miry road. As the first broad impression about Arnold was that he was lurking about trying to build an academy, so the first broad impression about Mr. Yeats was that a young gentleman said he had seen the fairies. Now fairies stand to reason. That remark, made by a humbler Irishman, is better than the best books in the Celtic movement: but it would not be impugned by Mr. Yeats himself. His friends, his family, his fellow countrymen have talked to him of the fairies, and he would no more claim to have introduced fairies than to have introduced potatoes to Ireland -like a new Sir Walter Raleigh. And this Irish assumption would be the assumption of most of mankind, civilized as much as savage. Take ten men at random from an old Greek city, ten from a Japanese village, ten from a mediæval manor, ten from a Russian commune, ten from an Indian bazaar, ten from a Roman camp, and in all you will find many, probably most, who will answer you, perhaps in short idiomatic terms like the Irishman, but in terms that logically amount to something like this. "It is not only intermittently proved, but it is intellectually probable, that there are spirits other than man whose mode of materialization is different: tradition is on its side and also a priori truth. We don't know anything about them, and generally we don't want to. But fairies stand to reason." The Irish were not the only men who saw the fairies: it would be truer to say that the English were the only men who refused to see them. But the ra

tionalists of the capitalist age made the Cosmos, not merely a clock, but a clock whose works could be seen; they took it to pieces now and then and cleansed it of fairies, as they might of flies. This, combined with the fact that Mr. Yeats was a spirited Nationalist of the most misgoverned state in Europe, made up a portrait of the unworldly mystic: he was gentle, emotional, credulous, vague, a home of lost causes, a worshipper of the weak-a Breton.

The portrait is nearly the reverse of the original-like a photographic negative. He is not gentle: it is hardly gentle to compare your own disciples to the fleas on a dog. He is not credulous; he is a sceptic breaking outward to the edges of things, not a pilgrim striving for the centre of them. He is not even emotional in the English sense; there is more of Parnell than "Paddy" about him. He is not specially a friend of the weak: on the contrary, but for a certain courage and patriotism, he might have sunk to be a Superman. This is what has somewhat chilled his charm and power for his own country; you must be strong enough to be weak in real persecutions. His poetry is always beautiful: but this is only a further proof. I heard him say: "I have always liked Efficiency"; and people laughed, looking at his romantic cloak or hair. But he was right: he knew himself very well. He will have nothing badly done: a poem shall be a poem; he will not let it get prosy in parts, like the more genial Byrons and Brownings. Hence his work has a coldness of accomplishment, such as clings to marble; for "efficiency" is not really worth doing. His highest emotion is a sort of disdain; what Mr. Robert Lynd, in a really fine eulogy, probably meant by "the gesture of magnificence." He has often described old wars between priests and minstrels, of course from the minstrel's