the
vocabulary of Otaheite.

Of those scholars who have disdained to confine themselves to verbal
criticism few have been successful. The ancient languages have,
generally, a magical influence on their faculties. They were "fools
called into a circle by Greek invocations." The Iliad and Aeneid were to
them not books but curiosities, or rather reliques. They no more admired
those works for their merits than a good Catholic venerates the house of
the Virgin at Loretto for its architecture. Whatever was classical was
good. Homer was a great poet, and so was Callimachus. The epistles of
Cicero were fine, and so were those of Phalaris. Even with respect to
questions of evidence they fell into the same error. The authority of
all narrations, written in Greek or Latin, was the same with them. It
never crossed their minds that the lapse of five hundred years, or
the distance of five hundred leagues, could affect the accuracy of
a narration;--that Livy could be a less veracious historian than
Polybius;--or that Plutarch could know less about the friends of
Xenophon than Xenophon himself. Deceived by the distance of time, they
seem to consider all the Classics as contemporaries; just as I have
known people in England, deceived by the distance of place, take it for
granted that all persons who live in India are neighbours, and ask an
inhabitant of Bombay about the health of an acquaintance at Calcutta.
It is to be hoped that no barbarian deluge will ever again pass over
Europe. But should such a calamity happen, it seems not improbable that
some future Rollin or Gillies will compile a history of England from
Miss Porter's Scottish Chiefs, Miss Lee's Recess, and Sir Nathaniel
Wraxall's Memoirs.

It is surely time that ancient literature should be examined in a
different manner, without pedantical prepossessions, but with a just
allowance, at the same time, for the difference of circumstances and
manners. I am far from pretending to the knowledge or ability which
such a task would require. All that I mean to offer is a collection of
desultory remarks upon a most interesting portion of Greek literature.

It may be doubted whether any compositions which have ever been produced
in the world are equally perfect in their kind with the great Athenian
orations. Genius is subject to the same laws which regulate the
production of cotton and molasses. The supply adjusts itself to the
demand. The quantity may be diminished by restrictions,