AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. II deteriorated. Books were not read, and every one wrote only for his own satisfaction. Be- cause the beauties of the classicity of old could not be found in contemporaneous work the error was made of blaming the language for it. It is easily understood that the writers of many centuries, even the less educated, who had nothing of the genius of their ancestors, in their admiration of the classical language retained most anxiously all the old orthography, the words, the modes of expression, the construc- tions, because all considered the old language as one of extreme beauty. They looked upon new elements which might be introduced into it as vulgar corruptions. Every writer had the in- tention to use the aristocratic, pure ideal lan- guage instead of the vulgar and irregular. Thus can be explained the fact that the schools, the church, the administration, the military, the legislature, the courts, the correspondents, and the literati of all kinds, during all the centuries while Greece was in bondage, used the archaic language. Books written in dialects, such, for instance, as A B C books or readers, grammars of contemporaneous Greek, were altogether un- known things at those times. In aristocratic society tuhv-ti only was spoken. Even the Roman 4
