elegance of expression, which characterise the great works of Athenian genius, we must pronounce them intrinsically most valuable; but what shall we say when we reflect that from hence have sprung, directly or indirectly, all the noblest creations of the human intellect; that from hence were the vast accomplishments and the brilliant fancy of Cicero; the withering fire of Juvenal; the plastic imagination of Dantgu. the humour of Cervantes; the comprehension of Bacon; the wit of Butler; the supreme and universal excellence of Shakespeare?" The claim which Macaulay here makes for Greek literature would be extravagant indeed if it meant that Cicero was brilliant because he had profited by Demosthenes, that Juvenal's satire was inspired by Aristophanes, that Dante was vivid and sublime because Virgil had given him glimpses of Homer, that the humour of Cervantes and the wit of Butler flowed from an Attic source, that Bacon's grasp was due to study of Aristotle, or that Shakespeare, who had small Latin and less Greek, was the prince of dramatists by grace of the Dionysiac Theatre. In what sense, then, if in any, is the claim a just one? In this—that the Greeks were the people with whom the very conception of artistic literature began; that, in all the principal branches of poetry and of prose, the Greek mind achieved work so abounding with intellectual life, and so excellent in form, as to remain for after-ages an inspiration and a standard.
