Aristophanes. Nor should it be overlooked that all Browning's work has one element of kinship, unconscious but important, with the Greek; pervaded, as it is, by an intense vitality, it is always a voice of life; it has more affinity with the spoken word than with the written. There are living poets and prose-writers who have also contributed, by various gifts, to the comprehension of ancient thought and beauty; but I am compelled to be brief; and the names of some of them will at once occur to you. I need only add that, within the last thirty or forty years, we have seen the growth of a literature tending to popularise, without vulgarising, the classics; addressed, that is, not only to scholars, but to cultivated readers generally; such books, for instance, as those of the late SymondsMr J. A. Symonds, and the late SellarProfessor Sellar. We have had, too, a number of good English translations; in the forefront of which stands that beautiful work, a memorial of one whom so many pupils and friends are mourning, through which JowettProfessor Jowett has made Plato an English classic.
Growth of a feeling for ancient art.Thus the literary development of the century has been such as to draw Greek and Latin studies more and more out of scholastic isolation, and to bring them more and more into the general current of intellectual interests. A change, not less significant, has meanwhile been passing over the English appreciation of classical art. This has been, in its larger aspect, merely one branch of a movement dating from about the middle of the century, and tending to raise thePage:Essays and Addresses.djvu/626
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The Position of Classical Studies
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