that his appreciation is most difficult to analyse. Very diverse opinions have been expressed on the subject by scholars of long and intimate acquaintance with Greek literature. The testimony of the Anthology is, by itself, fairly clear; but, if it be cited, it must be put forward not as decisive on the question, but as merely contributory to it. It In these poems the sense and appreciation of the beauty of flowers is strongly contrasted with the absence of any expressed appreciation of the beauty of scenery. It is not merely in the 'Garland' of Meleager that the love of flowers is shown; it is displayed again and again by poets of all the ages of this millennium of verse. is their colour, their scent, and their symmetry of form which seem to appeal especially to the feelings of the Greek. Scenery, in the sense in which we use it, leaves him, if not cold, at any rate expressionless. There are passages which seem at first reading to show such appreciation; above all the numerous verses, some of which are without doubt copies of actual inscriptions, which refer to some delightful resting-place near a spring beside the road, or to the plane-tree or the pine high on the hillside where the shepherd's pipe may be heard. The verse of Anyté is typical of the feeling expressed : 'Stranger, beneath this rock thy limbs bestow Sweet, 'mid the green leaves, breezes whisper hers Drink the cool wave, while noontide fervours glow For such the rest to wearied pilgrim dear.'-Wellesley. Even should the epigram refer to the beauty of the trees by the well, the idea uppermost in the mind of the writer is the bodily comfort to be derived from shade, from rest, and from the quenching of fierce thirst. Nor is it difficult for anyone who has passed a summer in the Nearer East to understand the gratitude of the wayfarer for this counterpart of the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land. There is also a marked tendency to humanise the beauties of nature by a process of idealisation. The sunbeams which pierce the foliage are the wood-nymphs dancing through the forest; the waters which flash over the wheel are the water-nymphs turning the mill, as in the pretty fancy of Antipater: 'Let your wheel-turning hands, lucky maidens, be still. Sleep on, though Alectryo wakens the morn; The water-nymphs now take your part at the mill, And weigh down the mill-stones that crumble the corn. How they flash from the wheel! How they thunder and roar! How the axle spins round at the sound of their voices! This age is become like the golden of yore, When Ceres our hearts without labour rejoices.' -C. Merivale. To the Greek sense, educated by the excellence of the plastic arts, beauty became associated especially with symmetry and with vivid colour. The rugged, irregular outlines of mountain scenery, which make a peculiar appeal to the modern sense, left Greek feelings apparently untouched. It is sometimes supposed that the sites chosen for Hellenic sanctuaries argue in themselves an appreciation of the beautiful in scenery. The lofty headland and the isolated acropolis of Greek lands afford indeed views which are hardly to be surpassed in the wide, wide world; but it is probable that these situations were chosen for more practical motives, the acropolis for its strength as a position, the headland in the hope that the god of the sanctuary might guard the sailor who navigated its dangerous waters. Such is the hope underlying the epigram of Anyté: 'Cythera from this craggy steep, Looks downward on the grassy deep, In modern poetry and in modern art the beauty of the sea is an ever-recurrent theme. That the Greek was appreciative of its colour everyone who has read the Odyssey will know. In the Anthology such appreciation is rare, almost non-existent. The sea is associated with darkness, disaster, and death. The best that can be said of it is that it is sometimes calm. It is not difficult to understand why, in these days of early navigation, rendered all the more dangerous from the fact that the customary coasting voyage must have exposed the sailor to the peril of being caught by a storm on a lee shore, a certain dread of the salt sea wave should have killed all appreciation of its beauty. The Anthology is full of piteous laments on the untimely fate of those who have been drowned in shipwreck. It is impossible to do justice to the beauty, wit, and humour of the Anthology within the brief limits of an essay; but any attempt to do so would be manifestly incomplete did it fail to mention the light verse of some of the later writers in the collection. Fashion in wit and humour is liable to rapid change; but the verses of writers like Lucilius and Nicarchus, in the first century A.D., have a twentieth-century ring about them. They aim the shafts of their wit at objects similar to those which provoke the light satire of the present day-the quack doctor, the professed prophet, the popular songwriter. Lucilius' pictures of the dismay caused amongst the dwellers in Hades by the appearance of Eutychides, the composer of popular tunes, and of Pluto's reluctance to accept the ghost of Marcus the rhetorician unless he employ his art as an alternative torture on Ixion and Tityus, are as amusing as the best that is to be found in the light verse of modern times. Nicarchus did not like the doctors: 'Yesterday the Zeus of stone from the doctor had a call. Though he's Zeus, and though he's stone, yet to-day's his funeral.' His answer to Demetrius' invitation to dinner might have been written to the occupant of a top-story London flat: "Twas yesterday, Demetrius, you asked me in to dine. I've come to-day, but don't be cross, the fault was hardly mine, It took me hours to get to you; your stairs they never ended; I gripped another ass's tail, and so at last ascended. A heavenly body you've become. Zeus must have used this flight When he took poor old Ganymede to heaven's starry height. And so it goes on from age to age, and from grave to gay, for the spirit of the verses is apt to take its colour from the age. The lights and shadows of the history of the time are reflected in the clear waters of the Anthology. When the political world is out of joint and all is confusion, so that men begin to count their lives by hours, the verses turn to seriousness or even to despair. The joy of life, when the ordered government of the Principate gave peace and prosperity to the provinces, is shown in the careless, reckless fun of Lucilius and Nicarchus. One can even trace in the poems the priggish archaism of the second century of our era. They are, indeed, pictures of the life not merely of man, but of the centuries. Brief, pointed, and terse, they express in a few words thoughts which it takes us hours to think and years to formulate, even to ourselves. They are, indeed, some of the brightest examples of all that the human intellect is capable of at its best; and, were the civilising and humanising element which Greek introduces into education to be banished from it at the instance of unpractical preachers of practicality, the disappearance of these poems from accessible literature would be not the least part of the loss. For, after all, the splendid literary boast of Parrhasius was true: • Εἰ καὶ ἄπιστα κλύουσι λέγω τάδε· φημὶ γὰρ ἤδη "Twill sound a foolish boast; but still I make it; G. B. GRUNDY. Art. 3.-BRITISH INVESTMENTS ABROAD. 1. Economic Inquiries and Studies. By Sir Robert Giffen, K.C.B. Two vols. London: Bell, 1904. 2. Fifty-third Report of the Commissioners of His Majesty's Inland Revenue for the year ended 31st March, 1910. London: Wyman, 1910. 3. Statistical Tables and Charts relating to British and Foreign Trade and Industry, 1854-1908. London: Wyman, 1909. 4. Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom from 1895 to 1909. London: Wyman, 1910. THE question whether the investment of British capital outside the limits of the United Kingdom on the lavish scale that has obtained during the past three years will prove to the ultimate benefit or disadvantage of the inhabitants of the country as a whole, is one of the most important and, at the same time, difficult economic questions of the day. No precise data are yet available which make it possible to arrive at a final verdict upon the matter; but there are certain statistical data in existence which, if used in a judicial spirit, render it practicable to form some general conclusions. The first point to which attention may be directed is the magnitude of our foreign and colonial investments. The annual reports of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue contain particulars of the income from abroad which is disclosed to them and which they are able to ear-mark as such; and the following is the summary of all the assessed income from abroad which was so earmarked in the last income tax statistics dealing with the matter, namely, those which related to the year to April 5, 1909. Income disclosed by agents for payment of interest on Income disclosed by bankers and coupon-dealers in connexion with the realisation of foreign and colonial coupons Income declared by persons, firms, or public companies as received in respect of investments abroad without taxation at the hands of agents, bankers, or coupon-dealers, £ 32,241,680 17,949,838 15,105,979 8,030,136 |