Symonds in his _Greek Poets_ speaks of the "unrivalled
majesty" of the _Agamemnon_, and Mark Pattison considered it "the grandest
work of creative genius in the whole range of literature"); or, as Sir M.
E. Grant Duff recommends, the _Persae_; Sophocles (_Oedipus Tyrannus_),
Euripides (_Medea_), and Aristophanes (_The Knights_ and _Clouds_);
unfortunately, as Schlegel says, probably even the greatest scholar does
not understand half his jokes; and I think most modern readers will prefer
our modern poets.
I should like, moreover, to say a word for Eastern poetry, such as
portions of the _Maha Bharata_ and _Ramayana_ (too long probably to be
read through, but of which Talboys Wheeler has given a most interesting
epitome in the first two volumes of his _History of India_); the
_Shah-nameh_, the work of the great Persian poet Firdusi; Kalidasa's
_Sakuntala_, and the Sheking, the classical collection of ancient Chinese
odes. Many I know, will think I ought to have included Omar Khayyam.
In history we are beginning to feel that the vices and vicissitudes of
kings and queens, the dates of battles and wars, are far less important
than the development of human thought, the progress of art, of science,
and of law, and the subject is on that very account even more interesting
than ever.
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