THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 64 to do justice to that reviewer (though Naz., and 44 to an imitator of Greg.

who is better able to do that for him- Naz.; and the book ends with illustraself?)it must be said that there, and tions of the possible value of ' accentual later, he exposed errors calculated to cursus' as a criterion in these and also inspire others with considerable mis- in textual problems. There are two trust of the Loeb translator. In a chap- indexes and a table of MSS. ter on questions of authenticity, the P. B. R. FORBES. author argues strongly for ascribing Ep. 38 to Greg. Nyss., 169, 170, 171 to Greg. University of Edinburgh. WHAT IS A CLASSIC? T. S. ELIOT : What is a Classic? Pp. 32. ' We may expect a language to approach London: Faber, 1945. Cloth, 3s. 6d. maturity at a moment when it has a critical sense of the past, a confidence net. THIS, the first annual address, delivered in the present, and no conscious doubt by its first President, to the newly of the future'; and 'an exhaustible founded Virgil Society, sets a challeng- language is the kind which may produce ing, even an alarming, standard for Mr. a classic poet'. A language to Mr. Eliot's successors. It is the work of a Eliot is something different from what trained critic who is also a poet; of a it is to most of us: it can have a critic well and widely read, no longer critical sense, and it can produce a subjugated by the yoke of his learning, poet. with judgement both acute and balBut these are small points, and the anced; of a poet who shares at least address as a whole is a powerful exposisome of the qualities of the poet of tion of what Mr. Eliot means by a whom he writes. It is full of matter, ' classic' and of his reasons for holding ordered by hard thinking, and presented Virgil to be a 'universal classic'. And with grace. he ends with a passage so notable, and And yet ? Is there something a trifle noble, that it makes us forget what in bloodless about it all, an air of with- earlier pages has irritated us and redrawal from the world of men into the member only what we have admired world of letters? Some readers will (though even here Mr. Eliot speaks of think that tenuitas in the good sense ' a literature' and not of the men who draws sometimes dangerously near to wrote it): tenuity in the bad. When they are told ' I have spoken of the new seriousnessgravity that a consciousness of Virgil's 'refine- I might saythe new insight into history, illusment of manners springing from a deli- trated by the dedication of Aeneas to Rome, to a his cate sensibility' makes Catullus seem future far beyond more livinga achievement. His reward was hardly than narrow beach-head a ' ruffian', and Horace ' somewhat ple- and a political marriage in a weary middle age: beian' by comparison, they may be his youth interred, its shadow moving with the tempted to thank God that they are shades the other side of Cumae. And so, I said, still crude enough to be kindled by one envisages the destiny of ancient Rome. So may think sight, passion and stirred by Regulus' return weliterature of of Roman literature:a at firstmuster a limited scope, with poor to Carthage. When they are told that of great names, yet universal as no other literature 'to a sensitive palate the difference can be; a literature unconsciously sacrificing, in between the prose of Addison and Swift compliance to its destiny in Europe, the opulence will be as marked as the difference and variety of later tongues, to produce, for us, the classic. It is sufficient that this standard should between two vintage wines to a con- have been established once for all: the task does noisseur', they may be inclined to say not have to be done again. But the maintenance that even a palate which can tell mild of the standard is the price of our freedom, the from bitter can also tell chalk from defence of freedom against chaos.' cheese. And they will notice with inM. R. RIDLEY. terest two sentences in the address: Balliol College, Oxford.