of the most infamous of the Olympian deities—­is brought on the stage to save the prestige of the oracle at Delphi and to explain away the altogether disreputable behaviour of the no less infamous Apollo.  But no one before Verrall had thought of coupling together the free-thinking and the episode in the play.  This is what Verrall did.  Ion sees that the oracle can lie, and, therefore, “Delphi is plainly discredited as a fountain of truth.”  The explanation is, of course, somewhat conjectural.  Homer, who was certainly not a free-thinker, made his deities sufficiently ridiculous, and, at times, altogether odious.  Mr. Lang says with truth:  “When Homer touches on the less lovable humours of women—­on the nagging shrew, the light o’ love, the rather bitter virgin—­he selects his examples from the divine society of the gods."[94] But whether the very plausible conjectures made by Verrall as to the real purpose of Euripides in his treatment of the oracle in Ion, or, to quote another instance, his explanation of the phantom in Helen, be right or wrong, no one can deny that what he wrote is alive with interest.  On this point, the testimony of his pupils, albeit in some respects contradictory, is conclusive.  One of them (Mr. Marsh) says:  “I was usually convinced by everything,” whilst another (Mr. J.R.M.  Butler) says:  “I don’t think we believed very much what he said; he always said he was as likely to be wrong as right.  But he made all classics so gloriously new and living.  He made us criticise by standards of common sense, and presume that the tragedians were not fools and that they did mean something.  They were not to be taken as antiques privileged to use conventions that would be nonsense in any one else.”

Classical learning will not be kept alive for long by forcing young men with perhaps a taste for science or the integral calculus to apply themselves to the study of Aristotle or Sophocles.  The real hope for the humanities in the future lies in the teaching of such men as Butcher, Verrall, Gilbert Murray, Dill, Bevan, Livingstone, Zimmern, and, it may fortunately be said, many others, who can make the literature of the ancient world and the personalities of its inhabitants live in the eyes of the present generation.

[Footnote 90:  The Public Schools and the Empire.  By D.H.B.  Gray.]

[Footnote 91:  [Greek:  En gar daimonioisi phobois pheugonti kai paides theon.]—­Nem. ix. 27.]

[Footnote 92:  Rise of the Greek Epic, p. 3.]

[Footnote 93:  [Greek:  Ouden sophizomestha toisi daimosi].—­Bacchae, 200.]

[Footnote 94:  The World of Homer, p. 34.]

XIX

AN INDIAN IDEALIST[95]

"The Spectator,” July 12, 1913