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plans, at least the professed ones, of Catherine II. to do both. Though her real object was more probably to harass and weaken the Turkish power, she professed a great sympathy with the degraded Greeks, and laid out her measures to bring them back to their primitive glory. She proposed to erect them into an independent power, and to compliment them with being governed by a Russian prince. Accordingly she surrounded the grand duke Constantine, whom she intended for their sovereign, (the brother of the present emperor Alexander, and heir apparent of the Russian throne) with Grecian nurses. The princely child was taught to lisp his infant wants, in the dialect in which it was meant he should one day proclaim his laws, and it is said that he now speaks, with equal purity, his native Russ and the modern Greek. In pursuance of the same design, prince Potemkin established, at St. Petersburg, a corps de cadets for the education of young Greeks, where they were taught the ancient Greek, together with their native dialects, at the same time that they were disciplined in the usual exercises of a military academy. This academy was suppressed by Paul, and has not been revived by his successor. Indeed we cannot wonder that the empress Catherine should have taken an interest in the restoration of the Grecians, if the following anecdote of one of her officers be correct. It is found in Tooke's history of this empress, vol. i. p. 346, and seems to prove that there exists, among them, an acquaintance with the ancient language, which we can hardly credit. Capt. Ployart (who commanded one of the ships, which were sent by the Russians against the Turks in 1769, and who has since been an admiral in the Danish fleet) going on shore at Naxos, the largest of the Cyclades, took with him a Homer, an old school book which he happened to have on board, and showed it to some of the natives, who begged it of him with the most earnest importunity. The captain complied with their desires, and on going again on shore the next day, he saw an elderly man with his back to a wall, reading the speeches of the first Iliad, to an audience of fourteen or fifteen persons, with all the fury of declamation. To this anecdote we may add another, of equal authenticity and greater probability. With respect to our immediate subject of

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the Greek language, it will ascertain but a single word, but it will show the moving of a spirit, which haply one day will speak in pages and volumes. It is an extract from a letter of Dr. Clarke, the traveller, to Lord Byron. Its occasion will better appear by a sentence from Chateaubriand's Itineraire. "Lord Elgin has counterbalanced the merits of his laudable efforts, by ravaging the Parthenon. He was desirous of removing the basso-releivos from the frieze. The Turkish workmen employed in executing this design first broke the architrave, and threw down the capital, and then, instead of taking out the metopes by the grooves, the barbarians thought it the shortest way to break the cornice." Dr. Clarke says, "When the last of the metopes was taken from the Parthenon, and in moving it, a great part of the superstructure with one of the triglyphs was thrown down by the workmen, the disdar, who beheld the mischief done to the building, took his pipe from his mouth, dropped a tear, and in a supplicating tone of voice cried out to the agent is!"* I was present."

But to return; the attempts of the Russians to restore the Greeks, as they were undertaken from reasons of state, have for these same reasons been abandoned; leaving this defenceless country to the severer tyranny and aggravated oppression of its Turkish masters. Yet still the hope of their restoration is cherished among themselves, and much has been done to increase the means of education. There is at Havaili an institution for the education of Greek youth, with a hundred students and three professors. This establishment was disturbed by the Porte, under the the ridiculous pretext, that the Greeks were constructing a fortress instead of a school. But upon investigating the matter, and bribing the Divan, it has been suffered to continue. The principal professor, named Veniamin, (Benjamin) is stated to be a man of talents, but an infidel. He was born at Lesbos, studied in Italy, and is master of Romaic, Latin, and some of the languages of modern Eu

rope.

The most distinguished patrons however of modern Greek literature, are two brothers, of the name of Zosimado,

• Cease.

natives of Joannina, the capital of Epirus, but settled as mer chants at Leghorn. It is by their encouragement, and at their expense, that Coray has been prosecuting his studies at Paris Their names are mentioned with fondness and respect by all their countrymen.

Of Coray, from whose talents the best expectations are formed, and who indeed appears to have done most, at least of living Hellenists, towards improving his native dialect, a short notice may be acceptable. He is a native, according to Lord Byron, of Scio, the ancient Chios, though by the Edinburgh reviewers* it is stated that he was born at Smyrna, and that his family are living in a village in its vicinity. Where he received his education does not appear. He has published, with a French translation, the treatise of Hippocrates wigi idarar, xI KEN gav, xai tonwy, and the Æthiopics of Heliodorus, as he says in the title page, zag 'Eλany, with a preface in modern Greek, and notes in ancient Greek. In the latter part of his preface he speaks of the bad style of those, who have written in modern Greek, and ends with a spirited address to his countrymen. He has also translated into modern Greek, Beccaria on crimes and punishments. Besides these works, he has published a French translation of the characters of Theophrastus, and many of his conjectures and illustrations of Herodotus are inserted by Larcher, in his translation of that work. He has proposed to publish all the Greek classics, with Romaic versions and Greek. notes. Of these Thucydides in ten volumes, and we believe Herodotus, are published. He is considered a man of elegant mind, and of extensive acquaintance with the Greek clas sics. His French style is clear and elegant, and he has lately published a Lexicon of the Romaic and French language. He has been recently involved in an unpleasant controversy with M. Gail, a Parisian commentator and editor of some translations from the Greek poets, in consequence of the Institute having rewarded him for his version of the treatise of Hippocrates, to the disparagement and consequent displeasure of M. Gail. In a pamphlet published by the latter, in the course of the con

• Edinburgh Review, No. 31, Review of "Traduction de Strabon"

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troversy, he threatens Coray with the most unclassical chastisement, of throwing him out of the window. Upon which a French critic exclaims with characteristic naiveté. "Ah mon

Dieu! jetter un Helleniste par la fenêtre! Quel sacrilegè!

Among other famous scholars, and next to Coray, are Panagiotes Kodrikas, the translator into Romaic of Fontenelle; Kamarases, who has translated Ocellus Lucanus on the universe into French; Christodoulos, the author of some physical treatises, and more particularly Psalida, professor of a very flourishing school at Joannina. This last has published in Romaic and Latin, a work on true happiness, dedicated to Catherine II. There is now at Athens a pupil of Psalida's, who is making a tour of observation through Greece. He is intelligent, says Lord Byron, and better educated than a fellow commoner of most colleges. These short notices of the Greek literati may convince us that there is something in motion for the improve. ment of their race, and gives us ground to hope, that if a conjuncture of foreign affairs should favor their restoration, they will not at least be wanting to themselves.

But whatever is done, or is to be done, it may be a subject of regret to a genuine enthusiast, that Athens itself, the very city of Minerva, is not likely to commence the revival. The whole Attic race is barbarous even to a proverb:

Ω Αθηνα πρωτη χώρα

Τι γαιδαρος" τρέφεις τωρα;†

In the Fanal, and Joannina of Epirus, the best Greek is spoken. We have never understood that there have been as yet any printing presses established in Greece, though in Trieste Vienna, and Venice, there have been several erected for the especial multiplication of Romaic books. A correspondent of the Edinburgh review says, that he purchased at Venice a translation of Montesquieu's greatness and fall of the Roman empire: the Arabian Nights' Entertainment, and an epitome of

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The Fanal is the quarter of Constantinople inhabited by the Greeks,
Review of "Traduction de Strabon,"

Locke on the Human Understanding (ru zuęız Aszy, as they call him) and some plays of Metastasio and Goldoni, all in Romaic. There has been published at St. Petersburgh a translation into this language of Catherine's instructions for forming a new code. At Misitra, which has commonly been considered as built on the ruins of Lacedæmon, though d'Anville conjectures and Chateaubriand establishes the contrary, the latter found, in the library of the Archbishop, Romaic translations of Telemachus, and Rollin's history; he also found a translation of his own Atala. He adds, that "M. Stamati has likewise done me the honor to impart to my savage the language of Homer. The translator was a Greek, a native of Zante, who happened to be at Venice, when Atala appeared there in Italian, and from this version he began his vulgar Greek. I know not whether I concealed my name from pride or modesty; but my petty fame of authorship was so highly gratified, to find itself beside the brilliant glory of Lacedæmon, that the Archbishop's porter had reason to praise my liberality."

We have already mentioned the academy at Haivali, in Ionia. We are informed in the article of foreign literary intelligence in the Port Folio for December last, that others are es-tablished at Bucharest, Constantinople, and Mount Athos. In many also of the populous Grecian towns and cities are philosophical establishments of the nature of schools for the purpose of instruction, and under the care of professors. In that of Smyrna the number of professors is seven, and that of the scholars one hundred and fifty.

There is also in the city of Bucharest a society, formed by the assiduity of Ignatius, metropolitan of Wallachia. It is called the philological society, and consisted in 1811 of eighteen or dinary and ten corresponding members. It contributes to the support of a periodical work called 'Eguns à λoyses, a paper published once a fortnight, and devoted among other topics to the ancient and modern Greek languages, and the explanation of their agreement and difference. Of this journal each of the Grecian schools in Europe and Asia is presented with one copy. The editor of this journal is the learned Anthimus Gazi, a native of Melia in Thessaly, and second in dignity in the No. 1. Vol. II.

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