William Watson Goodwin

“ Something more than mere statement of facts has been attempted in the present work, although nothing has been further from my thoughts than a complete theoretical discussion of all the principles which govern the use of the moods. He who ventures far upon that sea is in great danger of being lost in the fog or stranded; for, while Comparative Philology has thrown much and most welcome light on the early history of the Greek language, it has also made us more painfully aware of our ignorance, although it is a more enlightened ignorance than that of our predecessors. ”

“ His plan is to give full and accurate statistics of the use of every construction bearing on the history of Greek syntax, and thus to make a true historic syntax of the language a possibility. The work of collecting, classifying, and discussing the examples of different constructions has been assigned by him to a large number of colleagues, and every year testifies to substantial progress. The following treatises bearing on the construction of the moods ami tenses have already been published by Schanz : Weber, Emcickdungsyeschichte der Absichtssatze ”

“ The amount of patient labour devoted to these compilations, in which the exact number of examples of each construction in each Greek author before Aristotle is given, while the most important passages are quoted and nearly all are cited, will be most gratefully appreciated by those who would be least willing to undertake the work themselves. The results of such dry enumerations are often interesting and surprising. No one knows whether statistics will be dry and barren or not, until they are collected and classified ”