We must own—and it is well to make the confession at the outset—that the literature of Syria is, on the whole, not an attractive one. As Renan said long ago, the characteristic of the Syrians is a certain mediocrity. The shone neither in war, nor in the arts, nor in science. They altogether lacked the poetic fire of the older—we purposefully emphasize the word—the older Hebrews and of the Arabs. But they were apt enough as pupils of the Greeks; they assimilated and reproduced, adding little or nothing of their own…. The Syrian Church never produced men who rose to the level of a Eusebius, a Gregory Nazianzen, a Basil, and a Chrysostom; but we may be grateful to the plodding diligence which has preserved for us in fairly good translations many valuable works of the Greek fathers which would otherwise have been lost.
