Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 2).djvu/129

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longed for during the Peloponnesian war, visited Thebes, and then crossed Mount Pentelicus into Attica. The ruins of Athens were then far less imperfect than they are at present, and he examined them with the eye of a learned antiquary; but extensive as was his learning, he does not seem to have possessed that sort of reading which would have enabled him thoroughly to enjoy a tour through Greece. It is for those who have entered deeply into the private history, literature, and philosophy of the Greeks that Attica has real charms. He should be able to determine or imagine the exact spot where Socrates sat under the plane-tree with Phædrus in order to discuss the merits of Lysias's style; he should be interested in discovering where the house of Callias stood, to which the impatient Hippocrates would have led Socrates before day, that he might lose no time in being introduced to Protagoras; he should walk up and down the banks of the Ilyssus, that he might be sure of having visited the spot where Sophocles nestled all night among the reeds to enjoy the song of the nightingale: this is the sort of traveller who should visit Greece. Otherwise, with Strabo, Pausanias, and Vitruvius in hand, he may determine the sites of cities and measure the height of columns to a hair; our feelings go not along with him, and his researches become tiresome in proportion as they are circumstantial and exact.

From Athens Pococke proceeded westward, crossed the ancient territories of Megara, visited Corinth, and continuing his journey along the southern shores of the Gulf of Lepanto, arrived at Patras, where he embarked for Sicily. He then crossed over into Italy, and hurried on through Germany, Switzerland, and France, to England, and arrived in London on the 30th of August, 1741, exactly eight years from the day of his first departure for the Continent.

Being now happily arrived in port, with a pro-