IN THE generation immediately following that of Charlemagne and the great educator Alcuin, there appeared in Constantinople a character whose life and work, though not so well known as those of the Frankish monarch or his venerable preceptor, were have effects at least as far reaching. Photius of Constantinople, patriarch and founding father of the Greek church, theologian, teacher, and polymath, remains this day one of the most amazing and controversial characters known in human history. Damned by the Roman Catholic, hallowed by the Orthodox Greek, and esteemed by classical and medieval historians and philologues as Aristotelian in his intellectual endeavors, Photius has enjoyed a most singular reputation for nearly eleven hundred years. Born early in the ninth century, probably between the years 8I5 and 820, he displayed at an early age a precocity in his natural aptitude for books and learning which foreshadowed his great work of future years. His long and stormy career as a political and ecclesiastical figure, while of the utmost significance in itself, has frequently obscured his activity as a scholar and teacher. We have heard and read much of Photius the patriarch of Constantinople, the instigator of the Greek schism, who, like Henry VIII of England seven hundred years later, defied the pope, daiming ecclesiastical independence for himself and his people; of Photius, who, through guile and fortuitously favoring circumstances, was, by turns, elevated the patriarchate, deposed by the combined powers of pope and emperor, reinstated as patriarch, and finally exiled, and who passed his last days in a lonely monastery of Armenia, where he died in the year 89I. This Photius is well known, having served as the subject of many books and articles. Our interest here is rather in Photius the literary critic and teacher, whom succeeding generations of scholars are eternally indebted. No one would have been more astonished than Photius himself, had he known that, in addition his veneration as founder of the Greek church, he would be accorded the honor of having composed the earliest-known surviving specimens of a now well-established literary form: the book review. In his early years Photius had gathered about him a group of private pupils and scholars, forming what appears have been quite a thriving literary circle. Just how the sessions were conducted we do not definitely know, but it would seem that a portion of them, at least, was devoted the discussion and criticism of the various volumes contained in Photius' own library, which, for the times, must have been quite extensive. At the age of about thirty-five, Photius was commissioned by the emperor undertake a diplomatic mission the East, to the Assyrians, as he says, possibly meaning the Arabians, whence his journey would be the caliph of Bagdad. At this time, it seems, a certain pupil of his, Tarasius, who had been unavoidably absent from many meetings of the literary conclave, requested his teacher pre-