Professor Gilbert Murray, Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, has announced that to his original schedule of eight lectures, he will add a ninth. This lecture, which will be on "Drama," will be inserted into the list tonight at 8 o'clock in Sanders Theatre. Professor Murray is giving the lecture in his capacity of first occupant of the Charles Eliot Norton Chair of Poetry.

First Lecture Was on Tradition

In the opening talk the visiting classicist took as his subject "Tradition in Poetry." The classical tradition, he said, that descended from Greece was the true poetic inspiration, and all great poetry since early times had been under direct influence, and owed its greatness to the amount of its faithfulness to the tenets of that tradition, which were ecstatic adoration of primal beauty, not for the beauty itself, but for the appreciation of the transcendent spirit behind it, the spirit that has been felt by all generations of poets, and which is itself the fountain spring of all poetry.

Molpe Was Spring of Poetry

In his second lecture, on "The Molpe," Professor Murray touched on the Greek ritual of song and dance, which went under the name of "molpe," and which he defined as worship of this spirit of beauty. The ecstasy to which contemplation of this spirit raised the worshippers was such that mere words were too weak to express it, and movement was the natural means sought as a vent for the emotions.

Tonight he will trace the next step in the development of poetry, and show how the very elementary molpe evolved into the drama "Metre" will be the subject of the next lecture, which will take place on Friday.