LETTERS TO THE EDITOR,
THE OXFORD MODERN LANGUAGE STATUTE.
(To VIE EDITOR Or THE " ErECTITOR.1
am afraid you have been misled on some points with regard to the statute about Modern Languages which was dis- cussed last week in the Oxford Congregation. There is no such process or custom as that which you speak of by which any Proctor gives a casting,-vote. The vote of November 1st came under the usual rule of all assemblies that a measure cannot pass unless it has a majority. There may or there may not be a provision for making an artificial majority by giving some person a casting-vote. This is provided for in Convocation, where the Vice Chancellor has such a casting-vote; in Congre- gation he has none. And this casting-vote is again distinct from the negative voice—a true veto, rightly to use a word which is often misapplied—which, in Convocation but not in Congre- gation, is vested both in the Vice-Chancellor singly and in the two Proctors together.
I perhaps need not tell you that the reports of debates in Congregation which appear in the newspapers are never to be trusted. For what reason I know not, these debates are worse reported than the smallest matters in the smallest local papers. It is not this or that man that is touched, or this or that party ; every man is impartially misrepresented all round. Most commonly a speech is turned into sheer nonsense, as my speech of last Tuesday, only a fellow-sufferer with others, certainly was.
If no competent person can be set to do the work, it would be far better not to attempt it at all. Thus, as I do not exactly remember Sir William Anson's words, the chances are that you are not quoting anything that he said. The words that you quote, whoever may be their author, are misleading. It cannot be said that "history, literature, and philosophy" are " necessi- tated " in "all other schools,"—in those, for instance, of mathematics and natural science. (" Philosophy" is a new term in Oxford ; I believe it means what we used to call science, before physiological laboratories were beard of.) The proposed school of modern languages would surely be as historical as the schools of law, oriental languages, and theology.
My own belief is that the tie of last week is the best thing that could have happened. The statute is not rejected, but is simply, as the Proctor said, "not carried." It may be taken back and improved.
Let me state one or two points in which it may be improved I. My first suggestion must, I fear, be only theoretical ; still it must be made. A School of "Modern" Languages is bad. What is wanted is a "School of Language," in which Greek and English, kindred tongues of equal dignity, should be scien- tifically studied aide by aide. We should thus, not, in the words of an amusing local pamphleteer, "reverse the Benaissance ;" we should rather do in the nineteenth century what the men of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries did ; that is, we should embrace the discoveries of our own time, which as yet Oxford has not done. This, of coarse, involves getting rid of the present fragments of the old school of Litero3 Humanioree, and joining the whole into one, an expansion of Literce Ilumaniores as they stood before the fashion of reckless change set in. I see no present hope of such a real reform ; bat anything short of it, anything that makes "ancient" languages one study and " modern " another, is a mere temporary provision for the present distress. Such a division—" dichotomy," it seems, is the high.polite word—is essentially unscientific. Other suggestions will come more nearly within the range of practical politics.
2. After all the babble in the newspapers, it would be well to get rid of the doubtful word "literature." That word is capable of a worthy sense, and I believe that it is meant in a worthy sense in the statute. But late talk has shown that it can bear another sense. It must be made perfectly clear that we mean a school of scholarship, not a school of chatter.
3. We must get rid of the proposal for admitting a " col- loquial " knowledge of the languages taken up. What that would mean would be the power of fluently talking two or three of the languages concerned in their modern shape. No one will take up colloquial Gothic or colloquial Lithuanian. It would mean the fluent talking of French, German, and Italian by those who, from some circumstance of early life, have got the knack of so doing. Such fluent talk is a most valuable practical gift, but it is in no way the affair of the University ; for it is a matter of knack, not of scholarship it is most commonly not the result of study. That this was felt is shown by the pro- vision that such colloquial knowledge should not lead to honours. But a subject which is not worthy to lead to honours is unfit for examination.
4. The most unintelligible thing of all is the omission of Greek. The fact of the connection between Latin and the Romance tongues is fully admitted ; but Greek is left oat altogether. Yet Greek is a living tongue, with the longest and most unbroken life of any European tongue, and with the most direct connection with the other studies of the University. No tongue is so historical as the abiding speech alike of the men who followed Miltiades to Marathrin and of the men who followed Gouras to the same field.
The object of the statute then ought to be to challenge equality between all the great languages of the Aryan stock, as a matter of the higher academical study. We must maintain that what the pamphlet that I spoke of grotesquely calls the "savagery" of "Goths and Anglo•Saxons "—the " savagery " perhaps of the monastery and the hospital—is entitled to hold its place alongside of the " humanity " of the "Greeks and Romans" —the humanity perhaps of the cross and the amphitheatre. To this end the struggle will have to begin again. With rational opponents like Sir William Anson we are ready to argue. With enraged newspaper-writers, talking about " fraud " and " treason," we shall not argue. Nor shall we argue with some of the younger sort among ourselves, who have not yet learned that all snbjects, in all times and places, have been jeered at by those who did not understand them, and that they have got on none the worse for the jeering. Those who think it fanny to laugh at " Gothic " or " Letto-Slavic," because they know nothing about either, may be surprised to hear that there is a large class of people in the world who think it just as funny to laugh at Latin and Greek, and with just as much and as little reason.—I
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