USE AND ABUSE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES.
Scarborough, Yorkshire, 23d Norember. Sin—Will you allow me to make a few remarks upon an article which ap- peared in your book-review of last week ? In noticing "Cookesley's Pin- der," your reviewer makes a furious onslaught upon the mode in which classical instruction is given in English schools at the present day. I will not enter into a discussion whether or not a fair average number of scholars is annually sent out of our schools. I think there is a sufficient number to warrant our asserting that classical education is as successful as education in any other branch of knowledge. It is not the fault of school systems and schoolmasters that so many boys are doomed to spend years of their life in unprofitable studies of Greek and Latin and "polite literature," but of parents, who are unwilling to educate their children according to the pro- per standard of their individual tastes and abilities. Hence it arises that hundreds of lads, who are more fitted by dame Nature for gamekeepers or mechanics, are compelled by the pride and vanity of their parents to strug- gle with tasks which are not only distasteful to them—for, say what you will, few boys like book-work—but which they never can be brought to comprehend, having had their faculties stunted or misdirected by previous preparation at home. It is, I take it, pretty generally admitted, that no person can pretend to literary refinement—that no person can be well versed in poetry, philosophy, or history—who is not also well versed in ancient classical literature. More than this, I believe that for the ordinary purposes of society, no training ever is found to be so efficient as a classical training. Without wishing to make an invidious remark, I would point to the difference which every " censor morum" cannot fail to observe between men thus trained and those who have not been thus trained.
Now, with regard to the mode in which this instruction is to be conveyed. Your reviewer objecth to the attaching so much importance to grammar and verbal criticism, and demands that, instead of parsing •ruw-rw and insisting upon the observance of the concords, tutors should " meet what is a want of young minds, by presenting to them ancient literature and ancient history as living realities" ; and he asserts that if this were done, " the knowledge of Greek would come by degrees, and under patient and loving guidance, just as knowledge of English comes in part by reading English books about matters that interest the faculties." He would impart grammar on a ho- moeopathic system, "in small doses, and in combination with knowledge of a more directly interesting character." All this sounds very fairly and plausibly, and I would not assert that in some eases such a method might not answer ; but in the long run, the combined experience of public school- masters and university professors unanimously asserts that all systems-which profess to teach boys Greek and Latin without thoroughly working grammar and philology are worse than useless, that the acquaintance with the lan- guage is without this purely superficial, and that, like swimmers when the corks are removed, they who are so taught are utterly helpless when left to themselves.
For my. own part, I would go to this extent, (after some considerable ex- perience in teaching,) and assert, that if more time were spent and snore yams- taken with grammar at first, (irksome though it may be,) the pupil would learn to read the language twice as fast and twice as easily as on any other system, and that having once mastered thoroughly one language, Greek or Latin, he would be furnished with a key to unlock all the others with :the greatest ease. it isthe_slipshod way.in which grammar istaught to children that makes the acquisition of proficiency, however small, so difficult. There is no royal road to the study of languages any more than to any other study. The multiplication-table cannot be made interesting except to a very few. Euclid and algebra are no favourites with schoolboys. Here and there is one with a taste for geology, botany, zoology, or histery.; but to the majority there is no attractiveness in them, and the nonienelature a stumbling-bkak, which, without some "love" of the work, can hardly be surmounted. I remember well, that at school we used to gravely inveigh against the folly of driving into us ancient lore at the point of the birch, and to sigh after a more useful employment of our time ; but I never re. member that any of us really liked our French, and German, and English lessons, a whit better than our Latin and Greek. In short, after mastering the grammar, I believe we preferred the classics to any other study. In fine, as far as I can see, the mere acquaintance with the life and manners of an- tiquity can be acquired without much trouble, through the medium of trans_ latione, classical dictionaries, and histories. There is no need to work wearily through Thucydides, or Herodotus, or Plato, if all we want is a mere record of facts and arguments. But the study of the classics is pursued for higher and more important objects than this. it is intended to cultivate thought, and elegance in the expression of thought ; and only they who have had the much-abused drilling in grammar and criticism can be made to ap- preciate the vast advantage resultant from -the study of that noblest and subtlest vehicle for human wisdom—the Greek language. These results cannot be procured without that stringent analysis which your reviewer abhors. Unless I can trace a metaphor or an -idiom to its simple source I can never duly estimate its force and beauty. And how can this be done without having recourse first to that bald and literal expression Which ap- pears to be so condemned ? I have not seen Mr. Cookesley's book ; but I should suppose that when he puts in a note a bald and prosaic rendering, .he by no means intends that a boy should accept that as the ultimate version of the author. Just as an artist would insist upon his pupil sketching an outline anatomically before he begins to fill in and colour the figure, so the teacher of classical literature must insist upon a rigid analysis of the forms of speech before he permits his pupil to aim at a free and elegant translation. As to whether boys are not introduced to Latin and Greek too early, I will not venture an opinion. Perhaps they are. But it is not true that a boy can or ever does learn as much French or German in six months as he can Latin or Greek in as many years. Whenever a person does learn a modern language so rapidly, it usu- ally happens, that there exist circumstances most favourable to its acquire- ment, either from having the language used in conversation, or, it may be, from the very fact that a good yrantanatical foundation has been previously laid from the study of Latin. If this acquisition of French and German is so rapid and easy compared with that of Greek and Latin, is it not a shame and disgrace to the literary men of this country that the ordinary, run of translations from those languages are so miserably poor and incorrect ? I do not hesitate moreover to affirm, that there are quite as many persons in this country who (after an equal amount of time expended) can write Latin cor- rectly and fluently, as there are who can write German or even French. In- deed, it is rare to see a French composition of any kind by an Englishman which does not contain some flagrant error.
A great deal more could be said on this subject, but I must apologize for [We do not undervalue the teaching of grammar, but only place it at a different stage. The present system .having, for the majority of boys, un- questionably failed to teach Greek and Latin, we would try another system, which Nature points out by her method of teaching languages to children, and our experience confirms in the case of the contemporary foreign lan- guages.
When our correspondent has seen Mr. Cookesley's book, it will be time to discuss its merits with him. So far from finding fault with Mr. Cookesley for literalness of rendering, one of our grounds was that he rendered poetic phraseology into phraseology the reverse of poetic. If this is what Mr. Oates means by sketching an outline anatomically, we conceive the,process to be undesirable at any stage of education. But this is what most schoolmasters understand by a literal translation ; and it is this error of which we complain.
Our reviewer values " stringent analysis" as highly as Mr. Oates. The question is not one mainly of individual estimate of the importance of accu- rately learning what is learnt, but of the means for attaining accuracy, and for saving time. If Mr. Oaths does not acknowledge that the present system both spends time needlessly and after all fails to turn out the majority of boys even decent scholars, we must be content to abide by our own expe- rience rather than by his assertion.—En.]
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