BOOKS.
COOKESLEY'S PINDAR..
IT would be difficult to name any field of human industry in which the returns bear so small a proportion to the outlay of time money, and talent, as in that of classical scholarship in this country. In making this remark, we do not intend to take up the ordinary utilitarian ground of the exceedingly small practical worth of an acquaintance with Greek and Roman literature in comparison with other branches of knowledge ; on the contrary, it is because we estimate highly the knowledge that lies veiled in the languages and literatures of the Ante-Teutonic period of Eu- ropean history, that we complain of the inadequate results of our vast and expensive machinery for imbuing the youth of our upper and upper-middle classes with such knowledge. The richest edu- cational endowments that the world has ever seen, supplemented by enormous annual contributions from the pupils of the establish- ments, have been for three centuries largely devoted to pay the teachers of Latin and Greek to young Englishmen from ten to five-and-twenty years old, and to reward in the shape of college fellowships those of the pupils who distinguish themselves in these branches of learning. Eminence in classical scholarship was at one time almost as influential in procuring a man Church prefer- ment as political pliancy.; and as many of our bishops probably owed their mitres to an insight into the mysteries of Greek metre and choric meaning, as to domestic servitude in the families of no- blemen who could ask favours of a prime minister, or to the faculty of demonstrating the harmony of human reason with, say, the Athanasian Creed. Fashion, finally, added her stimulus to the cul- tivation of the classics, by pronouncing that a gentleman might be as ignorant as his own footman of all literatures and sciences of the world in which he was living, but he must at least have undergone whipping at the shrines of the ancient bards and orators, even though the gentle dulness of his brain was not stirred by the in- fluence applied to the lower extremity of the spinal cord. And what has been the fruit of all this care and fencing and manuring bestowed upon one small corner of the great time-field of human knowledge ?—Perhaps one hundred Englishmen per annum are in oar age trained to read the classical authors with as much ease as one reads French and German after six months' moderate applica- tion; perhaps twenty of the hundred acquire a very nice and criti- cal sense of the languages; perhaps five are inclined and enabled to carry on original researches in ancient history or comparative philology. It would be a curious problem in political economy to calculate how much every really competent Greek or Latin scholar must have cost the English community since the Reforma- tion. We should think, much more than his weight in gold ; and there must be added to the debtor side of the account all the waste of good sense and honest effort, all the superinduced idleness and consequent vice, involved in abortive attempts to force all boys to learn what many dislike and never do learn, though they are effect- ually prevented from learning anything else but that blank vacu- ity and apathy of mind, which encounter us so terribly often among the highly-developed animals of the upper strata of our human society, constituting them preeminently the "dangerous classes." Precious indeed ought our really good scholars to be, see- ing the sacrifices made to the system supposed to be necessary for producing the requisite supply—far more precious than attar of roses, as the human intellects crushed to distil the elixir of learning are more precious than the rose-leaves whose beauty and fragrance are condensed into infinitesimal doses of essential perfume. And there is no rose-leaf but contri- butes some share to the resulting .sweetness ; whereas it may fairly be questioned whether our system does not involve a needless as well as a costly sacrifice—whether we could not supply ourselves with as many good Greek and Latin scholars as we get now without a method that injures and dwarfs a hundred minds for every one that it fosters and develops. For in spite of all the dishonest or simply unenlightened cant that is talked, of the superior efficacy of the ancient classical languages as instruments of education, we presume that no sane man would attribute this efficacy to them in cases where the languages are not learned— 'whereat the end of ten or even twenty years of almost exclusive attention' so called, to these languages, the unfortunate pupil can neither turn a simple English sentence into Latin or Greek, nor perform the opposite process -upon any series of sentences which he has not crammed, and to whom the "Constitution of Cleisthenes " and the "Agrarian Laws" convey about as definite a meaning as the "Constitutions of Clarendon and the "Act of Settlement." It can only be the comparatively few who learn at school and col- lege sufficient Latin and Greek to read the easier classical writers • Pindari Carmine, ad fidem Textus Biickhiani. Pars secunda, continens Odas 1'A_ Was. Notas,quasdam Ang Hee scriptas adjeeit Guliebrus Gifford Cookesley, Eliams Eegire &holm Etonensise Alsgistris Adjutoribus. Editio secunda. Published W.
with facility and correctness, that the supposed benefit of a clas- sical tducation can reach at all. The rest are, in our opinion, and from our experience in a large number of cases, very seriously injured.
We have already said that we consider of high importance the knowledge to be obtained by a thorough study of ancient language and literature ; and we complain of the system hitherto most prevalent in England, not because it imparts useless know- ledge, but because it fails to impart any, and in that fail- ure necessarily fails to train the mental faculties. Now, we ber. Hove that boys of average faculty are not apathetic about know- ledge, though they may be averse from close attention or long- continued sedentary exertion. Look at them when they get hold of books suited to their apprehension, that speak to them of things they want to know, of feelings and ideas they can apprehend.' What is the interest of the most susceptible man in the highest works of literary art, compared to the rapt absorption of a twelve- year-old in his Robinson Crusoe, his Arabian Nights his Pilgrim's Progress, or even his Shakspere and his Milton ? Undoubtedly the boy appreciates in these books something that the man has learned to rate second, and does not consciously appreciate the art, the thought, the knowledge of human passion, that enchain the man, and raise him for the time above the petty or degrading ac- tualities of his outward existence. But, by some qualities that are inherent in almost all works of genius, the boy's soul is appealed to as well as the man's ; the boy as well as the man can be diverted from mere muscular or nervous delights ; his affections and his conscience can be trained to harmony with what is noble and beau- tiful. Without entering upon the long controversy, whether an- cient or modern literature is best fitted for this highest educa- tion,—asserting, as needing no proof, that each will enhance and illustrate the other,—we cannot but conclude from the facts of English society, that the classics, as they are taught at present, do very generally fail to impress the youthful student with any feeling but that of intense weariness, and a deep conviction that his masters and teachers are shamming when they use of classical writers the highest epithets of admira- tion, and set them up as a standard of which modern writers have with few exceptions fallen immeasurably short. We believe that, when every allowance has been made for the real difficulty of Latin and Greek, for the effort required to enjoy a literature founded on an unfamiliar state of society and unlike moral and religious ideas, there yet remains amongst boys and young men an immense amount of indifference to or dislike of these two languages and the literature written in them, only to be accounted for by the way in which they are generally taught. The primary mistake seems to lie in allotting a far longer time than is necessary to learning the rudiments of Greek and Latin. Perhaps they are generally commenced too early, but we would offer no decided opinion on that point. But a system is manifestly convicted of fundamental error which confines a pupil's formal instruction from seven to seventeen years of age to one branch of learning, and fails in a vast majority of cases to effect a competent know- ledge of that. The obvious conclusion is' that it should be taught differently, or that other things should be taught contemporane- ously: perhaps the monotony may weary the attention of the pu- pils and make them disgusted. • perhaps a larger range of study would enable them to realize the ancient life of which their clas- sical authors talk to them, as well as call forth faculties of thought and feeling which would find sources of interest in the contrast of that ancient life with that from which modern books derive their vitality. Paradoxical as it may appear, we should be disposed to attribute to the long time spent over the classics and to the ex- clusive attention paid to them, that slight knowledge of them which so many young men, who have passed through public schools and universities, carry into life as their sole acquirement. Very few men, and still fewer boys, can interest themselves for long together in verbal criticism and the abstract laws of language, in parsing, syntax, or prosody. It is, we believe' mainly because an attempt is made to teach the ancient languages to boys in this repulsive fashion, by cramming them with formal rules of grammar and comparatively useless refinements of critics, that so much time is taken up and so little way made. As we before said, literature has charms for almost all boys ; and if teachers were wise enough to meet what is a want of young minds by presenting to them ancient literature and ancient history as living realities, telling them what the men of old time did, thought, and suffered, Herodotus and Homer would be found at least as exciting as King Arthur and juvenile histories of England ; and the knowledge of the 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. We would saythat the first requisite was not to tire young people with Latin and Greek ; but to administer formal grammatical instruction in small doses, and in combination with
dge of a more directly interesting character; to lead them to
a scientific knowledge of the ancient languages through awakening a profound interest in the thoughts and lives of ancient men and women ; and to remember that such an interest can only beawaken- ed -when the understanding, the affections, and the imagination, have been cultivated. "He who loveth not his brother whom he hath seen," &e. is a maxim that holds universally in human life. The faculties must be roused to action by what is near and familiar be- fore they can grasp what is far off and obscure. No man can under- stand ancient literature and ancient history who knows nothing of modern literature and modern history. It is by our knowledgenf and sympathy with the living world of which we are a part that we are enabled to put together the fragments of the dead world em- bedded in the works of classical authors. Nothing, in our opinion, far short of a reversal of the method of educating our upper classes, practised for the last three centuries in England, will either effect the highest objects of education or secure in the highest degree the special object of a sound general knowledge of Greek and Latin literature.
The almost undisputed predominance hitherto conceded to these literatures has been as injurious to the teachers as to the pupils— has tended as much to lower the estimation of their utility among the mass of the people as it has tended to keep down the level of knowledge and culture. For while thousands of young English- men annually run to waste through abortive and ill-directed at- tempts to make Persons and Parrs of them, and while plain sen- sible citizens, seeing the failure and not reasoning very accurately on its cause, rush to Mr. Cobden's conclusion that the Times news- paper is worth all the classics, the teachers are suffering from the misemployment of intellectual power and industry upon subjects which, as they teach them, are neither extensive enough in their range to afford healthy exercise for their faculties, nor deep enough to form the links of a profound moral sympathy between master and pupil. We speak with regret when we are compelled to say that we can conceive no relationship more unmoral than that which has generally existed between the average public school master and the average public school pupil. We are also aware that it might be answered to us, that the moral side of the pupil's nature is touched by the modicum of theological instruction given at public schools, and that the masters in these schools are spiritual guides to their pupils as well as teachers of Greek and Latin. The fact is so nominally, but it rather enhances the strangeness of the ut- terly unmoral method of teaching classics than excuses it. Viewed philosophically, the necessity of being in holy orders imposed upon these masters is a highly valuable suggestion of the sort of relation that should exist between teacher and pupil, and that ought cer- tainly to be mainly shown forth in that which is the essential function of the teacher, the daily communication of knowledge and the training of character and faculty involved in that process. We have no wish to strain a point in support of a theory, but we can- not believe that any system of instruction starting from our na- tional literature and history, as that which was essential to awaken the intelligence and sympathy necessary for appreciating all other literatures and all other histories, could have led to or admitted of /hat cold and distant relation between teacher and pupil which is generally characteristic of English schools and universities. The hearts which had been touched with a common tenderness, or roused to a common exaltation, by the strains of a Wordsworth or a Milton, would have beat more in unison at the music of Theocritns and Homer; a genial excitement would have ugh toned the task- work and made effort easy ; and the difficulties of language would yield of themselves to the flow of emotion and of thought arising in sympathy with a teacher who habituated himself to seek in the dead languages that which makes them ever living—in the writers of the past that which binds them to the present.
How much of the painfully frivolous verbal criticism, vastly dif- ferent from scientific philology and philosophical grammar, which fills the notes of our common school and college editions of classical writers, would have never troubled a commentator's brain, but for a system which has accustomed men of vigour and talent to look upon the teaching of Latin and Greek as an occupation with which the moral faculties had no concern. And how much of this habit has been induced by divorcing Latin and Greek literature from its living connexion with that modern thought to which it stands in such a striking relation of contrast and development. And this is the direct result of that false notion of the time required and the methods necessary for laying the rudiments of classical knowledge soundly and safely. Dawdling leads to drivelling, and the con- nexion seems to us most intimate between the time spent in schools upon Latin and Greek, and the intolerable trash that is written by school-teachers in the shape of commentaries upon Latin and Greek writers—and which goes far to account for the small progress their pupils make, and for the small pleasure they derive from the masterpieeess of ancient art.
And this brings us by a devious track to our starting- point. We took up Mr. Cookesley's new edition of the Py- thian Odes with the notion that it would give us a standard of the most recent teaching of Greek in our greatest classical school. Mr. Cookesley himself forewarns us not to expect any new light from him on the difficult author he has undertaken to render ac- cessible to junior Grecians. We do not therefore institute any -comparison between him and the German Professors Bockh,Dissen, and Hermann, whose labours have probably made Pindar as intel- ligible as he is ever likely to become. Dr. Donaldson, twelve Tears ago, published an edition of Pindar based mainly upon their joint efforts at arrangement and elucidation ; but he was purposely, somewhat sparing of notes. It is to furnish a larger amount of explanation and illustration, as needful for the junior student, that Mr. Cookesley has undertaken his edition. We therefore take it as a specimen of the sort of help which an Eton master thinks necessary and serviceable to a class of boys sufficiently advanced in Greek to read an author confessedly among the most difficult And we regret to say that it is this specimen which has led twilit° the train of reflection on the method of classical instruction in England with which we have, we fear, wearied readers expecting a detailed notice of a new book. We do not accuse Mr. Cookesley of knowing no Greek, of failing to discern what may be called the skeletons of the poet's fair and living forms, or to collect with suffi, dent industry the passages from other Greeks writers which present kindred uses of words or kindred constructions of sentences. He has, like his predecessors, noted with adequate fulness the mytho- logical and historical stories to which Pindar is so fond of allud- ing. Indeed, if we were inclined to point out faults of this de- scription in his book, we should rather complain that, having no original matter of his own to contribute—neither a fact nor a theory, that we can perceive,—he has needlessly swelled his pages with long extracts-from books which must be, we presume, in the hands of every Eton student who is set to read Pinder. But what we do complain of in a commentary upon a Greek rood by a master at Eton is, that the poetry evaporates under his hands, and that the boy who is taught to read Pindar accompanied by such coin- meats will have a much keener sense of Boeotian dulness than of Greek intellect and art. Mr. Cookesley is given to indulge in such grammatical explanations as " subauditur KaTa" and " subauditur byre," and subauditur everything else which the English language expresses by prepositions and the Greek by its inflections, or which prose expresses logically, and poetry contents itself with expressing pictorially. Moreover, he frequently offers what we think forced and even impossible renderings of passages. These, however, are not our main grounds of fault-finding ; but that while he tells his pupils that Pindar is among the sublimestof poets, and compares him to a Hebrew prophet for his moral sub. limity and earnestness of conviction, he makes him talk English that a nursery-maid would feel to be slipslop, and habitually changes the images that flash from the poet glowing with "fine frenzy" into the baldest prosaic statements of commonplace facts. The boys taught thus must hate their author, and can hardly help thinking their teacher somewhat of a humbug for rating such an author on a level with or above the Grays and Tennysons whose choicest poems many of them have by heart ; except that, provi- dentially, a boy's genius is not absolutely crushed and stunted by bad teaching, and he may chance to learn Greek well, and to appreciate Greek poets, not by the aid of but in spite of his teacher. And Eton has sent too many first-rate echo- lars and clever young men into the world, within the last ten years, not to prove to our satisfaction that Greek and Latin are learned well at Eton by those who have a special capacity for such learning, however defective some of the teaching may be. But Mr. Cookesley's commentary on Pindar fully accounts for the state of classical knowledge in the majority of boys when they leave Eton. It must require a far stronger passion for learning, and far greater aptitude for self-improvement, than most boys have, to overcome such a dry, verbose, repulsive mode of present- ing Greek and Latin literature.
We beg, in concluding these remarks, to apologize to Mr. Cookesley for making his Pindar a peg to support a long disqui- sition on ordinary English classical teaching. His book is neither worse nor better than twenty school-books published every year. He has not fallen below the common standard; bat the standard is wretchedly low, or, perhaps we ought to say, wretchedly dis- torted. Arnold's Thucydides remains, with all its errors of minute scholarship, unapproached in its class.
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