A little learning is by no means a dangerous thing
in the matter of languages : half a sentence is incomparably superior to no speech among foreigners. A vocabulary, however small, is essential in order to enjoy the human amenities of any civilized country. And a vocabulary is easy to acquire. It 13 my belief that about fifty per cent. of educated people can learn something of any European language in one month by Modern methods, We need confidence—confidence that was
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often bullied out of us at school by grammatical pedants and dry-as-dusts delighting in " a, ab, absque, corm?, de." The other fifty per cent. of decently (or at any rate expensively) educated people arc those whose brains are not so retentive, Or whose vocal organs are not so flexible ; they may take three to four months to learn a language by the up-to-date sensible systems. At any rate, learning foreign tongues is by no means so difficult as many of tis suppose who studied the Classics and even modem languages by the mediaeval Methods of twenty years ago.
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