CLASSICAL STUDIES. go THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."' SIR,—The
following extract from a letter written by Edmund Burke in July, 1746, about a month after he had obtained a scholarship in Trinity College, Dublin, may interest those of your readers who have followed the recent discussions about classical study. Burke and his two brothers were educated for four years in this county at Ballitore, where a Yorkshire Quaker named Abraham Shackleton had set up a boarding- school, which was extensively patronised. The letter from which I quote was written to his schoolfellow and life- long friend, Richard Shackleton, who succeeded his father
Abraham in the school :—
" Your office of a school-master," writes Burke, " throws you amongst the ancient authors, who are generally reputed the best ; but as they are commonly read and taught, the only use that seems to be made of 'em, is barely to learn the language they are written in—a very strange application of the use of that kind of learning—to read of things to understand words, instead of teaching words that we may better be enabled to profit by the excellent things which are wrapt up in them. I would therefore advise you to be less inquisitive about the grammatical parts of the authors than you have been, not only for the above-mentioned reason, but because you will find it much the easier way of attain- ing the language. And you will be pleased to consider after what manner we learn our mother tongue. We first by conversa- tion (to which reading, when the language is dead, is equivalent) come to know the signification of all words, and the manner of placing 'em. Afterwards we may, if we will, know the rules and laws •by which they are to be placed so and so ; which will then be quite easy to us, as they are only the laws of words reduced to writing."
This writer one hundred and fifty-nine years ago seems to have come to very nearly what the Lord Chancellor of England said to the Classical Association the other day. Perhaps in another hundred and fifty-nine years our descendants may
see it acted on.—I am, Sir, &c., W. SHERLOCK.
Sherlockstoton, Co. Kildare.
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