II 11 :i II ! f r im';iiM,i;i;i-i.:ni'i'i., !: :L STUDY HARRINGTON ;iN!^ BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Hettrg H9. Sa^e 1S91 /?.,.,;i.5-../..a..2..s aJizr/iL 1357 a...jiir/./.. Cornell University Library 3 1924 031 206 174 olin.anx Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031206174 LIVE ISSUES IN CLASSICAL STUDY BY KARL POMEROY HARRINGTON BOSTON AND LONDON GINN AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 1910 COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY KARL POMEROY HARRINGTON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Ot gttemmm grt«« CINN AND COMPANY ■ PRO- PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. PREFACE / In an age of educational unrest the present moment is vitally concerned with the present and future status of the classics. Classical Associations are springing up every- whererjCurricula are being made and unmade. German and English scholars are urging the broadening of the scope of Greek and Latin reading. Great metropolitan joimials are protesting against discrimination by American colleges in the matter of material equipment to the dis- advantage of the classics. Educational meetings are seri- ously discussing defects in classical teaching. If the essays in this little volume should contribute at all to the ultimate solution of some of these great problems, the author's modest hope would be fully realized. Of the four essays here published, the second and third, previously printed respectively in the Southern Methodist Review and the Classical Weekly, have been revised and are here reproduced in the hope that thus they may reach a somewhat larger public. KARL FOMEROY HARRINGTON MiDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT CONTENTS PAGE DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT 3 A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE CLASSICS 37 THE "LATINITY" FETISH 55 THE USE OF TRANSLATIONS 66 LIVE ISSUES IN CLASSICAL STUDY DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT " What are you eating, my child ? " said a lady to her little daughter, who came into the room visibly munching something. '" Cheese," was the smiling answer. " Where did you get the cheese .? " inquired her mother. " In the mousetrap," was the frank response. " Why ! what will those poor little mice say when they come and find all their nice cheese gone ? " " There were two there just now, when I took it, and they did n't say a single word ! " There is no denying the fact that many people have studied the classics for a considerable length of time, and brought away from their study no more vital message than the child did from the dead mice. To such students the classics were merely dead, very dead, languages, — dead, with the dust of centuries heaped upon them. There was no word of life spoken by these musty and crumbling corpses, so far as their ears could detect. Yes, the classics were a veritable valley of dry bones, — bones of diphthongs and hidden quantities, bones of case endings and verbal inflections, bones of the tweedledum and tweedledee of absolute and relative temporal clauses, hideous great bones of indirect discourse, meaningless bones of ablative abso- lutes, monotonous bones of parasangs and what Caesar did, — all mingled with the bleaching bones of the hope- less victims of pedagogical severity, the victims that had 3 4 DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT perished at examination times in the vain attempt to classify these bones and assign them correctly to the pre- historic monstrosities to which they once belonged ; and the idea that any breath of modern, up-to-date life could ever have been clothed upon this bone yard seemed as impossible as did the miracle foretold to the Hebrew prophet of old in answer to the query, " Can these dry bones live ? " That a similar sentiment is quite common among those that have never made the acquaintance of the classics at all goes without saying. And in our day and generation, when the prevaiUng criterion for estimating the importance of a rule for the dative case is its potential earning power, expressed in terms of dimes, cents, and mills, it is not surprising if the impression that the classics are nought but dry bones is somewhat widespread in this land of the worship of the almighty-dollar Moloch. The danger is ever increasing that the typical Roman schoolboy whom Horace describes as spending his whole energy in learning to divide the monetary unit of his day into a hundred parts, will be duplicated in the typical American schoolboy of our times. Away from the classics has seemed to be the trend during the last few years, espe- cially in the older parts of the country. Colleges are ceasing to require Greek for any course, and some give beginning courses in Greek. Schools are accordingly ceasing to pre- pare in Greek, and are dropping it from their curriculum. The size of freshman Greek classes is visibly affected by this process. Whether Latin, too, may be relegated to the limbo of optional requirements, not merely for the arts degree, but also for admission to college in any course. DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT 5 and whether colleges may come to begin their Latin teaching with the Latiri alphabet, are conundrums calcu- lated to bring many a forefinger into titillative contact with its owner's scalp. Latin, to be sure, has enjoyed, and still enjoys, a more than feline vitality. Although teohnically more dead than Greek, which is still spoken, and always has been spoken at Athens, it is practically for the great world of modem civilization a more living force: through the Romance languages and through the large element of the English lan- guage which is really Latin without its terminations; as a necessary basis, up to the present time, of what is generally recognized as " liberal " education ; as the foundation of all the most important science and literature of Europe ; and as a living, written language, both technical and literary, among all the European nations during all the twenty centuries since Cicero. But though, during the earlier period of the develop- ment of American education, Latin occupied a relatively high place in popular esteem, it was never pursued here with the thoroughness of Old World methods, and our classical scholars have usually been treated with a patron- izing smile by European savants. Now, more than ever, with the present tendency to exalt the eye, ear, nose, arm, toe, above the reason, it is not surprising to learn that the Rhodes scholars from America have won the high jump, the broad jump, and the distance run, but have not at any time come perilously near winning anything in Greek or Latin. If classical men, classical teachers especially, are to be candid, — and who is more candid than a teacher ? — they 6 DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT will admit that sometimes there has been cause for the disfavor which Greek and Latin study have so often met in this active civilization of ours. Although not prepared to agree that training is as valuable as education, or that carpentry should count for the arts degree as much as Aristotle, we need not deny that some classical teaching has been dry, that some teachers have been lifeless, and that too often an intelligent effort to adapt methods to the conditions under which we live has been lacking. What then is to be our next move ? Are we to mount the fence with mouth agape and gaze at the passing pro- cession .? Or shall we climb up into close proximity to the horns and trombones ? And, rather than stop too long to debate the question whether it would comport well with our very ancient and honorable dignity, might it not be well even to lay violent hands upon a piccolo, or possibly a bass drum, and proceed to announce audibly that we are still here, right in line, — not back there, sitting on the fence and reviling the procession .' For classical devotees have no occasion to sell their birthright, and even teachers of the classics are as yet un- der no grim necessity of sitting down to die. Some of our contemporaries, indeed, — scientists, or modem-language men, or educational faddists of some type, — would have it understood that the classics are already dead and buried, so far as pedagogical value or interest is concerned. Mr. Flexner, in his recent discussion of the American college, sums up his results after the post-mortem ex- amination of the supposed corpse as follows : " The classical curriculum went to pieces because it had long since served its purpose. . . . Nothing tangible depends DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT 7 on Greek and Latin, they lead nowhere. . . . Sheer dis- cipline, whether of the classical or any other kind, cannot give us the type of educated man that modem society needs. I say it leads nowhere ; it does not connect individuals with concrete opportunities." Fortunately, however, the classics have a stronger hold than those who are running with the new procession are aware. Probably more boys and girls are studying Latin to-day in America than ever before. Even Greek has not been entirely thrown overboard ; and in the educational prognostications of the near future there may be expected, "along about this time," in the phrase of the good old almanacs, some reaction against the arrogance of those who would oust Greek entirely from modem concern. Some important readjustments in the amounts, proportion, methods of classical study in our college curricula have been made ; but the classics have not disappeared from college halls. The New England colleges have refused, as a rule, to remove them altogether from the list of re- quired subjects. At Princeton and Chicago they are on the high tide of enthusiastic interest and attention. Not only in such great institutions as Cornell and California have they made a conspicuous place for themselves during the years against great odds, but the great state universi- ties of the Middle West, like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, are devoting large sums of money and much care to making their classical departments stand on an even footing with the great technical schools by their side. In dealing with the questions of the value and the future of the classics in education we should strive to attain the aurea mediocritas of that practical man of the world, 8 DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT Horace, who at the same time represents the highest type of Uterary culture of the Augustan age. CarefuL definitions are needed, not vague or rash generalizations, condemna- tions, assumptions, or prophecies. On the one hand, clas- sical men have welcomed the broader outlook and more practical application of classical study to twentieth-century conditions. On the other, the immense practical value of classical study must be acknowledged by all sincere seekers for truth. The preposterous notion that the classics " lead nowhere" should be offset with a consideration of the generally acknowledged principle that what is most needed in the training for any business or professional life is the cultivation and acquirement of the power to think for one's self. The idea that there is any better field in which to exercise the mental faculties and gain this power of inde- pendent thought than in the study of the classics must be attacked without gloves. Is accuracy of observation desired ? It can be gained as well in distinguishing the minutiae of inflectional endings, genders, and quantities, as in mixing liquids in a glass dish. Is mental vigor in wrestling with a complex problem sought ? What can test it better than being presented before a Latin period of many clauses, moods, tenses, cases, each one of which must be coordinated, subordinated, in one correct way, in its proper relation to the whole, — must, so to speak, be ticketed and put into its own cubby-hole, and then taken out again and arranged in its correct position before sym- metry and sense will be complete ? Is it breadth of view that we should have ? The student of a Latin lesson, be- fore he has mastered it, is liable to be called upon to con- sider and investigate form, syntax, synonym, elegance of DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT 9 expression, in at least two languages, history, geography, mythology, antiquities, and general linguistics. Is it origi- nality that is the aim ? It does not take half the effort to strike out on a new line and make a new discovery in the comparatively modern sciences that it does in the realm of classical study and research, where the ground has been already carefully covered by the great scholars of many centuries. No ! If you would have a youth gain the power to grasp any difficult problem with a well-trained mind, let him study the classics faithfully and with a purpose. How can one trained merely to a particular trade compete with such a mind, whether the training has been acquired in an apprenticeship or in a " school " ? It is as yet quite too early to estimate accurately what the new learning without the classics, so earnestly preached upon many a housetop, will achieve for culture, business success, or scientific precision. For the present generation was almost entirely educated classically, and has used its power thus acquired to achieve the great material success that has been won, as well as to revile its teacher. The great modem structure of science has been built by classi- cally educated men upon the classical foundation. If we could get a generation trained only in modern languages, or sciences, by itself, we might be able to form some idea of what it could achieve, and what might be its leading char- acteristics and its superiority or inferiority. But as yet we have no data to show that the claims made for such an education would be realized. We are, however, beginning to notice, be it remarked in passing, something of what the practice versus the theory of giving a boy his own sweet will from the word " go " will effect in educational lO DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT institutions themselves. Look at the facts. Does the boy aim for culture or for dollars > Study the proportions in class statistics and note what part of the class goes into business and what part into a profession. Does he indus- triously pick out the subjects that best fit his particular "bent," or does a class follow fads like a flock of sheep, taking such courses as are popular on account of their ease, or the personal geniality of the instructor, or their novelty ? Does he now get into the honor lists at gradua- tion better than when forced to study more of the classics, or do the honor lists decrease .? Does he wisely give sport the proper place in his curriculum, or does that monopo- lize the best part of his strength and interest, leaving comparatively little vigorous enthusiasm for the main con- cerns of education .' Does he now become well informed on the great problems of life, or is it more apt to be upon the contents of that peculiar American abomination, the thick Sunday newspaper ? Too near the truth, alas ! is Mr. Flexner, when he says, " The college has come down from the mountain ; it dwells among men." For in places, and at times, it seems as if it had ceased to be a city set on a hill, to draw men up to its light, and had rather been pulled down to the level of the mob, on the joyless plains below. Teachers of the classics know — they do not simply opine, they know — that a classical education is invaluable for mental training and for an appreciation of history, literature, and all that makes an intelligent and cultured life for a good citizen. They know that there is no sub- stitute for Greek and Latin in combining all the disciplin- ary, civilizing, and humanizing elements that appertain DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT li to Study. One cannot rub up against Greek sculpture in French, nor against Roman law and the development of political institutions in German, nor against ancient phi- losophy in Spanish. And if he studies English and English literature indefinitely, he is still handicapped without a classical basis beneath him, when he tries to understand its countless relations and direct references to the literature, mythology, biography, political development, and social customs of those two races upon whose civilization has been reared the structure of the world of the twentieth century. Nor can he hurry through a few translations of standard classical writers and accomphsh the same result as that achieved through a regular classical education, any more than he can take a Pullman car across the continent and back, and then write intelligently of the land, its people and their customs, their morals and their civili- zation. He must rather take time and care to get down into the life of the people, to associate with them in their everyday affairs, and to absorb their spirit. There are indeed other tiny pebbles upon the educational strand; but Greek and Latin are bowlders in comparison with their would-be petrean associates at the edge of the ocean of knowledge ! Naturally enough, nobody appreciates these facts quite as well as the classical teachers themselves. There is, to be sure, a gratifying comity in evidence in the educational world ; but every cause must furnish its own champions. It is Yale that shouts for Eli, and Princeton for old Nassau. Who is to " holler " for the classics except clas- sical men ? Yet, while it may not be denied that they are probably sufficiently self-satisfied, they don't exactly do it. 12 DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT They hate to hustle for business among the throng. It is easier and more dignified to sigh gently and deprecate the signs of the times. But if there is to be any new life in- fused into these dry bones, classical men are the wizards to do the trick. How, then, is it to be done .' 1. By improved pedagogical methods. Many signs of progress can here already be discerned. Textbooks to-day are greatly superior to those of a generation ago, in plan, illustrative material, linguistic accuracy, attractiveness. Ar- chaeology is becoming more and more the handmaid of language in relation to Greece and Rome. The lantern has become an instrument of great power to vivify the people and places and things with which classical texts deal, and its use can be infinitely extended. The curriculum is being wisely extended to include many courses in ancient politics, law, private life, religion, art, and other subjects appealing to present-day thinkers. An hour in the Latin or Greek classroom does not mean a grammatical quiz so much as it used to, — sometimes, possibly, not so much as it should, for extremes in tendencies are ever the failing of frail human nature. More emphasis is being placed on the ability to read the language and master it for general purposes of pleasure and profit. These tendencies will be wisely followed out in the teaching of the future. 2. Many a comparison can be instituted between ancient and modem life, to make more vivid the ancient history and to teach the lesson of the meaning of modem trends. Most instructive is the comparison of movements in Roman days — political, social, or religious — with similar movements in our own days. Put Sicily and Hawaii side by side, if you would keep a class on the qui vive. Consider the divorce DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT 13 problem in the days of the Roman Empire and in the open- ing years of the twentieth century. Inquire into the con- ditions of demoralizing luxury then and now. Parallel the Roman and the American senates. You will see nobody going to sleep under this process, and the extent to which such comparisons are possible is hardly yet realized. 3. A much wider human interest can be given to the study of Greek and Latin by wisely broadening the scope of the literature handled. There is an immense amount of untasted delicacies in the literatures, ancient and medi- eval, written in the classic languages, to whet the appetite and delight the literary palate of the learner. The world of scholars is beginning to awake to the possibilities of the wider field of reading. But more of this in another chapter. 4. That there should be an important change in the attitude of classical teachers is essential. There are, indeed, already evidences that it is beginning to be realized that no merely defensive campaign, like the traditional one of the generations past, will suffice. No contented air of su- periority, or references to the "splendid discipline " gained from the classics, will alone win the day. The time has surely come to carry the ball into the enemy's territory, and, even if " downed " once, twice, or thrice, to make the re- quired distance and keep control of the play. An aggres- sive campaign always and everywhere in behalf of classical study should be the order of the day. What an inspiring wealth of material the classics afford with which to build a castle of fairy beauty before the eye of imagination in a young, ambitious pupil with the long, long thoughts of youth before him and the choice of a career to come ! How easy it is to emphasize the general 14 DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT agreement between teachers of science, modem languages, and even technical branches, that the classics make the best basis for the most successful study of their special subjects! How foolish not to urge at all times the enormous positive disciplinary value of the classics in acquiring a mastery of English, whether for public speech, literary work, or every- day culture ! For example, the very elaborateness of structure of the Latin language, so unlike English, ren- ders it peculiarly adapted to concentrate the attention upon the details of form, structure, and expression in Eng- lish, and is thus much better suited to develop a mastery of English and a practical English style than is any modem language, or the study of English alone. This principle of teaching by parallels, and especially by contrast, has not been suflflciently emphasized in peda- gogical thought. Boys and girls learn their own lan- guage naturally, by mere rote, without any analysis, and frequently without any understanding of the grammatical forms and structure which they glibly utter in everyday life. And grammatical analysis is irksome when it begins to be required, for it seems unnecessary to the young minds that feel already able to use the language as well as those about them use it. They think of grammar as an abstract science. But by comparing such a language as Latin the interest in the most correct, emphatic, and ele- gant forms of expression is awakened and developed. Most of the great thinkers, writers, and speakers of Eng- lish have been through this experience, and the wonder is that many are so blind to it, sometimes even after having experienced it in their own lives. There was Macaulay, with his remarkable memory and mind, so well read and DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT 15 trained in the Greek and Latin classics, and so enthusi- astic over them that he used to review them constantly throughout his life. Yet even he seems at times to have lost sight of their inevitable power. In the biography of that magnificent orator, William Pitt, he writes : To modem literature Pitt paid comparatively little attention. He knew no living language except French ; and French he knew very imperfectly. With a few of the best English writers he was intimate, particularly with Shakespeare and Milton. . . . His education, indeed, was well adapted to form a great parliamentary speaker. One argu- ment often urged against those classical studies which occupy so large a part of the early life of every gentleman bred in the south of our island is, that they prevent him from acquiring a command of his mother tongue, and that it is not unusual to meet with a youth of excellent parts who writes Ciceronian Latin prose and Horatian Latin Alcaics, but who would find it impossible to express his thoughts in pure, perspicuous, and forcible English. There may, perhaps, be some truth in this observation. But the classical studies of Pitt were carried on in a peculiar manner, and had the effect of enriching his English vocabulary, and of making him wonderfully expert in the art of constructing correct English sentences. His practice was to look over a page or two of a Greek or Latin author, to make himself master of the meaning, and then to read the passage straight forward into his own language. This practice, begun under his first teacher, Wilson, was continued under Pretyman. It is not strange that a young man of great abilities, who had been exercised daily in this way during ten years, should have acquired almost unrivaled power of putting his thoughts, without premeditation, into words well selected and well arranged. Macaulay need not have made even that modest con- cession to the attack of the enemies of the classics. He should have known that William Pitt's education in the classics was merely an exaggeration of what he himself and practically all well-educated Englishmen had enjoyed; and that he could scarcely call over the names of the poli- ticians, churchmen, and men of letters who have made l6 DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT England great, without at the same time showing the practical results of a thorough classical education. Even more important, interesting, and effective is the argument based upon the inestimable value, the indispen- sable nature, of a classical education for an appreciation of the world's best thought as embodied in the best literature. For surely it is only by communing with the best thought of the world's best thinkers that we can hope to get the best out of life. Honorable and valuable as is the ability to create a perfecdy fitting horseshoe or a finely balanced snow shovel, can the pleasure derived from it be compared for a moment to that of sharing the most beautiful and the most noble thoughts of the greatest thinkers among man- kind > The young man looking forward to the happy life of an educated man, expecting to enjoy in his own home some of the fruits of his education, not merely to make money out of it, should be led to realize how common it is for business men, to say nothing of those in the pro- fessions, to regret that they cannot enjoy the best literature even in their own tongue. It is idle to argue that the best in Greek and Latin literature is accessible in English translations. Really to reproduce a work of literature in another language is im- possible ; for all that is most essential, delicate, and intan- gible in expression, form, and spirit vanishes as soon as another version is attempted by another mind. Put your- self in the place of the foreigner. Take your " Hamlet," your Mr. Dooley, your " Hiawatha," in a German or Rus- sian translation. Would you be satisfied ? The thing is absurd. Here, for example, is an edition of Shakespeare's " Winter's Tale " in parallel German and English. The DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT 17 translation is well done, as such things go. Opening at random, the first line that strikes your eye at the top of the page may be, My wife is slippery ? for which the parallel German reads, on the opposite page, Mein Weib sei ungetreu ? with all the force of the original figure gone. A little lower down comes the phrase, horsing foot on foot ; and the German — on foot, certainly, rather than on horse- back ! — reads setzen Fuss auf Fuss ! Turning the page, we continue, ay, and thou, His cupbearer, — whom I from meaner form Have bench'd and reared to worship, who mayst see Plainly as heaven sees earth and earth sees heaven. How I am galled, — mightst bespice a cup, To give mine enemy a lasting wink ; Which draught to me were cordial. Under this the German staggers thus : ja wohl, und du, Sein Mundschenk, — den aus nieder'm Stand ich hob Zu Rang und Wiirden, der so klar es sieht, Wie Himmel Erde sieht und Erde Himmel, Wie ich gekrankt bin, — kannst der Becher wiirzen, Der meinem Feind ein ew'ger Schlaftrunk wiirde, Mir starkend Heilungsmittel. Or let us try to get the idea, the other way around, for example, of this stanza sung by Autolycus thus in the German version : 1 8 DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT Wenn Kesselflicker im Lande leben, Und wandem mit Russ geschwarzt ; So darf ich doch auch noch Antwort geben, Und im Stock selbst wird wohl gescherzt Do we not get new light when we read the original ? If tinkers may have leave to live, And bear the sowskin budget, Then my account I well may give. And in the stocks avouch it? Not all English translations of Latin originals are as atrocious as this interesting example of how Mulcaster, the English schoolmaster of the Elizabethan Age, tried to English his own Latin poem on the death of his queen : As good Elizabeth raignes most happie now in heaven. So happy may King James raigne long with us on earth ; And as she did avoid the Jesuites' treacherous traines, Whereby she got her grave in dire and quiet death. So good King James goe late to God, and slip their snares ; For if thou stick'st to God, they'l not sticke to sticke thee ! Yet how few can represent to any satisfactory degree the melody, the imagination, the delicate turns of thought of the original ! Which of the great masters of English poesy who have tried their hand at it has been able to do justice to Horace's stanzas ? Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa perfusus liquidis urget odoribus grato, Pyrrha, sub antro ? Cui flavam religas comam, simplex munditiis ? Heu quotiens fidem mutatosque deos flebit et aspera nigris aequora vends emirabitur insolens. DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT 19 Even Milton, the incomparable word painter, fails to meas- ure up to the charm of the original. What is a translation to do with that colossal onomatopoeia of the music of the spheres in Lucretius ? Ergo vivida vis animi pervicit, et extra processit longe flammantia moenia mundi atque omnia immensum peragravit mente animoque. Goldwin Smith renders it thus : Past the world's flaming walls his venturous mind Through the unmeasured universe pressed on ; Mallock, thus : His spirit broke beyond our world and past Its flaming walls, and fathomed all the vast. In either case the majesty is gone. If you try Catullus when he sings : Te suis tremulus parens invocat, tibi virgines zonula soluont sinus, te timens cupida novus captat aure maritus, you will see how baffling is his music. Certain failure awaits the attempt to reproduce Ovid's merry echo : Forte puer, comitum seductus ab agmine fido, dixerat " ecquis adest.' ", et "adest! " responderat Echo. hie stupet, atque aciem partes dimittit in omnes, voce " veni ! " magna clamat : vocat ilia vocantem. In any translation what becomes of the bubbling fun of Plautus .'' Thensaurochrysonicochrysides vanishes into ba- thos ; and our old friend Sagaristio, the " Vaniloquidorus, 20 DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT Virginisvendonides, Nugipalamloquides, Argentumextere- bronides, Tedigniloquides, Nummosexpalponides, Quodse- melarripides, Numquampostreddonides," is transformed into a stupidly prosaic thief no more like the original than "pious ^neas " is like '" pius Aeneas " ! A great work of art is revealed in a carefully rounded Ciceronian period. Listen while he appeals to the judges to confirm for Archias the citizenship he had so long rightfully possessed : Quae cum ita sint, petdmus a vobis, iudices, si qua non modo humana, verum etiam divina in tantis ingeniis commendatio debet esse, ut eum qui vos, qui vestros imperatores, qui populi Roman! res gestas semper omavit, qui etiam his recentibus nostris vestrisque domesticis periculis aetemum se testimonium laudis daturum esse profitetur, estque ex eo numero qui semper apud omnis sancti sunt habiti itaque dicti, sic in vestram accipiatis fidem, ut humanitate vestra levatus potius quam acerbitate violatus esse videatur. But while this commands our admiration in its original form, anything like a faithful reproduction of that form in English is a tedious performance, and something to be carefully avoided in the shaping of an English style. Even if it were possible — as it surely is not — to secure a reproduction of such a passage in one's own ver- nacular, there must still be inevitable failure to gain an intimacy with the thought, the life, the people, the influ- ence, of Greece and Rome, which requires time and close association. But this very intimacy is also essential if a gentleman of culture is to be able to sit down in his library after dinner and enjoy the best English literature. He takes down his Chaucer, for instance, and begins the Prologue, reading in the fifth line, Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth, DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT 21 and finds himself immediately transported back into the atmosphere of Vergil. He reads on here and there : On which ther was first write a crowned A, And after Amor vincit omnia; Wd knew he the olde Esculapius And Deyscorides, and eek Risus; Thanne hadde he spent al his philosophie, Ay, " Questio quid iuris," wolde he crie ; And also war him of a Significavit. As he continues, the Knight's Tale comes first in order after the Prologue, and he finds himself at once occupied with the tales of classic literature, with Theseus, Athens, Hippolyte, Venus, Cithaeron, Narcissus, Medea, Hercules, Turnus, Circe, Cupid, Mars, in the midst of which, with- out the classic education, he is like a cat in a strange garret. It is needless to weary the reader's patience with further Chaucerian examples, which abound on every page. Chaucer is simply saturated with the classic spirit. A reader without any familiarity with the mythology and accompanying imagery of the classic writings could, to be sure, painfully search out the recondite meanings in classical dictionaries and other repositories of such lore. But it would be a tedious thing to read Spenser in that way, and much of the picture that he paints would be but a hazy outline, as compared with the scene that rises before the classically educated man as he reads : He bade awake blacke Plutoe's griesly dame ; Great Gorgon, Prince of darknesse and dead night, At which Cocytus quakes, and Styx is put to flight ; 22 DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT there Tethys his wet bed Doth ever wash, and Cynthia still doth steepe In silver deaw his ever-drouping had ; Phoebus fiery carre In hast was climbing up the easteme hill ; Now when the rosy-fingred morning faire, Weary of aged Tithones saffron bed, Had spread her purple robe through deaway aire, And the high hills Titan discovered, The royall virgin shooke off drowsy-hed ; As many forms and shapes in seeming wise As ever Proteus to himself could make ; Of griesly Pluto she the daughter was, And Proserpina, the Queene of hell ; And thundring Jove, that high in heaven doth dwell And wield the world, she claymed for her syre ; And brought the heavy corse with easy pace To yawning gulfe of deepe Avernus hole ; They pas the bitter waves of Acheron Where many soules sit wailing woefully ; And come to fiery flood of Phlegetonj Before the threshold dreadfull Cerberus His three deformed heads did lay along ; There was Jxion turned on a wheele. For daring tempt the Queene of heaven to sin ; And Sisyphus an huge round stone did reele Against an hill, ne might from labor lin ; Where thirsty Tantalus hong by the chin ; And Tityus fed a vulture on his maw ; Typhceus jojmts were stretched on a gin ; Theseus condemnd to endless slouth by law ; AaA fifty sisters water in leake vessels draw ; DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT 23 And in another corner wide were strowne The antique ruins of the Romanes fall : Great Romulus, the grandsyre of them all, Proud Tarquin, and too lordly Lentulus, Stout Scipio, and stubborne Hanniball, Ambitious Sylla, and steme Marius, High Ccesar, great Pompey, and fierce Antoniusj Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring. So towards old Sylvanus they her bring ; Far off he wonders, what them makes so glad. Or Bacchus merry fruit they did invent, Or Cybeles franticke rites have made them mad ; Sometimes dame Venus selfe he seems to see; But Venus never had so sober mood : Sometimes Diana he her takes to be ; But misseth bow, and shaftes, and buskins to her knee ; The wooddy nymphes, faire Hamadryades j And all the troupe of light-foot Naides ; Such one it was, as that renowmed snake Which great Alcides in Stremona slew, Long fostered in the filth of Lema lake ; Whose many heads out budding ever new Did breed him endless labour to subdew ; For harder was from Cerberus greedy jaw To plucke a bone, etc., etc. Such passages, picked up here and there from the first book merely, show how dull reading Spenser would be without the knowledge of the classics. Take down your Shakespeare and begin to read Macbeth's soliloquy before his awful deed : Now o'er the one half-world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse 24 DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT The curtain'd sleep ; witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate's offerings ; and wither'd murder, Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf. Whose howl 's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace. With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost. But what are "pale Hecate's offerings," and what is meant by the expression " Tarquin's ravishing strides " ? How inane a mass of words such a passage becomes when the key to it is lost in antiquity ! Pick up Bacon's essays and read the immortal discourse on " Frendship," and realize how meaningless such writ- ing is to a reader without the classical education : " For when Caesar would have discharged the Senate, in regard of some ill Presages, and specially a Dreame of Calpumia ; This Man lifted him gently by the Arme, out of his Chaire, telling him, he hoped he would not dismisse the Senate, till his wife had dreamt a better Dreame. And it seemeth, his favour was so great, as Antonius in a letter, which is re- cited Verbatim, in one of Cicero's Philippiques, calleth him Venefica, Witch; As if he had enchanted Ccesar. Augustus raised Agrippa (though of meane Birth) to that Heighth, as when he consulted with Mcecenas, about the Marriage of his daughter lulia, Mcecenas tooke the Liberty to tell him ; That he must either marry his daughter to Agrippa, or take away his life, there was no third way, he had made him so great. With Tiberius Ccesar, Seianus had ascended to that Height, as they Two were tearmed and reckoned, as a Paire of friends. Tiberius in a Letter to him saith ; Haec pro am,icitia nostra non occultavi : And the whole Senate, dedicated an Altar to Frendship, as to a Goddesse, DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT 2$ in respect of the great Dearenesse of Frendship, between them Two. The like or more was between Septimius Se- verus and Plautianus" — and so on, and so on. True, you may have read something of Cassar and Augustus and the rest of them in history ; but how stupid is a passage like this without the ability to transport yourself in thought, with a full understanding of the surroundings, back into the very midst of the scenes there conjured up by Bacon ! Try Milton. Begin the " L'AUegro " : Hence, loathed Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born In Stygian cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy ! Find out some uncouth cell. Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings. And the night-raven sings ; There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks. As ragged as thy locks. In dark Citnmerian desert ever dwell. But come, thou goddess fair and free. In heaven yclept Euphrosyne, And by men heart-easing Mirth ; Whom lovely Venus, at a birth. With two sister Graces more. To ivy. Who are these people with hard names to pronounce ? And did Bacchus wear ivy for any special purpose .' Alas ! we are in the classical maze again, and need the thread of classic lore to lead us out into the open. Does the professor of English litera- ture look with complacency upon the possibility of being 26 DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT obliged to introduce students to such poems without premising a classical education ? Turn the pages and read in " Comus " : I have oft heard My mother Circe with the Sirens three Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naides Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs, Who, as they sung, would take the prisoned soul And lap it in Elysium : Scylla wept, And chid the barking waves into attention. And fell Charybdis murmured soft applause. It is the same story. Here comes the " Lycidas," and once more you read : Return Alphetis, the dread voice is past, That shrunk thy streams ; return Sicilian muse. If you try " Paradise Lost," you are soon floundering about amid such phrases as, " Ceres ripe for harvest " ; ^^ Auroras fan " ; " voice mild as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes " ; " pilot, from amidst the Cyclades Delos or Santos first appearing, kens a cloudy spot " ; "in Pontus, or the Punic coast, or where Alcinous reign 'd " ; " like Pomona's arbour"; "the first goddess feigned of three that in Mount Ida naked strove T And how far short we come of thorough insight into the thought of Milton, if we have no knowledge of Latin, when we roll under our tongues such words and phrases as '"alimental recom- pense," " humid exhalations," " mellifluous," " concoctive heat to transubstantiate," " love unlibidinous reigned," "corporal nutriments," "celestial tabernacles"! Not merely in the older English literature, but in all the master works of later periods as well, as the reader DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT 27 roves at will he still finds himself everywhere lost without the classics to interpret or to paint the scenes for him. Now you are with Keats in his " Ode to a Nightingale," where he sings : light-winged Dryad of the trees ; Tasting of Flora and the country green ; Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrenej Lethe-wards had sunk. The famous odes, " On a Grecian Urn," " Fancy," and " To Psyche," are in subject classic and abound in classic phrase, as, for example : Dulcet-ey'd as Ceres' daughter, Ere the God of Torment taught her How to frown and how to chide ; With a waist and with a side White as Hebe's, when her zone Slipt its golden clasp, and down Fell her kirtle to her feet, While she held the goblet sweet, AnA Jove grew languid. Indeed, to look through the works of Keats is, from start to finish, to encounter the classics at every turn of the page. You are among Syrinx, Arcadian Pan, young Narcissus, Echo's bale, Latmus's top, Dian's temple, sparkling Heli- con, Baiae's shore, the wrong'd Libertas, Clio's beauty, with the rest of the classic beings trooping merrily around you. It is hardly worth while to multiply instances of the classical allusions of Keats. His most ambitious poems, " Endymion," " Hyperion," and " Lamia," are all built 28 DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT on a Greek foundation and finished with Greek adorn- ments in a Greek atmosphere. His friends and enemies alike recognized his devotion to the spirit of ancient Greece. " He was a Greek," exclaimed Shelley. He was accused of versifying the classical dictionary of Lempri^re ; and his recent editor, Selincourt, attributes much of his inspiration for his early work to the Elgin marbles, and an important part of his stock in trade to the " Metamor- phoses " of Ovid. To read Shelley is one long revel in classical mythology and learning. As the blue waters themselves, in the " Ode to the West Wind," Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, saw in sleep old palaces and towers, so the reader, with eyes closed, seems to wander among the men of ancient days. The poems are introduced by quotations from Lucretius, Moschus, Plato ; for Shelley was ever reading the classics and absorbing their beauties. In the year 1816, for example, his classical reading in- cluded Theocritus, .iEschylus, Plutarch, Lucian, Lucretius, Pliny, and Tacitus. His notes quote passages from more unfamiliar writers here and there. The " Prometheus Un- bound " was written in the Baths of Caracalla at Rome, and pictures the gods in the regions of classic mythology. And such titles as "The Witch of Atlas," " CEdipus Tyran- nus," " Epipsychidion," "Adonais," "Hellas," "Otho," betray the enthusiasm of the author for the classic world. Vergil's sixth book is quite indispensable for a good un- derstanding of such poems as the " Epipsychidion " and the " Adonais." Read first the fourth eclogue of Vergil, DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT 29 and then can you with delight peruse the " Hellas " as Shelley's imagination speaks : The world's great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn : Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. A brighter Hellas rears its mountains From waves serener far ; A new Peneus rolls its fountains Against the morning star ; Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep. A loftier Argo cleaves the main. Fraught with a later prize ; Another Orpheus sings again. And loves, and weeps, and dies. A new Ulysses leaves once more Calypso for his native shore. Oh write no more the tale of Troy, If earth Death's scroll must be — Nor mix with Laian rage the joy Which dawns upon the free. Although a subtler Sphinx renew Riddles of death Thebes never knew. Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies. The splendor of its prime : And leave, if nought so bright may live, All earth can take or heaven can give. Saturn and Love their long repose Shall burst, etc. 30 DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT If you are to understand what the poet means, how necessary, too, the Latin background for such expressions as these : Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers Lightning my pilot sits ; The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes ; I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone, And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl. If unconvinced, try the stanzas of the " Ode to Liberty," and run over such titles as "Arethusa," "Song of Proserpine," " Hymn of Apollo," " Hymn of Pan," and " Orpheus." Without Latin, Addison is impossible. To say nothing of his elegant Latin poems, his "Dialogues on Medals" are to a large extent made up of passages quoted from the Latin classics. His chief drama is the " Cato." His travels are steeped in the classics. His minor poems are largely trans- lations from Vergil and Ovid, and his celebrated essays in the various series in the Whig-Examiner, the Tatler, and the others are constantly prefaced by Latin passages for texts, and interlarded with countless classical quota- tions and references. Without a first-hand knowledge of Latin and Greek the reader will frequently find an impassable barrier erected to his appreciation of the " Biographia Literaria " of Cole- ridge, as is indicated indeed by the very title. And even the " Ancient Mariner " is preceded by a Latin passage of some lines, giving the key to the thought. It would be a work of supererogation to recount in de- tail the points of contact between Pope's poetry and his classical models. A mere glance at the table of contents DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT 31 in a volume of his complete poems suffices to show how- all his verse was based on classic originals or pervaded with the classic spirit. The pastorals imitated from Theoc- ritus and Vergil, the imitations of Horace, the transla- tion of the "Iliad," the various translations and imitations from Ovid, Statius, Hadrian, Martial, and others are, to be sure, most unlike their originals. But even where there is no excuse of original form Pope finds it hard to break away from the classic models. So in the comparatively short "Ode on Saint Cecilia's Day'' we must needs hear of Amphion, "the Nine," Morpheus, Argo, Pelion, Phlege- thon, Sisyphus, Ixion, Furies, Elysian flowers, Eurydice, Proserpine, Styx, Hebrus, Mseander, Rhodope's snows, Hsemus, the Bacchanal's cries, and Orpheus. Probably Gray's name first suggests to the average reader the " Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." But if you examine his published works, it will be found that in the first volume is the "Agrippina," a dramatic frag- ment, with some translations from Statius and Proper- tius, and forty pages of Latin poetry in various styles and meters. Volume second contains not merely a Latin letter written to Richard West in the Ciceronian style, but also a wealth of passages utterly unintelligible to the modem Philistine without a knowledge of the classics. The letters of volume third are also full of classical allusions, while the fourth volume is entirely composed of notes to Aris- tophanes and Plato. Even Wordsworth, apostrophizing a daisy, must needs compare it to A little Cyclops with one eye Staring to threaten and defy. 32 DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT Do you say that at least the modem poets have broken away from the classics, and that we, in a new world, can afford to neglect the old ? Read Tennyson's " Lucretius " ; hear Matthew Arnold comparing the wash of the sea on Dover beach to the sound which Sophocles long ago heard on the ^gean ; scan Longfellow's titles and note " Chry- saor," "Prometheus," "Excelsior," "Enceladus," "Mori- turi Salutamus," and the rest of them ; and give his "Masque of Pandora" the study it deserves. Even in our own Gilder, though we expect less classi- cal allusion and more of the human life of to-day in plain English appealing to every human heart, we note such titles as " Mors Triumphalis," " Sanctum Sanctorum," " Pro Patria," " Credo," " Non Sine Dolore," and read such stanzas as this : Shall greet, ah, who can say ! a nobler face Than from the foam of Cytherean seas : Loveliness lovelier ; mightier harmonies Of song and color ; an intenser grace ; Beauty that shall endure Like Charts, heavenly-pure ; A Spirit solemn as the starry night. And full as the triumphant dawn of golden light. Add Gilder's own testimony to the undying power of the classics : Greece lives, but Greece no more ! Its ashes breed The undying seed Blown westward till, in Rome's imperial towers, Athens reflowers ; Still westward — lo, a wild and virgin shore ! But perhaps you say that poetry is only for the few, but prose for the many. True, though our gentleman of DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT 33 culture should certainly be of the few. Try Macaulay, how- ever, to see what part the classics play with him. That he should write his familiar and popular classical poems, " Ho- ratius at the Bridge," "The Battle of Lake Regillus," " Virginia," " The Prophecy of Capys," and the others, might be expected from one who constantly read and re- read his Greek and Latin authors from year to year. But consider how vastly more intelligible is his English prose to one with a classical training. Take as an example the biography of Samuel Johnson, and judge of the increase in enjoyment and appreciation of it as one passes these words and expressions with a consciousness of their derived meaning : " exposed to sale " ; " oracle " ; ^''religious and political sympathy" ; "he had qualified himself for munic- ipal office " ; ^^ physical, intellectual, and moral peculi- arities which afterwards distinguished the man were plainly discernible" ; '^'^ morbid propensity to sloth and procrastination." These and various other expressions of similar character occur in the first few sentences, within a single half page. As you glance along perhaps you would not hesitate over "impedimenta," "eccentric," "aristocrat- ical," "effigy," "undisputed ascendency," "aggravated," "incurable hypochondriac," "conceive an unintelligible aversion," "munificently," "sinecure," "subterranean," "sycophancy," "impost," "obloquy," "septennial," "anon- ymous," "vicissitude," "specimen," "inhospitable," "tran- scription," "morose cynic," "monotonous," "obviously artificial," "turgid," "superfluities," "concentrated," "pro- spectus," "malevolent," "lexicographer," "conversant," anefihe like, if possessed of a fair acquaintance with your native tongue. Yet how much more these expressions 34 DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT would impress the man who knows their origin and can thus detect the deeper significance of the often blind form. But supposing the diction to be quite intelligible for all, what comfort will the man without a classical education have as he reads from page to page in this essay and meets successively passages like these ? — " On the first day of his residence he surprised his teachers by quoting Macrobius " ; " The Blues of the Roman Circus against the Greens " ; " It is probable that what he had suffered during his first year in London had often reminded him of some parts of that noble poem in which Juvenal had described the misery and degradation of a needy man of letters, lodged among the pigeons' nests in the tottering garrets which overhung the streets of Rome"; " In 1749 he published the Vanity of Human Wishes, an excellent imitation of the tenth satire of Juvenal. It is, in truth, not easy to say whether the palm belongs to the ancient or the modern poet. The couplets in which the fall of Wolsey is described, though lofty and sonorous, are feeble when compared with the wonderful lines which bring before us all Rome in tumult on the day of the fall of Sejanus, the laurels on the door-posts, the white bull stalk- ing toward the Capitol, the statues rolling down from their pedestals, the flatterers of the disgraced minister running to see him dragged with a hook through the streets, and to have a kick at his carcass before it is hurled into the Tiber. . . . On the other hand, Juvenal's Hanni- bal must yield to Johnson's Charles ; and Johnson's vigor- ous and pathetic enumeration of the miseries of a literary life must be allowed to be superior to Juvenal's lamentation over the fate of Demosthenes and Cicero " ; " It would be DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT 35 the height of absurdity in a man who was not familiar with the works of ^schylus and Euripides to publish an edition of Sophocles " ; " One Scotchman, bent on vindicating the fame of Scotch learning, defied him to the combat in a detestable Latin hexameter : Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum." To the reader without a classical education these remarks or bits of literary criticism are as full of delight as the inter- esting and oft-quoted asseveration that " all Abracadabra is some X, Y, Z " ! Not to urge the frequency of Latin and Greek quotations in Macaulay's essays, and the ever recur- ring references to classic writers, writings, and themes, how is the reader to make any satisfactory headway with such es- says as that on history, or on Addison, or on Lord Bacon, unless he has the background of a classical education ? The situation is similar if you sit down to Carlyle's essay on " Goethe's Helena," or to Montaigne on " The Educa- tion of Children," or to Sidney's " Defence of Poesy," or to Milton's "Areopagitica," or to Cowley's " Government of Oliver Cromwell," or to Goldsmith's " Of Rewarding Genius in England," or to Disraeli's "The Philosophy of Proverbs," or to Charles Lamb's " Complaint of the Decay of Beggars and the Convalescent." Even in our own Whittier, Lowell, and Whipple the classic power has made itself felt. And if the reader is genuinely to appreciate Mr. Hamilton Mabie's " Essays on Books and Culture," he should first know something of his Greek and Latin. We must not tarry now to show how intimately classic literature and classic life are interwoven with all our other human interests. But the classical teacher must do it for 36 DRY BONES AND LIVING SPIRIT the inquiring student, be he boy or man, who wants to know, "What good are the classics anyhow?" He must trace architecture back to the Parthenon, sculpture back to Phidias, law back to the Twelve Tables, political liberty back to the simple days of the early Roman republic, philosophy back to Plato, religious institutions back to pagan rites beside the Tiber. Yes, he must trace them, and never lose the opportunity to satisfy that craving en- thusiasm for the reasons for things that bubbles out of every youthful heart. He must never put his questioner off with some vague reference to the " magnificent discipline " he is getting from classical study. Dry indeed are bones rattled emptily without any pur- pose save to tickle the ear of the groundlings, but in their place these same bones may ever be the source of vigorous life. The vital spirit is in them, and the touch of the master hand shall bring it to fruition. Are there not signs of a new renaissance of classical learning ap- pearing out of the darkness of our greed-ridden age .' Shall we not hope to emerge from the clouds of monster trusts, and the collapse of gigantic bubbles, and the mad chase for bonanza mines, and the drowning gasps uttered from rivers of watered stock, and rub our eyes to behold that, after all, "to get" is not synonymous with "to live".' Happy day! Not, let us hope, a vain imagining! Let us give the living spirit of classical study free course in these days of storm and stress, and when our great, lusty, young country shall have got its physical growth and have passed through the veal age, we may hope for that intellectual maturity which knows and enjoys and cultivates all, in times new or old, that makes the real life of the soul worth living. A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE CLASSICS " A fair chance ! " ejaculates the professor of chemistry. " A fair chance ! " chime in the professors of physics and biology. " Why, have n't the classics been the center and circumference of your so-called liberal education during the centuries ? Have n't the classics formed a considerable por- tion of the work required for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in most of our colleges and universities .' Has n't a large part of the time occupied by a boy or girl in prepa- ration for college commonly been devoted to the classics ? Have n't the classics become a veritable fetish in education, with a factitious importance out of all proportion to their practical value in this busy world at the beginning of the twentieth century? Do the classics wish to possess the whole surface, and the orbit too, of this mundane sphere ? A fair chance ! " And a contemptuous curl of the lip expresses even more than the words that have preceded it, as our scientific friends turn away in evident disgust. Not so fast, my supercilious friends ! Granted that the classics have absorbed a good share of the attention and study of the learned world during many generations, are we, after all, giving them fair treatment at this very moment ? Every true scholar rejoices at the progress and exalted position of science in America, as well in the cur- ricula of the higher institutions of learning as in almost every other department of our widely and rapidly expand- ing national life. He would surely be but the exponent of 37 38 A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE CLASSICS a most contemptible selfishness, who should look with envy upon the munificent endowments and the rare facilities possessed by our best scientific and technical schools. Is it certain that the same generous spirit is everywhere mani- fested toward classical culture and its representative toilers ? Do scientific men among us warm with enthusiasm over the steady improvements in methods of classical study, and over its recent achievements ? Or do they look upon Latin and Greek as useless remnants of a waning educational system, the mere exercise ground for idle mental gymnas- tics, and hope to see them soon give way to something more closely connected with the knowledge and subjuga- tion of the physical world, to which so large a part of the attention of the age is already devoted ? Do men of wealth most readily lavish their millions upon classical equipments, or upon the training schools for developing scientific methods of acquiring other millions ? The genuine Amer- ican is justly proud of the world-famous achievements of higher scientific education in his native land. How is it with those of classical education .? Is there not constantly manifesting itself in periodical literature and in life an undercurrent of impatience at the steady persistence of classical studies, and a desire to escape from the whole stupid business .' "There must assuredly be," writes a friendly reviewer in The Nation, "among teachers of the classics in Amer- ica, a growing conviction that some special effort must be made if Greek and Latin are to retain the place worthy of them in the college course." Why } What is the matter with the classics and with classical teaching.? Certainly nobody is more anxious than the classical instructor to learn A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE CLASSICS 39 his failings and to broaden his effectiveness. Let us listen intently to some of the prevailing criticisms of classical study and instruction. I. " There is no reason why the approaches to classical study should be made forbidding." " Make them attrac- tive in the first stages." By all means ! That seems to be a leading thought among classical men themselves in these days, judging from the recent textbooks ; from the sums expended upon pictures, maps, and lantern slides ; from the interest taken in ancient art, history, myth, and antiq- uities. But, after all, how are the classics peculiar in this respect.? Are the "approaches" to other lines of study so very attractive ? Do we drink in inspiration from the multiplication table ? Are the formulas of chemical reactions " interesting " ? Is the child absorbed with enthu- siasm over English grammatical analysis, or the spelling book, or the gender of German nouns .' We can, no doubt, learn much of our history nowadays from novels, and our English from " Robinson Crusoe " ; we can become French scholars through French storybooks, and talk Ger- man through "Studien und Plaudereien "; and in the labo- ratory, while waiting for the liquids to boil and disclose something interesting, we may tell a joke to while away the tedium, and smoke a cigarette to kill the other stenches. But these sugar-coated pills and juicy mouthfuls do not suffice alone to build up intellectual strength, without some steady diet of a plainer nature. The athlete must devote himself largely to beef and bread and butter; and, similarly, the mind must do a good deal of hard, often irksome, train- ing, long before the results heave in sight. Even such a critic as ex-President Andrews, in his arraignment of 40 A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE CLASSICS classical teaching, was forced to admit: "To begin a clas- sical tongue, more or less of hard and cheerless toil must be gone through. To the mastery of the needful accidence no royal road exists." This thorough drill must be given, if at all, in the preparatory schools, that the student may be ready to advance to a higher grade of subjects for investi- gation. If too much grammar is bad, too little grammar is worse. If the attempt to learn the art of swimming with- out going into the water is idiotic, the other extreme is suicidal. 2. Owing to unworthy ideals on the part of classical instructors, the methods of instruction are pica}aine, pedan- tic, behind the times. In most colleges [wrote President Andrews] classical culture, in the proper sense of the term, is hardly so much as aimed at. . . . Most of the odium classicum (if that is not very bad Latin) of recent years is due to classical teachers themselves. They have not tried to sound the depths of the riches lying at their feet. Students have asked for bread and have received stones. No keen observer should fail to discover that any past failures of this sort are to be attributed not to a lack of proper disposition on the part of classical teachers, but rather to the circumstances that have attended their labors, and to the crudeness of the material with which they have had to deal. The scarcity of opportunities for teachers to leam their art, and for pupils to get their preparation ; the absurd multiplicity of poorly endowed colleges and so-called " universities " ; and the killing burden of classroom and routine work demanded of classical teachers, — these causes have long combined in America to retard progress in the methods of instruction and to crush out enthusiastic A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE CLASSICS 41 ambition toward the best ideals. Doubtless there have been in the past too many cases where undue prominence has been given to dry grammatical drill at the expense of the spirit and the beauty of the classics. But it can no longer be said, without gross misrepresentation of the spirit pre- vailing among us, that " Sophocles and Plato, Horace and Juvenal, are, from the American-university point of view, almost valueless of themselves " (Mr. King in the North American Review). No such state of things is now possi- ble in any respectable American college. If anything has marked the efforts of classical instructors within recent years, it has been the enthusiasm with which they have en- deavored to impress upon their students the spirit of the authors before their consideration, and to reproduce the picture of ancient life as vividly as possible. From every quarter the cry has been heard, "Read, read, read!" And they have read, often pushing on with undiminished speed through regions of grammatical difficulty, without pausing to examine very closely the details of the ground, in their eagerness to explore the unknown and to discern new poet- ical, historical, or philosophical beauties. Indeed, in such a quest there is sometimes danger of forgetting that it is well-nigh impossible to appreciate the charm of dehghtful surroundings while stumbling over a rock in the path or " taking a header " over a philological unevenness in the road. Greek and Roman literature as literature, poetry from the standpoint of poetical criticism, history with regard to its comparative accuracy and reliability, oratory in relation to its conformity to the principles of rhetoric, philosophy as the foundation of modern philosophical thought, classical art and architecture, manners and morals. 42 A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE CLASSICS mythology and religion, — such are the topics in the clas- sical instruction of to-day that are engaging the attention of undergraduate and graduate alike in all our first-class colleges. In all this the instructor must often contend against immense odds. A good many of his pupils look upon clas- sical study merely as something to be endured because it is required, and to be thrown aside as soon as possible. Such students, of course, pursue it with utter carelessness of the quality of the results obtained. Worse than this, however, many of those who might otherwise become successful classicists are so handicapped by their poor preparation to enter college that they never can fall into their proper place in the ranks. Is the teacher of such a class of college students to bear the blame, and to be accused of being an old dry-as-dust fogy, if, recognizing the needs of the minds before him, he heroically turns back from the pleasanter paths of literary enjoyment and conducts the ranks over the toilsome grammatical passes which should have been surmounted long before, toward the happy hunting grounds of the classics .' If anybody still has lingering doubts as to the progres- sive spirit that animates classical teachers and teaching of to-day, let him examine the recent textbooks put forth by our leading publishers. Let him compare with the Caesars and Ciceros of a generation ago the editions now in vogue, with their wealth of illustrations, maps, plans, and general reading matter, so ordered that there passes before the pupil a continuous picture of ancient life, represented after the style of the modern illustrated weekly. Let him enu- merate the handy editions of classical authors for rapid A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE CLASSICS 43 reading. Let him notice the attractive little books on antiq- uities, mythology, geography, and even paleography, that have risen up to deal with every human and practical side of classical study. Meanwhile let him not fail to consider the many learned and exhaustive works setting forth the results of careful research on the part of American classi- cal scholars. Such an observation will convince a thought- ful mind that every opportunity is being sought to bestow upon the student "the grace and glory of the classics." 3. But classical study is barren of results. After years of such study the college graduate has no good working knowledge of Latin and Greek, no literary appreciation of their charms, no command of the languages ; he cannot sit down beside the evening lamp and enjoy reading a book of Homer or an epistle of Horace. Well, how is it in our own language, which we lisp in the cradle, spell out in the primary school, declaim vehe- mently before snickering mates in the grammar school, murder cruelly in compositions upon Mary Queen of Scots and similar subjects, analyze desperately in maze-like dia- grams upon the blackboard, dissect learnedly in college language and literature classes, and spout triumphantly, before fond parents and our best girl, on the glad com- mencement rostrum ? Surely after that experience for a score of years with one's own vernacular, every college graduate should be a master of English ! Is he ? Does he handle it with such accuracy, and in such an attractive and convincing way, that magazine editors fall over each other in their haste to accept his contributions ? Has he an apt quotation from Milton and Bacon ever at his tongue's end ? Can he read entertainingly and explain satisfactorily to a 44 A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE CLASSICS company of friends a play of Marlowe, an ode of Keats, a scene from " Cymbeline," or a book of " The Excur- sion " ? When he sits down by his evening lamp does he proceed to enjoy a Canterbury Tale, or the " Essay on Man," or Burke's " Letters to a Noble Lord " ? What means the plaint of the examiners at America's oldest university? and the plague of articles on "methods of teaching English," so burdensome upon the editors of our educational periodicals ? In point of fact, however, the poverty of results of clas- sical education is not nearly so striking as is often assumed. To be sure, of every company of young men sent out into active life, whether from college, university, or professional school, only a small minority wins celebrity, although the present generation is much quicker to recognize and appre- ciate certain kinds of genius than others, perhaps no less worthy. It may, indeed, be admitted that the majority of our college graduates have forgotten much of their Latin and Greek soon after graduation ; but that is a fact rather amusing than serious. It does not apply any more to the classical languages than to any other branch of knowledge. It is but a stale platitude to say that people forget what they do not take pains to remember. Within three years after graduation most of the contents of every book studied in the whole college curriculum has ceased to be a part of the graduate's working knowledge. It is as true of chemis- try as it is of Greek, as true of German as it is of Latin. But it does not follow that the college course has been a failure, or that the books forgotten have been profitless to the student, or that no residuum of pure culture has been left in the mind. If Cicero and Theocritus could be A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE CLASSICS 45 persuaded to forsake the charming society of "the houseboat on the Styx " long enough to take a httle trip to New York, they would doubtless be as intelligently entertained in the gorgeous establishment of the University Club as would Voltaire, or Lessing, or Lavoisier, or Kant, or Chaucer. The truth is, that not the number of words, or sentences, or rules, or dates, or formulas, or equations, or facts of any kind which the graduate has retained from his college days is the criterion by which to judge the value of those days to him, but rather the amount of training and preparation his four years have given him to wrestle practically and successfully with the problems that will occupy his attention as an educated man. Judged by this criterion, when have the classics been found wanting ? 4. But classical teaching is not " practical " ! It does n't train the young mind to observe the phenomena of the external world, and is therefore a hindrance to the scien- tific habit of thought. It doesn't prepare men for the mad struggle of practical life in this age even as well as the self-made man is prepared. Of course a " self-made man " is a noticeable figure any- where in life, be he poet, novelist, scientist, statesman, merchant, or what you will. But it is a cold, hard fact that the great majority of the most successful men in a literary, scholarly, scientific, or professional way are the very men that have been through the rigid training of a regular clas- sical course of study. We must not make a rule out of an exception. It is true that " Grant got up out of a tanyard and dealt disaster wherever his sword fell." Shall we then abolish West Point and go to establishing tanyards all over the country ? 46 A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE CLASSICS The notion that classical study stunts the student's power to observe natural phenomena is based on absurd logic. A. B. has studied the classics. A. B. shows poor facility in the observation of natural phenomena. Ergo, classical study is a hindrance to the development of the scientific mind and method ! What reason is there to suppose that A. B. would have done even as well as he has in scientific study, had he not been trained to habits of mental accuracy in observing linguistic phenomena .' Only one student in many is satisfactory to a teacher, be it of science or clas- sics. Why throw our disappointment back on somebody else than the student himself } Non ontnes omnia possu- mus. Not only would it be reasonable to suppose on a pri- on, grounds that the student trained to distinguish fine points of Latin grammar would be so much the better pre- pared to see what a test tube or a vivisection might reveal; but also, many of those who have had the best chance to put such a theory to the test have found it realized in expe- rience. In Germany, where a severe classical training of many years in the gymnasia precedes a university course, leading scientists have often complained that the training of students who desired to work with them was still imper- fect in the matter of Latin grammar, and have urged the maintenance of a full course in Greek as a requirement for entrance to the university in all cases. Hofmann, the celebrated chemist of the University of Berlin, expressed his views thus : The ideality of academical study, the unselfish devotion to science as science, the free exercise of thought, — both the condition and the result of this devotion, — recede in proportion as the classic basis, such as the gjfmnasium furnishes as propaedeutics for the university, is withdrawn. A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE CLASSICS 47 '" Practical " ? What is the meaning of that much-abused word in such a contention ? In the narrower sense, for the mass of mankind nothing much except " the three R's " is included. Is geometry " practical " for most men ? or conic sections ? In the strict interpretation of the word, no. Not one graduate in a score makes any direct use of either after leaving college. Shall we then drop all mathematics higher than arithmetic from our college curricula and insert something more "practical" ? If so, what shall it be, judged by a similar standard .' Shall it be geology or psychology ? If you think German might/fill the bill, imagine your grad- uate trying to talk with a native of Berlin. As for history, the least sense of humor would prevent anybody from sug- gesting that, in the midst of the general apparent inability in the United States to apply the lessons of history to the " imperialism " movement. There is a broader and better sense, however, in which all of these subjects of study have their immense practical value. They help make life worth living, and they help man to live a worthy life. And among all the subjects that tend to develop what is best in human life and character, a fore- most place must surely be assigned to the ancient classic languages and literatures ; for, by their disciplinary value and their cosmopolitan interest, they give any man power to read, listen, and talk intelligently, interestingly, and prof- itably, and a man thus equipped can defy the world to prevent his highest usefulness and personal enjoyment. The classics deserve a fair chance. What, then, do they need, in order to have it .? In the first place, more time and patience should be allotted to the early stages of clas- sical study. The tendencies of the age in America are 48 A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE CLASSICS toward living quickly, brilliantly, easily. We should like to " strike a bonanza " in Latin grammar, to open a rich vein in Greek lyric poetry, to invent an electrical memorizer, which would cram rules and dates into us without any severer effort on our part than pressing a button. We are in such a hurry to erect the stately fagade of our classical edifice that we have no time to lay any foundation for it. Some people have even taken seriously the so-called " Six Weeks' Preparation for Reading Caesar " ! Why does n't somebody invent a six weeks' "preparation" for a col- lege presidency or for the ambassadorship at the court of St. James ? Of course Caesar may be studied by anybody, at any time, with or without any preparation ; but a prepa- ration for it, in the proper sense of the word, cannot be gained in six weeks, — usually not in six months. Quickness, mental acumen, and tact will accomplish much, but they can never entirely supersede hard work. Why are the Germans the leaders in classical scholarship .' Are their sons more gifted than the youth of America? No ! our boys are in many ways quicker and more ener- getic than their German cousins. We play "good ball," we sing " cute " songs, we invent innumerable methods of making school life gay and attractive, and of " getting out of " required duties ; in short, we seem to have a genius for almost everything except steady, patient, hard work. There the Germans get ahead of us, being put through long and severe discipline in the principles of the classics from childhood, so that in the university they are ready for real university work, while our college professors must often spend time and strength in listening to mere recita- tions, and in beating into listless heads common principles A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE CLASSICS 49 which ought to be thoroughly mastered in the preparatory school. It is no milk-and-water diet which is administered to the German boy in the gymnasium. His first two or three years in Latin are devoted almost entirely to steady grammatical drill, before any considerable amount of read- ing is undertaken. Upon this solid and indestructible basis he rears such a structure of acquaintance with Roman lit- erature that before he leaves the gymnasium he has read more Latin, read it more intelligently, and read a greater variety of authors, than have most American graduates. The conditions are similar in Greek. The young American, however, on entering a prepara- tory school, is rushed through a Latin lesson book and some elementary grammatical principles in from four to six months. He then plunges into Caesar, — an author whose pages bristle with tremendous difficulties for a beginner,, — and spends a few weary months wrestling with the mys- teries of participial constructions and the "indirect dis- course," all the while painfully conscious that he must " hurry " if he wishes to get ready for college within the brief allotted time. He then attacks the greatest epic of the Romans and their greatest orator. After "finishing" them, sandwiching in a short course in Roman history and a pitiful smattering of Latin composition, having performed a series of similar operations in Greek on an even smaller scale, perhaps he pursues a year or two of work in the clas- sics in some college, and in the majority of cases then turns away from Latin and Greek forever, to devote his attention to a multiplicity of other subjects. Even such a hasty and careless course has doubtless been profitable in many ways ; but what wonder if it has failed to give the student a so A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE CLASSICS masterly acquaintance with the matchless civilization and culture of Athens and Rome ? Where is the reason in spending year after year in repeated drill upon the elemen- tary principles of arithmetic and one's native tongue, and then imagining that a complex language, far more alien to an American boy's natural mental processes, can be successfully handled in half the length of time ? It was a most encouraging experiment made in the public schools of Chicago, where a six years' course in Latin was reported as working very well, and with advantage to other courses of study. A preparatory course of not less than six years should become universal at no distant day. Secondly, the classics need a material equipment and financial support commensurate with that afforded scien- tific schools and investigations. The old-fashioned idea of a school was that of a bench with a pupil upon it, a desk with a teacher behind it, and a textbook, which the pupil studied and then handed to the teacher, who heard him recite. The laboratories, museums, and apparatus of the present indicate how entirely that conception has been banished from the world of science and the teaching of science ; but many people seem to imagine that the equip- ment of the olden days is still good enough for the classics, — that there is no special need of any modem work- shop or first-class tools. In comparison with the technical schools, the magnificent buildings, the extensive appliances, for scientific investigation, the opportunities for doing good work in the classics are yet meager. How rarely do we find adequate special buildings, libraries, and collections repre- senting the art, architecture, antiquities, epigraphy, paleog- raphy, of the ancient world ! How many institutions place A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE CLASSICS 51 before their students the current Hterature on classical subjects ? How many really first-class classical libraries are there in the United States ? How many thoroughly satisfactory archaeological museums do we find ? The ideal classical school would have the most complete buildings, libraries, and museums, and the most learned and progressive classical scholars to direct its work. It would spare no expense to obtain not only all available archaeological relics of whatever sort, and ancient manu- scripts, but also casts, copies, and photographs of everything that could not be secured in the original. Its students would not only be led up to the most valuable kinds of original investigation in the school itself, but would also have wide opportunity to bring back to it the results of such new investigations and discoveries in foreign lands as the funds thus provided had enabled them to make. Under the guidance of the directors of the school, archas- ological expeditions would be fitted out from time to time to explore various yet untried fields. The results of this work would be published at regular intervals, and the importance attaching to such publications would be equal to that conceded to the learned utterances of any educa- tional institution in the world. If our college men could be looking forward to entering such a school after the achieve- ment of the bachelor's degree, much of the so-called " odium classicum " would speedily become a myth. Do you say that such an ideal is unattainable .? Why so ? What is to hinder the establishment of a few such great classical schools for advanced work, and the reflection in miniature of their spirit, methods, and influence in every other classical school in the country .' Money will build 52 A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE CLASSICS buildings, hire specialists, buy books, coins, and the vari- ous antiques that are on the market. There is plenty of ancient pottery still lying underground, and many buried cities are yet waiting to surrender to the spade their won- drous works of art. Money will fit out expeditions to secure these, as it has in England, France, and Germany, and more recently in the United States under the manage- ment of the Archaeological Institute. Money will procure a complete collection of casts of all the important remains of ancient sculpture, like that in the Berlin Museum, scientif- ically catalogued for the student's use. Is there a scarcity of money in America for such purposes .■' Certainly not, provided the characteristic American liberality is aroused by the proper enthusiasm. This brings us, finally, to the third great need of the classics in America, — enthusiastic support on the part of pupils, of parents, and of the public. A considerable part of the American people seem to regard the classics in a manner exactly corresponding to a definition of a deponent verb once given to the writer, that is, as something possessing "passive form and active insignificance " ! A similar spirit of unappreciative indifference led men in the Middle Ages to despise the stately marble forms of ancient Roman art as worthy of no better fate than the limekiln — a very ab- surd idea, no doubt, from our standpoint ; but from theirs, intensely " practical." The " almighty-dollar " temper of the age and the peo- ple tremendously retards classical culture in America. Boys and men chafe under the long restraint of classical study, and are in haste to devote their attention to something that requires less patience and produces results apparently A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE CLASSICS 53 more tangible, — something that will bring them rapidly to wealth and fame. Parents want their sons to make money ; the public honors the man with the large bank account, and he is the popular ideal of the man that has " got there." Science opens many avenues to material success. The work leads quickly into unexplored country, where new dis- coveries are to be made and original investigation will tell, while the fields of classical study have been longer culti- vated and progress is more deliberate. Science is almost daily revealing new life, new laws, new facts, new means to improve the material comforts of life. Our broad land offers abundant subjects for scientific investigation, and no munificence has been lacking to develop these natural opportunities. Moreover, "there is money in it," often very rapidly acquired. There are railroads to be built, elec- tricity to be subdued for our use, farming to be made more profitable, mines to be opened, machinery to be invented, medical and surgical skill to be perfected, and practical politicians to be trained. No such wide range of immedi- ate possibilities for activity stretches out before the classi- cal student, nor is he likely to become rich as a scholar. And so the type of Horace's Roman boy, Albinus, has re- appeared in these United States ; he can reckon minute fractions of interest and profit in dollars, cents, and mills ; but the gangrene of covetousness is eating out his life. Meanwhile the words of Arlo Bates with reference to the classics in general are equally true of the ancient classics in particular : For wise, wholesome, and comprehensive living there is no better aid than a familiar, intimate, sympathetic knowledge of the clas- sics. . . . For him who prefers the outlook of the earthworm to that 54 A FAIR CHANCE FOR THE CLASSICS of the eagle, the classics have no message and no meaning. For him who is not content with any view save the highest, these are the mountain peaks which lift to the highest and noblest sight. A boy doesn't ordinarily discern much usefulness in Latin and Greek, any more than he does in music, or painting, or poetry. The parent, who sees much farther than the child, owes it to him, then, to direct his enthu- siastic anticipation toward the more remote, but also more lasting, advantages of classical study. The man of wealth, who sighs, when it is too late, for the culture that would make possible a higher enjoyment of his wealth, should see to it that the younger generation has the benefit not only of his experience but also of some of his thousands, to make classical study attractive. No nation is more richly endowed than our own with the financial resources, the intellectual forces, and the delicate sensibilities necessary for appreciating and appropriating the ennobling ideality of classical study. It remains only for America to awake fully to the importance of the responsibility thus placed upon her, and, with the same characteristic eagerness that has enabled her already to occupy many of the strongholds of civilization, to seize and hold the most exalted position in classical scholarship, estabhshing an empire of culture broader and more lasting than any whose existence history has ever yet chronicled. THE "LATINITY" FETISH As a working definition, a " fetish " may be described as an object of superstitious reverence. Altiiough Lowell exhibited no semasiological accuracy in explaining super- stition as a survival of a worn-out form of belief, the actual use of the word in that sense is often very convenient. The veneration of a fetish begins to wane either when it is shown to be intrinsically less worthy of such veneration than was supposed, or when the march of progress makes it ill adapted to present conditions. The contention of this essay is that the particular fetish mentioned in its titie should, for both the foregoing reasons, at least claim a smaller share of attention than it has been hitherto awarded. Any living organism is undergoing constant change. Some things are being sloughed off and some new tissue is growing. A granite rock is a very respectable mass of matter; it has, however, no vital force. But neither a pansy nor a man is ever exactiy the same on any two suc- cessive days. Nor are any two pansy blossoms exactly alike. The glory of each living organism is in its individuality. A language is a living thing so long as it is undergoing constant change, and as people use it with the freedom and variety of individuality. When its form becomes rigid and its aspect is the same from every point of view, it is dead. From Plautus to Horace and from Cato to Livy was a far cry ; but the space was full of the rushing life of Roman thought, corresponding to the ever-changing life of the SS S6 THE "LATINITY" FETISH people and the state. In the heyday of Roman comedy no- body had discovered the fatal secret that its master might be guilty of Plautinity. The Empire was just rising on the ruins of the Republic when the cry of "Patavinity" was raised. Henceforth the attempt to freeze poetry into the mold of the Vergilian style, and prose into that of Cicero's stately products, resulted in a lifeless and monotonous feast of reason and flow of soul. Not only was the substance more and more lacking in the qualities that nourish, but it soon came to have too little body to maintain even the de- sired form, and the artificial literature of high " Latinity " fell, a flimsy fragment, a shell without a kernel. Here and there, however, an independent, a free lance in literature, struck out a new form and spoke a new mes- sage, and the spark of literary life flamed up again. Petro- nius was more careless of literary conventionalities than the proverbial Gallio ; and we turn to him with a sigh of relief, our minds jaded with the elaborate imitations of his con- temporary, Persius. And if the truth should be told about Seneca, that other strange product of the same brilliantly wicked age of Nero, do we most relish his stately experi- ments in imitating the antiquated tragedies of the Greeks ; or his attempt to atone, with a theoretical philosophy of life, for his practical violation of the principles he sets forth at such length ; or the unconventional diatribe upon the dead Claudius, in which he throws form to the winds and we see the heart of the man and the hateful world in which he lives ? There was no other Cicero, no Vergil the second, no Horace the third. But with the decay of old faiths and the growth of the new world-religion of Christianity there came in a new prose and poetry which had its own great THE "LATINITY" FETISH 57 truth to tell in its own way. And on through the centuries of the Middle Ages there were those in Italy, in Gaul, in Spain, in England, in Germany, who in history, or con- troversy, or didactic verse, or song, sacred or secular, had each his message for the world. Why have we not continued to read these best examples of Latin, written not merely a century or two just before and after the Christian era, but during the last two millen- niums ? Because the specter of " Latinity" has been omni- present. For a while previous to the revival of learning this ghost was apparently laid ; but, with the coming of Petrarch and the renaissance of classical ideals and the new worship of classical forms, Latin was slain in the house of its friends. Six centuries have passed away since the birth of Petrarch, and the slow pendulum of literary esteem may be discerned moving back toward a more universal appre- ciation of all that is good in Latin literature. For some time collections of patristic Latin and of the best of the fifteenth and sixteenth century Latin literature have been in progress of publication on the continent of Europe. A recent volume of that popular collection of books of Weis- heit und Schonheit, published in the German language at Stuttgart, consists of tales and satires translated from the Latin. Of these only a few from Apuleius, Petronius, and Prudentius belong to that field of Roman literature where " Latinity" is supposed to hold sway ; while the bulk of the book is made up of stories by Notker of St. Gall, satires of Amarcius, and selections from Wirecker, Gervasius, Eberhardus, Teutonicus, and from the " Dialogus Miracu- lorum " of Caesar of Heisterbach. Mr. Percy Ure, in a recent issue of the Classical Review, after reviewing the S8 THE "LATINITY" FETISH new volume of " Die Kultur der Gegenwart," which deals with the Greek and Latin languages and literatures, feels moved to fall into line with Wilamowitz and the other au- thors of that book, and asks : " Ought we not in England to extend our curricula, at least in the seats of higher edu- cation ? Is it desirable that our university students (and lecturers ?) should practically never read anything written in Greek after Theocritus, or in Latin after Tacitus ? " Two or three of our American preparatory Latin textbooks have rather timidly ventured into the broader field in their selection of passages to be read by the young student in the early stages of his acquaintance with the language. But the consultation of college catalogues will show but slight opportunity as yet for more advanced students to go out- side the sacred inclosure dominated by the Latinity fetish. Why should we longer hold fast to the tradition of the Pharisaical elders who began to exalt " Latinity " thus, only after the palmy days of Latinity were gone .' To Cicero "La- tinity " was the avoidance of solecisms and of barbarisms, not a comparison of all Latin with his own orations and with the journal of the Gallic campaigns of his contempo- rary, Julius Caesar. Pray where did Horace, with his curiosa felicitas, and his dainty aroma of the cedar in which for years had lain his unfinished product, waiting for the ulti- mate file, learn Latin .? Why, forsooth, from a crude trans- lation of a Greek poem made by a Greek slave before there were any standards of Latinity or any Latin literature to which to apply them ! Yet the Grecisms, and archaisms, and colloquialisms, and juicelessness of Livius Andronicus, though so laboriously flogged into Flaccus by Orbilius the flagosus, apparently did him no harm, while Orbilius never THE "LATINITY" FETISH 59 Stopped to consider their serious defects from the purists' standpoint of Latinity. When Horace railed at the care- lessness of Lucilius, did he cease to read him because of hiS' bad Latinity, or did he rather imitate his good points and avoid his faults ? The grammar of Plautus and his diction are as far removed from the Latinity of Livy as Livy's is from that of Ausonius ; but the critics did not stop reading Plautus in the days of Livy. By the time of Priscian a couplet of Pacuvius might be cited to illustrate a grammatical curiosity, while in Cicero the same passage might be quoted for its literary value. Was Pacuvius to be ruled out of the classical galaxy because he used incur- vicervicus and prolixitudo, matresco and taetro, and be- cause nearly one half of his experiments in word formation failed to meet with the permanent approval of the Roman liter^ world } Did anybody shy at Lucretius because he refused to be universally orthodox or consistent in his treat- ment of prepositions and infinitives, because his poetry was sometimes prosaic, and because he preferred to end his hexameters in ponderous polysyllables .' Quintilian's cautiousness in regard to the alleged " Pata- vinity" of Livy is worthy of our emulation. "Asinius Pollio," says he, ^^ thinks that a kind of Patavinity is to be found in Titus Livy, in spite of his amazing fluency." What, by the way, would Pollio have said to that word, facundia, used here by Quintilian .? For neither Livy, Cicero, nor Caesar ever ventured to write it. Surely to the fastidious Pollio it would have been conclusive proof of the hopeless provincialism of its Spanish-bom friend, an instance of rank Calagurritanity ! Once more we hear Quintilian speaking of the famous criticism, when he says 6o THE " LATINITY " FETISH that while PoUio detects Patavinity in Livy, for his part everything Italian is Roman, as contrasted with any real barbarism. Which of us has been able to detect Livy's Patavinity ? Quintilian evidently could not. Nor did he think the attempt worth while, for toward the close of the same paragraph he enunciates the universal truth which should still have recognition : sed auctoritatem consuetudo superavit. And in the ever-changing form of the Latin language there has ever been, of course, a present "custom" which justly overrode "tradition." Why, then, should we slight Boethius or elevate our eyebrows at mention of Aulus Gellius } Why need we be ashamed to delve into the Church Fathers or to read The Venerable Bede .' Why not give even younger students selections from Einhard's "Life of Charlemagne," from the hymns of the Church, from the declamations of Me- lanchthon, from the colloquies of Erasmus, from the great mass of lyric and dramatic Latin poetry which European scholars have thrown off on occasion during the last fifteen centuries ? I take up Gellius to see wherein consist his sins against Latinity, why it would be dangerous to bring up boys on his anecdotes, and open at his tale of Fabricius and the gift offered him by the Samnites (1.14). The first thing that causes one to stop is the use of familia in the sense of " property." But this goes back to the Twelve Tables, and was considered good'usage by Cicero. Tamquam in- troducing an assigned reason was good Latinity in the eyes of Tacitus. The collocation redditam pacem can be charged with nothing more serious than being a token of the author's individuality. The purpose dative dono used THE "LATINITY" FETISH 6 1 alone, with obtulisse, is also along the natural line of de- velopment according to Tacitean standards. The phrase lautum paratwm esse is one in which paratum. appears to be used as a substantive with the force of apparatum. If we grant this at once, without arguing the question of the text or of other possible explanations, grammatically speak- ing, we have indeed a phenomenon unparalleled perhaps in the " Golden Age," but not unlike many a substantive used in the generations following that age. Finally, though propterea alone is less common, and looks forward more often than back, its use in the latter sense is classical from the time of Terence. Surely the immature mind, under the direction of a competent teacher, runs no risk of being radically corrupted in ideals of Latinity while reading this neat little anecdote of Gellius. Or I turn to a paragraph of Erasmus, in his story of the priest, the vendor, and the impostor; and now the purists vociferate, " Procul, o procul este, profani!" But with rash persistence I read : Sacrificus quidam receperat mediocrem summam pecuniae, sed afgenteae. Id impostor quidam animadverterat. Adiit sacrificum, qui gestabat in zona crumenam nummis turgidam ; salutat civiliter ; nar- rat sibi datum negotium, etc. Here, to be sure, is a different atmosphere. We note the loose, narrative style, but must not fail to recall Terence's similar mahner in the " Andria," for example. We admit promptly that sacrificus, impostor, 2ci\Aparochus, in the sense used here, are nonclassical ; that commodare with such an object as tantillum operae is comparatively modern ; that vehementer congruere and -mire congruere, referring to well- fitting clothes, sound a little like the present-day German 62 THE "LATINITY" FETISH slang use of kolossal ! But how often Lucretius and Cicero felt constrained to apologize for the new words and new meanings of words which their subjects demanded ! And was not in his own day and generation a living Erasmus better than a dead Marcus Tullius ? I glance at a convenient edition of Gnaphey's "Acolas- tus," the Latin play on the story of the prodigal son, first published nearly four hundred years ago at Antwerp, and I see eight pages of closely printed references to passages in classical writers used by the author. Surely a scholar so saturated with the spirit of the ancients ought to be able, in dealing with so interesting and suitable a subject, to teach a reader some good Latin and not utterly to ruin his appreciation of classical Latinity ! Or at random I read one of the lyrics of Joannes Posthius, entitled " De Suo Amore " : luppiter horrendo contristans frigore caelum Sarmatico largas fundit ab axe nives, Nostra tamen rapidis uruntur pectora flammis, Nee minuunt ignes frigora tanta meos ; Quin magis accendunt etiam (quis credere possit?), Et gelida flagrans de nive crescit amor. Nunc etenim recolo mecum, ut mea saepe puella De nive compactis luserit ante pilis. Nix, fateor, primes mihi conciliavit amores : Hinc eadem flammas auget alitque meas. Where in all Latin literature shall we look for a more dainty conceit or for more unimpeachable Latin ? At sound of it the " Gradus ad Pamassum " and the " Anti- barbarus " exchange significant glances, relapse into their most complacent smile, and make no move at all to descend from the shelf. THE "LATINITY" FETISH 63 The truth of it is that the Latin of the sixteenth cen- tury A.D., or even of the nineteenth, is more Hke that of the second century b.c. than the English of to-day is like the English of a period one quarter as long ago. The artificial form of the champions of literary conservatism has, to be sure, long since lost some of its potency. But it was as foolish to try to maintain Cicero's style after the death of its master as it was to attempt the continuance of the republican constitution after the life of the Roman republic was gone. Cato and Cicero perished in the use- less struggle against the politically inevitable ; and the best inspiration of Roman literature perished in the struggle against the stylistically inevitable. How long must we go on sacrificing youthful enthusi- asm on the altars of a similar conservatism in the worship of the Latinity fetish.? Granting that Caesar, Cicero, and Vergil are the best models of Latinity, can we claim that the centuries have shown that the youthful mind waxes enthusiastic over them, appreciates them, and assimilates their style, as shown by their Latin prose composition exercises ? What would you think of the pedagogical wis- dom of a teacher who should introduce a beginner into English by making him read blocks of from twenty-five to fifty lines a day, for several years, of Macaulay's " His- tory of England," Burke's speeches, and Milton's " Para- dise Lost " ? Do we insist on Shakespeare for babes } Do our modem-language contemporaries begin with " Faust " and " William Tell " ? Oh, no ! They smear with honey the edges of the bitter cup and coaxingly inquire, "Do you see the great green goggles of my red-coated aunt in the long white automobile ? " Horace laughed at the 64 THE "LATINITY" FETISH conservatism of the schoolmen of his own day, who forced him to learn Latin from Livius Andronicus ; but we have lost that sense of humor, so far as Latin is concerned, and are still following in the wake of Orbilius. To be consist- ent, we ought to require every boy to learn his English from Chaucer's " Canterbury Tales " ! As a matter of fact we learn English to-day from the Times, Edith Wharton, and Mr. Dooley, while William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon are obliged to wait for a more convenient season. Of whom will our children learn it .? Who can tell .? That they will learn it, however, we may be sure ; nor need we fear that publishers of de luxe editions of the Eng- lish classics will be obliged to go out of business even if George Ade should claim a place on the same shelf with Alexander Pope. Why not follow nature somewhat more readily in Latin also } A beginning has been made, indeed, in these last days ; but, as I have already said, it seems to be too timid, and followed with too little enthusiasm. One of the latest and best of the books of reading selections for young stu- dents contains, besides the proper amount of Caesar (I would by no means discard Caesar or the other traditional authors!) and the purely modem exercises, two selections from Phaedrus, three from Valerius Maximus, two from Pliny's letters, three from Erasmus, four from Horace, and one each from Nepos, Livy, Ovid, Plautus, Catullus, Terence, Vergil, and Tibullus. Good ! Why not go still further 1 Why omit Gellius and Macrobius and Martial ? Why not include letters of Lipsius and poems of Scaliger .' Why not have more Curtius, and even Velleius Paterculus and Justinus, some Seneca, Suetonius, TertuUian, Prudentius, THE " LATINITY " FETISH 65 Bernard of Cluny, and Thomas a Kempis, not forgetting the inscription upon the sepulcrum hau pulcrum pulcrai feminae, nor the Testamentum Porcelli? Why reserve most of the tidbits for the occasional student of Roman lit- erature, and run the risk of convincing the masses of Latin students that Latin is insufferably dull and that nobody with red blood in his veins would elect it after the stupid days of its requirement are past ? Must the traditional curricu- lum be preserved at any cost ? ^ Perhaps the question is a more practical one than we realize. Curricula are changing. Latin, like Greek, is being jostled from its occupancy of the middle of the road. Doth it not behoove the pedagogical divinities of the clas- sics, for the nonce, to set down their ambrosial cups of scholarly investigation, and, forsaking temporarily their intermundane spaces, to descend among men, take human counsel, and observe whether, in the unceasing downward procession of the atoms, there are any tokens of a speedy dissolution of the world which they have hitherto known .' If the readers of this essay detect in it signs of hetero- doxy, it remains for them, as for all seekers for real values, after washing away the useless matter, to discover, under- neath, those shining grains of truth which heterodoxy is ever wont to contain. 1 Since the above was written a practical German schoolman by the name of Christian Harder has proposed that the Latin reading in the gym- nasia shall follow a carefully arranged and considerably broadened cur- riculum, in which Caesar's "Commentaries" shall be much curtailed and many hitherto unusual authors from Cato to Boethius shall find a place, notably Velleius, Justinus, C. Gracchus, Suetonius, Lucilius, Propertius, etc., the course being rounded off with a consideration of the relations of Greek and Roman literature, the coming in of Christianity, the transi- tion to the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. THE USE OF TRANSLATIONS There is reason to believe that when Prometheus in fashioning man took some elements from every creature he took at least two parts of mule to one of ox ! At any rate a consistent and persistent resistance to everything that is supposed to be disciplinary is characteristic of man- kind, especially of youth. So when the wisdom of maturer years arranges courses of study designed to secure mental training, the cunning of youth proceeds forthwith to devise ways and means to avoid such training. The eye is fixed on the goal so intensely, and the childlike enthusiasm to arrive at once is so all-absorbing, that the shortest way across lots appears the best, and the obstacles along the path are knocked aside with little regard to consequences. The present age, — in which the slogan is, in colloquial expression, "get there all the same " — is peculiarly liable to indulge such a spirit in the educational world, except in physical culture. If a boy is in training for " the team " and needs leg muscle, he does not plan to get it by hiring an automobile with which to cover a dozen miles of road. But if he is supposably after mind training, he immediately strives to acquire the diploma or other insignia of such culture, regardless of the intermediate steps. If the ground of algebra is to be covered, he procures a " key" or a book in which some member of the preceding class wrote down all the answers. Instead of mastering the Latinity of Livy he strives to "pass up" on a certain amount of it 66 THE USE OF TRANSLATIONS 6/ by reading somebody's translation. Instead of taking notes himself on chemistry lectures he borrows those of his neighbor or hires those of a thrifty " coach." When an essay is due he consults the encyclopedia and swiftly and painlessly produces a wonderful patchwork of another man's ideas. If he reaches commencement day, an enter- prising firm will, for the proper consideration, supply him with an oration ready-made. And if he finally fails of his degree, several paper institutions are ready to sell him any known degree for a reasonable sum ! He cheerfully ac- cepts the dry bones of form for the living spirit of truth and attainment. It often seems to work for the time being, but the day of reckoning can always be found without looking too far ahead on the calendar. It is clear that classical students are not the only sinners in these matters. Teachers of mathematics have fallen into the habit of frequently changing textbooks for the fresh problems that they offer. A gentleman of my acquaintance has it among his proudest boasts that when at Harvard he made a snug little sum by translating within a week's time a German play upon which the class had just started, and of which no available English translation existed. Indeed it is whispered that a famous speech of a well-known uni- versity president may be found in all its essentials in a certain volume in a university library. Among classical students translations are the particular vehicle by which riding is attempted where it would be better to walk. " The nature of the beast " is recognized in the various euphemistic designations, — "horse," "pony," " trot," and even " Jack " ! Inasmuch as there are certain authors whose works must be read by every well-educated 68 THE USE OF TRANSLATIONS classical scholar, it is natural that such use of translations should spring up, owing to the steady demand and supply. A practical and timely question is whether methods of teaching are always such as to reduce the evil results of the practice to a minimum, and whether further improvement is possible in this line. It is not the author's intention to deny that translations made by a master hand, and judiciously used by advanced scholars, may have an important and useful place. When a practical knowledge of the Latin language, for example, has been already acquired ; when the thought presents itself to the reader's mind at sight of a page of the original ; when the student needs no longer to concentrate his attention upon the structure of the language ; when a translation is no longer to be used to slight difficulties rather than conquer them, — then indeed to consult such translations as that of " Lucretius " by Munro, or Con- ington's " Persius," Cranstoun's "Tibullus," Martin's " Horace," Tyrrell's " Cicero's Letters," or Reid's " Aca- demica," may serve a valuable purpose in stimulating to elegance of rendering, or suggesting happy turns of idio- matic expression. It is not with such use of translations for genuine scholarly purposes that we are now concerned. The be- lief that the disadvantageous use of translations by imma- ture college students has been increasing, and has extended down into the secondary schools very generally, and the suspicion that our professors and schoolmen are treating the matter with too much apathy, have led to a little in- vestigation of the facts in the case, and the results have suggested a few conclusions which may possibly be helpful. THE USE OF TRANSLATIONS 69 On the occasion of this investigation, blanks with four questions to which answers were requested were sent out to the professors of Latin in twenty-five representative universities and colleges, from Minnesota to Tulane, from Bowdoin to California. Courteous replies were received from twenty of these, that is, from four fifths of the whole number, giving the information desired from a good pro- portion of the leading institutions in all sections of the country. The investigation might have been extended into the field of Greek, but the results would probably not have been essentially different. The first question was, " What proportion of the stu- dents of Latin at your institution do you think are accus- tomed to use English translations in the preparation of their assigned reading lessons ? " Of the answers, six did not venture any estimate; one said "not many"; one, "a large number"; one, "a large proportion"; one, "one tenth"; one, "one fifth"; two, "one quarter"; two, "one third"; four, "one half"; one, "four fifths or more." It appears, therefore, that of those willing to express any definite opinion one half believe it probable that at least one half of the students in question are in the habit of using translations in preparing assigned les- sons, while the others estimate variously, from one in three down to one in ten. In two of our largest univer- sities the practice was believed to be decreasing. Recent utterances, however, would seem to indicate the probability that, on the whole, it has greatly increased within the last few years in both school and college. The second question was stated thus : " Do you con- sider the practice advantageous on the whole.' Please 70 THE USE OF TRANSLATIONS State briefly your reasons pro or con." A classification of the answers shows that one considers " the practice advan- tageous for college students, provided the translation is a good one." One does " not think the occasional use anything objectionable." One recommends translations for making up large amounts and for reading the balance of works that cannot be finished in class, but ordinarily not for freshman work. Three, while not approving the use of the ordinary literal translation, think that metrical ver- sions of merit, and even sometimes good prose renderings, may well be recommended to the class. One states his opinion thus : "It hurts ninety-five for five it benefits, I think. For the five who will use translations for a ladder to climb by, the ninety-five will use them for a crutch to hobble on." The other thirteen regard the practice as an unmixed evil, and express their disapprobation of it in various emphatic ways like these : " The practice produces laziness and prevents real knowledge " ; " The practice is disastrous — no one can learn to walk who always rides a pony " ; " No. Constant use of translations causes the student to drift farther and farther away from the spirit of the Latin" ; " I think nothing could be worse than the use of translations if the student ever expects to know Latin"; "By no means. I regard it as dangerous to morals, — a peril to the best work of the students and generally demor- alizing." It seems, accordingly, that only one of the twenty cordially recommends regular use of translations, while an overwhelming majority earnestly deprecate the practice. The third question, " If you do not consider it advan- tageous, what methods, if any, do you employ to discourage or prevent it.'" evoked a considerable variety of replies. THE USE OF TRANSLATIONS 71 One believes that frequent change of textbooks is useful. Another makes an effort to make the study of Latin more interesting. Three employ close questioning on gram- matical details or other matters. Two see to it that exam- inations are mainly on othe^ lines than translation of Latin previously read. Four emphasize sight reading. Five resort to moral suasion. Six make large use of chrestomathies, or of works more rarely read, of which translations are not so easy to procure. Seven are in the habit of advising classes against the practice. Four do nothing at all. To the fourth question, " What suggestions would you make to prevent, regulate, or improve such use of trans- lations by American college students of Latin ? " five had no further answer to make, and most of the others brought forward suggestions already made in describing the prac- tices now followed. Some accordingly recommend moral suasion and advice ; others, sight reading. Some urge the use of chrestomathies and the more unusual authors ; others, more close and accurate work. Some propose that the examinations be of such a character that weaklings can- not pass them. One suggested the " exposure of flagrant instances," presumably by making a fool of the student in the classroom ; others, the requirement of intelligent read- ing of Latin without translation. One hesitatingly pro- posed a boycott of firms that sell translations to students. The facts brought out by this little investigation are, that the use of translations is much more common than most of our instructors approve, and that, while various methods are tried to check or minify the evil, there is no general agreement as to ways and means, and some are inclined to ignore the matter and excuse the practice by postulating 72 THE USE OF TRANSLATIONS possible advantages. Meanwhile the practice has been rapidly extending down into the secondary schools. If we should look a little deeper than we have done thus far, we might find further cause for this condition of affairs in the extreme to which many of our educators would carry the idea of personal liberty and freedom of choice, mentally and morally. From the old idea of a pre- scribed curriculum we passed first to a moderate elective system, applicable mainly to higher college classes. Then the principle was easily extended in some degree to the under classes in college. Before long it began to be sug- gested that complete freedom of choice should prevail from the beginning of the course, and that a given degree need not stand for a given kind of work, but for anything that the boy fancied he preferred. At the same time that the particular kind of mental discipline gained from clas- sical study ceased in some quarters to be considered a necessary part of a liberal education, and that a certain amount — a particular number of hours — rather than a given kind or quality of work came to be the requirement, it became more rational, to a superficial observer, to cover the ground as easily as possible rather than as thoroughly as possible, in order to minimize, so to speak, a necessary evil. This condition happened to be coincident in time with a widespread disposition to treat young people morally as if they had already completely learned to distinguish be- tween good and evil, and as if parents, instead of holding the reins, should turn them over to the children. Symp- toms of reaction have developed here and there in the springing up of curfew ordinances, passing of anticigarette laws, and the like. THE USE OF TRANSLATIONS 73 How long must educators wander in an irrational wilder- ness before discovering that it is nonsense to treat fresh- men or sophomores, even in our highest institutions, to say nothing of high-school boys, like German-university students ? Why do we chase every pedagogical will-o'-the- wisp? When a prominent New England educator tells a great teachers' convention, practically, that the elective system should begin in the cradle, and that a boy should never be forced to study anything he doesn't want to study, why should anybody welcome the preposterous idea as if it were a new revelation from th^ skies ? Does n't all nature protest against this doctrine ? The very waving branches of the trees, the bending grasses of the fields, the gamboling kittens on the lawn, the birdling in its downy nest, know better. They must learn to resist buffet- ing, to triumph over difficulties, to struggle among their kind, to suffer hardship and peril. Rarely, if ever, does a human being come to successful maturity without disci- pline in doing what he does n't want to do. If every young fellow were an accomplished Latin scholar on entering college, we might use the laissez-faire method in dealing with this matter of translations. But that is far from being the case, either at the Golden Gate or across Back Bay. To the claim that a good translation is a help rather than a hindrance it must be replied that this is so only under ideal conditions, where an unusual student, with plenty of time, after reading his Latin passage without the assistance of a translation, then compares his work with that of some master of the art of translating. But, in the first place, immature students will not usually choose the best translation. Secondly, in most cases they will not use 74 THE USE OF TRANSLATIONS it in a judicious way. School and college life is so full of other interests than studying, and genuine mental effort is so laborious, that the quickest method of sliding over any given ground is in great demand, and the temptation to use a translation in a lazy and corrupting way is too great to be successfully resisted by the average young man, if he understands that he has the approval of his instructor for the use of such assistance. Thirdly, no matter how much ability a young man may have to read Latin at sight, if he has any regular assigned reading lessons to be prepared for translation in a class, he misses the benefits to be gained from the preparation of such translation in a care- ful, self-reliant way, if he employs somebody else's work to boost himself. It is the very careful work in the study of words and their various meanings, in framing phrases, and in evolving a logical and beautiful sentence structure representing the thought of the original, that constitutes a large part of the value of classical study. It is significant that the wail of insufficient training in English is heard so loudly in these latter days from quarters where the trans- lation of the classics into good English is less usually the result of independent effort than was once the case. If the young student does not need to translate at all, well and good; if he does, let him practice doing it himself, first, before 'availing himself of the results of other men's work. Mental acquisition without mental effort is always ephemeral. To hurry over a lesson with a " pony" is as fruitless of last- ing benefit as to have it read over by a bright classmate. It is in no small degree due to the growth of such practices that classical study has become relatively less pop- ular, and that so few students find themselves capable of THE USE OF TRANSLATIONS 75 pursuing the advanced college courses in Greek and Latin departments. At heart we all depise sham. If we resort to it under stress of circumstances or because of common usage, it produces ultimate disgust as well as the conscious- ness of weakness. A boy in this state of mind will natu- rally, as soon as the required amount of Latin is completed, turn away to some other subject, partly because he does n't really enjoy such sham work, partly because he knows himself not a master of the subject, and so not prepared for higher courses. " If I had not been such a fool as to get into the habit of using translations in school," said a bright young college man to the writer, " I should have continued my work in Latin and made a specialty of it." His experience is all too typical. It is time that teachers of the classics, both in college and in secondary schools, agreed to present a more united front against this tendency, which most of us so heartily deplore. To this end the following remedies for the evil may be suggested. I. It should be definitely explained to each class that the practice will prove detrimental to the best scholarship, and that therefore the student is not expected to employ such methods, any more than to use unwise or dishonest means in any other department. This declaration should not be followed by espionage, but the student should be made to feel that he is expected to act in accordance with the advice given. Those instructors who beheve there is a real advantage gained from the use of a good translation at times, should assign special lessons occasionally, to be prepared with the aid of a given translation, in which lessons such requirements should be made of the student 76 THE USE OF TRANSLATIONS that he will feel it a different case from the everyday reading, but no easier. 2. Too much stress should not be laid upon translation in classroom work, but much variety of questioning, of lecturing, of explanation, should convince the student that the help he gets from a " pony " is at best but slight, - — that, indeed, " a horse is a vain thing for safety " ! 3. Examinations should be mainly, so far as their trans- lation is concerned, on passages not before translated, thus calling for the acquirement of ability to translate rather than for previous covering of some special ground. 4. So far as feasible, such textbooks and such frequent changes of textbooks should be the rule that both the stu- dent and his bookseller shall be discouraged from dealing largely in translations. 5. Finally, the teacher should constantly endeavor to awaken enthusiasm over the study of the classics on the part of the learner. As soon as a boy or a man becomes thoroughly interested in the study of the Latin language, his desire will be a different one from that of the mechani- cal performer of certain irksome linguistic tasks. In pro- portion as Rome, her history, her people, her life, her language, become alive to the imagination, will his zeal quicken in the endeavor to enter into the spirit of things Roman. An inspired teacher can do much toward making his pupils oblivious of hard benches, dusty maps, and dead sounds. 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