ENGLISH AGAINST THE CLASSICS. 715 



on Latin and Greek. Too little time is left for this analysis : none but 

 teachers know the quantity of iteration and exemplification necessary 

 to get an abstract notion into a boy's head. And there is no time at 

 all for an exercise without which analysis can never be vividly under- 

 stood, the opposite process of synthesis. Before a boy can be fully 

 awakened to the gist of the terms of analysis, he must have applied 

 them again and again to themes of his own composing, and there will 

 be no time for such an exercise until there is an end of the classical 

 supremacy. 



The purification of the language from blunders is an urgent neces- 

 sity. A good way of habituating the pupil to recognized usage would 

 be to keep him working at collections of grammatical blunders. Were 

 English made the systematic study that Latin has been, we should in 

 this way effect, in the course of a generation or two, a great purification 

 of our language. We have a good many collections of genuine idioms 

 with examples of their violation ; but we want a great many books of 

 this kind contributions from many workers in the same field. Latin 

 is well provided for in this way. One cannot help regretting that so 

 much time has been thrown away upon settling pure Latin usage that 

 might have been spent so much more profitably in the purification of 

 our own tongue. 



So much for familiarizing the pupil with the parts of a sentence and 

 correct grammatical usage. Practical teachers will recognize in what 

 has been exhibited a wide field for school-study. Others will under- 

 stand the amount of exercise involved, when they reflect upon the time 

 now spent upon introductory exercises to Latin, of a much less exten- 

 sive rano-e than those I have indicated. 



A knowledge of admissible forms of expression is more than Mr. 

 Dasent seems to have found in several " good Latin scholars." But a 

 youth that is master of this accomplishment is but indifferently 

 equipped for recording and communicating his thoughts. Much im- 

 perfect expression passes current. A thing may be put a hundred 

 ways, all conformable to grammar, yet one, and perhaps not many 

 more than one, accords with the laws of good composition. 



Can the principles of good composition be taught ? Is rhetoric 

 the knowledge of good and bad in expression, viewed with reference to 

 certain ends a possible accomplishment for the school-boy ? Accord- 

 ing to De Quincey, the end of rhetoric, as conceived by the ancients, 

 was either ornament or fraud, figurative decoration or sophistry a 

 conception of rhetoric not so very rare in our day. The one end was 

 served by the branches of rhetoric conversant with Tropes, Figures, 

 and Emotional Qualities of Style ; the other by the various maxims of 

 Persuasive Art, consisting for the most part of shrewd devices for 

 secm-ing plausibility. I believe something more might be made of 

 those branches of education than mere garnishing and trickery ; still 

 they are, perhaps, too advanced for the school-room. Be that as it 



