ENGLISH AGAINST THE CLASSICS. 717 



The difficulty is not to get work to overtake, but to overtake much of 

 the work that waits for us. 



2. It may he said that studies of this kind are mere elegant trifling. 

 Admitted that classical studies are of no practical value except for dis- 

 cipline : admitted that these English studies contain all the elements 

 of discipline ; the one is as useless subsequently as the other ; there is 

 no reason for substituting the one for the other. I say that English 

 studies have at least the advantage of keeping the pupil occupied with 

 the words and correct usages of his own language, and that this, were 

 there nothing else, is sufficient cause for change. But I say, further, 

 that these studies can be so directed as to cultivate clearness and force 

 of expression. Perhaps you deny this : you hold that clearness and 

 force are natural gifts. That clearness and force are natural gifts, and 

 that a teacher cannot communicate brains, nobody will care to dispute ; 

 but, that the devices and appliances for giving clearness and force to 

 what they say can be communicated to boys of natural aptitude by a 

 skilled teacher, I hold to be beyond question. All would not learn to 

 compose English well, any more than all learn to compose Latin well ; 

 but some would learn ; and no more can be said for any system of in- 

 struction. 



3. It may be said that, granting careful tuition a help to acquiring 

 clearness and force of expression, a good style can be formed only by 

 familiarity with the best writers. I answer that this is no objection to 

 the scheme we have considered. We made provision for the analyti- 

 cal as well as the synthetical study of English, rhetorical parsing as 

 well as rhetorical practice. What I insist upon is, that we must have 

 principles of good and bad in expression drilled into our boys, princi- 

 ples to be borne in mind both in analysis and in synthesis, in reading 

 authors as well as in our own composition. Otherwise, how are we to 

 know what to adopt and what to reject in an author, what to imitate 

 and what to avoid ; and how shall we escape the errors of Latinists that 

 worship the conceits of Cicero, and adore the Patavinities of Livy V 

 I quote from Dryden a striking confirmation : " Thus difficult it is to 

 understand the purity of English, and critically to discern, not only 

 good writers from bad, and a proper style from a corrupt, but also to 

 distinguish that which is pure in a good author, from that which is 

 vicious and corrupt in him. And for want of all these requisites, or 

 the greatest part of them, most of our ingenious young men take up 

 some cried-up English poet for their model ; adore him and imitate 

 him, as they think, without knowing wherein he is defective, where he 

 is boyish and trifling, wherein either his thoughts are improper to his 

 subject, or his expressions unworthy of his thoughts, or the turn of 

 both is inharmonious." 



4. It may be said that, granting the necessity of reading admired 

 authors critically, that is, upon principles of good and bad, there are 

 no good authors in English, and that the pupil should go with his 



