7 i 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



princq:>les to classical Greek and Latin. Supposing there were no good 

 authors in our tongue, the amendment of the bad would be as valuable 

 an exercise as the recognition of the good. However, we should be 

 glad to think with Macaulay : " It may safely be said that the litera- 

 ture now extant in the English language is of far greater value than 

 all the literature which three hundred years ago was extant in all the 

 languages of the world put together." 



5. It may be said that, if composition were managed according to 

 rule, there would be no scope for variety. That depends upon the 

 nature of the body of rules. If the rule is absurdly narrow, obedience 

 to it will result in a dead monotony. For example, on the unity of the 

 sentence, Irving lays down that " different thoughts ought to be sepa- 

 rated in the expression by being placed in different periods " a rale 

 that would reduce all composition to the movement of a jig. On the 

 contrary, Prof. Bain recognizes that the matter of a sentence is de- 

 termined by the rest of the composition, and gives the limitations 

 of the absolute rule of unity. A principle of this kind, so far from in- 

 ducing monotony, tends to assist variety : the writer is compelled to 

 think of the matter of his sentences, and, in all probability, will thereby 

 be prevented from the natural tendency to run them all together on 

 the same model. Even if the rule were absolute, it would still be 

 valuable, provided its reasons were assigned. The dull pupil would be 

 dull all the same : the eager pupil, if he found the restrictions irksome, 

 would either overthrow the reasons, or cast about for all variety with- 

 in the letter of the law. Cut a root that intrudes into your garden, 

 and the stump sends out twenty suckers for the one. You produce the 

 same effect when you stop short an inquiring boy with a rule : the dull 

 boy, a dead root, is little affected for good or for evil, but the clever 

 boy is put upon his mettle, and becomes twice as active as before. 



6. It may be said that icriting by rule, like walking on stilts, must 

 be a very cramped and constrained movement. The awkwardness in 

 both cases is removed by practice. 



7. It might be said that we should have nobody to teach the new 

 subject. Such an evil would rapidly disappear. Many teachers are 

 already competent, and all could without difficulty keep ahead of their 

 first batch of pupils. 



8. It will be said that no material for school-exercises has been ac- 

 cumulated, and that taking up an author at random would be unprofit- 

 able. It is not so ; a good deal of such material has been accumulated. 

 The reason why so little, comparatively, has been done, is plain enough. 

 Our school-rooms have been occupied by a foreign invader, and the 

 makers of school-books have been retained in alien service. For gen- 

 erations our boys have been condemned to anomalies in Greek and 

 Latin gender, declension, and conjugation, Greek accents, Latin 

 quantities, stiff constructions in Virgil, obscure allusions in Juvenal, 

 various readings in iEschylus, years of study at things of no human use 



