638 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The recent agitation in Cambridge, in Oxford, and indeed all over 

 the country, for remitting the study of Greek as an essential of the 

 Arts Degree, has led to a reproduction of the usual defenses of things 

 as they are. The articles in the March number of this " Review," by 

 Professors Blackie and Bonamy Price, may claim to be the demiers 

 mots. 



Professor Blackie's article is a warning to the teachers of classics, 

 to the effect that they must change their front ; that, whereas the 

 value of the classics as a key to thought has diminished, and is dimin- 

 ishing, they must by all means in the first place improve their drill. 

 In fact, unless something can be done to lessen the labor of the acqui- 

 sition by better teaching, and to secure the much-vaunted intellectual 

 discipline of the languages, the battle will soon be lost. Accordingly, 

 the Professor goes minutely into what he conceives the best methods 

 of teaching. It is not my purpose to follow him in this sufficiently 

 interesting discussion. I simply remark that he is staking the case 

 for the continuance of Latin and Greek in the schools on the possibility 

 of something like an entire revolution in the teaching art. Revolution 

 is not too strong a word for what is proposed. The weak part of the 

 new position is that the value of the languages as languages has de- 

 clined, and has to be made up by the incident of their value as drill. 

 This is, to say the least, a paradoxical position for a language-teacher. 

 If it is mere drill that is wanted, a very small corner of one language 

 would suffice. The teacher and the pupil alike are placed between the 

 two stools interpretation and drill. A new generation of teachers 

 must arise to attain the dexterity requisite for the task. 



Professor Blackie's concession is of no small importance in the ac- 

 tual situation. " No one is to receive a full degree without showing 

 a fair proficiency in two foreign languages, one ancient and one modern, 

 with free option." This would satisfy the present demand everywhere, 

 and for some time to come. 



The article of Professor Bonamy Price is conceived in even a higher 

 strain than the other. There is so far a method of argumentation in it 

 that the case is laid out under four distinct heads, but there is no deci- 

 sive separation of reasons ; many of the things said under one head 

 might easily be transferred without the sense of dislocation to any other 

 head. The writer indulges in high-flown rhetorical assertions rather 

 than in specific facts and arguments. The first merit of classics is that 

 " they are languages ; not particular sciences, nor definite branches of 

 knowledge, but literatures." Under this head we have such glo wing- 

 sentences as these : " Think of the many elements of thought a boy 

 comes in contact with when he reads Coesar and Tacitus in succession, 

 Herodotus and Homer, Thucydides and Aristotle ! . . . See what is im- 

 plied in having read Homer intelligently through, or Thucydides, or 

 Demosthenes ; what light will have been shed on the essence and laws 

 of human existence, on political society, on the relations of man to man, 



