OXFORD AND GREEK 651 



the great schools is obvious. Almost simultaneously comes an 

 announcement made by the Head Masters of Eton, Charter- 

 house, Harrow, Rugby and Winchester " with the object of 

 discouraging the premature study of Greek in preparatory 

 schools," on the ground that such study " will cause incon- 

 venience and waste of time." Boys will be admitted and 

 classified on their knowledge of Latin, French and English ; 

 no Greek will be taught to boys of average ability until they 

 are about fifteen. At Winchester the time thus saved " will 

 be divided between history, geography, English and Latin " ; 

 and "boys who spend more than a year in that part [the 

 Greekless part] of the school will never do any Greek " ; and 

 consequently will never have even the option of entering at 

 seventeen for Mr. Murray's Leaving Certificate. Thus the Head 

 Masters are discouraging preparatory schools from starting 

 ordinary boys in Greek before they are fifteen ; and the Com- 

 pulsionists are proposing to make all Greek optional after the 

 age of seventeen. In the two short years which remain, how 

 much real Greek could even Dr. Rouse "preserve." 



Meantime, even the Compulsionists are not likely to carry 

 any " reforms " before the winter : and it may be well to look 

 about us in the interval. Oxford may or may not do something 

 decisive later on and Cambridge may or may not follow suit. 

 In the meantime, where do the Greekless stand ? In particular, 

 are they really excluded from Oxford at all ? If not, what is the 

 way to get in ? And who keeps the key ? 



Greekless Students already in Oxford 



Two other facts, which have almost wholly escaped recent 

 comment, deserve wider publicity, besides the quaint ancestry 

 of Smalls which I have already detailed. One is that the 

 exemption of special classes of students from the Greek in 

 Smalls — about which all this trouble has arisen — and even from 

 the Latin is, as a fact, nothing new. The facts were con- 

 cealed by both sides in all the recent debates : they have now 

 been published briefly by the Master of University College. 1 



But the special classes already so relieved are precisely 

 those which to the lay mind would seem to be most urgently 

 in need of Hellenisation, even if it had to be compulsory. 



1 Times, January 20, 1912. 



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