VII SCIENCE AND ART AND EDUCATION 185 



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which exists in the world at the present time. I 

 have said before, and I repeat it here, that if a man 

 cannot get literary culture of the highest kind out 

 of his Bible, and Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and 

 Milton, and Hobbes, and Bishop Berkeley, to 

 mention only a few of our illustrious writers — I 

 say, if he cannot get it out of those writers, he 

 cannot get it out of anything; and I would 

 assuredly devote a very large portion of the time 

 of every English child to the careful study of the 

 models of English writing of such varied and 

 wonderful kind as we possess, and, what is still 

 more important and still more neglected, the habit 

 of using that language with precision, with force, 

 and with art. I fancy we are almost the only 

 nation in the world who seem to think that com- 

 position comes by nature. The French attend to 

 their own language, the Germans study theirs; but 

 Englishmen do not seem to think it is worth their 

 while. Nor would I fail to include, in the course 

 of study I am sketching, translations of all tlie 

 best works of antiquity, or of the modern world. 

 It is a very desirable thing to read Homer in 

 Greek; but if you don't happen to know Greek, 

 the next best thing we can do is to read as good 

 a translation of it as we have recently been 

 furnished with in prose. You won't get all you 

 would get from the original, but you may get a 

 great deal; and to refuse to know this great deal 

 because you cannot get all, seems to be as sensible 



