in.] A LIBERAL EDUCATION. ^ 45 



To be sure, if a great comparative anatomist were 

 to look at these fabrications he might shake his head, 

 or laugh. But what then ? Would such a catastrophe 

 destroy the parallel? What think you would Cicero, 

 or Horace, say to the production of the best sixth 

 form going? And would not Terence stop his ears 

 and run out if he could be present at an English per- 

 formance of his own plays? Would Hamlet, in the 

 mouths of a set of French actors, who should insist 

 on pronouncing English after the fashion of their own 

 tongue, be more hideously ridiculous ? 



But it will be said that I am forgetting the beauty, and 

 the human interest, which appertain to classical studies. 

 To this I reply that it is only a very strong man who 

 can appreciate the charms of a landscape, as he is 

 toiling up a steep hill, along a bad road. What with 

 short-windedness, stones, ruts, and a pervading sense 

 of the wisdom of rest and be thankful, most of us 

 have little enough sense of the beautiful under these 

 circumstances. The ordinary schoolboy is precisely in 

 this case. He finds Parnassus uncommonly steep, and 

 there is no chance of his having much time or inclination 

 to look about him till he gets to the top. And nine 

 times out of ten he does not get to the top. 



But if this be a fair picture of the results of classical 

 teaching: at its best — and I gather from those who 

 have authority to speak on such matters that it is so — 

 what is to be said of classical teaching at its worst, 

 or in other words, of the classics of our ordinary middle- 

 class schools? 1 I will tell you. It means getting up 

 endless forms and rules by heart. It means turning 

 Latin and Greek into English, for the mere sake of 

 being able to do it, and without the smallest regard 



1 For a justification of what is here said about these schools, see that 

 valuable book, " Essays on a Liberal Education," passim. 



