105 



caturod by Shillahor in his '• S:i.vinj,'s (if Mrs. rartiiiRton." Mrs. Partington is 

 a t.v|K> of tlio person wlio lias no atlccinatc sense of tlie original meaning; of the 

 classieal derivatives wliicli lie nses. rneducated colored people often furnish 

 ixaniples of si)eeeli of this kind. One of them, for instance, noes to a drug 

 store and a^j!^s for a " nanny goat " for a iiarticular poison, meaning " antidote." 

 And Mrs. Tartington thought that " total depravity was a very good doctrine 

 if you could only live uji to it." 'Plie (Sreetc meaning of the word "antidote" is 

 Just as easy to remeinher as the naiiw' of the domestic aiuinal to a person with 

 a smattering of (Jreelc. and the Latin meanings of " total " and " dejiravity " are 

 ti|ually easy to the one who has given some study to liatin. 



The fact that what is called a complete English dictionary contains three 

 Latin or (Jreek derivatives to one word from a (iothic s<mrce shows us that to 

 the educate<l man the livest i»art of his language, so far as science and literature 

 and the higher order <if thoughts are coiu-erned. is the Latin :iiid Creek con- 

 tingent. .Viiy person who had to learn botany or chemistry would find it worth 

 his while to liegiii l>y a three years' study of Latin and (Jrei'k just for the l»eiipfit 

 of these languages in liis scientilic education. So, too. for history or for poetry, 

 and by far more essential for medicine, the law. and divinity. 



1 a(hi!it that there is abuse of time and energy in stu<lying Latin according to 

 the favorite methods jiursued in pn*paratory schools and colleg«'s. I had a 

 poet friend, a chum of mine at IMiillips Academy. Andover. in the times of 

 Samuel II. Taylor, the (Jreek scholar. Meeting him at a reunion of (mr class 

 after many years, I asked him. " What did you learn at Andover, and what did 

 our class learn V" lie replied. "We learned the exceptions. To Ix' sure, we 

 learned the paradigms; liut that did not take much of our time." It was the 

 committing to memory of lists of unfamiliar words which were said to lie ex- 

 ceptions to the regular declensions and conjugations. The memorizing of these 

 exceptions, however, is not a serious matter as compared with the time spent 

 ill classical schools in learning the t|uantities of vowels in Latin words. In the 

 English universities. Oxford and Cambridge, and at the English jireparatory 

 schools they learn not only the laws for (luantity. but they learn the numerous 

 exceptions and the innumerable cases of vowels which -avo long or short only 

 "by usage." They learn these with such ]>ainstaking as would be reiiuired to 

 make Latin i>oets. and they test the (piality of their scholarship by actually 

 requiring written verses in Latin. This is .-ill the more astonishing Itecause no 

 person knows precisely how the iiuantity of Latin vowels affected their i)ro- 

 nunciation. There may be some shrewd guesses on this point, but there is little 

 real knowledge on it and no complete theory. 



One is led to suppose that the English gentleman desires to celebrate his con- 

 tempt for what is useful not only in the line of bread and butter studies, but 

 even in the line of producing science and literature, lie studies the (juantities 

 of Latin vowels to show his contempt for utilities either in the conipiest of 

 nature or in the combination of men into social wholes for business or politics. 

 I admit that in some cases, especially in the case of Tennyson and iNIilton. the 

 study of Latin quantities may possil>ly have quickened the ear to the melodies 

 possible in the English tongue, and that we owe in the case of Tennyson and 

 Milton much to their work in the preparatory school in the way of learning 

 quantities. But if " Shakespeare had little Latin and less Greek," he certainly 

 excelled both Tennyson and Milton in his discovery of the capacity of his native 

 tongue for a greater compass of music than the classic tongues ever possessed. 

 However this may be. I for one am glad that American preparatory schools, 

 especially in the public high schools, waste very little time in the learning of 

 Latin quantities. For those who claim conservatism in this matter and insist 

 with great stress on the study of quantity as the real key to the benefits of 

 Latin and Creek there is very little defense, since the studies of comparative 

 phonology and other branches of classical philology reached their height in the 

 last generation. 



It remains true and will remain true that in the English language Latin and 

 Greek must he studied because they are still living languages and not dead 

 languages, because they are the living languages not of the colloquial vocabulary 

 of common sensuous experience, but of the scientitic vocabulary not only of the 

 strict sciences like mathematics and logic and physics, but of the experimental 

 and hi.storical sciences one and all. and because the characteristic vocabularies 

 and styles of the great literary writers of English are to be identified through 

 the possession which they show of fine shades of meaning and the newly 

 attained powers of expression of moods of the soul, their refinements of taste, 

 lofty aspirations, and subtle thoughts, all made possible by skill in using the 



