CLASSICS IN MODERN EDUCATION. 1 19 



[Renaissance men] teaching Greek like passionate missionaries, as a 

 progressive Chinaman might teach English to the boys of Pekni, clumsily, 

 impatientl}^ with rod and harsh urgency, hut sincerely, patriotically, be- 

 cause they felt that behind it lay revelations, tlie irrestible stimulus to 

 a new phase of history. That was long ago. A new great world, a 

 vaster Imperialism had arisen about the school, liad assimilated all these 

 amazing and incredible ideas, had gone on to new and yet more amazing- 

 developments of its own. . . . 



" There is no herceness left in the teaching now. . . . 



" So it was I occupied my mind with the exact study of dead languages 

 for seven long years. It was the strangest of detachments. We 

 would sit under the desk of such a master as Topham like creatures who 

 had fallen into an enchanted pit, and he would do his considerable best 

 io work us up to an entliusiasm for, let us say, a Greek play. If we 

 flagged, he would lash himself to revive us- He would walk about the 

 class-room mouthing great lines in a rich roar, and asking us with a 

 flushed face and shining eyes if it was not ' glorious ' . . . Glorious ! 

 And being plastic human beings we would consent that it was glorious^ 

 and some of us even achieved an answering reverberation and a sym- 

 pathetic flush We all accepted from him unquestioniiigly that 



these melodies, these strange sounds, exceeded any possibilitv of beauty 

 that lay in the Gothic intricacy, the splash and glitter, the jar and re- 

 covery, the stabbing lights, the heights and broad distances of our English 

 tongue. That indeed was the chief sin of him. It was not that he was 

 for Greek and Latin, but that he was fiercely against every beauty that 

 was neither classic nor deferred to classical canons. 



"And what exactly did we make of it, we seniors who understood 

 it best? We visualised dimh% through that dust and the grammatical 

 difficulties, the spectacle of the chorus chanting grotesquely, helping out 

 protagonist and antagonist, masked and buskined, with the telling of 

 incomprehensible parricides, of inexplicable incests, of gods faded beyond 

 symbolism, of that Relentless Law we did not believe in for a moment, 

 that no modern Western European can believe in. . . . And then out 

 one would come through our grey old gate into the evening" light and 

 the spectacle of London hurrying like a cataract, London in black and 

 brown and blue and gleaming silver, roaring like the very boom of 

 Time- We came out into the new world no teacher has yet had the . 

 power and courage to grasp and expound- Life and death sang all 

 about one, joys and fears on such a scale, in such an intricacy as never 

 Greek nor Roman knew. . . • 



" That submerged and isolated curriculum did not even join on to 

 living interests where it might have done so- We were left absolutely 

 to the hints of the newspapers, to casual political speeches, to the car- 

 toons of the comic papers, or a chance reading of some socialistic 

 pamphlet for any general ideas whatever about the huge swirling world 

 process in which we found ourselves. I always look back with particular 

 exasperation to the cessation of our modern history at the year 1815. 

 There it pulled up abruptly, as though it had come upon something 

 indelicate. . . ." 



§ 7. Few will deny the substantial truth of this picture. 

 Few will fail to recognise that Wells has here voiced a revolt to 

 which their hearts respond. I am not thinking merely of the 

 average school-boy who generally learns too little of the Classical 

 languages to come to love them for the sake of the wonderful 

 world of ideas to which they are the gate. Even the student 

 who becomes enthusiastic in his classical studies must surely at 

 times doubt the value of his enthusiasms, and wonder whether the 

 time spent on Classics might not have been better spent other- 

 wise. However much a man knows of Greece and Rome, he 

 must be singularly lacking in sympathy and catholicity of interests 



