244 GREENE 



to educate, and was generons enough to receive as one of his 

 own sons his sister's son Nils, to be educated with them. This 

 peasant boy Nils Ingemarsson, remember, is the predestined father 

 of our Linnaeus. But this boy's-school scene, lying away back 

 almost upon the edge of mediceval times, and afar in the north 

 of Europe, well towards the country of the midnight sun, is a 

 pleasant scene, before which we must pause a moment. It is 

 in midst of a time when great people may lead simple lives, and 

 when a family group of boys, destined if possible to the intel- 

 lectual life — and at least to one of the learned professions, are 

 not at first to be sent away from home. They live under the 

 parental roof, and their Latin tutor lives there with them. That 

 is the language in which, later at college and at university, lec- 

 tures on all subjects will be given ; it will be the language in 

 which most of the books there used are printed ; the language 

 of recitation and of student debate. 



So these small boys at home begin Latin. They also so 

 begin it as if they were to become interested in it, and really 

 to learn the language, and not to end with a mere smattering 

 of it. They are to speak it, as well as read and write it. 

 Therefore it becomes at once, in as far as possible, the medium 

 of spoken intercourse between tutor and pupils ; the father of 

 the family himself incidentally aiding the tutor, by addressing 

 the youngsters at meal time or recreation in Latin, and requir- 

 ing them to answer in that, and not in the mother tongue. It 

 was a serious business ; the entrance to college, the matricula- 

 tion at any university, the rising to any learned profession even, 

 are dependent upon the boys having made good progress in the 

 acquisition of this, at that time the universal language of the edu- 

 cated. The Swede or Finlander even, if a college man, might 

 visit every country of Europe, and converse with the men of the 

 colleges and universities everywhere, without learning one of 

 the modern languages. Linnasus even, two generations this 

 side of the epoch of his great uncles the Tilianders, did this. 

 Now, among this aristocratic caste of the learned, in mediaeval 

 times and later, it was almost the universal custom with men of 

 lowly origin, to drop the ancestral family name, and assume a 

 Latin one. It was a fashion of the time ; and, as I have said, 



