1820.] 
But admitting, as we do admit, the 
comparative value of classical attain- 
ments, we proceed to that part of the Re- 
viewer’s animadyversions upon which we 
think he might even have been more ex- 
plicit, the time as. unnecessarily as ab- 
surdly consumed—generally speaking, 
in the very imperfect accomplishment 
of an exclusive object: 
“ From six or eight, till sixteen or seven- 
teen, nine or ten months in eyery precious 
year of youth are occupied, for six or eight 
hours of every day, in learning, or trying 
to Jearn, a little Latin and less Greek; in 
attempting, in fact, not to read and under- 
stand the matter of a classical author—to 
know the history, the poetry, the philosophy, 
the policy, the manners, and the opinions of 
Greece and Rome—but the grammar, the syn- 
tax, the parsing, the quantities, and the ac- 
cents—not in learning to write and speak the 
languages, but in getting by rote afew scraps, 
fabricating nonsense, or sense verses, it is 
indifferent which. In ten years of this 
labour, priyation, punishment, slavery and 
expense, what is gained even of this use- 
less trash? Nothing. Let the man who 
can now write and speak Latin—let him 
who ean read the poets, philosophers and 
historians with the facility and pleasure that 
he reads Hume and Milton, or even Boi- 
leau and Tasso, answer whether he ac- 
quired these powers at school, or whether 
he is not self-educated.”’ ' 
“ The apotheosis (of the university 
scholar, says the reviewer, and he says 
truly) is, to talk of accents which he knows 
not the purpose of, and never will dis- 
coyer; to squabble about digammas; to 
discover metres in A®schylus, of which 
Eschylus never dreamed; to read Homer 
in a measure which Homer would not re- 
cognize to be his own poetry, perhaps not 
even his own language.” 
Nothing can be more self-evident than 
this—nay, nothing more self-evident than 
the conviction of the pedants and peda- 
gogues who talk about these matters, if 
they would only ask themselves what 
their convictions are. Their very lan- 
guage betrays it: ‘ You must not read 
as you scan,” they say. Then why 
teach us so to scan? Are we to be 
flogged for six years into a_ theory, 
which the very floggers would laugh 
Moses Mendlesohn, of Berlin, comes streaming upon 
our recollection, like a flood of morning light, to 
shew us, as a crowd of other instances might 
shew, how perfectly unnecessary the aristocratical 
distinction of an university education is to the foster- 
ing and development of the finest and best powers of 
intellect, and to maturing the highest dignity, with- 
out eradicating the modest meekness of human chay 
yacter.—See our Rev. M.M., No. 409, p. 351. 
Absurdities of Classical Tuition. 
237 
in our faces if we were to cdtry into 
practice ?* 
As far as the writer before us goes up- 
on this subject, he is perfectly right ; 
and we lament that our limits compel 
us to restrain our inclination to pursue 
the subject still further. We perfectly 
agree that 
“the practical truth respecting the re- 
lation of a school, schoolboy and grammar, 
is, that grammar is not learned, and never 
can be learned, at a school, and that the 
attempt to teach it, the mode of teaching 
it, and the pretence of teaching a language 
through it, are insults to the common sense 
of mankind, as well as to the experience of 
ages.” 
We know, indeed, from what has 
passed under our own observation, that 
more Latin, for example, may be ac- 
quired without the impediments of a 
classical tutor, and the parrot-like ab- 
surdity of learning grammars, as it is 
called, by heart, in twelve months, than 
is usually acquired at our public schools 
in more than half as many years. We 
echo with full accordance the reprehen- 
sion, that in our public schools, 
“our own language and its authors are 
not only neglected, but excluded, by the 
system ; and were it not for our mothers 
and nurses, it is tolerably certain that we 
should possess as little language as an 
ourang-outang, since we should understand 
neither English, Latin, nor Greek.” 
We admit the perfect futility of the 
pretence that, by learning (or pretending 
to learn) the Greek and Latin Gram- 
mars, we become masters of our own; 
and that, without the study of the dead 
languages,we could never understand the 
etymology and structure of the English. 
We, also, shall be obliged, 
“if the Dean of Westminster will please 
to tell us how much he teaches, or knows, 
of Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, Celtic, 
French, Italian, Danish, Low Dutch, &c. ; 
and will also inform us how many English 
words come straightway to us from Greek 
or Latin.” 
The futility of the pretence, if it want- 
ed further exposition, might be illus- 
trated by therareness of the instances 
in 
* As if Homer and Virgil constructed their verses 
upon a theoretical principle of rhythmus, that was 
to be subverted in practice, before those verses could 
be rendered acceptable to the ear! adjusted imagi- 
nary quantities, to involve themselves in useless diffi- 
culties, and amuse Utopian sophists! and the mea~ 
sures they elaborated were addressed to the fingers of 
pedants, not to the organs of their readers, or the 
hearing of their auditors.—ssay on the study of Eng- 
lish Rhythmus, 1812. 
