AN ADDRESS TO STUDENTS. 93 



English grammar was the most important discipline of 

 my boyhood. The piercing through the involved and 

 inverted sentences of * Paradise Lost ' ; the linking of 

 the verb to its often distant nominative, of the relative 

 to its distant antecedent, of the agent to the object of 

 the transitive verb, of the preposition to the noun or 

 pronoun which it governed, the study of variations in 

 mood and tense, the transpositions often necessary to 

 bring out the true grammatical structure of a sentence, 

 all this was to my young mind a discipline of the 

 highest value, and a source of unflagging delight. 

 How I rejoiced when I found a great author tripping, 

 and was fairly able to pin him to a corner from which 

 there was no escape 1 As I speak, some of the sentences 

 which exercised me when a boy rise to my recollection. 

 For instance, * He that hath ears to hear, let him 

 hear ; * where the ' He ' is left, as it were, floating 

 in mid air without any verb to support it. I speak 

 thus of English because it was of real value to me. I 

 do not speak of other languages because their educa- 

 tional value for me was almost insensible. But know- 

 ing the value of English so well, I should be the last 

 to deny, or even to doubt, the high discipline involved 

 in the proper study of Latin and Greek. 



That study, moreover, has other merits and recom- 

 mendations. It is, as I have said, organised and 

 systematised by long-continued use. It is an instru- 

 ment wielded by some of our best intellects in the 

 education of youth ; and it can point to results in the 

 achievements of our foremost men. What, then, has 

 science to offer which is in the least degree likely to 

 compete with such a system ? I cannot better reply 

 than by recurring to the grand old story from which I 

 have already quoted. Speaking of the world and all 

 that therein is, of the sky and the stars around it, the 



