CLASSICAL STUDIES IN ENGLAND 89 



tendency to disparage composition in the dead 

 languages, to sacrifice it to general reading 

 about them. Latin verse-making may pro- 

 duce, as Dean Farrar said, a "finical fine- 

 lady ism of the intellect"; it may be an exotic 

 which flourishes most luxuriantly in the thin 

 artificial soil of vain and second rate minds: 

 but at least it does teach a knowledge of the 

 language. 



If too much reading of books about books 

 is not an unmitigated blessing, still less is it so 

 when the end and object of reading is an exam- 

 ination. Getting up facts for examination 

 purposes is rather a weary business; cram- 

 ming theories has really nothing to be said 

 for it; and cramming some one else's literary 

 appreciation is the worst of all. There is this 

 great justification of the examinational sys- 

 tem, — that it shows a man at his worst and pro- 

 tects the public by destroying any illusions 

 about him. And if papers of questions are not 

 well adapted to a course of general reading 

 about classical antiquity, what is to be said 

 about their relation to specialized studies and 

 "intensive culture"? One need not enlarge on 



