600 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. a 
Do you know why Portia the Maid of Belmont remained so long unmarried ? 
It was ‘because her suitors assumed that the golden language of conquest was 
Greek and the silver language was Latin. If you read between the lines you 
will see that this is what Shakespeare meant. His leaden casket signified the 
English of Belmont-cum-Stratford-on-Avon. 
The worst of it is that the average boy who has done almost nothing else 
than Latin and Greek at school gets absolutely no love for the classics; he never 
reads a Greek or Latin author after he leaves school. He might enjoy them in 
translations, but he hates their names, and even if he did not it would never 
enter his head to read a ‘crib.’ Surely this is the natural effect of the school- 
room routine. 
Followmg that article in The Times newspaper, referred to above, in a 
discussion, the secretary of the Association for Improving the Teaching of Latin 
said, ‘Out of the vast number of boys who learned Latin only a few reached 
the stage when they could read the classics with any pleasure. A still smaller 
minority continued their classics after they had left school or the University. 
The great majority left school with very little, if anything, as the result of years 
spent in the study of the classics.’ The next speaker said that the reforms 
suggested ‘ were based upon the assumption that the present method of classical 
education was wholly bad. He did not agree.’ Nor do I agree. I think that 
if there is one subject that the ordinary public schoolmaster can teach it is 
Latin. I take the first statement as right, however. I have always said so, 
loudly, to an unbelieving world that thought me prejudiced, and here we see a 
lover of the classics inadvertently supporting me, and surely every fair-minded 
schoolmaster must agree with him, at all events as concerning the average boy. 
It is not the method of teaching that is wrong; it is merely that Latin as a 
school subject for the average boy must be altogether condemned. It takes from 
him all interest in every kind of literature; it makes him dislike reading. We 
must have some compulsory subjects, and I think that any boy may be taught 
any subject—to some extent; but we ought to have as few of these compulsory 
subjects as possible, because any subject may be found very difficult by certain 
classes of intelligent minds. And it is surely ludicrous when a clever mathema- 
tician, well read in Natural Science and fond of English literature, is plucked 
for his degree because of his poor Latin or Greek. JI knew a case where the first 
classic of his year would have failed to pass his ‘ Little-go’ only that special 
arrangements were made to let him through his mathematics easily. My own 
career was nearly ruined because I failed in a French examination. 
Before a student enters a University he has to pass a Matriculation examina- 
tion, so that we may be sure that he is fit to follow any of the courses of study. In 
medieval times the one compulsory subject was Latin, because all the literature 
known to students and teachers was in Latin, all lectures were delivered 
in Latin, all teaching was in Latin. Consequently in some Oxford Colleges a man 
was fined if he spoke in any other tongue. Then came the time when there was 
still no English literature, and not only was the best literature in Greek, but Greek 
was the only approach to natural knowledge, so Greek also was compulsory, and 
so it has remained to this day—-to this day when English literature (including 
translations) is of greater worth than any ancient or, indeed, any other modern 
literature; when all teaching, all lectures are given in English, and when our 
English knowledge of Natural Science is not only infinitely greater than anything 
possessed by the ancients; but it enables us to say that the ancients were hope- 
lessly wrong; when nobody but the official University orator or some traveller 
ignorant of the language of a foreign country speaks Latin and then speaks 
rather the language of Stratford-atte-Bow than the Latin of the City of the 
Golden Shields. The men of the City of the Violet Crown were not handicapped 
by being compelled to Jearn any other language than their own, to waste their 
time on mere words; ‘they were engaged in pursuits of a higher nature, in 
acquiring a knowledge of things. They did not, like us, spend seven or ten 
years of scholastic labour in making a general acquaintance with two dead 
languages. These years were employed in the study of nature and in gaining 
the elements of philosophical knowledge from her original economy and laws.’ 
The above quotation is from the Langhornes’ ‘ Life of Plutarch,’ and it is par- 
ticularly valuable as expressing the views of two great classical scholars. 
I would make a knowledge of Latin or of Greek compulsory only on students 
