60 



SCIENCE, 



[Vol. Vni., No. 180 



successor of Sir John Cheke on this side of the 

 Atlantic ; of the last old woman, trousered or un- 

 trousered, that shall have discharged the office of 

 a professor of Greek in an American university. 

 People who have reached a certain age, and have 

 become somewhat reflective and prophetic, gen- 

 erally console themselves with Hezekiah's words. 

 But I cannot content myself with the thought 

 that there will be peace and truth in my days. 

 There has not been much of either of these com- 

 modities in my first half-century, and I do not 

 expect the market to be glutted with them in my 

 second. Surely there is no sign that there will 

 be any peace about Greek, or truth about Greek, 

 in any period that I can reasonably hope to reach. 

 But the peace and the truth that may be denied 

 me from without are vouchsafed me abundantly 

 from within ; and while many of my fellow- 

 workers are in woe for the silver shrines of Diana, 

 and mourn for the abandonment of Greek, and 

 sorrow that the trade in text-books languishes, I 

 am serenely standing where I stood many, many 

 years ago, when I published my first article on 

 the ' Necessity of the classics,' a title not to be 

 confounded with the ' Necessities of the classics,' 

 about which one hears far too much. I live in 

 the abiding assurance that what is inwrought in 

 the structure of our history and our literature 

 must survive so long as the history of our race 

 and the history of our language shall survive. 

 To disentwine the warp of the classics from the 

 woof of our life is simply impossible. One 

 mediaeval writer every one must know, and, 

 measured by modern standards, Dante was not a 

 classical scholar of the first rank. His perspective 

 of antiquity was false, his estimate of the poets of 

 the past was far from being just ; and yet what is 

 Dante if you loosen his hold on the classic time ? 

 I will not speak of Milton, steeped in classic lore : 

 I will speak of Shakspeare. None but those 

 who have read Shakspeare with the eye of the 

 classical scholar know how much the understand- 

 ing of Shakspeare is dependent on training in the 

 classics ; and more than once when I have hesi- 

 tated as to whether it was pedantry or not to use 

 a Greek word in my English discourse, I have 

 turned to Shakspeare. 



Is this the judgment of a man who can see 

 only through his own narrow casement ? Scarcely 

 had I set down those words, when the following 

 passage fell under my eye. It is to be found in 

 the recent introductory lecture of the professor of 

 poetry in the University of Oxford. "The 



thorough study of English literatm-e, as such, 



literature, I mean, as an art, indeed the finest of the 

 fine arts, — is hopeless unless based on an equal- 

 ly thorough study of the literatures of Greece and 



Rome. When so based, adequate study will not 

 be found exacting either of time or of labor. To 

 know Shakspeare and Milton is the pleasant and 

 crowning consummation of knowing Homer and 

 Aeschylus, Catullus and Virgil ; and upon no 

 other terms can we obtain it." ' 



To be sure, we have promise of mountains and 

 marvels if we break with the past. What satisfied 

 us in our boyhood no longer suits the fastidious 

 taste of the present ; and the Phoebus Apollo of 

 our youth, clad as to his dazzling shoulders with 

 a classic cloud, is shown up as nothing better than 

 a padded dandy. Our adored Thackeray is no 

 longer faultlessly attired in a garb of perfect 

 English : he is simply a stylistic old beau. The 

 plots in which we once took delight are nothing 

 but vulgar tricks, and the lifting of a teakettle lid 

 and the setting down of the same are intrigue 

 enough for the conduct of a two-year-long novel. 

 All this new literature has nothing to do with the 

 classics. Far from it. And yet I am not at all 

 shaken by the self-satisfied edicts of those who 

 rule so large a portion of the reading world ; and 

 I maintain with unwavering confidence that all 

 healthy literature must be kept in communion, 

 direct or indirect, with the highest exemplars of 

 our Indo-European stock ; and if any thing could 

 prove the necessity of a return to healthy human 

 nature, with its compassed form, its fair red and 

 white, it would be the utter wearisomeness of so 

 much recent fine writing, in which there is no 

 blood, no sap, nothing but division and subdivision 

 of nerve-tissue. ' A pagan suckled in a creed 

 outworn ' is a joy and delight in comparison with 

 the languid, invertebrate children of the great 

 goddess Anaemia. 



I have watched, with much interest the develop- 

 ment of the study of artistic composition in Eng- 

 lish during the last few years. Indeed, it would 

 have been necessary to stop one's ears to keep out 

 the shrilling cicada-sound of * art for art's sake,' 

 and all the theoretical buzz of aesthetic criticism. 

 The interest has not been unmingled with amuse- 

 ment, because the apostles of progress are preach- 

 ing very old doctrine, — a doctrine which I shall 

 be glad to re-enforce, so far as I can, before I ac- 

 quit myself of this function. Art for art's sake 

 involves the very hardest, the very driest study, 

 the very kind of study for which we philologians 

 and grammarians are contemned. The accom- 

 plished master in the art of dipping, who delighted 

 the world a few weeks since by his ' Letters to 

 dead authors,' made his swallow-wing strong on 

 the Elysian fields of the classics ; and those who 

 should hold him up as an example of the kind of 

 classical scholar we ought to have, little know to 

 I F. T. Palgrave, • Province and study of poetry.' 



