July 16, 1886.] 



SCIENCK 



61 



what severe studies is due that easy grace. It is 

 so cheap to talk about gerund - grinding and 

 root-grubbing, as if gerund - grinding did not 

 lead to the music of the spheres, and root-grub- 

 bing to the discovery of the magic moly that 

 guards against the spells of Cu-ce, of ' euphrasy 

 and rue,' that purge ' the visual nerve.' He who 

 neglects the elements lacks the first conditions of 

 the artistic life. In the old times great artists did 

 not disdain to prepare their own varnishes ; and 

 the old paintings stand fresh to this day, while 

 many of their modern rivals, scarce a generation 

 old, are falling into decay beyond the hope of 

 recognition. The fair dream was embodied in 

 machine pigments, and the machine pigments 

 flake off, and with them the fair dream vanishes. 

 If grammatical research is pressed with regard 

 to truth, to that which is, then the gerund- 

 grinding, as the color - grinding, not only has 

 its warrant in itself as a useful exercise, but 

 it is sure to be available for higher purposes ; 

 and if it is not given to every one to make use 

 of grammatical results for artistic ends, still no 

 organic fact is without its value, none will fail 

 of its appropriate place in the completed sys- 

 tem of art as of science. To me, as an ardent 

 lover of literature, as one who was led through 

 literature to grammar and not through grammar 

 to literature, the fairest results of a long life of 

 study have been the visions of that cosmic beauty 

 which reveals itself when the infinitely little fills 

 up the wavering outline, and the features stand out 

 pure and perfect against the sky of God's truth. 

 Now, for the study of literature as an art, we 

 have every thing to learn from the old critics ; 

 and what our own Sylvester, our own Lanier, 

 have re-discovered as to the science of verse, is a 

 chapter from antique rhetoric. Mr. Lowell has 

 recently pointed out the great secret of Gray's 

 abiding popularity. That consummate master 

 did not disdain the close analysis of the sensuous 

 effect of sound ; and the melody of Coleridge is 

 due in a measure to a conscious though fitful 

 study in the same line. Of late an author, whose 

 charm of style was first appreciated in this 

 country, has written an essay in which he applies 

 phonetic analysis to the works of our great prose 

 vTriters, and strikes the dominant chord of what 

 seems unconscious music. The essay might have 

 been written in the beginning of the first century 

 as well as the end of the nineteenth, and have 

 been signed Dionysius of Halicarnassus as weU as 

 Robert Louis Stevenson. 



Whether, then, it be for the historical unity of 

 the race, whether it be for the human sanity of 

 classical literature, whether it be for the influence 

 on form either as example or precept, there is no 



danger that the ancient classics will be displaced 

 from the list of studies necessary for the highest 

 and truest culture. Nor do I think that the so- 

 called hard and dry and minute research to. this 

 and cognate provinces of study will ever be 

 abandoned in favor of a mere bellettristic phrase- 

 mongery about half-understood beauties. What 

 is hard, what is dry, what is minute, depends 

 very much on the spirit in which it is approached 

 by the student. 



Some years since, I attended a lecture by a great 

 master. The theme was the vanishing of weak 

 vowels in Latin. Candor compels me to state, 

 that, although I pride myself on being interested 

 in the most uninteresting things, I should have 

 chosen another subject for a specimen-lecture. 

 Candor compels me to state also that I very much 

 question whether the illustrious teacher would ac- 

 cept aU his own teachings to-day, such progress 

 do grammarians make in devouring themselves as 

 well as one another. I was much struck with the 

 tone in which he announced his subject. It was 

 the tone of a man who had seen the elements 

 melt with fervent heat, and the weak vowels 

 vanish at the sound of the last trump. The tone, 

 indeed, seemed entu-ely too pathetic for the oc- 

 casion ; but as he went on and marshalled the 

 facts, and set in order the long lines that con- 

 nected the disappearance of the vowel with the 

 downfall of a nationality, and great linguistic, 

 great moral, great historical laws marched in 

 stately procession before the vision of the student, 

 the airy vowels that had flitted into the nowhere 

 seemed to be the lost soul of Roman life, and the 

 Latin language, Roman literature, and Roman 

 history were clothed with a new meaning. And 

 so we of the language departments do not intend 

 to be disturbed in our work by criticism on the 

 arid details of our courses ; nor, on the other hand, 

 are we unmindful of the larger and more popular 

 aspects of the wide field of culture which we 

 occupy. 



There is no form of art, no phase of phi- 

 losophy, of ethics, no development of physical 

 science, that is alien to the student of language ; 

 and the student of physical science, in his turn, 

 needs the human interest of our study to save his 

 life from an austere and merciless quest of fact 

 and principle in a domain where man enters only 

 as a factor like any other factor. But first and 

 last, the scientific standard must be upheld for the 

 university man, be he a student of letters, be he a 

 physicist ; and that standard is the absolute truth, 

 the ultimate truth. ' Nothing imperfect is the 

 measure of any thing,' says the prince of ideal- 



ista.i B. L. GiLDERSLEEVE. 



1 (LreAes yap ovBiv ovSevbs Mf'Tpo;/ (Plato. Republic VI., 504 C). 



