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Utility of the Study of Greek and Latin.

101

has occasion to understand it, but he must understand it. He not only finds it convenient, but he cannot avoid it.

If from the usages and principles of Greek or Latin, we go on to acquaint ourselves with the beauty or power of the language as used by its great writers, we are at once put upon comparing the secret of its beauty or its strength, with anything corresponding to it in English writers. If we find it, it is well. If we do not find it, we gain the habit of observing closely, of seeing nicely, and of feeling warmly, and we carry it, how can we help it, into all our reading of English. Demosthenes prepares us to appreciate Burke and Webster. Sophocles and Homer to admire Milton and Scott.

But we are told that Demosthenes studied his native language by studying Greek directly, that he copied Thucydides nine times over. Franklin, too, studied English in Addison, first writing off his thoughts into his own rude English, and then comparing the result with the polished English of the Essayist; and we are asked, why not take their method so direct and simple as it is; why go the round about way and not aim immediately at the result? To this we reply, that if Demosthenes had had a Thucydides in a language as noble as the Greek, from which to copy and recopy, the advantage to him would have been vastly greater even than it was; and if our would-be orators would do the same with Demosthenes, turning him backwards and forwards from Greek to English for nine successive times, their profiting would greatly appear. This is done now and then in these days. This was oftener done in the days of Roman education, as appears from the direction :

Vos exemplaria Græca

Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna.'

Besides, it is exceedingly difficult for a man to study his mother tongue at all, except as he measures it by another. A man can hardly see himself without having a mirror, in which to be reflected. It is rare that one can lift himself over a fence, by pulling at his own boot-straps. So of language. The scholar cannot take in pieces his own mother tongue, as he can one foreign to himself; certainly he cannot do it, till he has learned how, by building up one language at least from the bottom.

tongue is a part of himself. It is a part of all the thoughts that he has ever thought, from the tiny notions of infancy up to the

1 See also Cicero De Oratore 1. § 34.

sublime conceptions of enlightened manhood. It has entered into the substance of every feeling that has fired his heart. It cleaves to himself as the bark of certain shrubs, that seems à part of the very wood. You cannot analyze it, any more than you can criticise your own mother. The ancient languages are highly artistic. Their structure is as nicely jointed as the most polished machinery, not a joint of which can be seen; but as you unloose a screw, it falls in pieces. Or like a pure crystal with its lamina arranged by a given law; its seams cannot be traced, and yet the whole may be made to fall asunder like the quarters of an orange. The noblest works of the Latin and Greek writers were written by men, whose intellects were clear as well as deep, and who brought out their conceptions even when most profound, as Lake George reveals the crystal depths of its lowest bottom. Their taste was so severe that their sentences are like chisseled statues, well defined and sharp in their outline, and yet enveloped in the mysterious haze of spiritual beauty. Then their world of thought was most diverse from our own. Of course language was applied to different uses, on themes new and strange, and with a genius far other than that which animates modern writers. This makes the language more conspicuous, turns the attention of the student more strongly upon it, and makes him a more thorough master of its laws and resources. On this ground alone, for their use in the study of English, the classics must be studied by every man, who would get a scholar's mastery over his own tongue. The other reasons for their study, we shall not stay to give.

But if the classics are to be studied, how shall they best be mastered? How shall the golden hours of youth, lay the heavi est burden of gratitude on the later years for being most faithfully employed? How shall the peculiar adaptation of the earliest years of life, for the acquisition of language, be turned to its best account before these years are forever gone?

We propose the following plan, with some hesitation, as it is novel, and novelty is in our view no recommendation to anything; and with more, as it is a theory, and we are well aware, that in education the theory is far easier than its realization. The principles which the plan involves, however, we are sure are true and important.

At the age when the young student is to be earnestly put to the business of study, say from nine to twelve, let the German language be thoroughly mastered by the oral system so success

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fully drawn out by Ollendorff. At least let it be taught so thoroughly, that the scholar can speak and write the simpler sentences, and be familiar with all the peculiarities of its construction. We select a modern language, because it is more akin to the vernacular of the child, and because it has names for all the thoughts and things, which are already familiar,-and the German in preference to the French or Italian, because its structure is so artistic, and the laws of its grammar and construction are so rigid and uniform. Indeed, as far as structure is concerned, it is ideally perfect. With proper attention and no excessive labor, this language may be learned at an early age. Childhood and early youth, is the period set apart by nature for remembering words and phrases. The infant before the age of four or five, has mastered with ease and delight a language far more complicated, and it is no uncommon thing for it, under favoring circumstances, to learn two, as unlike as the German and English.

This work being accomplished, two great objects have been gained; first, the acquisition of language has been commenced by the verbal memory, under circumstances not repulsive; for the language is applied to the sports and the occupations of childhood. The other is that you have taught or rather broken in the pupil to the analysis of language, and have given him the notion of grammatical structure. The process of breaking in to the grammar of the Latin or the Greek, is most terrific to the majority of youthful scholars. They are furnished with a grammar and confined to its principles, with the promise that bye and bye they will understand their application. What they are studying for they know not, except that it is to learn Latin; and they often wish that Latin and the tower of Babel, were both at the bottom of the ocean. The reason is, they know not that language has a structure, any more than a healthy child knows that he has lungs or a stomach. They may have studied English grammar, and have been broken to the exercise of parsing; but parsing a lan

1 "Ollendorff's New Method of learning German, etc." Of this work there are four editions, as follows: London, Whittaker & Co., 2 vols. 8vo.; Frankfort, Charles Jugel, 2 vols. 12mo.; London, Hyppolyte Bailliere, 1 vol. 12mo ; New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1 vol. 12mo. The last is to be preferred.

"Ollendorff's New Method of learning French, etc." We have seen two editions only of this work; London, Whittaker & Co., 1 vol. 8vo.; Frankfort, Charles Jugel, 1 vol. 12mo. It is to be regretted that, owing to some claim of priority in respect to the application of the oral method by the publishers of Manesca's System of Teaching French, we are not likely very soon to see an American edition of Ollendorff's French Grammar.

guage already known, gives but a superficial insight into the structure of a language to be learned. Their Latin grammar may be relieved by exercises, but they cannot receive the idea that it was ever a language of living men.

These two objects being attained, the way is open for the natural and rapid acquisition of Latin and Greek. The memory has been accustomed to hold the words and phrases of another tongue, and the idea of what it is, to know and to use the principles of a language, has been fairly introduced into the mind.

Let the scholar now be introduced to the Latin or Greek. We would begin with the oral method; not so much to teach him words, or to enable him to converse in good Latin, as by constant repetition, to grind into his mind the paradigms and the syntax. This will lead him, if he would express an idea in Latin, to do it in the Latin idiom, and never to know any other than the Latin way. As he reads authors who wrote pure Latin, and he should never read any other, as he first makes himself master of the historians, and goes from them forward, with that perpetual review, so admirably described by Wyttenbach, and connects therewith frequent composition, in exercises carefully adjusted to his power to perform them with ease; the formidable heights, as he approaches, will be surmounted by easy gradations, and he shall wonder, as he stands upon the summit, at his own progress upward. The laws of structure in the Latin and Greek, will not be invested with that barbarous and scholastic terminology which so confounds our best grammars; but be seen as the natural method of construction, just as the Romans or Greeks build their houses after a different style from the moderns.

The advantages growing out of such a method are, not that it saves hard study, but that it prepares the way for hard study that shall be effective. It does not dispense with hard blows, that shall make the muscles strong, but it dispenses with misdirected blows, which strike in the wrong place, and sometimes upon the striker's own fingers. It would relieve many an honest and industrious student from the painful feeling, that he labors for nought and that his labor will never end by making him the master of the language. It would send our students to college, something more than lucky blunderers in Latin, and unlucky blunderers in Greek, to come out of college unlucky ones in both. It would raise the style of instruction at the university, and give it the literary and moral interest that should be attached to the study of the classics there. It would elevate the teacher above

1846.]

Claims of the Study of Mathematics.

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the mere drill-master which he altogether refuses to become, or submits to be, with an impatient grace. Last and not least, it would give those mighty minds of Greek and Roman name, that influence over our professional men and our literature, which they ought to exert, purifying the taste, enlarging the knowledge, refining the manners, and adding weapons of ethereal temper to the armory.

It is pitiful to think of the attainments of our best scholars, compared with what they might be, and compared with what an English or a German boy even counts but the ordinary furniture of a common establishment.1

The Mathematics next prefer their claims to our attention. No one who has a right to judge will doubt in the least, that these are to enter largely into the training of the youthful mind. The discipline which they give is peculiar. It acts directly on the framework of the mind. If the languages give strength and grace to the muscles, the mathematics harden the bones. If the gymnastics of the one give the man a graceful air, a quick movement and dexterous strength for ordinary occasions, those of the latter spread out the frame and knit the joints, and prepare for the desperate encounter with other minds. Nothing can supply the place of a thorough drill in all sorts of mathematics, to bring out and

1 Since this manuscript was forwarded to the press, the writer has been gratified to find the views here advanced, expressed in an article "On Teaching the Languages" in the Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 69, April 1845. The attention of teachers is invited to the suggestions therein contained. The writer contends that the oral or natural method should be followed in teaching every language, especially in the beginning. Its elements are four: "1. There is a direct appeal to the ear, the natural organ by which the language is acquired. 2. This appeal is made in circumstances where there is a direct relation, ipso facto, established between the sound and the thing signified. The sound makes directly for the thing like an electric flash, or it rests upon it like a graceful mantle. 3. The same living appeal to the ear is continuously and for a considerable length of time repeated. 4. The appeal is made under circumstances which cannot fail strongly to excite the attention and to engage the sympathies of the hearer." He afterwards gives a particular statement of his plan of teaching Greek and Latin under eighteen specifications, which is worthy the attention of all interested in the subject of teaching.

It is to be hoped, that Greek and Latin will not long be taught in this country, without large and long continued occupation in constructing from the very beginning; and that to write and speak both these languages may be esteemed as within the reach of the youthful scholar. The publication of such books in England as "Arnold's Series," and in this country of" Weld's Latin Lessons," and "Kreb's Guide for writing Latin," is a token for good.