To
get into touch with any author he must be read at a good pace, and by
reading of that kind there is plenty of time for a boy before he
reaches 17 to make acquaintance with much of the best literature both
of Greek and Latin.
Education must be brought up to date; but if in accomplishing that, we
lose Greek, it will have been sacrificed to obstinate formalism and
pedagogic tradition. The defence of classics as a basis of education
is generally misrepresented by opponents. The unique value of the
classics is not in any begetting of literary style. We are thinking of
readers not of writers. Much of the best literature is the work of
unlettered men, as they never tire of telling us, but it is for the
enjoyment and understanding of books and of the world that continuity
with the past should be maintained. John Bunyan wrote sterling prose,
knowing no language but his own. But how much could he read? What
judgments could he form? We want also to keep classics and especially
Greek as the bountiful source of material and of colour, decoration
for the jejune lives of common men. If classics cease to be generally
taught and become the appanage of a few scholars, the gulf between the
literary and the scientific will be made still wider. Milton will need
more explanatory notes than O. Henry. Who will trouble about us
scientific students then? We shall be marked off from the beginning,
and in the world of laboratories Hector, Antigone and Pericles will
soon share the fate of poor Ananias and Sapphira.
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