Could it have been that the time allotted to it was
insufficient? Dr. Arnold had some suspicions that this might be
the case. With modern languages there was the same difficulty.
Here his hopes were certainly not excessive. 'I assume it,' he
wrote, 'as the foundation of all my view of the case, that boys
at a public school never will learn to speak or pronounce French
well, under any circumstances.' It would be enough if they could
'learn it grammatically as a dead language. But even this they
very seldom managed to do. I know too well,' he was obliged to
confess, 'that most of the boys would pass a very poor
examination even in French grammar. But so it is with their
mathematics; and so it will be with any branch of knowledge that
is taught but seldom, and is felt to be quite subordinate to the
boys' main study'.
The boys' main study remained the dead languages of Greece and
Rome. That the classics should form the basis of all teaching was
an axiom with Dr. Arnold. 'The study of language,' he said,
'seems to me as if it was given for the very purpose of forming
the human mind in youth; and the Greek and Latin languages seem
the very instruments by which this is to be effected.' Certainly,
there was something providential about it-- from the point of
view of the teacher as well as of the taught.
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