[WORTH OF THE CLASSICAL WRITERS.]

The second branch of the argument relates to the greatness of the classical writers.  Undoubtedly the Greek and Roman worlds produced some very great writers, and a good many not great.  But the greatness of Herodotus, Thucydides, Demosthenes, Plato, and Aristotle can be exhibited in a modern rendering; while no small portion of the poetical excellence of Homer and the Dramatists can be made apparent without toiling at the original tongues.  The value of the languages then resolves itself, as has been often remarked, into a residuum.  Something also is to be said for the greatness of the writers that have written in modern times.  Sir John Herschel remarked long ago that the human intellect cannot have degenerated, so long as we are able to quote Newton, Lagrange and Laplace, against Aristotle and Archimedes.  I would not undertake to say that any modern mind has equalled Aristotle in the range of his intellectual powers; but in point of intensity of grasp in any one subject, he has many rivals; so that to obtain his equal, we have only to take two or three first-rate moderns.

If a few fanatics are to go on lauding to the skies the exclusive and transcendent greatness of the classical writers, we shall probably be tempted to scrutinize their merits more severely than is usual.  Many things could be said against their sufficiency as instructors in matters of thought; and many more against the low and barbarous tone of their morale—­the inhumanity and brutality of both their principles and their practice.  All this might no doubt be very easily overdone, and would certainly be so, if undertaken in the style of Professor Price’s panegyric.

The professor’s third branch of the argument comes to the real point; namely, what is there in Greek and Latin that there is not in the modern tongues?  For one thing, says the professor, they are dead; which of course we allow.  Then, being dead, they must be learnt by book and by rule; they cannot be learnt by ear.  Here, however, Professor Blackie would dissent, and would say that the great improvement of teaching, on which the salvation of classical study now hangs, is to make it a teaching by the ear.  But, says Professor Price:  “A Greek or Latin sentence is a nut with a strong shell concealing the kernel—­a puzzle, demanding reflection, adaptation of means to end, and labour for its solution, and the educational value resides in the shell and in the puzzle”.  As this strain of remark is not new, there is nothing new to be said in answer to it.  Such puzzling efforts are certainly not the rule in learning Latin and Greek.  Moreover, the very same terms would describe what may happen equally often in reading difficult authors in French, German, or Italian.  Would not the pupil find puzzles and difficulties in Dante, or in Goethe?  And are there not many puzzling exercises in deciphering English authors?  Besides, what is the great objection to science, but that it is too puzzling for minds that are quite competent for the puzzles of Greek and Latin?  Once more, the teaching of any language must be very imperfect, if it brings about habitually such situations of difficulty as are here described.