SSICAL LITERATURE.
As long as gentlemen feel a deficiency in their own education, when
they have not a competent knowledge of the learned languages, so long
must a parent be anxious, that his son should not be exposed to the
mortification of appearing inferiour to others of his own rank. It is
in vain to urge, that language is only the key to science; that the
names of things are not the things themselves; that many of the words
in our own language convey scarcely any, or at best but imperfect,
ideas; that the true genius, pronunciation, melody, and idiom of
Greek, are unknown to the best scholars, and that it cannot reasonably
be doubted, that if Homer or Xenophon were to hear their works read by
a professor of Greek, they would mistake them for the sounds of an
unknown language. All this is true; but it is not the ambition of a
gentleman to read Greek like an ancient Grecian, but to understand it
as well as the generality of his contemporaries; to know whence the
terms of most sciences are derived, and to be able, in some degree, to
trace the progress of mankind in knowledge and refinement, by
examining the extent and combination of their different vocabularies.
In some professions, Greek is necessary; in all, a certain proficiency
of Latin is indispensable; how, therefore, to acquire this proficiency
in the one, and a sufficient knowledge of the other, with the least
labour, the least waste of time, and the least danger to the
understanding, is the material question. Some school-masters would
add, that we must expedite the business as much as possible: of this
we may be permitted to doubt. _Festina lente_ is one of the most
judicious maxims in education, and those who have sufficient strength
of mind to adhere to it, will find themselves at the goal, when their
competitors, after all their bustle, are panting for breath, or
lashing their restive steeds. We see some untutored children start
forward in learning with rapidity: they seem to acquire knowledge at
the very time it is wanted, as if by intuition; whilst others, with
whom infinite pains have been taken, continue in dull ignorance; or,
having accumulated a mass of learning, are utterly at a loss how to
display, or how to use their treasures. What is the reason of this
phenomenon? and to which class of children would a parent wish his son
to belong? In a certain number of years, after having spent eight
hours a day in "durance vile," by the influence of bod
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