as able to
learn about seventy words a day. The secret of his success was the
invaluable art of selection, and the strict limitation of effort in
accordance with a preconceived design. A traveller not so well skilled
in selection might have learned a thousand words with less advantage to
his travels, and a traveller less decided in purpose might have wasted
several months on the frontier of every new country in hopeless efforts
to master the intricacies of grammatical form. It is evident that in the
strictest sense M. Enault's knowledge of Norwegian cannot have been
sound, since he did not master the grammar, but it was sound in its own
strictly limited way, since he got possession of the four hundred words
which were to serve him as current coin. On the same principle it is a
good plan for students of Latin and Greek who have not time to reach
true scholarship (half a lifetime is necessary for that), to propose to
themselves simply the reading of the original authors with the help of a
literal translation. In this way they may attain a closer acquaintance
with ancient literature than would be possible by translation alone,
whilst on the other hand their reading will be much more extensive on
account of its greater rapidity. It is, for most of us, a waste of time
to read Latin and Greek without a translation, on account of the
comparative slowness of the process; but it is always an advantage to
know what was really said in the original, and to test the exactness of
the translator by continual reference to the _ipsissima verba_ of the
author. When the knowledge of the ancient language is not sufficient
even for this, it may still be of use for occasional comparison, even
though the passage has to be fought through _a coupes de dictionnaire_.
What most of us need in reference to the ancient languages is a frank
resignation to a restriction of some kind. It is simply impossible for
men occupied as most of us are in other pursuits to reach perfect
scholarship in those languages, and if we reached it we should not have
time to maintain it.

In modern languages it is not so easy to fix limits satisfactorily. You
may resolve to read French or German without either writing or speaking
them, and that would be an effectual limit, certainly. But in practice
it is found difficult to keep within that boundary if ever you travel or
have intercourse with foreigners. And when once you begin to speak, it
is so humiliating to speak badl