reat influence on
the human mind, and which illustrates the character of an important
epoch in letters, politics, and morals, should disappear from the world.
If we err in this matter, we err with the gravest men and bodies of men
in the empire, and especially with the Church of England, and with the
great schools of learning which are connected with her. The whole
liberal education of our countrymen is conducted on the principle that
no book which is valuable, either by reason of the excellence of its
style, or by reason of the light which it throws on the history, polity,
and manners of nations, should be withheld from the student on account
of its impurity. The Athenian Comedies, in which there are scarcely a
hundred lines together without some passage of which Rochester would
have been ashamed, have been reprinted at the Pitt Press and the
Clarendon Press, under the direction of syndics and delegates appointed
by the Universities, and have been illustrated with notes by reverend,
very reverend, and right reverend commentators. Every year the most
distinguished young men in the kingdom are examined by bishops and
professors of divinity in such works as the Lysistrata of Aristophanes
and the Sixth Satire of Juvenal. There is certainly something a little
ludicrous in the idea, of a conclave of venerable fathers of the church
praising and rewarding a lad on account of his intimate acquaintance
with writings compared with which the loosest tale in Prior is modest.
But, for our own part, we have no doubt that the great societies which
direct the education of the English gentry have herein judged wisely.
It is unquestionable that an extensive acquaintance with ancient
literature enlarges and enriches the mind. It is unquestionable that a
man whose mind has been thus enlarged and enriched is likely to be far
more useful to the state and to the church than one who is unskilled, or
little skilled, in classical learning. On the other hand, we find it
difficult to believe that, in a world so full of temptation as this, any
gentleman whose life would have been virtuous if he had not read
Aristophanes and Juvenal will be made vicious by reading them. A man
who, exposed to all the influences of such a state of society as that in
which we live, is yet afraid of exposing himself to the influences of a
few Greek or Latin verses, acts, we think, much like the felon who
begged the sheriffs to let him have an umbrella held over his head f