passing of a lax hand over the
surfaces of disarranged things. It is difficult to read, because one's
mind slips over it and emerges too soon at the end, mildly puzzled
though incurious still as to what it is all about. One perceives Mr.
Gilkes through a fog dimly thinking that Greek has something vital to do
with "a knowledge of language and man," that the classical master is in
some mysterious way superior to the science man and more imaginative,
and that science men ought not to be worried with the Greek that is too
high for them; and he seems, too, to be under the odd illusion that "on
all this" Englishmen "seem now to be nearly in agreement," and also on
the opinion that games are a little overdone and that civic duties and
the use of the rifle ought to be taught. Statements are made--the sort
of statements that are suffered in an atmosphere where there is no
swift, fierce opposition to be feared; they frill out into vague
qualifications and butt gently against other partially contradictory
statements. There is a classification of minds--the sort of
classification dear to the Y.M.C.A. essayists, made for the purposes of
the essay and unknown to psychology. There are, we are told, accurate
unimaginative, ingenious minds capable of science and kindred vulgar
things (such was Archimedes), and vague, imaginative minds, with the
gift for language and for the treatment of passion and the higher
indefinable things (such as Homer and Mr. Gilkes), and, somehow, this
justifies those who are destined for "science" in dropping Greek.
Certain "considerations," however, loom inconclusively upon this
issue--rather like interested spectators of a street fight in a fog. For
example, to learn a language is valuable "in proportion as the nation
speaking it is great"--a most empty assertion; and "no languages are so
good," for the purpose of improving style, "as the exact and beautiful
languages of Rome and Greece."

Is it not time at least that this last, this favourite but threadbare
article of the schoolmaster's creed was put away for good? Everyone who
has given any attention to this question must be aware that the
intellectual gesture is entirely different in highly inflected languages
such as Greek and Latin and in so uninflected a language as English,
that learning Greek to improve one's English style is like learning to
swim in order to fence better, and that familiarity with Greek seems
only too often to render a man incapab