BY

MARIA EDGEWORTH,

AUTHOR OF LETTERS FOR LITERARY LADIES, AND THE PARENT'S ASSISTANT;

AND BY

RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH,

F.R.S. and M.R.I.A.

VOL. II.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD.

1798.

Ste?

CHAPTER XII.

ON GRAMMAR, AND CLASSICAL LITERATURE.

As long as gentlemen feel a deficiency in their own education, when they have not a competent knowledge of the learned languages, fo long must a parent be anxious, that his fon fhould not be exposed to the mortification of appearing inferior 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 fcarcely 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 profeffor of Greek, they would mistake them for the founds 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 moft fciences are derived, and to be able, in fome degree, to trace the progrefs of mankind in knowledge and refinement, by examining the extent and combination of their different vocabularies.