thing, to make use of all its riches, to try to enlarge its capabilities. We must assume that it stopped short with Cicero, or at latest with Tacitus, and expend untold study and pains on keeping it unimpeachably dead. Now I fully admit that this limitation, or at any rate some limitation, is quite necessary. We cannot treat Latin as a live language, for the principle of healthy growth, through the natural selection of new words and forms, went out of it once for all when it ceased to be one of the mediums in which men instinctively embodied their thoughts. If we must write it at all, we must write it to a certain standard; else we should soon produce a sort of pidgin-Latin, worse than the dog-Latin of the Middle Ages, inasmuch as there would be no sort of use or excuse for it. The writing of Latin, in fact, is an "elegant accomplishment," or it is nothing. But to say this is surely to reduce it to absurdity; for the few who ever attain accomplishment do so at the cost of a grotesquely disproportionate expenditure of time, while the many toil after it with infinite groaning and tribulation of spirit, and never attain it at all.

The study of the particular limitations of a given author's vocabulary has no more-nay, it

has less-essential reason in it than the study of a particular set of grammatical usages. As a body of documents bearing on the political and intellectual adventures of the human spirit, the writings of Cicero are of inestimable value. It is of some importance, too, that we should read them in the original, since our imaginative realisation of his period is thereby intensified. Moreover, the qualities of his rhetoric are worthy of study-his methods of exposition, argument, invective, and appeal.

They are

full of artistic interest and instruction. It may even be a valuable exercise for the student to imitate them—in his own language. But the peculiarities of Cicero's vocabulary and syntax are of no moment whatever. They are absolutely fortuitous-that is to say, they depend on psychological conditions which defy analysis. The fact that such and such a word had gone out of use in Cicero's time, or not yet come into use, or, though in currency, happened not to be employed by him, is just about as insignificant, in relation to the order of the universe, as anything well can be. It would be important if we wished to make ourselves agreeably comprehensible in conversation with Cicero himself or one of his educated contemporaries; but as

there is no likelihood of such an opportunity presenting itself, I venture to maintain that to spend hundreds of hours of our priceless youth in learning to avoid locutions unsanctioned by Cicero is a cruel and almost impious waste of time and mental energy.1

It is extremely difficult to express one's thought on this matter briefly, clearly, and without apparent over-emphasis. I am aware that some of the things I have said in this paper will appear excessive even to people who are not bigoted partisans of the established classical curriculum. Perhaps in examining the pleas usually put forward in its favour, I may succeed in defining my position more accurately, if not more acceptably.

I "G. M." writes: "A good composition teacher does not-as 'Kappa' implies-say mechanically, 'This word does not occur in Cicero; you are to imitate Cicero ; therefore, this word is wrong.' He merely sees that, roughly speaking, the style in a piece of composition is uniform throughout; that, to take a parallel, if you begin writing an essay in the style of Addison and introduce into it a phrase out of Carlyle, the result is something wrong. This may be a refinement, but it is surely part of the ordinary æsthetics of language."

POSTSCRIPT ON THE CLAIMS OF GREEK.A critic to whom I am deeply indebted at many points-"G. M." to wit-discusses as follows the suggestions put forth in the two foregoing chapters:

666

"I am not at all satisfied with the public

school teaching of the classics. I think with Kappa' that too many boys learn classics, "that too many hours are spent in teaching "classics, and that they are taught in too "narrow a way. There is too much grammar; "not enough philology; too much Latin, not 'enough Greek; too much composition, no "enough translation, not enough history, an. "the whole subject treated with too little "literary sense. Some of these points can be 'easily remedied. It is easy, for instance, to "reduce the number of boys, and it ought to "be easy to teach the remainder better. But, "as things are at present going, I see some "difficulties ahead. One is that the line of “least resistance, in reducing the time given to "the classics, is to begin by cutting off the best things and leaving the second-best. There

can be little doubt, for instance, that the most "valuable things in ancient literature are "Greek poetry and Greek philosophy. Yet

"even so sympathetic a critic as 'Kappa' is "going largely to drop these, and give us "instead a wide and fluent reading of Cicero "and Livy and the Scriptores Historiae Augustae! This must somehow be wrong.

"I do not see my way out of the difficulty, "but one fact to be remembered is this: In "former centuries, as 'Kappa' says, people "learned Latin because it was the general and "polite language. This reason has ceased to operate. But why did they learn Greek? "Not for that reason, nor mainly for any "reason that has ceased to operate, but for

exactly the same motives as ourselves—be"cause of the exceptional value and beauty of "Greek thought and Greek literature. I would "not say a word in favour of compulsory Greek,' yet one cannot help wondering "whether the line of abandoning the best "things first can really be the wisest way of "reforming classical education."

The remark about "Cicero, Livy, and the Scriptores Historiae Augustae" is apparently founded on a misunderstanding. When I spoke of a boy going "so far into Roman history as to read the chief Latin classics in the original," I was not thinking only of the