historical classics, but was using the word "history" in the wider sense which it is one of my primary objects to claim for it. The works of Lucretius and Catullus, Virgil and Horace, are in my eyes documents in Roman history, just as clearly as Livy or Suetonius.

I confess myself much impressed by "G.M.'s" suggestion as to the unwisdom of "cutting off the best things and leaving the second-best." Latin, of course, cannot be deprived of its historical position as the mother or step-mother of so many modern tongues, and our own among the number. Therefore it would be unreasonable to postpone it entirely to Greek. It must be the basis of linguistic study. But I am quite willing to believe that even for the boy who intends to make science rather than history the basis of his life-work-for the boy contemplated in the opening sentences of Chapter VIII.-it might in some cases be advisable to drop Latin altogether at the age of thirteen or so, and take up Greek instead. Experience has proved, I believe, that Greek can be learnt quickly and efficiently by boys who begin it at this comparatively late age. Of course it would only be a boy with strong literary tastes who would find it worth while to

learn a language for the sake of purely literary enjoyment; but it does not seem to me at all inconceivable that, under a reformed system, a good many boys would be moved, at this point in their progress, deliberately to face the extra labour and prefer the best to the second-best.

In The Upton Letters there occurs a passage which, though not directly germane to this point, shows that the writer would approve the idea of taking up a classical language at a comparatively late age, and for literary, as distinct from linguistic purposes. "My own "belief," he says, "is that Greek and Latin are things to be led up to, not begun with; that

they are hard, high literatures, which require "an initiation to comprehend; and that one "ought to go backwards in education, begin"ning with what one knows.

"It seems to me, to use a similitude, that the case is thus. If one lives in a plain and "wishes to reach a point upon a hill, one must "make a road from the plain upwards. It will "be a road at the base, it will be a track higher

up, and a path at last, used only by those "who have business there. But the classical theorists seem to me to make an elaborate

"section of macadamised road high in the 'hills, and, having made it, to say that the "people who like can make their own road "in between."

Surely a pregnant and memorable image!

IX

VERBAL CHESS-PLAYING

THE apologists of the predominant part played by prose and verse composition in the ordinary classical curriculum usually rely upon two main arguments: (1) that the act of translating into Latin and Greek is an incomparable training for the intellectual, and especially the literary, faculties; (2) that it is the only way to attain a thorough mastery of these languages, and a full appreciation of the peculiar qualities of classical literature.1

The latter plea, even if just in itself, is of

I "And yet this preposterous system continues year after year. I had an animated argument with some of the best of my colleagues the other day about it. I cannot tell you how profoundly irritating these wiseacres were. They said all the stock things—that one must lay a foundation, and that it could only be laid by using the best literatures; that Latin was essential because it lay at the root of so many other languages; and Greek, because

very limited value, since it is certain that only a small minority of the boys who spend the best hours of their best years over Greek and Latin composition ever do attain a wide knowledge or a keen appreciation of classical literature. The majority must profit in other ways, if they profit at all; so that the former pleathe unrivalled intellectual gymnastic supplied by prose and verse composition-must form the decisive line of defence. My answer to it has already been clearly foreshadowed; but I will now state it in greater detail.

Certainly no mental exercise involving memory, resourcefulness, and alertness of attention is ever entirely wasted. The solving of charades, or the writing of acrostics, has its value. A game of chess is a most invigorating mental exercise-for me, personally, it is much too severe. Now in Latin and Greek

there the human intellect had reached its high-water mark -'and it has such a noble grammar,' one enthusiastic Grecian said; that an active-minded person could do all the rest himself. It was in vain to urge that in many cases the whole foundation was insecure; and that all desire to raise a superstructure was eliminated."-The Upton Letters, p. 158.

It seems to me that, in this age of "compulsory games," a certain amount of chess might very well be made

K