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 REESE LIBRARY 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Received ^-Cy6~- • '^o9 
 
 Accession No. V^ V / ^ • (^^^-^^ No. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/daydreamsofschooOOthomrich 
 
DAY DREAMS. 
 
DAY DREAMS 
 
 OF A SCHOOLMASTER 
 
 BY 
 
 D'ARCY W. THOMPSON 
 
 OvK ovap, akV oveiap. 
 
 BOSTON, U. S. A. 
 D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS 
 
 i8q8 
 

 7 6'/ / f 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The UrDER Form at St. Edward's, and the 
 
 Theory of Elementary Unintelligibility, 1 
 
 The Upper Form at St. Edward's, and its Latin 
 
 Verses, 16 
 
 The Hellenists, 28 
 
 The ol TToXXol, or the Crew of Ulysses, . . 36 
 
 On Climbing, 53 
 
 From Penna to Possum, 63 
 
 From Possum to Ph^drus, 75 
 
 From Ph^drus to Farewell, .... 83 
 
 Teeth on Edge, and Closed Lips, ... 96 
 
 Place aux Dames, 109 
 
 Solar Specks, ...... p . 124 
 
 Prolusiones Homeric^ — 
 
 Mort d' Arthur, 148 
 
 Ulysses, 150 
 
 Edwin of Deira, 152 
 
 Enallos and Cymodameia, .... 154 
 
 The DpATH of Artemidora, .... 156 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Back to Babel, 158 
 
 Dissolving Views, . . . . . . . 190 
 
 The King of the Alphabet, .... 202 
 
 Fallacies, 213 
 
 Nursery Reform, 229 
 
 Dead Languages, 242 
 
 A Vision, 247 
 
 The Schoolmaster's Love -Letter, . . . 251 
 
 SUUM CUIQUE 255 
 
 The Social Position of Schoolmasters, . . 268 
 
 Tint, Tint, Tint, 279 
 
 The Pressure of Gentleness, .... 294 
 
 Schola in Nubibus, 307 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 L 
 
 THE UNDER FORM AT ST. EDWARD's, AND THE 
 THEORY OF ELEMENTARY UNINTELLIGIBILITY. 
 
 This day— October 10th, 1863— my Jun- 
 ior Class, in the Schola Nova of Dunedin, 
 had its first lesson in Greek ; put aside 
 its frock and linen pants, and donned its 
 breeches, intellectually. No transition-state 
 is agreeable to the subject, or graceful in 
 the eyes of a looker-on. These little fellows 
 will all waddle, duck-like, for a considerable 
 period in their new clothes : some will never 
 habituate themselves thereto ; but will by 
 and by discard them, and return to the frock 
 and linen pants ; affording, it may be, a pas- 
 sing laugh to the unpliilosophic bystander, 
 but themselves deriving permanent comfort 
 and unrestricted swing of limb. 
 
2 THE UNDER FORM 
 
 The step these innocents take to-day is^ 
 of course, a step into the dark. Will the 
 darkness, into which they so confidingly 
 plunge, be to them perpetual and Cimmer- 
 ian? or, will it duly break into a clear, 
 bright dawn ? Within three years, the ma- 
 jority of them will have probably passed 
 from within these walls. What an opportu- 
 nity is meanwhile afforded of wreaking upou 
 their little heads summary vengeance for 
 the wrongs done me by a past generation ! 
 of doing to them as I was done by ! Not 
 only should I thus be giving vent to my 
 indignation for past ill-usage ; but, strange 
 to say, I should actually be carrying out 
 the wishes of the parents of my victims; 
 for, in general, those parents dread new- 
 fangled ways, and cling piously to old scho- 
 lastic superstitions. Well : for three years, 
 then, let me lead this little flock, blind-fold- 
 ed, by curiously sinuous and zigzag ways ; 
 so that, always in motion, they may never 
 progress ; and at the close of the triennium, 
 remove the bandage from their eyes, and 
 show them, to their wonderment, that tliey 
 are standing by the starting-post ; that tliey 
 
AT ST. EDWARD'S. 3 
 
 have been dancing their Greek hornpipe 
 on a plate. 
 
 This first lesson has turned back the dial- 
 hand of my days, and for a passing hour I 
 am standing in the dawn of my own most 
 dreary, weary boyhood. 
 
 I was not quite seven and a half years 
 old, when my dear Mother was presented 
 with a free admission for myself, her eldest 
 son, to the Grammar School of St. Edward. 
 The offer was too valuable an one to admit 
 of refusal. 1 was accordingly prepared for 
 admission to my new home, by having my 
 hair somewhat closely shorn, and by being 
 clothed in a long, blue gown, not of itself 
 ungraceful, but opening in front so as to 
 disclose the ridiculous spectacle of knee- 
 breeched, yellow-stockinged legs. After 
 some laughter at my disguise, and much 
 weeping at my banishment, I bade good- 
 bye to my dear Mother. We little thought 
 at the time that school was to be my home 
 for twelve long years. 
 
 The da J" after my entry into this colossal 
 institution, a Latin grammar was placed 
 into my hands. It was a bulky book of its 
 
4 TUE UNDER FORM 
 
 kind: considering the diminutiveness of 
 the new student, a portentously bulky 
 book. It was bulky in consequence of its 
 comprehensiveness. It gave all imaginable 
 rules, and all imaginable exceptions. It 
 had providentially stored within it the req- 
 uisite gear for whatever casualty might be- 
 fall us. The syntax rules, in the edition 
 presented to me, were, for the first time, 
 rendered mercifully in English : those for 
 gender and quantity remained in the old 
 Latin ; and the Latin was communicated in 
 a hideously discordant rhythm. Over a 
 space of years we went systematically 
 through and through that book ; page after 
 page, chapter after chapter. It was all un- 
 intelligible ; all obscure ; but some spots 
 were wrapt in more than ordinary gloom. 
 Our chronic bewilderment was varied from 
 time to time by shooting pains, brought on 
 by some passage or expression unusually 
 indigestible. We read of creatures, happily 
 few in number, that v/ent about in the Epi- 
 coene (render. Were they fish, flesh or fowl ? 
 Would the breed be ever extinct ? Under 
 certain desperate circumstances, a participle 
 
AT ST. EDWARD'S. 5 
 
 and a noun together were bound hand and 
 foot, and put into the Ablative Absolute. 
 What had they done, to be treated in a man- 
 ner thus peremptory, unreasonable, crotch- 
 ety? Did they ever get out after being 
 once put in ? Then there were gerunds in 
 Di^ Do^ and Dum. How they recalled to us 
 that old Fee^ Fi^ Fo^ Fum^ and the smell of 
 English blood ! And supines in Um and U, 
 What was the meaning of these cabalistic 
 names? I did not know then; and I do 
 not know now. And yet I have been be- 
 hind the scholastic curtain for twelve long 
 years. 
 
 There was no entire chapter in the book 
 more broken with pitfalls than that, com- 
 posed in doggrel, which treated of the rules 
 for gender. Not one word, I am sure, of an 
 exceptionable kind had escaped the dia- 
 bolic ken of the compiler. String upon 
 string of jangling, unmusical lines could we 
 repeat with a singular rapidity; under- 
 standing nothing ; asking no questions. Oh 
 the sweet, simple faith of childhood ! We 
 had been told to commit those lines to mem- 
 ory, and we committed them. They would, 
 
6 THE UNDER FORM 
 
 doubtless, do us good in the latter days. 
 We should, at all events, be flogged there 
 and then, unless we sang them like caged 
 birds. It was the will of Allah: Allah was 
 good. 
 
 Many of the words in that puzzling lit- 
 urgy I have never fallen in with since, 
 though I have been a student of its dialect 
 for twenty-seven years. Some of the words 
 I have since discovered to be grossly in- 
 decent in their naked English meaning. 
 Well, well: they might have all been so, 
 without doing more harm to our morality, 
 than they did good to our understandings. 
 I can vividly recollect one circumstance, 
 that broke in a startling manner to me the 
 dull monotony of these years. It was a hot 
 and sultry afternoon. My wits were wan- 
 dering : I suppose in green fields. So, in 
 class-time when my turn came round, my 
 brain was a tabula rasa: the inscription 
 was clean wiped out, that had been care- 
 fully written there but half an hour before. 
 The Master, a clergyman, had broken his 
 cane upon a previous delinquent ; his rid- 
 ing-whip was sent for, and I received ten 
 
AT ST. EDWARD'S. 7 
 
 lashes on my two hands. I was then under 
 nine years of age. For a passing bewilder- 
 ment, I was treated as though I had broken 
 into an orchard. Our Master was shortly 
 after, if I mistake not, presented to a vicar- 
 age: he was in appearance almost effemi- 
 nately genteel; in dress, scrupulously neat; 
 with fingers tapering and delicate as a 
 lady's. 
 
 The round-shot of a Latin grammar had 
 been, I believe, tied to our legs, to prevent 
 our intellectually straying. However, in 
 course of time we became habituated to the 
 encumbrance, and ceased to feel it as a se- 
 rious check upon our movements. The 
 hour at length arrived, in which it was con- 
 sidered wise to attach another round-shot 
 to our other legs. This was done accord- 
 ingly in the shape of a Greek grammar, 
 written entirely in Latin. This extra weight 
 answered the purpose effectually : we were 
 all brought to an immediate standstill. 
 
 I have sometimes thought, in a charitable 
 mood, that the compiler of this book — 
 Heaven forgive him ! to word it mildly — 
 composed it originally for such students as 
 
8 THE UNDER FORM 
 
 might be familiar with the tongue in which 
 it was written. My comrades and I were 
 not in that condition. We had to grapple 
 with the difficulties of one unknown tongue 
 through the medium of another tongue al- 
 most equally unknown. We were, in fact, 
 required to give a determinate solution to 
 an indeterminable problem. We had set 
 us the equation — 
 
 and were called upon to give the values of 
 X and y in terms of constants to be manu- 
 factured by ourselves. It w^as the old, old 
 story. Bricks without straw. "Ye are 
 idle : " said the taskmasters. So they took 
 away our scanty wisps; but diminished 
 nought of the tale of bricks as heretofore. 
 
 I have heard the system casuistically de- 
 fended by men who, old prejudices apart, 
 were intelligent and sagacious. "The ab- 
 stract rules of grammar," said they, "are at 
 first above the comprehension of all child- 
 ren. Even if they be worded in the mother- 
 tongue, it will be long before their true and 
 full significance is apprehended. If, then, 
 these rules be communicated in a strange 
 
AT ST. EDWARD'S. Q 
 
 language, the very difficulty surmounted in 
 committing them to memory will imprint 
 them the more lastingly on their under- 
 standings." 
 
 Now it would occur to me — but my sim- 
 plicity may be to blame — that, if subjects, 
 concrete or abstract, be beyond a boy's com- 
 prehension, the less he has to do with them 
 the better. We never ask an errand-boy to 
 carry a weight we know he cannot lift. 
 Might not the communication of such sub- 
 jects be deferred to a period, when, by a 
 process of training, a boy's intellect were 
 rendered capable of grasping them? Or, 
 again, at the expense of a little time and 
 trouble, might not the majorit}^ of gram- 
 matical rules be so simply worded, and so 
 familiarly illustrated, as to be brought home 
 to the intelligence of boys of ordinary ca- 
 pacity? I grant the difficulty, if we persist 
 in using unintelligible terms, as Grerunds^ 
 Supines^ Aorists^ and the like ; and rules 
 that would be awkwardly enough worded, 
 even if they were correct in substance. 
 
 But, for the sake of argument, let us ad- 
 mit the defence put forward f or the o ld sys- 
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^ OF 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 LCALIFORt^ 
 
10 THE UNDER FORM 
 
 tern of Elementary Unintelligibility. Then, 
 surely, we may push it to its logical issues. 
 All will allow morality to be higher than 
 grammar. It is, consequently, a more im- 
 portant task to imprint upon the minds of 
 our children the rules of the former than 
 the rules of the latter. But what will serve 
 to imprint indelibly the rules of one science, 
 will serve also to imprint the rules of an- 
 other ; supposing that, for the time, it be 
 unnecessary that either set of rules be un- 
 derstood. Then why not communicate the 
 Ten Commandments through the medium 
 of Chinese ? Or, if that method be found 
 insufficiently irksome and tedious, why not 
 improve upon the method, by rendering it 
 physically painful? Might we not incul- 
 cate each portion of the Decalogue with the 
 aid of a pin, and imprint it upon the mem- 
 ory of childhood by associating it with 
 pricks upon some sensitive portion of the 
 frame? In this simple manner, we might 
 literally fasten a whole system of ethics and 
 grammar upon the bodies as well as the 
 brains of our little ones. The system might 
 be extended to our university course ; and 
 
AT ST. EDWARD'S, H 
 
 a petty domestic instrument might prove a 
 weapon of power in the hands of an ener- 
 getic professor of chemistry, logic, or meta- 
 physics ! Our academic youtli would go out 
 into the world, tattooed with the records of 
 their education. A man's own skin — and 
 sometimes even that would be of the old 
 material — would be his portable diploma. 
 In two generations, not a gentleman would 
 sit down to dinner without resting securely 
 upon a cluster of anchors, binding him in- 
 , visibly to correctness of living, reasoning, 
 and grammar. 
 
 But to return to our Greek grammar 
 written in Latin. Day after day our cleri- 
 cal Sphinx propounded the mysterious 
 enigma. When is a door not a door ? was 
 the simple conundrum that confounded us. 
 It was set us in the language of the Cu- 
 msean Sibyl, and the solution was to be 
 given in that of the Pythian Apollo. Day 
 after day a victim fell ; 
 
 (xlel dh TivQocl V6x{)0t)p xaloi^TO S^a/iieiai. 
 
 When I escaped from Thebes, no CEdipus 
 had appeared. I wonder if the Sphinx is 
 at the old work still. 
 
12 THE UNDER FORM 
 
 For five years — and five years make a 
 hole in one's school-time, not to say in one's 
 life — for five dreary years the process went 
 on. We committed daily to memory some 
 page or half-page of the sacred but unin- 
 telligible book. We revised it, and we 
 re-revised it again and again. To lisp its 
 contents seemed as natural as respiration. 
 We could repeat glibly most perplexing 
 declensions and conjugations ; contracts of 
 all kinds ; changes Attic, Ionic, and JEolic ; 
 verbs in co and verbs in ai ; rules of syntax, 
 prosody, and construction, which no one 
 seemed called upon to understand at the 
 time, and to which, in their Latin form, no 
 one was, to my knowledge, ever referred 
 afterwards. 
 
 So far did Greek accommodate itself to 
 ordinary views, that we occasionally caught 
 glimpses of such familiar friends as nouns^ 
 and verhs^ and prepositions^ and the like. 
 But here the condescension ceased. Ever 
 and anon came looming through the Latin 
 fog strange forms, gigantic, spectral ; Heter- 
 oclites. Paradigms, Asynartetuses, Syzy- 
 gies; Augments, temporal and syllabic. 
 
AT ST. ED W AMD'S. 13 
 
 The former seemed to embody some dim 
 records of a pre-Adamite state ; mystic al- 
 lusions to bygone Mammoths, Behemoths, 
 Ichthyosauri ; under the latter twain seemed 
 to lurk an allegory of the connexion be- 
 tween Church and State. 
 
 It is a grand thing to be conversant with 
 a noble language, unknown to all around us, 
 to our nearest kin. It conveys an undefined 
 idea of wealth and power. We travel where 
 they cannot travel. We visit at great houses, 
 and leave them standing at the door. We 
 stand in sunlight on the hill-top, while they 
 are groping in the valley. We wield with 
 ease a mighty flail of thought, Avhich they 
 cannot uplift with both hands. Yes: we 
 may reasonably be proud of the capability 
 of speaking, maybe of thinking in a foreign 
 tongue. But it is either superlatively sub- 
 lime, or superlatively ridiculous, to speak for 
 years a language unintelligible to one's-self. 
 
 But before quitting for ever the old Under 
 Form, let me say that my quarrel has been 
 with a system and not with persons. The 
 only unfeeling man, under whom I had been 
 placed, was the genteel clergyman of the 
 
14 THE UNDER FORM 
 
 riding-whip. My other Masters were good 
 and kindly men, who went according to or- 
 der through a dull routine, believing in it 
 most probably, and quite powerless from 
 their position, if not also from their abili- 
 ties, to modify it to any material extent. 
 One of them, before passing further, I must 
 specially recall. He was the only classical 
 Usher ; the only classical authority not in 
 orders ; a tall, gigantically tall and muscular 
 Scotchman, of thenaine of Ramsay. He was^ 
 also^ the only classical teacher without a cane. 
 He used a strap ; Scotice^ the tawse. Was 
 it because he was only an usher and a lay- 
 man ? or was it a kindly record of his own 
 more merciful training in his dear native 
 land? Good soul : even in the using of this 
 innocuous instrument, he kept his elbow on 
 the desk, to spare us the full sweep of his 
 tremendous arm. There was a silly legend 
 current among us, founded only on his 
 physical strength, that the cane had been 
 denied him, after his having once cut unin- 
 tentionally through a boy's hand, — an idle 
 myth, that wrapped a possibility in specious 
 falsehood. To see the huge torso towering 
 
AT ST. EDWARD'S, 15 
 
 above the comparatively puny desk, it was 
 like the figure-head of a man-of-war. Why, 
 with a cane the man could have hewn a 
 beadle to the chine, and with a birch have 
 minced us mannikins to collops. I wonder 
 if he had an ancestor at Bannockburn: 
 such an one, I could imagine, with a great 
 two-handed sword, would have chopped off 
 English heads like turnips. I have an in- 
 distinct idea of there having been something 
 very soft and tender in the domestic rela- 
 tions of that biggest and best of ushers. 
 
 But, farewell ! good, kindly Usher ! and 
 farewell! good gentlemen of the Under 
 Form ! — ye deserved a better fate than the 
 fate of Sisyphus -bolides. 
 
16 THE UPPER FORM 
 
 IL 
 
 THE UPPER FORM AT ST. EDWARD's AND ITS 
 LATIN VERSES. 
 
 The upper form consisted of three classes 
 — the Hellenists, or House of Lords; the 
 Deputy-Hellenists, or House of Commons; 
 and the Erasmus, or town-council, or parish 
 vestry, or patricio - plebeio - non - descript. 
 Those who attained to the second rank gen- 
 erally stayed a year beyond the usual term : 
 four were chosen annually from the second 
 rank for the first; and these favorites of 
 Fortune remained for three years on the 
 Hellenist class, and then left for one of the 
 Universities, with a valuable Exhibition. 
 
 The work of the Erasmus was about as te- 
 dious and unrefreshing as the old drudgery 
 of the Under Form. That of the Deputies, 
 to which but very few attained, became, as 
 regards the Classics, a very little less tedious 
 by very slow degrees ; but was wholesomely 
 
AT ST. EDWARD'S, 17 
 
 vivified by tlie introduction of mathemati- 
 cal studies. How delicious, I remember, 
 were the first lessons in geometry and alge- 
 bra ! they were as draughts of spring- water 
 to lips dry with heat and chapped with sand. 
 Latin versification began in the Erasmus, 
 was imperative on all, and was continued 
 through the senior classes, whether a pupil's 
 bent of mind were for language or science, 
 for verse or prose. To a very few — in which 
 minority, perhaps, I was myself included — 
 it was an amusement, and would have been 
 prosecuted with pleasure, had its study been 
 optional. We members of the minority had 
 each our special beat; our Crusoe-island, 
 where we reigned unapproached and unap- 
 proachable. One would write hexameters, 
 unirradiated by fancy, unblemished by flaw 
 of rhythm or diction; another would com- 
 press epigrams, not devoid of wit, within 
 the narrow limits of the elegiac couplet; 
 another would attempt a comic flight, with 
 a somewhat square-toed jocosity ; another, 
 with the false taste of enthusiastic youth, 
 would slight the severest models of Latin 
 verse, and spread the ideas of Keats and 
 
18 THE UPPER FORM 
 
 Shelley over quires of dropsical hexameters 
 and flatulent alcaics. For myself, I would 
 push on patiently through the brakes of 
 Statins and Silius Italicus, to catch one 
 quaintly-dappled epithet. Many a peach- 
 skinned apple, somewhat flavorless to the 
 taste, would I steal from the hot-houses of 
 Claudian. I had a stock of preludes, similes, 
 and perorations stored away in the pigeon- 
 holes of my brain. Unlike the simple an- 
 cients, my forte lay in landscape. I had 
 an extensive assortment of sleeping lakes 
 that mirrored heaven, the emblems of quiet 
 souls ; of winds, that rustled over peaceful 
 seas; of suns that went down with diffi- 
 culty through washes of superfluous paint. 
 One sunset I have by me still. It is so gor- 
 geously out of all simple and severe taste, 
 that, could I forget my own handiwork, I 
 should attribute it to the pencil of a Rus- 
 kin. As the prelude to an ode on Lucretia^ 
 it gained me a prize in books at school; 
 as the prelude to an ode on The Moors in 
 Spain, it gained me a gold medal at Cam- 
 bridge. I could with ease adapt it, if re- 
 quired, for a peroration to an ode on the 
 Exliihitio7i of all Nations, 
 
AT ST. EDWARD'S. 19 
 
 But to return to my prose comrades, who 
 formed an overwhelming majority. Latin 
 versifying was to them a bugbear more 
 appalling than any yet encountered. How 
 tough-grained soever might be their idio- 
 syncrasies of intellect — and, in many cases, 
 the grain was very tough indeed — the wood 
 was tapped for the regular supply of sap. 
 Great importance was attached to the sub- 
 ject ; and still is at all great English schools. 
 I liave not the remotest idea why. When 
 we meet with a very odd reading in a Greek 
 play, we presume it is correct, because any 
 copyirft would have given a reading more 
 obvious and intelligible. So when we come 
 upon a study of an apparently impracticable 
 and ludicrous kind, we should hesitate be- 
 fore we condemn it utterly. It is plain that 
 no ordinary brain could have suggested it. 
 It would never have grown up of itself. If 
 it flourish in despite of common sense, there 
 must be a hidden sense that feeds its roots 
 with moisture. There is, doubtless, some 
 unseen power that troubles into usefulness 
 the dull water of As in prcesenti ; a nymph 
 that rises to the music of a well-turned 
 
20 THE UPPER FORM 
 
 hexameter, and re-dissolves before the dis- 
 cord of a false quantity. We are catholic 
 in our views of education. There shall be 
 no invidious distinction made between the 
 poor and rich in brain. All our boys shall 
 hammer at the hexameter, as all our girls 
 are kept strumming at the piano. Shall 
 Rugby be denied a mystery, that is allowed 
 to every seminary of young ladies ? If the 
 theory of Latin versification be inexplica- 
 ble to woman, what male intelligence could 
 solve the riddle of those globes, whose use 
 is esoterically taught at the humblest of 
 our boarding-schools ? 
 
 Our apprenticeship to the Latin muses 
 lasted for about two years. Your kitten may 
 reach his full intellectual powers in a few 
 months ; but it takes time to form an ele- 
 phant or a poet. I subjoin a few sets of 
 quasi-arranged lines. We had probably 
 transferred to Latin verse some thousands 
 of similar sets, before we spread our wings 
 for original flights. 
 
 The Horse. 
 
 The fiery steed, his tail in air proudly cockM, 
 
 Not without much neighing traverses glad pastures. 
 
AT ST. EDWARD'S. 21 
 
 Alexander the Great. 
 To thee, O Alexander — learn, O ye kings, being ad- 
 monished — 
 Glory having been attained, Bacchus was a sad end. 
 
 The bee from various flowers sips sweetest honey ; 
 Speckled as to little body and yellow as to double 
 
 legs : 
 We, too, gather honey on Parnassus, a boyish crowd. 
 Yellow as to legs and cserulean as to flowing robe. 
 
 When duly prepared for more adventur- 
 ous effort, we were set to practise upon all 
 the heroes and sages of antiquity; upon 
 all seasons ; upon diverse accidents of fire 
 and flood ; and the Gradus was our Heli- 
 con. Magnanimus would help Phaethon 
 on his hexametrical ride : Alexander was 
 practicable with a preliminarj^ fortis : Her- 
 cules would have been an unmetrical brute, 
 but for his alias of Amphitryoniades, that 
 pushed out like a promontory half way 
 across the page. 
 
 A Latin couplet might be exchanged for 
 English verse. But it is not often that 
 we took advantage of the permission. The 
 fact is, we had no English Gradus. Our 
 subject one day was Latro, or "The Robber." 
 I composed my own couplet in Latin, and 
 
22 THE UPPER FORM 
 
 furnished a friend with the following Eng- 
 lish equivalent : — 
 
 The wicked, lurking robber, when 
 The harmless traveller passes his den ; 
 He seizes him by the tail of his coat, 
 And robs his money and cuts his throat. 
 
 I remember also a pair of verses on the 
 subjects, Patroclus and The Last Judgment^ 
 given in, without the least idea of joking, 
 by a contemporary. The Urst ran : — 
 
 Let us mourn, let us mourn, let us mourn for our 
 
 friend ; 
 Let us mourn for our friend and protector ; 
 Let us mourn, let us mourn, for Patroclus is dead ; 
 He is kill'd by the man-slaying Hector. 
 
 And the second : — 
 
 What can the righteous man expect, 
 But to go up to heaven erect ? 
 What can the wicked man desire, 
 But to go down to hell-fire ? 
 
 These latter verses were not achieved by 
 a novice. The author had been for years 
 a nursling of the Muses ; and his English 
 song was but an echo of the music of his 
 Latin brother-minstrels. Caw^ Caw^ was all 
 these honest rooks could say. And you 
 might have whistled till you were black in 
 the face before you would have removed 
 
AT ST, EDWARD'S. 28 
 
 the black out of their rook-faces, or the caw 
 out of their husky throats. 
 
 In the Hellenic class we advanced to 
 ambitious efforts, epic and lyrical. We all 
 sang ; some bass ; some tenor ; some. Heaven 
 only knows how. One or two of us were 
 very prolific. I plead guilty to having been 
 the juvenile parent of some two thousand 
 Hexameters, and of innumerable Alcaics. I 
 shall plead extenuating circumstances, when 
 I am brought before Rhadamanthus. 
 
 Many of my brother Hellenists have no- 
 thing to fear from that stern judge. They 
 suffered enough for their misdoings in the 
 actual doing. They were delivered of their 
 poetry with throes that cannot be uttered. 
 I remember the case of one Hellenist in 
 particular. II Stait de feu pour Valgebre^ 
 mais de glace pour le Latin. In the three 
 Upper Forms he would have had in all prob- 
 ability six or seven years of continuous prac- 
 tice in versification. This would not be whol- 
 ly suspended at the University. In his final 
 examination for honors, he translated the 
 first line of Tennyson's Beggar-maid thus : 
 
 "Brachia trans pectus posuit mendica puella." 
 
24 THE UPPER FORM 
 
 Now, Reader, I am inclined to think that, 
 before the days of Lucretius, there were very 
 few lines of Latin verse that would throw 
 this one into the shade. I am convinced 
 that Tully never wrote a hexameter that 
 could compare with it. I suppose there are 
 few scholars that would acknowledge that 
 there is an obvious natural want of the je 
 ne sais quoi requisite for versification, indi- 
 cated in the few metrical scraps interspersed 
 in the works of the great Consul. And yet 
 this man was one of the greatest masters of 
 his own language that Italy ever produced. 
 Without a prose literature to build upon, he 
 has left enduring works of state-oratory, 
 legal pleading, literary declamation, discur- 
 sive essays, philosophical treatises, witty 
 letters. He wielded the prose of his native 
 tongue, as Ovid wielded the verse. It was 
 put a quarter-staff into his hands, and he han- 
 dled it like a rapier. However, with all the 
 versatility of his genius, and his almost un- 
 approachable dexterity of linguistic manipu- 
 lation, he might have probably gone through 
 all the exercises of Bland^ Arnold., and 
 Company ., without ever producing a single 
 
AT ST. EDW. 
 
 original line with the requisite poetic ring. 
 And yet an English classical master, in a 
 field where Cicero failed, will endeavor, 
 with a native obstinacy, to achieve success 
 with any pupil whatever, be he imaginative 
 or matter-of-fact, musical or timber-tuned; 
 ay, in a language foreign to both master 
 and pupil, and never spoken by either. 
 There is a courage in the effort, which de- 
 serves success. 
 
 He may achieve certain results, I ac- 
 knowledge. A pupil, after years of profitless 
 toil, may acquire the mechanical power of 
 wedging together geometric blocks of deal 
 into the form of a hexameter. But the time 
 and trouble wasted on the acquisition of this 
 mechanical dexterity, might have carried 
 him over a broad field of reading in the 
 Classics, or a wide range of scientific study, 
 or through the leading authors of some mod- 
 ern literature. Alas ! my English brethren 
 of the scholastic cloth, how long shall we 
 turn rapidly our gerundstones, in the vain 
 endeavor to grind sawdust into flour ? 
 
 In regard to ancient traditions, scholastic 
 or political, Oxford is usually more Conser- 
 
26 THE UPPER FORM 
 
 vative than Cambridge. It is not to the 
 former that we should look for an attack 
 npon Latin Verses, Port Wine, Trial by 
 Jury, the Bench of Bishops, or any of the 
 traditional institutions of our country. 
 However, in regard to the tradition — I may 
 say, superstition — of Latin versification, 
 Oxford is in advance of the Sister-univer- 
 sity ; notwithstanding that she has records 
 of excellence, in this particular line, supe- 
 rior to anything that Cambridge can show. 
 For, leaving to a Merivale the pre-eminence 
 in translating from English into Latin verse, 
 we might search the prize-poems of Cam- 
 bridge in vain to discover an original Latin 
 poem to compare with the Cursus Glacialis 
 in the Musce Anglicanoe, 
 
 At Oxford, then, the ancient seat of the 
 banished Camoense, a copy of Latin verses 
 is said only then to pay^ when the verses 
 are far above mediocrity. At Cambridge, 
 a graduation of marks may be obtained by 
 verses that range from the tnta nreQoevTa 
 of a Senior Classic to the deal-wedges of 
 the Wooden Spoon. 
 
 What a number of uselessly-turning ger- 
 
AT ST. EDWARD'S. 27 
 
 undstones might be arrested in mid-revolu- 
 tion; what an amount of vainlj-tortured 
 sawdust might be set free for the stuffing of 
 dolls or pincushions, if it were only under- 
 stood that no amount of mere mechanism 
 in versifying could obtain a mark at any ex- 
 amination in either University ! Such a reg- 
 ulation would in no way affect those few 
 scholars who cannot read their Greek and 
 Latin poets without an occasional, and not 
 irreverent, desire to imitate ; but it would 
 set free the energies of their prosier, but not 
 less intelligent . brethren, for employment 
 in more useful and congenial studies. 
 
 But, Reader, I fear I am jogging on un- 
 consciously towards Utopia. Do you not 
 see that such a regulation would imply, on 
 the part of Public Examiners on the Cam, 
 an exquisite appreciation of the differen- 
 tialities of Verse and Prose ? Ah ! Reader, 
 it were an easy task to examine our Under- 
 graduates, but who shall examine our Ex- 
 aminers ? 
 
28 THE HELLENISTS. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE HELLENISTS. 
 
 I HAVE been dubbed Hellenist. Nay, 
 never start, Reader : I am too proud to be 
 conceited. There : you need not stand un- 
 covered. I am invested with the Latin 
 Order of the Garter, and the Greek Order 
 of the Golden Fleece. I am standing on a 
 peak in Darien, and staring at anew Pacific, 
 broad and blue, wherein lie happy islands. 
 I have reached the zenith of all boyish hopes ; 
 surely, henceforth my path will slope down- 
 wards to the grave. I am self-poised, self- 
 centred. All pettiness of vanity is swallowed 
 up in an absorbing contentment and pride. 
 For three years I shall pace the old, shadowy 
 cloisters; then for as many years shall I 
 walk the garden of Academus; and then 
 pass into the great world by one of two 
 roads; and at the end of one road I can 
 
THE HELLENISTS. 29 
 
 dimly see men with gray wigs and silk 
 gowns ; and at the end of the other, a cir- 
 cle of reverend Elders with white lawn 
 sleeves. O Phaeton, Phaeton, your head 
 is turning giddy ! 
 
 To descend, then, from my dizzy flight. 
 I am in the middle of my seventeenth year. 
 I have had nine years of classical drilling , 
 All that I have as yet learnt might very 
 easily, indeed, have been acquired, had I 
 commenced in my thirteenth instead of in 
 my eighth year, and had the system of in- 
 struction been natural and easy instead of 
 being unnatural and difficult. This I state 
 unhesitatingly, after having twice carried a 
 class through the whole of a school curri- 
 culum of seven years. 
 
 Had it been my lot now to leave school, I 
 should have carried away a rather pleasant 
 remembrance of my first usher, and an affec- 
 tionate remembrance of but one Master, 
 Delille. It was only in the Hellenist class 
 that I came to love and venerate Rice, to 
 love and admire Webster. Speaking from 
 the light of subsequent experience, I believe 
 uo school in the world ever had, or ever 
 
30 THE HELLENISTS, 
 
 will have, a trio of masters to surpass the 
 trio I here mention. Let me pause for a 
 moment, to portray them in few but loving 
 words. 
 
 Delille, our master of French, was a tall 
 and powerfully-built man, with a fresh and 
 ruddy complexion, and a manly carriage. 
 His temper was imperturbably good : his 
 sense of humor infectious. He had no vul- 
 gar instrument of punishment ; but by his 
 noble presence, and the unseen force of his 
 character, he could maintain the strictest 
 order in classes numbering above a hundred 
 pupils. He spoke our language without a 
 flaw of accent ; it was only by an occasional 
 hyper-correctness of hither for here that one 
 could detect the foreigner. His classes were 
 held out of the usual school-hours, some- 
 times even on half-holidays ; and for all that, 
 they were the pleasantest classes in the 
 under school. His severest mode of punish- 
 mg was to set a fable of La Fontaine to be 
 committed to memory. You were not re- 
 leased until it had been repeated without one 
 single break ; and you generally left him, 
 exasperated a little at the loss of play, but 
 
THE HELLENISTS. 31 
 
 laughing perforce at some grave piece of 
 badinage with which he had dismissed you. 
 I knew him afterwards as a friend, and 
 guest, and host. And what a companion he 
 was at table or over a cigar ! He was, like 
 his compatriots, a hon-vivant ; and as good a 
 judge of wine as any member of a London 
 club. He had a splendid voice for decla- 
 mation or singing ; was an admirable after- 
 dinner speaker in either French or English ; 
 could sing a song of Lover's with a rich Irish 
 brogue ; a song of Burns' with all the sub- 
 tlety of its pure, sweet accent ; and roll out 
 a sea-song of Dibdin's like a sailor ! Had 
 I never esteemed him as a master, I should 
 have liked him as an accomplished man 
 of the world and a delightful companion. 
 With a number of University friends, I once 
 dined with him at his house in Ely Place. I 
 still remember the four kinds of Champagne 
 that were broached at dinner ; the Cham- 
 bertin that flowed freely afterwards with 
 the flow of wit and good-humor ; the music 
 in the drawing-room, and the singing from 
 ballad, opera, and oratorio ; the hour at 
 midnight in the snug library; a fuming 
 
32 THE HELLENISTS, 
 
 bowl and irreproachable cigars ; and I re- 
 member, as my cab drove me to the Tavi- 
 stock, that the lamps of Holborn showed 
 through the window like mad and merry 
 dancing stars. Alas ! I am writing of one 
 whose hand I shall never grasp again, for 
 cordial welcome or regretful farewell. 
 
 Of Webster I cannot speak at such length ; 
 and happily for the best of reasons : he is 
 not, like his two colleagues, a memory alone. 
 But I shall never forget how contagious was 
 his zeal for work ; how impetuously chival- 
 rous was his character ; how thorough his 
 respect for industry; how unmistakable 
 his abhorrence of shuffling and sloth. And 
 I remember thinking, at times, when I 
 looked up from a remarkably white hand 
 on the desk to a handsome and proud and 
 almost haughty face before me, that my 
 clerical Master should have been a courtly 
 Abbe, and have set in hall with prince and 
 gentle ladye. 
 
 And Blimey — dear old Burney, as we 
 used to call our Head-master — how feeble 
 w^ould be any words to describe our fond- 
 ness for that dear, white head ! The Doctor 
 
THE HELLENISTS. 33 
 
 was a noble type of the old-fashioned Eng- 
 lish Head-master. He had a loathing for 
 all scientific study ; was utterly ignorant of 
 modern languages: indeed, I believe, he 
 looked upon Delille as the only Frenchman 
 that had ever been reclaimed from greasy 
 cookery and sour claret to a repentant but 
 honest appreciation of roast beef and port 
 wine. English literature of the day to him 
 was non-existent; his lectures smacked of 
 the last century, with their long undulating 
 periods, and pauses Ciceronian. He was 
 the fellow-student rather than the master 
 of his Hellenists. Patiently would he pore 
 over their exercises, in the lighted study 
 that sent a melancholy gleam into the long, 
 dark school-room. All information, histori- 
 cal, antiquarian, geographical, or philo- 
 sophic, as connected with the classics, he 
 regarded with contempt : any dunderhead, 
 he considered, might cram that at his lei- 
 sure : but it pained him to the quick if a 
 senior pupil violated the Porsonian pause, 
 or trifled with a subjunctive. "A word in 
 your ear. Doctor," said an Oxford examiner 
 once to him ; "your Captain yesterday could 
 
34 THE HELLENISTS. 
 
 not tell me where Elis was ! " "I looked hor- 
 rified," said the Doctor, in repeating the cir- 
 cumstance; "I looked horrified, of course ; 
 but, on my word, I did not know it myself. 
 But," continued he, "these Oxford fellows 
 like this kind of thing ; but I'll wager you'd 
 get few of them to write a good Porson." 
 
 Like all simple and unworldly natures, 
 he was generous to a fault. He would have 
 given anything, forgiven anything to a good 
 Greek scholar. The boys of the Under 
 School feared him as a strict and resolute 
 and severe disciplinarian. We, his Hellen- 
 ists, knew that, while he followed, unques- 
 tioningly, old Draconian laws, his heart was 
 of the kindest and softest and tenderest. 
 How the old man, that could look so stern 
 at times, would weep, when an old pupil 
 went wrong at college ; with what unre- 
 proaching kindness he would help him out 
 of difficulties, into which idleness or extrav- 
 agance or misfortune might have plunged 
 him. How like a father he would welcome 
 him, when all errors had been retrieved by 
 the winning of an honorable place in the 
 list of final honors. "You must remember, 
 
THE HELLENISTS, 35 
 
 Sir, that my place is due to you ; that but 
 for your help last summer, I could not have 
 returned for long-vacation reading." " Non- 
 sense," replied the Doctor ; " I remember 
 nothing of the kind ; but ril remember long 
 enough the place you held in the classical 
 Tripos." 
 
 And he, to whom he thus spoke, and I, 
 who am now writing, and all who had the 
 honor of belonging to the class of his Hel- 
 lenists, Avill remember him with love and 
 gratitude and reverence to the end ; ay, to 
 the end. 
 
 And now. Reader, why should I give a 
 description of the Hellenist class ? With 
 three such Masters, and a set of comrades 
 most of whom were enthusiastic students, 
 and all of whom were pleasant fellows, how 
 could a triennium fail to be an industrious 
 and a happy one? — It was the reign of 
 Antoninus Pius in my school-life, and needs 
 no chronicling. 
 
36 THE CREW OF ULYSSES. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE Ol noXXoi^ OR THE CREW OF ULYSSES. 
 
 Yes, Reader, I am Hellenist. I am at the 
 end of my third volume, and am going to 
 live happy ever afterwards. I have reached 
 Ithaca. A little tired and battered. But 
 I have reached Ithaca. I will now take 
 mine ease by my own hearth, and spin long 
 yarns about Scylla and Charybdis. But 
 where are my old comrades ? Poor fellows ! 
 they are all drowned. They are lying at the 
 bottom of that JEgean, which in life was 
 the scene of all their suffering, and the re- 
 servoir of all their geography. 
 
 The fact is, it was only in exceptional 
 cases, that boys with us remained at school 
 after the age of fifteen. Consequently, my 
 old friends were all away. They had gone 
 for the most part into commercial life. For- 
 tunately, one-half of their schooling had 
 been devoted to the despised branches of 
 
THE CREW OF ULYSSES. 37 
 
 penmanship, ciphering, reading, and writing 
 from dictation. These subjects had been 
 very well taught. Indeed, had they been 
 taught ever so indifferently, the pupils 
 could scarcely have failed to pick up some- 
 thing in such elementary branches during a 
 curriculum of at least seven years. Con- 
 sequently, in the various counting-houses 
 into which they were draughted, our boys 
 were usually found good penmen, ready 
 reckoners, and tolerably correct in their 
 spelling. But of one entire half of their long 
 school probation, the majority carried away 
 no intellectual memento. Upon that half 
 had been brought to bear the most expen- 
 sive part of the educational machinery; 
 masters of arts instead of ushers ; clergy- 
 men instead of laymen ; dictionaries and 
 lexicons instead of copy books and slates. 
 There had been no lack of sowing ; but there 
 had been no reaping; no gathering into 
 barns : although, Heaven knows! the ground 
 had been well harrowed, and the seed had 
 been watered plentifully, and with tears. 
 
 I must state in passing, that there was a 
 naval school into which boys might enter, 
 
38 THE CREW OF ULYSSES, 
 
 at their own option, about the age of twelve. 
 Many, that had no special calling for a sail- 
 or's life, entered it with the mere view of 
 escaping a life of Latin and Greek drudg- 
 ery on dry land. This part of the school 
 had been added to the original foundation 
 by Charles II. Every year a little deputation 
 presents at Court its charts and drawings, 
 in accordance with the expressed wish of 
 the royal founder. I believe in no portion of 
 the kingdom is a course of naval instruction 
 given so perfect in both practice and theory. 
 My contemporaries of the ordinary Under 
 Form, who survive, will be now in the prime 
 of manhood. Do they ever look calmly back 
 upon the miraculous fog, that overhung one 
 half of their seven years' schooling ? Have 
 they ever expiscated one intelligible reason 
 why they were so long detained in the bar- 
 ren wilderness ? What good have they ever 
 reaped themselves from the trial ; or, what 
 gratification can it have afforded to others ? 
 Or, seems that period to them an embryo- 
 state ; a dream within a dream? Some of 
 them will now be Benedicks ; some will have 
 boys growing into their teens. Our species, 
 
THE CREW OF ULYSSES, 39 
 
 like the sheep, is prone to follow a lead. I 
 would venture to affirm, that these fathers 
 will, in most instances, be putting their 
 boys through some similarly mysterious 
 educational process. 
 
 The fact is, men usually look back upon 
 their school days, as a pedestrian upon 
 traversed, far-off, blue hills. He forgets the 
 long, desolate moorlands ; the tortuous path- 
 ways; the morasses here and the shingles 
 there; the peak on peak, that never was 
 the highest. They forgive, over the walnuts 
 and the wine, the pedagogue that thrashed 
 them to no moral or mental profit; the 
 bully, that appropriated their weekly six- 
 pence ; the old house-keeper, that worried 
 them with nig-nagging for their torn linen, 
 or for faces dirtier than their dirty shoes. 
 School was not such a bad place after all. 
 Another glass or two of the old, tawny par- 
 ticular ; and, faith ! we were never so happy 
 as in our boyhood, and may never be as 
 happy again. Besides, boys are terribly in 
 the way at home; and school is the real 
 place for them after all ; and, depend upon 
 it, if there were no vii'tue in birching, caning, 
 
40 THE CREW OF ULYSSES. 
 
 Latin verses and Greek what-ye-may-eall- 
 'ems, they would not have held their ground 
 so long amongst a practical people like our- 
 selves. So Johnny is sent to the Town 
 Grammar School, and returns in due time 
 with as much honey of Hymettus on his 
 legs, as his father before him. And mean- 
 while, the great, time-honored Gerundstone 
 turns, and will turn to the last syllable of 
 recorded time. 
 
 In the majority of great English Public 
 Schools, the primary subjects of writing, 
 ciphering, reading and spelling, are noto- 
 riously ill taught. The chief modern lan- 
 guages, French and German, languish in the 
 cold shade of their classic rivals. And yet, 
 elementarily, they are taught on a more 
 rational plan than the Classics. That is to 
 say, the rules of nature or common sense 
 are not wholly ignored ; and the conversa- 
 tional, vivd voce principle is to some extent 
 kept in view. But success in these depart- 
 ments carries with it no acknowledged 
 prestige ; paves the way to no brilliant Uni- 
 versity distinction. Too frequently, also, 
 a master of French is a master of French 
 
TEE CREW OF ULYSSES. 41 
 
 only, with no more claims to learning than 
 a cTief'de-cuisine ; and too often a master of 
 German will mar the effect of his erudition 
 by a philosophic but frowsy disregard of 
 toilet proprieties. And alas! a foreigner, 
 however learned and well-mannered, too 
 often fails in the maintenance of discipline, 
 from the fact- that the idea of order is, to his 
 pupils, inseparably connected with a vigor- 
 ous use of implements, which are barbarous 
 in his eyes and ridiculous in his hands. 
 
 However, be the condition of other 
 branches what you please, the melancholy 
 fact stands, that the Classics are taught in 
 such a way as to benefit only those who, by 
 superior talents or inordinately long contin- 
 uance at school, eventually emerge from 
 the darkness overhanging their elementary 
 training. I could enumerate three histori- 
 cal and well-endowed metropolitan schools, 
 to which, in my day, even this latter excep- 
 tional statement Avas not due. 
 
 In the Under School at St. Edward's, 
 we certainly understood the husbandry of 
 making a very little Greek go a very long 
 way. We sank our teaching plummet many 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
42 THE CREW OF ULYSSES. 
 
 fathoms deep in the abyss of Unintelligi- 
 bility. But the historical trio had tumbled 
 through the antipodes to the nadir, where 
 they were sticking like rayless stars. There 
 were honey-prizes, in the way of Exhibi- 
 tions and Scholarships attached to these 
 drone-hives : they must have been assigned 
 to such drones as were found pre-eminent 
 in weight or size or capacity of repose. 
 
 At the best of the great Public Schools, 
 the youngest children — bless the innocents ! 
 — are suckled upon grammar; the more 
 advanced are too often fed upon dull books, 
 made duller by superfluous annotations ; the 
 manuals for prose composition are in many 
 cases tramways to pedantry exhibiting for 
 imitation the unintentional faults of Thucy- 
 dides and the intentional faults of Tacitus ; 
 the manuals for Latin versification would 
 seem to have been originally intended to 
 implant in boys a quick perception of the 
 ludicrous. A vile system of literal transla- 
 tion of Greek and Latin idioms so corrupts 
 the well of English undefiled, that a boy 
 often loses as much English in his Latin 
 room, as he will pick up for the day in his 
 
THE CREW OF ULYSSES. 43 
 
 Eijglish one. ' No one, after once the senten- 
 ces have been analyzed, would ever dream 
 of translating literally Comment vous portez 
 vous ? or, Qu^est-ce que c^est que ga ? but ped- 
 antry will insist upon boys rendering, year 
 after year, Greek particles by the most un- 
 English equivalents, and Latin redundancies 
 by English wind. The whole system, and 
 the elementary part most of all, is bookish, 
 unpractical. It is many years — nay, very 
 often it does not happen at all, — it is many 
 years, at all events, before a lad suspects 
 that Latin and Greek are instruments of 
 thought precisely similar to his own every- 
 day language. In the earlier years of his 
 apprenticehood, he would almost scout the 
 idea as profane, that men could under any 
 circumstances exchange chit-chat ; write 
 love-letters ; deliver after-dinner speeches ; 
 tell Joe Millers ; make bad puns in such sol- 
 emn and stiff-jointed forms of speech. In- 
 deed., they never strike him as forms of speech 
 at all. He may entertain a hazy idea that 
 Latin was employed by a Roman tradesman 
 for composing an Elegiac valentine, or an 
 advertisement in Alcaics. Its grammatical 
 
44 THE CREW OF ULYSSES 
 
 nomenclature is worded differently from 
 that of any modern tongue ; and that for 
 Greek is worded more cabalistically still. 
 He meets with no Aorists in English ; no 
 Supines in French ; no Gerunds in German ; 
 no Paulo-post-futures anywhere in the Ijab- 
 itable world. And yet I will venture to 
 say, that there are very few idioms of either 
 Greek or Latin that have not their analogues 
 in homely Saxon and pure French. Indeed, 
 I am almost inclined to think that the use 
 of av in Greek is the only idiom to which it 
 would be difficult or impossible to adduce a 
 parallel. Why on earth, then, are the former 
 pair swathed in a verbiage so peculiar ? I 
 can understand the use of a peculiar nomen- 
 clature in days when the theory of language 
 was imperfectly understood ; and I freely 
 acknowledge the debt of gratitude due to 
 the old grammarians for raising the struc- 
 ture before us, with the scanty materials at 
 their disposal. Latin was then considered as 
 radically different from Greek, as Greek, 
 from Coptic. Ay, and might be considered so 
 now, for all the teaching in our schools. The 
 magnificent, cloud-dispelling discoveries 
 
THE CREW OF ULYSSES. 45 
 
 of Bopp and the Grimms, so full of interest 
 if gradually and clearly expounded, to 
 young and old alike, are in most class-rooms 
 practically ignored. We still separate by 
 arbitrary boundaries studies that we know, 
 or should know, to be cognate. If Latin, 
 Greek, and Teutonic are really sisters, and 
 French a daughter of one of them, why 
 should it be thought impossible to teach 
 them all upon some catholic plan ? At the 
 very least, the grammatical terms employed 
 in one school-room might be employed in 
 another. Take, for instance, such a simple 
 sentence as, I sJiould like to know. If a boy 
 were called upon to parse such a sentence 
 in three consecutive class-rooms, he would 
 find a Conditional mood in the French 
 room, a Subjunctive one in the Latin, and 
 an Optative one in the Greek. Avery Pro- 
 teus of a mood; now a bear; now crack- 
 ling fire; now running water, that slips 
 through one's fingers. 
 
 I am convinced in my own mind that it 
 were practicable to teach English, French, 
 German, Latin, and Greek on a broad and 
 catholic system. The first step would be 
 
46 THE CliEW OF ULYSSES, 
 
 for the patrons of our great schools to re- 
 quire of every candidate for a classical mas- 
 tership satisfactory proofs of a thorough 
 knowledge of French or German, or even of 
 both languages, in grammar and accent. If 
 a good classical scholar were found deficient 
 in the latter particular, he might be advised 
 to travel abroad, to cure his ear and his 
 tongue of their insular vulgarity. In a few 
 years, a scholar would as soon think of 
 speaking French with a bad accent as of 
 eating peas with a knife. A class might 
 pass from language to language, retaining 
 its shape and the position of its members ; 
 upon the principle that it was merely passing 
 from one to another phase of one great and 
 comprehensive subject. Thus, the places in 
 a class of English, French, or German, would 
 be thrown in with those of Latin and Greek 
 at the end of a session, to determine the prizes 
 for proficiency in the broad and catholic 
 study of the dialects of one common lan- 
 guage. The classics would benefit by the 
 amalgamation, as they would have to be 
 treated less mysteriously, and illustrated 
 more interestingly; and to modern Ian- 
 
THE CREW OF ULYSSES 47 
 
 guages would be given a prestige in the eyes 
 of the pupils, which they have hitherto 
 most unquestionably and most undeserv- 
 edly lacked. 
 
 To some the amalgamation proposed may 
 seem one of incongruities. It is not so. It 
 is much more incongruous to mix the study 
 of modern history with the study of Latin 
 and Greek, than to associate the study of 
 one language with that of another cognate 
 language, in the determination of class 
 places. A boy may have a special turn for 
 history and the acquisition of general infor- 
 mation, who is comparatively slow at lin- 
 guistic studies. But a good scholar in 
 Latin and Greek will be a good scholar in 
 French and German — if he choose. I have 
 known lamentable instances of good classi- 
 cal scholars neglecting purposely, and for 
 sordid reasons connected with school prizes, 
 the study of modern languages ; but I could 
 also point to separate class-lists where the 
 same names, almost in the same order stood 
 as prizemen in four languages, ancient and 
 modern; and this would be found gener- 
 ally the case, if some such system as th^ 
 one suggested were adopted. 
 
48 THE CREW OF ULYSSES, 
 
 With such a system in operation, the 
 pedantic phraseology of our classic manuals 
 would have to be modified, of course ; the 
 examples to the majority of rules to be 
 pitched in a lower and more natural key. 
 We have, at present, a genteel and super- 
 stitious dread not only of solecisms, but of 
 commonness in expression ; forgetting, most 
 unphilosophically, that the vulgar tongue 
 is in all cases the real tongue ; that where 
 we can hear a language in its pure, unadul- 
 terated vulgarity, — and any one but a 
 Bagman knows the term is not necessarily 
 synonymous with coarseness or slang, — 
 there have we in Italy a correcter language 
 than the polished diction of Ovid ; and in 
 England more home-spun stuff that can be 
 drawn from Pope and Gray. Such a line, 
 for instance, as — 
 
 Ciijus ebiir nitidum fastif/ia suinma tegebat, 
 might be justified in Ovid, on the score of 
 difficulty in adapting his language to a for- 
 eign metre ; but the collocation of the words 
 is obviously wrong either for Latin or for 
 any language. Again, such a line as — 
 
 Utendum est SBtate ; cito pede prseterit setas, 
 
THE CREW OF ULYSSES. 49 
 
 is exquisitely worded. But the former part 
 of the line is only right according to the 
 rules of fashionable grammar, or that of 
 analogy and imitation, and wrong according 
 to the rules of real grammar. The poet's 
 valet would never have committed the blun- 
 der ; he would never have assigned to the 
 active utendum the government of the reflec- 
 tive uti. He would no more have thought 
 of attaching an abnormal case to an ordinary 
 verb, than of pinning a verb to his tunic. 
 
 In our servile admiration of what is 
 falsely called purest Latin, our hankering 
 after Augustan elegancies, we lose sight of 
 the homely, conversational treasures that 
 might be extracted copiously from Plautus, 
 less copiously from Terence, and to some 
 extent, if we taught Latin as we ought to 
 teach it, from our own brains. If, by the 
 adoption of a vivd voce conversational 
 method in elementary classes, a pupil once 
 got a natural, unconscious grip of Latin, 
 style and polish would follow easily enough, 
 as the method gradually became more 
 searching, critical, and analytic. In our 
 own language, we never illustrate early les 
 
50 THE CREW OF ULYSSES. 
 
 sons by elaborately poised sentences from 
 Robertson or Gibbon ; but with random 
 speech; familiar instances; common saws. 
 We wait patiently until the pupil gets a 
 tight hold of his subject, before we call upon 
 him to wield it with rhetorical effect. A 
 round single-stick suffices for the first rude 
 lessons in the use of the trenchant broad- 
 sword. So in the illustration of the rules 
 of Latin Syntax, I would advocate the use 
 of familiar everyday sentences, such as a 
 boy might carry about with him as uncon- 
 sciously as he does his jacket. I should not 
 be afraid to employ many a word that might 
 be searched for in vain in the pages of Cic- 
 ero, or even in the dull pages of a diction- 
 ary ; to let pass uncorrected many a phrase 
 that would send a shudder through an Au- 
 gustan precisian. In fact, I should treat 
 Latin and Greek as though I were not in 
 the least afraid of them ; as though there 
 were no special linguistic secrets wrapped 
 within their mantles ; as though they were 
 simple, honest, straight-forward languages, 
 like the one spoken without conscious ef- 
 fort by our own street ragamuffins. 
 
THE CREW OF ULYSSES. 51 
 
 So far, however, from ignoring the value 
 of style and finish, I should merely be de- 
 ferring their inculcation until I could in- 
 culcate them with effect. It seems labor 
 thrown away to demonstrate that this is 
 more elegant than that^ when tliis and that 
 are both imperfectly understood. 
 
 Again : at present, ere a boy by the glim- 
 mering light of a misty dictionary, or the 
 reflected light of his solar tutor, can grope 
 through the involutions of an ordinary par- 
 agraph, he is pushed into works that would 
 probably little interest him, could they be 
 perused as easily as his own Robinson 
 Crusoe. Cornelius Nepos and Sallust are 
 two special bugbears. Caesar is not wholly 
 blameless. I can well imagine a scholar- 
 like soldier or historian reading the latter 
 with pleasure and profit. But, apart from 
 the difficulty of frequently-recurring indi- 
 rect speeches, his narrative, with all its sol- 
 dierlike simplicity and directness, is too ex- 
 tended for boys who can only read it in de- 
 tachments. We ourselves could enjoy no 
 landscape, however beautiful, that we saw 
 only in separate rounds through a paper 
 
52 THE CREW OF ULYSSES. ' 
 
 tube. But who will stand bail for those 
 other notoriously old offenders? What 
 grown man, though reeking with Latin, 
 would give an evening hour to the twaddle 
 of the one, or the pedantry of the other ? 
 And what versatility of human wit could 
 render either interesting to children in 
 miserable, daily "pittances of eight lines ? 
 which eight lines would have first to be tor- 
 tured into villanous English; then parsed, 
 word by word ; the nouns all declined ; the 
 verbs all conjugated: — a ruminative pro- 
 cess; — then, after pausing to take breath, 
 we should begin again at the end, and re- 
 verse the order of proceeding; running 
 backwards through the verbs, and back- 
 wards through the nouns. And so on, ad 
 nauseam. dura pueror* ilia ! 
 
ON CLIMBING, 63 
 
 ON CLIMBING. 
 
 Imagine yourself, Reader, in an elemen- 
 tary class-room, and before you a semicircle 
 of some fifty little recruits upon the benches, 
 with their brain-pans newly primed with 
 the singular oipenna, "Make ready ! — pre- 
 sent ! ! — fire ! ! ! " and pop go the fire-arms. 
 But what a scattered volley ! Some, it is 
 true, discharge their six rounds with pre- 
 cision ; but some are firing off their abla- 
 tives half a minute behind their comrades, 
 and some poor unfortunates of the awkward 
 squad have missed fire at their genitive 
 shot. 
 
 Follow me now. Reader, through the 
 scenes of our ordinary Latin drama. The 
 subject-matter of the play is a somewhat 
 confused one : if, therefore, in the descrip- 
 tion I indulge in a Castlereagh-medley of 
 
§4 ON CLIMBING, 
 
 metaphors, the fault is in the subject, and 
 not in myself. 
 
 The singular of penna is our rehearsal 
 for to-day, with that of a few similar nouns : 
 the plural of the same will come to-mor- 
 row : on the day following the singular and 
 plural in combination. Then in order will 
 come dominus and suite; then puer and 
 ditto ; then liber and do. ; and so on, until 
 we pause with dies and res. 
 
 Then separately and in order will stalk 
 across the stage, honus^ hona^ honum ; mitis^ 
 mite ; felix; with their three legs, and two 
 legs, and one leg. Then come their invidious 
 comparatives, and their bombastic superla- 
 tives. Then the pronouns ; then an active 
 verb of the first conjugation, as amo ; then, 
 actives of the other conjugations in order, 
 as moneo^ rego^ audio ; then the verb sum ; 
 then the passives in due order; then ad- 
 verbs, numerals, prepositions, conjunctions. 
 
 Now I shall quit the stage, and set you 
 down to dinner, at our piece de resistances 
 Syntax. Thin separate slices are taken day 
 by day without vegetables, bread, or salt ; 
 they will, consequently, remain upon the 
 
ON CLIMBING, 65 
 
 stomach; will cause, certainly, indigestion; 
 will, possibly, leave a chronic irritation of 
 the mucous membrane. 
 
 Back, Reader, to the stage. The foot- 
 lights are dimmed, and the actors are grop- 
 ing their way through the defiles of Pi^opria 
 quce maribus^ and As in prcesenti — 
 
 "Lasciate ogni spei'anza, voi, che *ntrate." 
 
 Thus our class is taken through the pages 
 and chapters of its grammar, with its atten- 
 tion riveted exclusively on its daily lesson ; 
 on its daily square-yard of Latin. It is a 
 process somewhat analogous to that of tra- 
 versing a dictionary, by stages, from A to 
 Z. Or it may be considered as a process of 
 stratification, applied to the administering 
 of mental food. And yet, physically, no 
 man would ever take his dinner in separate 
 layers of beef and potatoes and bread ; and 
 no elderly gentleman would take his punch 
 in separate instalments of rum and water 
 and sugar and lemon-peel. Or again, it 
 may be considered as a process of bolting 
 mental food in lumps ; which process, phy- 
 sically, is not conducive to digestion. 
 
66 ON CLIMBING, 
 
 I acknowledge that the system, wooden 
 as it is, produces, or fails to hinder, some 
 good results in pupils of high intelligence 
 after a course of four or five years' teach- 
 ing ; because intelligence in boyhood will 
 twist through obstacles into knowledge as 
 a branch does into sunlight ; and common 
 sense in manhood will at times slip off the 
 grooves that routine may have laid down. 
 But, with an easier and more interesting 
 method, I assert that, after a similar period, 
 the more intelligent might have done far 
 more, and the less intelligent a great deal ; 
 whereas, at present, the more intelligent do 
 very little, and the less intelligent next to 
 nothing. 
 
 But it will be said, that there is no regia 
 via to knowledge ; that the latter is found 
 only at the summit of the Hill of Difficulty ; 
 which we may never reach by walking on 
 a level road. True : but there are more 
 ways than one of ascending a hill ; and the 
 one which seems the shortest, is often found 
 the longest; and he who tries it, often 
 meets midway with some insuperable diffi- 
 culty, and is forced to retrace his steps, and 
 
recommence the ascent by an easier and 
 less fatiguing route. Instead of breasting 
 a steep hill, and pushing upwards in a line, 
 gazing only at the heath or shingles at my 
 feet, I should prefer taking long circuitous 
 bends, to lessen the angle of ascent ; and, 
 as the labor would thus be rendered less 
 exhaustive, I should be enabled on my way 
 to enjoy the expanding prospect ; to watch 
 the sailing clouds above, and the valley and 
 the lake spread underneath. In this way 
 I have climbed Skiddaw and Benlomond 
 without over-fatiguing myself: I tried Ben- 
 Rattachan by the other way, unsuccess- 
 fully; and paid dearly for the attempt. 
 
 So, in the study of a language, I acknowl- 
 edge that there is an ascent to be made ; 
 but I hold it my duty, as a guide, to point 
 out to the pedestrians under my charge 
 such a pathway as may present the angle 
 of least inclination. 
 
 In the declensions and conjugations — say, 
 of Latin — as we find them, there is so much 
 of phonetic corruption, that the changes of 
 termination may be, for a while at least, re- 
 garded as arbitrary. Had we them pre- 
 
58 ON CLIMBING. 
 
 sented to us in their primitive form, mem- 
 ory would be little needed and judgment 
 would do almost all our work. As it is, 
 memory is here absolutely required. The 
 declensions and conjugations, then, musthQ 
 committed to memory; at first, unreason- 
 ingly ; we must wait awhile, before we give 
 the solution to the riddles of their inflex- 
 ions ; some, perhaps, we shall have to leave 
 unsolved. The rules of gender also, and 
 the commonly recurring exceptions, must 
 be similarly learned; they may be com- 
 pressed within a page and a half of an ordi- 
 nary octavo. We may, reasonably, take it 
 for granted that a young student of Latin 
 is capable of analyzing an ordinary sentence 
 in his own language : that, in the following 
 sentences — 
 
 (1.) This is my father's hat: 
 
 (2.) He loved his brother : 
 
 (3.) He gave me nothing: 
 
 (4.) This is the house that Jack built: 
 
 (5.) There is no saying: 
 
 he will understand that 
 
 (1.) My is in the possessive case, as 
 agreeing with the possessive father^ s ; 
 
ON CLIMBING. 59 
 
 That (2.) his brother is an accusative or 
 primary object after loved ; 
 
 That (3.) nothing is accusative after 
 gave; and me^ dative or secondary object ; 
 
 That (4.) the house is nominative after is^ 
 a verb of existence ; and that^ although re- 
 ferring to a nominative, itself an accusative 
 after the active-transitive verb built ; 
 
 That (5.) saying^ although spelt as a par- 
 ticiple, is a verbal noun, or a noun coined 
 out of a verb, and in reality the nominative 
 to zs, and only put after it for convenience, 
 in consequence of the intrusion of the super- 
 fluous and anticipatory word, there. 
 
 Unless a pupil shall know thus much, 
 and a good deal more of the grammar of his 
 own language, it would seem to me to par- 
 take of the nature of folly or cruelty to j)ush 
 him into the syntax of a foreign one. 
 
 Taking for granted, then, such prelimi- 
 nary knowledge in our novice, the difficul- 
 ties of Latin syntax are wonderfully les- 
 sened. The great majority of its rules he 
 is already acquainted with : they are com- 
 mon to that syntax of simple rules, by 
 which he should daily parse, with his Latin 
 
60 ON CLIMBING. 
 
 Master^ his paragraph of English, He will 
 find that there are after all but very few 
 rules of syntax in Latin, which might not 
 be applied to his own tongue. He will, 
 however, see that, in Latin, an adjective is 
 not invariable in its spelling as with us; 
 but partakes of the nature of the mocking- 
 bird, and imitates, musically but not always 
 usefully, its noun in gender, number, and 
 case. He will observe, also, that with 
 nouns, Latin expresses many things — such 
 as the manner., how ; the means., by which ; 
 the time., when — by case-endings, which 
 things English usually expresses by prepo- 
 sitions; in other words, that Latin uses 
 tight affixes^ where we prefer loose prefixes. 
 But he will see that English also has its 
 tight aflSxes in such words s^s father^ s, him., 
 them^ whom, loves, loveth, loving, loved. So, 
 even in this respect, he will see that there 
 is a partial agreement between modern Eng- 
 lish and ancient Latin, which at first seemed 
 so totally different. And I will now hint 
 to him, and by and by will prove to him, 
 that his own language had once as many 
 tight affixes as Latin, but dropt them by 
 
ON CLIMBING, 61 
 
 degrees ; just as Latin did, as it merged in- 
 to what is now called Italian. 
 
 It will very probably, then, be found that 
 such Latin syntax, as he may be called upon 
 to commit to memory, may be compressed 
 within at mo%t two pages. The rules for 
 prosody should, I consider, be expunged in 
 toto from his grammar. All that is neces- 
 sary herein may be communicated orally by 
 a Master in the scansion of lines, from day 
 to day, when his class comes to read Ovid, 
 or Virgil, or Horace. Indeed, the analysis 
 of noun and verb terminations, carried on 
 from day to day, will gradually explain upon 
 reasonable grounds almost all abnormal 
 quantities. I think it would be difficult to 
 bring forward in Latin half a dozen long 
 vowels^ final or otherwise, which could not 
 be explained on the principle of the blend- 
 ing of vowels or the softening of a conso- 
 nant. I have tried this oral method twice 
 with two sets of upper classes, of which I 
 had the divided, though subordinate, charge, 
 and can furnish full proofs of its success. 
 
 The numerals also must be committed to 
 memory, and may be so committed in at 
 
62 • ON CLIMBING, 
 
 most two lessons. To learn by rote long 
 strings of prepositions or conjunctions is to 
 my mind worse than useless. They should 
 be communicated orally, gradually; like 
 kindly gifts, stealthily. Thus, upon exam- 
 ination, we find that all that requires un- 
 reasoning memory may be reduced to the 
 following heads : — 
 
 (1.) The five declensions, which include all 
 adjectives and participles : 
 
 (2.) The rules for gender, and exceptions : 
 
 (3.) The four conjugations, active and passive, 
 which latter voice includes sum : 
 
 (4.) The irregular verbs, eo, volOj nolo, malo, 
 possum : 
 
 (5.) Syntax ; two pages. 
 
 All this might easily be comprehended 
 within twenty-four octavo pages. It is 
 only a hillock of difficulty. But instead of 
 climbing right up the face of it — for the 
 sides may be very steep, though the summit 
 be within rifle-range — I should guide a 
 pupil by the sinuous and not uninteresting 
 path, along which I beg of you. Reader, to 
 accompany me in the next chapter. 
 
FROM PENNA TO POSSUM, 63 
 
 VI, 
 
 FROM PENNA TO POSSUM. 
 
 I SHALL suppose myself to have a class 
 of about fifty little fellows seated before 
 me, impressed with the solemnity of the oc- 
 casion, and carrying each the baton of a 
 School-marshal in his pocket. I shall take 
 it for granted that they have had a previous 
 training of two years at some one or other 
 of the excellent preparatory schools of our 
 own Dunedin ; and that this training has 
 been wisely confined to English grammar, 
 spelling, reading, and elementary arithme- 
 tic; and not mischievously extended to 
 Latin rudiments for the muddling of their 
 as yet imperfect ideas of English. I shall 
 also suppose that they are all ten years of 
 age, with a margin on either side. 
 
 Under these circumstances I should com- 
 mence operations ; and it would be my ear- 
 nest endeavor from this first lesson to the 
 
64 FROM PENNA TO POSSUM. 
 
 last they should receive from me, to disrobe 
 their new language little by little of its 
 mysterious integuments, and, if possible, to 
 prove it in the end to be composed of the 
 same flesh and blood and bones as their 
 own Teuton mother-tongue. 
 
 For a week or so I should content my- 
 self with probing their knowledge of Eng- 
 lish grammar; and from time to time I 
 should draw their attention to those few 
 inflexional terminations that our own lan- 
 guage has still retained; as in Am, them^ 
 whom,, dost,, lovetli or loves ; and I should im- 
 press upon them that it was in such words 
 that English displayed what was the chief 
 characteristic of Latin, viz., the use of tigJit 
 affixes instead of loose 'prefixes ; and I should 
 repeatedly inculcate this fact, that the chief 
 difference, if not the only difference, between 
 the two languages, was, that English used 
 loose prefixes very often,, and tight affixes very 
 seldom; and that Latin used tight affixes 
 very often,, and loose prefixes as seldom as 
 possible. And I would illustrate this by 
 the present tense of the verb to love,, and 
 that of amare : — 
 
FROM PENNA TO POSSUM. 65 
 
 I love, . 
 
 Amo^ 
 
 Thou lovest, . 
 
 Amas, 
 
 He lovetli or loves, 
 
 Amat, 
 
 We love, 
 
 Amamus, 
 
 Ye love, 
 
 Amatis, 
 
 They love, 
 
 Amant ; 
 
 and I should request them to observe that 
 in the English tense there were four iden- 
 tical words love; but that in the Latin 
 tense all the words were different ; and I 
 should then show them how requisite it was 
 for us in English to use our pronouns with 
 our verbs, to prevent mistakes ; but that it 
 was not so requisite in Latin, as the persons 
 in both numbers were all spelt differently. 
 And if I met with such a sentence as, 
 The king sent him, I should point out how 
 independent we were here of the order of 
 our words; how, without ambiguity, we 
 might say — 
 
 Him the king sent ; or 
 The king him sent ; 
 
 because that the spelling of him plainly in- 
 dicated that, in sense, even if not i^i i^osition, 
 it was to follow or be governed by the verb 
 sent. 
 
66 FROM PENNA TO POSSUM. 
 
 But if I came to such a sentence as, The 
 hoy stuck the pig^ I should observe that here 
 we were unable to alter the position of our 
 words without imminent danger to the boy. 
 And I should show them how much more 
 freely in such a sentence we might have 
 handled the pig, if he had retained his accu- 
 sative in addition to his tail ; how we might 
 then have caught hold of him by his accu- 
 sative, and put him anywhere in the above 
 sentence, without his being able to do harm 
 to the boy ; and I should observe that, in 
 Latin, pigs as well as pronouns had accusa- 
 tives ; and not only pigs, but nouns of all 
 kinds, masculine and feminine — for, of 
 course, those stupid neuter nouns could 
 hardly expect them — and that it was only 
 in modern times that nouns, indiscrimi- 
 nately, had been treated worse than terrier- 
 puppies, and lopped into guinea-pigs and 
 Manx cats. 
 
 And thus for a week or so, under cover 
 of our parallels of English parsing, should 
 we approach, gradually and warily the Se- 
 bastopol of our Latin Grammar. And, 
 meanwhile, on one of our public days, some 
 
FROM PENNA TO POSSUM, 67 
 
 parents of my pupils would pay my class a 
 visit ; and one of them, perhaps, returning 
 home, would say that he could not under- 
 stand my method : which would very prob- 
 ably be true : and that he should remove 
 his boy from my class at the close of the 
 current quarter ; which he would very prob- 
 ably do ; perhaps, not to the great benefit 
 of his boy. 
 
 At length we open our grammar and 
 commence with penna. Its singular con- 
 sists of six words. When these had been 
 thoroughly committed to memory by each 
 and every pupil, I should request them to 
 limit their attention for the present to the 
 three cases — 
 
 The Nominative, 
 
 The Genitive or Possessive, and 
 
 The Ablative ; 
 
 and I should request them to .write down 
 on their memories, or in a copy-book, if 
 they preferred, these three cases for the fol- 
 lowing nouns — 
 
 puella, aquila, 
 
 aqua, matrona, 
 
 ala, ancilla ; 
 
68 FROM PENNA TO POSSUM, 
 
 and the same for the adjectives — 
 
 bona, nigra, 
 
 mala, pessima, 
 
 Candida, optima ; 
 
 and by means of these, and the simple word 
 e8t^ we might form scores of sentences. 
 These sentences might be varied by plac- 
 ing two nouns together, as, ala aquilce, or 
 aquilce ala : we might then throw in two 
 prepositions in and cum^ governing the ab- 
 lative ; and a pupil would thus, in one les- 
 son, be furnished with verbal machinery for 
 forming sentences without number; com- 
 mon familiar sentences, such as he might 
 use at dinner-table or in the playground, if 
 he chose. 
 
 In due time let us take the plural of 
 penna, and that of the six similar nouns, 
 and of the six feminine adjectives; and de- 
 cline them with adjectives in combination 
 with nouns, till each and every pupil has 
 them at his finger-ends ; and let us revise 
 the lesson of the previous day. Now, then, 
 let us throw in the word sunt^ and a few 
 adverbs of common occurrence in ordinary 
 talk; as nunc, tunc, semper, nunquam; and 
 
FROM PENNA TO POSSUM. 69 
 
 repeat, with our extended vocabulary, the 
 viva voce process of the preceding day or 
 days. 
 
 Let our next lesson be the singular and 
 plural of penna ; with the singular of dom- 
 inus. Let us now decline, like the latter, 
 six familiar nouns ; and the masculines of 
 the adjectives before mentioned ; and pause 
 awhile to illustrate the echoing propensi- 
 ties of a Latin adjective : then let us throw 
 in one or two more familiar adverbs, and 
 proceed with our vivd voce as before. 
 
 For the next day, let us be similarly en- 
 gaged with the plural of dominus and the 
 like nouns and adjectives ; and for our vivd 
 voce throw in tlie masculines and feminines 
 of the following participles — 
 
 amatiis, fractus, 
 
 culpatus, monitus, 
 
 laudat us, auditus ; 
 
 remembering that, hitherto^ in our spoken 
 sentences^ we are limited to the use of the 
 three originally specified cases. 
 
 When I reach regnum^ I may thiow in 
 the neuters of all the adjectives and par- 
 
70 FROM PENNA TO POSSUM. 
 
 ticiples hitherto used ; and, meanwhile, we 
 may have introduced the present tense of 
 sum^ and additional adverbs or adverbial 
 expressions from time to time. 
 
 Thus, on arriving at the end of the sec- 
 ond declension, we shall have a somewhat 
 extensive vocabulary ; and by a skilful use 
 of it we may vary our spoken sentences 
 almost ad infinitum. 
 
 By and by, the present tense of amo 
 should be introduced, with that of a few 
 similar verbs; and we should then call in 
 simultaneously the accusatives of all our 
 declinable words to follow active-transitive 
 verbs. 
 
 The indicative mood of sum and amo 
 might thus be introduced, by instalments, 
 before we reached the end of the fifth 
 declension. And meanwhile our attention 
 would have been confined entirely to nouns 
 regular in inflexion and gender; the irreg- 
 ulars being left to be incorporated in due 
 time. 
 
 While the declensions were being rigor- 
 ously committed to memory, we should 
 almost imperceptibly be throwing in prep- 
 
FROM PENNA TO POSSUM. 71 
 
 osition, adverb, or tense, that would enable 
 the pupil to use his little store of declined 
 words almost as soon as he acquired it. We 
 should in fact have used our declensions as 
 the boiling water, and the extraneous words 
 as our oatmeal; and by scattering in the 
 latter gradually and in thinnest streams 
 and adding such sales as were at hand, we 
 should probably have provided a porridge 
 not wholly indigestible. 
 
 We should now proceed to our verbs. 
 They would now be transmuted to the 
 water, and the nouns to component parts 
 of the oatmeal. Three tenses per diem 
 would, probably, be our allowance ; but to 
 every tense we should append strings of 
 examples, and would be gradually increas- 
 ing our vocabulary of words, and using 
 those numerous rules of syntax, in which 
 Latin is in harmony with English. It would 
 be as well to classify our nouns, as we in- 
 troduced them. One day we might attach 
 to one or two well-conned verbs the names 
 of trees or flowers; similarly, we might 
 make our pupils familiar with the names 
 of beasts and birds and fishes ; the articles 
 
72 FROM PENNA TO POSSUM. 
 
 of ordinary furniture in a Roman dwelling , 
 the parts and rigging of a ship ; terms mil- 
 itary; terms of courtesy; degrees of con- 
 sanguinity; not mapping out our proceed- 
 ings on all occasions, but following nature 
 and impulse ; and we should, doubtless, find 
 their guidance more direct than that of any 
 trumpery Delectus in existence. 
 
 And all the while, we should be endeav- 
 oring to deceive our little fellows, by con- 
 cealing from them the real amount of their 
 increasing stores. So long as we abstained 
 from using a pedantic and dull grammar, 
 we should easily deceive, in this respect, a 
 number of their parents, who would be 
 firmly persuaded that their children were 
 learning nothing. For in the minds of 
 many "people, education is inseparably con- 
 nected with the idea of difficulty and te- 
 diousness. They imagine that a great deal 
 must be accomplishing, when painful ef- 
 forts are being made. They find a grim 
 satisfaction in the feeling of obstruction. 
 So when you row a boat against the stream, 
 you hear the water ruckling at the prow, 
 and you feel virtue go out of you at every 
 
FROM PENNA TO POSSUM. 73 
 
 sweep of the oar; and the boat is almost 
 stationary. But, when you row with the 
 current, you hear no noise of rippling ; you 
 scarcely feel your oar ; and the boat is glid- 
 ing like a swan. 
 
 Some such method as that above — and 
 remember, a vivd voce method can, at the 
 best, be drawn in but faintest outline upon 
 paper — would lead boys to catch with ra- 
 pidity sentences of great length., so long as 
 the construction were not involved. They 
 would almost insensibly be brought to think 
 in Latin ; that is to say, it would very soon 
 sound as ridiculous in their ears, to put ille 
 after amo as to put he after I love ; and this 
 intuitive 'perception oi the grammar of a lan- 
 guage, as connected with its musical sound, 
 is one of the first requisites for a subse- 
 quent thorough knowledge of, and capacity 
 of easy handling the same. And the proc- 
 ess for acquiring this intuitive perception 
 is not so difiBcult as it is usually thought 
 to be. It is, in fact, not a very high men- 
 tal process. It is acquired by postilions 
 abroad and foreign waiters here, without 
 great difficulty or delay. But although it 
 
74 FROM PENNA TO POSSUM. 
 
 is not a highly intellectual acquisition, it 
 is a wonderfully useful one, to serve as a 
 foundation for a really intellectual struct- 
 ure. And I am convinced that some such 
 process should be employed with a novice 
 in Latin, and in any language he may be 
 approaching ; and that it is a positive cru- 
 elty to pin him wholly down for a year to 
 monotonous lessons of memory, or to worry 
 him too soon with formal rules for parsing. 
 
FROM POSSUM TO PHjEDRUS, 75 
 
 VII. 
 
 FROM POSSUM TO PH^EDRUS. 
 
 The course of study, sketched out in 
 rough outline in the preceding chapter, 
 would require, perhaps, a session, or at least 
 three quarters of a sessions, for the filling 
 in of such shading as would be requisite to 
 make of our sketch a finished and sightly- 
 drawing. Whilst memory had been con- 
 tinually engaged on the road from Penna 
 to Possum, we should imperceptibly have 
 introduced all those rules of syntax where- 
 in Latin and English — and, indeed, all 
 the Arian languages — are at one. 
 
 We might now attack, still upon the vivd 
 voce method, those few rules, wherein the 
 idiom of Latin is, or seems to be, at variance 
 with that of our own tongue. We might, 
 for a time, ingraft one such rule upon the 
 work of each day; then ingraft them by 
 
76 FROM POSSUM TO PH^DRUS. 
 
 twos ; then by threes ; then illustrate then- 
 at random. And in all our illustrations we 
 should use familiar expressions, and con- 
 trast the Latin and English methods of 
 expressing some one idea or circumstance. 
 Thus, for such a sentence as, He struck the 
 tree with an axe^ we might show how the use 
 of the Latin cum in such a sentence would 
 convey the notion of companionship; or 
 that he struck the tree along with an axe. 
 And in such a sentence as, He wrote the 
 letters with many tears^ we might show that 
 to omit the cum in Latin would convey the 
 idea of instrumentality, or that he wrote the 
 letters with tears as a sort of invisible ink. 
 Such idioms we might illustrate, so famil- 
 iarly and repeatedly, that their force could 
 scarcely fail to be appreciated by the ma- 
 jority of, and perhaps by all, our pupils. 
 And all this while, I must remind the 
 reader that our class is supposed to be en- 
 gaged daily^ for at least one hour., in the 
 strict and rigorous analysis of some English 
 paragraph ; and that, during every such les- 
 son in English grammar, attention is drawn 
 to those cases where the habits of the two 
 
FROM POSSUM TO PHuEDRUS. 77 
 
 languages are at one, and where their idioms 
 are really or apparently at variance. 
 
 By this time we should be prepared to 
 take in hand some Latin book for reading. 
 And here I should probably be compelled, 
 not without reluctance, to commence with 
 some Latin Delectus or Reader ; but, after- 
 wards, I should strongly object to any edi- 
 tion of a simple classic that should be en- 
 cumbered with notes or vocabularies. I 
 would recommend, for instance, a simple 
 text-edition of the Fables of Phsedrus : and 
 such an edition would combine cheapness 
 with utility : and I should take daily a fable 
 at random^ which should he made out in my 
 presence. If, in such a fable, I saw a word 
 not previously met with, or a difficult con- 
 struction, or — what is not unfrequent — a 
 piece of questionable Latinity, I should give 
 due explanation or warning. And I should 
 certainly never allow a fable to extend over 
 even two days, for fear of my pupils losing 
 interest in their work. And now I should 
 commence systematically parsing my Latin 
 lessons, and would draw special attention 
 to diversities of idiom ; but I would never 
 
78 FROM POSSUM TO PH^DRUS. 
 
 call upon a boy to repeat pedantic and too 
 often meaningless rules ; but only to answer 
 directly such questions as were put to him. 
 Thus, in such a sentence as, Suo se gladio 
 miles vulneravit^ if I asked the gender of 
 suo^ I should expect him only to say mascu- 
 line ; and if I asked him to say why it were 
 so, I should expect him to reply, that it was 
 so in imitation of, or in agreement with the 
 gender of gladio^ its noun ; and if I asked 
 him the case of suo^ I should be content 
 with the simple reply that it was ablative ; 
 and if I further asked him wTiy^ I should 
 expect him to explain it on the same prin- 
 ciple of imitation or agreement: but if I 
 asked him why gladio were ablative^ I 
 should expect him to say that it was so 
 as expressing the means hy which the sol- 
 dier did the deed. And, perhaps, before 
 very long I should tell him that the ahla- 
 tive case meant the taking away case, and 
 I should ask him to find fault with the 
 expression ablative case of the instrument ; 
 and he would doubtless perceive that 
 the taking away case could hardly be the 
 case of means hy ivhich^ and I then should 
 
FROM POSSUM TO Pff^DRUS. 79 
 
 request him to say simply, when asked 
 the ease of gladio in such a sentence, 
 that it was the case of instrument^ or of 
 means hij wliich. And I should similarly 
 point out the absurdity of such expressions, 
 if I ever met wdth them, as ablative of the 
 cause^ ablative of time^ genitive of place; 
 and suggest that it would be no less 
 ridiculous for us to speak of the waking 
 condition of sleep^ or the active condition of 
 repose. 
 
 And if I came to such a sentence as Puer 
 librum tabulce imposuit^ I should explain 
 how imposuit mednit put on; and I should 
 say that if a boy put, he must first have 
 put something; and that this something 
 might be called the primary object after 
 the transitive verb; and that if lie put 
 something on, he must also have put that 
 something on something else, which some- 
 thing else I should expect to find in the 
 case of the secondary object: unless a special 
 preposition were used, as in English : and 
 so in the above Latin sentence he would see 
 that librum was the primary object depend- 
 ing on the posuit in the verb ; and tabulce 
 
80 FROM POSSUM TO PIIjEDRUS, 
 
 the secondary object depending immediately 
 on the in of the same. And I should 
 continually impress upon him that the 
 primary object was rendered by what was 
 called the accusative; and the secondary 
 object by what was called the dative. And 
 I should consider such a simple and rational 
 and intelligible way of parsing far better 
 than the explaining the case of tahuloe by 
 so ridiculous a rule, as 
 
 " Verbs compounded with these ten prepositions, 
 
 AD, ANTE, CUM, IN, INTER, OB, POST, PR^E, SUB, 
 
 and SUPER, govern a dative case.^' 
 
 And by and by, when my pupils were 
 capable of following me, I should show 
 them that in the termination of the accusa- 
 tive, in that insignificant letter m at the 
 end of the word, was probably latent some 
 preposition meaning on^ upon^ or to^ which 
 made the case to follow verbs or words of 
 motion or activity ; and that all datives 
 properly ended in z, and that this i was 
 probably the corruption of some preposi- 
 tion indicating motion or rest, in or at a 
 place ; and that all datives were really loca- 
 tives or cases of direction. 
 
FROM POSSUM TO PHjEDRUS. 81 
 
 And such explanations, instead of puz- 
 zling little heads, would amuse them and re- 
 assure them, by gradually bringing them to 
 perceive that in Latin there was little of the 
 mysterious, and that the people who once 
 spoke that language were not all school- 
 masters, but an ordinary mixture of people ; 
 tinkers and tailors, and wise men and fool- 
 ish ; like the inhabitants of our own island. 
 
 Meanwhile, if upholders of the system of 
 rule-repetition argued against my plan as 
 unmethodie and vague^ I should reply that it 
 were better for a boy to give once^ in simple 
 words that he understood, his explanation 
 of a grammatical phenomenon, than to ac- 
 count for it a thousand times by a set formula 
 that he understood partially or not at all. 
 And I should assert that when a child has 
 once got a tliorough mental grasp of a gram- 
 matical phenomenon^ he cannot let it go, 
 though he try hard to do so ; any more than 
 an educated man, unless reduced to an 
 unnatural imbecility, can forget that three 
 times three makes nine, or that the three 
 angles of a triangle are together equivalent 
 to two right angles. 
 
82 FROM POSSUM TO PHJEDRUS. 
 
 And I would add that it was with repe- 
 tition, as with all things good and useful, 
 quite possible to have too much of it. A 
 child, if kept continually at a few airs upon 
 the piano, will ultimately lose all sense of 
 their melody; and a boy may repeat a 
 grammar rule until it cease to carry an echo 
 of meaning to his mind — and here I am 
 boldly premising that it originally did carry 
 a rather faint one. As in mental, so in 
 physical operations, there are limits to the 
 rule of repetition. We never heard of a 
 boy forgetting to swim, or not learning to 
 swim better, after he could once swim 
 twenty strokes ; or forgetting to skate, 
 after having once skimmed over twenty 
 yards on Duddingston Loch; and that^ too^ 
 although months and even years might have 
 elapsed between two separate occasions of 
 swimming or skating. 
 
tROM PHJ^DRUS TO FAREWELL. 83 
 
 VIII. 
 
 FROM PH^DRUS TO FAREWELL. 
 
 In my walk this afternoon I overtook 
 some farm-servants, who were engaged in 
 talk; and caught the following words, from 
 a lassie, as I passed by : " Well : I thocht 
 there were a gate^ And the sentence at 
 once suggested itself as a simple example of 
 the philological superiority of vulgar to 
 literary speech. The Abstract Bagman 
 would imagine there lay a blunder in the 
 were. The real blunder is in his own was. 
 The were is not plural, but an unconscious, 
 traditional conservation of the old subjunc- 
 tive, with its modification of vowel-sound. 
 I should have, perhaps, only puzzled the 
 farm-lassie, had I stopped to tell her that 
 she was more than justified in putting her 
 secondary verb into a mood of dubitative- 
 ness, seeing that the primary verb from its 
 
84 FROM PIIjEDRUS TO FAREWELL. 
 
 very signification precluded the idea of cer- 
 titude in the dependent statement. Very 
 probably, before my commendation had 
 been closed, her sweetheart would have 
 punched my head, under the idea that 
 some indelicacy were lurking beneath my 
 polysyllables. 
 
 But, revenons a nos moutons^ whom we 
 left browsing on Phsedrus. As too early 
 an acquaintance with metrical Latin is apt 
 to confuse a child's healthy, natural ideas 
 of the position of words, I should be at 
 great pains to provide a corrective by 
 spoken sentences, and the use of a good 
 exercise-book, if I could procure one. Ar- 
 nold's First Latin Composition-book is an 
 admirable manual, but the price is so out- 
 rageously exorbitant, that I should hesitate 
 in suggesting its purchase. However, if 
 the book be dear, it is certainly good ; and 
 that palliation cannot be given for the ma- 
 jority of dear school-books. I could in- 
 stance a very remarkable case of Selections 
 from Herodotus. Taking the Tauchnitz 
 standard of price as regards the mere an- 
 cient text, I should say there was about 
 
FROM PK^EDRUS TO FAREWELL 85 
 
 two pennyworth of Greek in the bookling 
 I have in view : the notes might possibly 
 be worth a penny, and a paper-cover might 
 be got for the fraction of a farthing. The 
 book in question, to the disgrace of the 
 publisher or purchaser, costs four shillings 
 and sixpence. I would rather publish the 
 classics than teach them. 
 
 It is a very singular fact, that while we 
 confessedly use Latin as the chief instru- 
 ment for inculcating clear and precise views 
 • on the philosophy of language, our pupils 
 are early made familiar with constructions 
 — especially in verse — where the simple 
 law of natural speech is violated in obedi- 
 ence to questionable rules of rhetoric, or the 
 imperious demands of non-Italian metre. 
 Take, for instance, the first line we meet 
 in opening our Virgil : 
 
 Tityre, tu, patiilx recubans sub tegmine fagi. 
 
 I would venture to affirm that the correct 
 way of translating this line is : Tityrus^ 
 that reclinest beneath the shelter of the beech 
 when spreading ; indicating somewhat su- 
 perfluously that the person addressed never 
 so reclined when the tree was bare, and 
 
86 FROM P ELBRUS TO FAREWELL, 
 
 the weather, probably, damp or cold. Of 
 course it is obvious that patulee is intended 
 as a mere epithet of fagi. But according 
 to all the rules of natural speech, ancient 
 or modern, the epithet should cling as 
 closely to its noun, as the bark to the tree, 
 the glove to the hand, the drapery to the 
 human form. And, whenever, such a dis- 
 location as the one above quoted takes 
 place, a novice should have explained to 
 him the reasons for the divorce of wedded 
 words ; and should be informed that, what, 
 natural speech had joined together, foreign 
 metre had pat asunder. Take another line : 
 a very beautiful one to an ear trained to 
 the abnormal licenses of Latin verse : 
 
 Invalidas^Q tibi tendens, heu! non tua, palmas. 
 Here our epithet and noun, that should be 
 as close together as the white legs of a toy- 
 soldier, are straddling like a Colossus, for 
 a fleet of petty words to sail under. 
 
 The second line of the elegiac stanza 
 sins continually against the rules of natural 
 arrangement; but the peculiar difficulty of 
 the metre pleads as a circonstance attenu- 
 ante. 
 
FROM PHJ^DRUS TO FAREWELL. 87 
 
 Bat it is not in verse alone that a pupil 
 will stumble over artificial collocations. 
 They abound in prose, wherever a writer 
 is affecting the grand style, or is talking 
 fine ; whenever Livy begins scene-painting ; 
 or Cicero to roll in flood; or Tacitus to 
 " glower into a puddle ; " or Juvenal to 
 pour the vials of his carefully-bottled wrath 
 upon excesses, with which he betrays a sus- 
 picious familiarity. A pupil, by being 
 brought into too early an acquaintance 
 with the tricks of rhetoric, fails later on to 
 appreciate their force. With a sober-tinted 
 background of natural Latin, these artificial 
 figures would be brought out in full relief ; 
 as it is, they blend with the surrounding 
 landscape, and the whole picture, to the 
 art-student, has a dim and hazy look. If 
 a pupil throughout the whole course of his 
 elementary training were only or chiefly 
 conversant with easy-flowing constructions; 
 when he came, subsequently, upon the ar- 
 tificial arrangements cf a rhetorical pas- 
 sage, their peculiarity would at once arrest 
 his attention ; and the writer's end would 
 thus be attained ; for it was just to arrest 
 
88 FROM PHJEDRUS TO FAREWELL. 
 
 a reader's attention that he arranged his 
 words abnormally. 
 
 Furthermore, in sentences of spoken 
 Latin, where the words should run in as 
 natural an order as they do in un-rhetorical 
 Italian, or, if you please, in common Eng- 
 lish, I should not hesitate to clip my adjec- 
 tives of their terminations, wherever I could 
 do so musically. Thus, I should not hesi- 
 tate to say : Bon^ aurum ^st : noii id, m ^er- 
 cule, hon^ hominis H ; but in such a sen- 
 tence as Bona femivH erat mater tua, I can- 
 not clip the adjective before a consonant, 
 as the Italian ear is abhorent of consonantal 
 endings. 
 
 For a long while, then, I should, in all my 
 spoken sentences, make my adjectives and 
 nouns walk in loose pairs, side by side ; like 
 the beasts into a Noah's ark, or school-girls 
 in their joyless processions. In course of 
 time, I should allow the adjective to throw 
 its arms around its noun ; or make the couple 
 touch finger-tips, as in a country dance, 
 while their companion-words ran under- 
 neath. 
 
 When I had sufficiently guarded my 
 
FROM PUuEBRUS TO FAREWELL. 89 
 
 pupils against an unreasoning belief in un- 
 reasonable word-arrangements, I should 
 venture to put into their hands the exqui- 
 site Metamorphoses of Ovid. One or two 
 of the stories I should set aside, as victims 
 for sacrifice ; or as scape-goats to be driven 
 into the wilderness of parsing. From these 
 our daily lessons for a time would be 
 chosen; and these lessons would be duly 
 construed, parsed, scanned, and committed 
 to memory. But I should from time to 
 time construe to them in uninterrupted 
 English some of the most interesting 
 stories; making comments as I went on, but 
 requiring no preparation, and no parsing. 
 
 Common sense would lead me to omit 
 several stories. Many, however, that Pru- 
 dery would pass by, I should exhibit in 
 all the exquisiteness of their naked grace. 
 I should follow Actaeon through the wood, 
 until he came upon the fountain where 
 Diana was bathing, with her pretty hand- 
 maids round her. And I should ask my 
 boys, if they had ever surprised the goddess 
 and her nymphs in their watery revels; 
 and they would tell me that, in their holi- 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
90 FROM PH^DRUS TO FAREWELL. 
 
 days, on clear summer nights, in some lake 
 among their own glorious mountains, they 
 had seen the crescent-moon and the twink- 
 ling stars. And I would tell them, that the 
 story had a moral meaning besides its po- 
 etic one ; that, for all the poet said to the 
 contrary, Actseon was led to the fountain 
 by curiosity, and was punished for this 
 fault, and not for a mere mistake. And they 
 would agree with me that the moral was 
 told in his story more gracefully, although 
 not more funnily, than in their old favorite 
 tale of Fatima and Bluebeard. 
 
 And I would follow with them the Holy 
 Mother through the world, in her search of 
 the lost Proserpine. And I would tell them, 
 how in ancient Egypt Osiris died and came 
 to life again, and was lost and was found ; 
 and that, though we had no Osiris in our 
 northern climes, we had still our maiden 
 Proserpine, that stood every spring-time in 
 the fields with the poppies in her hair ; and 
 that she was stolen away every year still, 
 and left for a while her mother desolate 
 and forlorn. 
 
 And when they came to perceive what 
 
FROM P ELBRUS TO FAREWELL. 91 
 
 truths of astronomy, morals, and religion 
 were quaintly and gracefully riddled in 
 isweet Latin rhythm, they would see that 
 the fancy of Ovid was not limited to inde- 
 cent images, as it is supposed to have 
 been by the Tourist in Norwaj^ and other 
 shallow writers of the Bagman tribe. And 
 if a member of this low caste ever came 
 into my class-room, I would call upon one 
 of the younger children to show him the 
 beauty and the truth of some story, where- 
 in his impure imagination and defective 
 scholarship had seen only a never-intended 
 indecency. 
 
 But while in these readings I should 
 exact no preparation and no parsing, I 
 should exact a close and universal atten- 
 tion ; and if the latter were not given by 
 any one pupil, I should consider the class 
 and myself as blameworthy, in failing, by 
 intellectual or moral means, to chain the 
 attention of the wandering pupil; and I 
 should punish the class and myself with the 
 loss of a quarter's play, for our selfish in- 
 attention to individual interests. And, by 
 and by, when I read a hundred lines to- 
 
92 FROM PHJEDRUS TO FAREWELL. 
 
 gether from a Latin poet ; slowly and dis- 
 tinctly, and following closely the order of 
 Latin words with a due regard to honest 
 English idioms ; there would probably not 
 be a boy in my class but would follow the 
 English rendering of every Latin word. 
 Acting upon this method, I have read 
 through the whole iEneid with a not very 
 advanced class in one year. For every 
 twenty lines they had construed, parsed, 
 and scanned, and said by heart, I read them 
 a hundred lines in current English ; so that 
 they read two books in the year, and I read 
 ten. I believe they were the first child- 
 mariners in Great Britain that ever circum- 
 navigated that splendid poem. 
 
 Meanwhile, my pupils would have reached 
 the period when it is usual for boys to be- 
 gin versifying. To see this process in all 
 its ridiculous nakedness, we should have 
 to visit one of the great English schools. 
 I have known young pupils to be removed 
 from Dunedin to Harrow, or Rugby, or 
 Marlborough, or other schools of fame. 
 Their parents have sometimes told me that 
 James or Willy was reported as doing very 
 
FROM PHjEDRUS TO FAREWELL. 93 
 
 well ; only that he was very deficient m his 
 Latin verses. I remember a lady telling 
 me this, with a face of great concern, as 
 the report sent in of her own boy. This 
 boy of hers had a capital prose head, but 
 Avould turn a summersault as easily as a 
 pentameter. 
 
 Whilst I should impress upon all my 
 pupils, gradually but orally, the strict rules 
 of quantity and scansion, I should make 
 my verse exercises optional ; and I should 
 not be surprised or annoyed if I found some 
 of my best boys unwilling to undertake 
 them, or, in their execution, coming below 
 their ordinary standard of intelligence. 
 
 And now. Reader, I would willingly draw 
 you on with me through an initiatory course 
 of Greek ; and show you how interesting 
 and amusing may be made the study of its. 
 regular declension and conjugation ; how 
 the bare branches of its rudiments may be 
 clothed with green leaves; how with the 
 besom of common sense we should sweep 
 aorists and polysyllables underneath the 
 schoolroom grate. Or, leaving grammar on 
 the ground-floor, I would fain carry you 
 
94 FROM PH^DRUS TO FAREWELL. 
 
 along with me up our Greek staircase to 
 Plato and ^schylus and Aristophanes in 
 the drawing-room, or to exercises in prose 
 and iambics in the garret. But, Reader, 
 how can I hope to retain you so long, when 
 I fail to retain my own pupils ? If I begin 
 my march at Penna with half a hundred 
 little privates, before the march is ended 
 my company has been eight times deci- 
 mated, and a sorry decade is left for the 
 closing of the campaign. Some have fallen 
 by the way, and been buried in lawyers' 
 offices, or counting-houses, or beneath bank- 
 counters. Some have deserted, and gone to 
 serve commanders, who give them a finer 
 uniform and less toilsome work. . 
 
 I met the other day a former pupil, whose 
 school-fellows are still under me : he stopped 
 to shake me by the hand, and I was de- 
 lighted to see him, for, though his talents 
 were below mediocrity, he was a well-con- 
 ditioned, manly little fellow. If he were 
 still in his old school-class, he would pro- 
 bably be a successful candidate for the last 
 place but one. I asked him what he was 
 now engaged in, and he told me, somewhat 
 
FROM PHJEDRUS TO FAREWELL. 95 
 
 nervously, that he was attending the class 
 of Logic and Metaphysics. And this rejjly 
 of his set me thinking, Reader, of that 
 wondrous chain of gold that binds to one 
 another all things in nature, animate and 
 inanimate ; how the green grass grows upon 
 the idle hills to feed the silly sheep ; how 
 the silly sheep browse thereupon to fatten 
 you and me ; and how the great round 
 world, with its green hills, and its silly 
 sheep, and all its boys and schoolmasters, 
 is bound by the chain of gold fast to the 
 throne of Zeus. So, looking into that frank 
 and pleasant face, I thought : " Well, my 
 boy, thou art not living altogether in vain. 
 When thou quittest this thy bleating- 
 ground, thou wilt leave some tags of wool 
 behind thee. And the fleece of thy modest 
 fees will cover with an over-coat the learned 
 form of a most excellent professor." 
 
TEETH ON EDGE, 
 
 IX. 
 
 TEETH ON EDGE AND CLOSED LIPS. 
 
 The Cardinal of Westminster has the 
 reputation of being the best Latinist of all 
 that now wear violet stockings. What an 
 interesting experiment it would be to kid- 
 nap his Eminence with the ambassador from 
 Athens into the Cambridge senate-house, 
 when the annual prize exercises were being 
 read in Latin and Greek verse. I take it 
 for granted that the Cardinal, from the 
 sacredness of his calling, has somewhat of 
 the Heraclitus in his composition; and 
 that the ambassador, from the vivacity of 
 his nation, will sympathize more with the 
 laughter of Abdera. I can imagine that his 
 Excellency would listen wonderingly dur- 
 ing the recital of The Greek Ode ; and, on 
 hearing that it was in his own language, 
 would burst, in spite of his good-breeding, 
 
AND CLOSED LIPS. 97 
 
 into an uncontrollable guffaw. Before the 
 Latin hexameters had gone through twelve 
 lines, the Cardinal would be removed to the 
 Lodge of Trinity, and treated soothingly 
 for a temporary derangement of the diges- 
 tive organs. 
 
 Were you ever present. Reader, at the 
 public distribution of prizes at a great Eng- 
 lish school ? If so, you will have heard the 
 senior pupils recite what are called Alcaics 
 and Elegiacs, with a thin, scrannel-pipe pro- 
 nunciation, and a mechanical observance of 
 the skeleton-rules of scanning. This is not 
 their fault. Some of these lads have musi- 
 cal ears ; most of them can hum "God save 
 the Queen ; " and all are quite aware that 
 they are uttering sounds as harmonious as 
 if one whistled on- the edge of a comb. Not 
 their fault at all. They are taught by us 
 to read a most exquisitely musical language 
 in this barbarous way. You may hear the 
 Italian flute played in such a manner as to 
 resemble a split fife, by the public orators 
 at our great universities. 
 
 At a time when Greek was becoming the 
 language of the civilized world, and enter- 
 
98 TEETH ON EDGE, 
 
 ing as the first linguistic element into the 
 education of youth, a grammarian of Alex- 
 andria suggested the idea of accentuating 
 all Greek words, as a help in the study of 
 a very intricate tongue, and as a means for 
 conserving its traditional rhythm. A few 
 such accents yon may see in books of mod- 
 ern times; French, Italian, and Spanish. 
 To a native, or a foreigner thoroughly con- 
 versant with Greek, such multitudinous 
 accents as a page of Greek now exhibits are 
 blots upon the original text ; and you may 
 imagine how they would have appeared to 
 an Athenian of the time of Pericles, by ob- 
 serving the effect upon yourself of the fol- 
 lowing style of printing : 
 
 The current that with gentle murmur glides, 
 
 Thou know'st, being stdpp'd, 'impatiently doth rage. 
 
 These marks might be of some assistance 
 to a young Hindoo student of English, but 
 they would, in all probability, have pre- 
 vented Shakespeare from recognizing his 
 own handiwork. They give the appearance 
 of poetry severely scarred with the small-pox. 
 
 However, the ingenious invention of the 
 old grammarian has met with a fate that no 
 
AND CLOSED LIPS. 99 
 
 oracle, by any possibility, could have prog- 
 nosticated. His accents, even where they 
 are questionably correct^ are carefully pre- 
 served in writing, and the rules upon which 
 they proceed are sedulously studied, al- 
 though their study is a somewhat perplex- 
 ing one ; but strange to say, they are never 
 observed in the way he must have had in 
 view, — we never sound a single word ac- 
 cording to their suggestions, except by 
 chance. We have a leader in our Greek 
 concert, who flourishes his baton vigorously, 
 and in what is thought correctest time, but 
 the members of the orchestra are independ- 
 ent of his rule, and regardless of one an- 
 other. 
 
 Towards the close of my school-days, I 
 used to envy very much my best of school- 
 friends the privilege he enjoyed of supping 
 from time to time with the greatest of then 
 living writers. I remember his describing 
 to me how this veteran scholar read an ode 
 of Horace after the pronunciation he had 
 recently heard in Tuscany ; and I confess 
 that until I had heard the simple but sweet 
 music of the Italian vowels, I had had no 
 
100 TEETH ON EDGE, 
 
 idea that the Roman lyre could be struck 
 to such reverberant sound. Indeed, I had 
 always imagined that the cadence of Latin 
 poetry resembled the intermittent notes of 
 the piano, and I found, to my surprise and 
 pleasure, that it admitted of the prolonged 
 vibrations and rolls of the violin and organ. 
 Perhaps in no piece of Latin poetry is the 
 fulness of Italian sound, and the thinness 
 of our own, more readily appreciable than 
 in that Latinest of Latin poems, the Atys 
 of Catullus. If any English scholar can 
 succeed in making this poem sound musi- 
 cally in the ears of man, woman, or child, 
 with our orthodox accentuation, he will 
 have rivalled that ingenious German youth 
 who produced the sounds of half an orches- 
 tra from a combination of Jew's-harps. 
 
 But, if our English pronunciation of Lat- 
 in be unmusical for verse, it is absolutely 
 ludicrous for prose, and the more so as the 
 prose approaches the familiar and conver- 
 sational style. We have but to read a scene 
 of Plautus out loud, or to see one travestied 
 at Westminster, to convince ourselves of 
 this fact. For the purposes of carrying on 
 
AND CLOSED LIPS, IQl 
 
 an extempore conversation, our method of 
 pronouncing is as ill-adapted as our system 
 of teaching. But it will be argued that 
 there would be no utility in a scholar's 
 possessing the power of fluently speaking 
 either of the old languages ; that they are 
 taught merely as abstract studies, for the 
 purpose of conveying strict ideas of gram- 
 mar and philology ; that the mere sound of 
 vowels and the accentuation of words are 
 but trifles compared with the intellectual 
 end in view. 
 
 I freely acknowledge that the heads of 
 our greatest English schools are boldly self- 
 consistent. They unflinchingly extend their 
 system to modern languages; and I could 
 name more than one flourishing and aris- 
 tocratic school, where French is taught by 
 an English clergyman with an accent that 
 would set a Parisian coiffeur in convulsions ; 
 where every u is sounded like the u in 
 flute^ and every final n is clenched with an 
 honest, Teuton guttural. 
 
 In his sixth year of tuition, a very excel- 
 lent pupil left me for one of the most famous 
 of southern schools. He was at the time 
 
102 TEETH ON EDGE, 
 
 well advanced in French and German. He 
 went south, I was told, to acquire an English 
 accent. He went south, I know, to lose 
 that of French and German. The latter 
 language he was advised to discontinue, as 
 it interfered with the more important study 
 of Latin versification. The study of French, 
 however, is continued for him by an Eng- 
 lishman, with a sort of club-footed pronun- 
 ciation. "- Oh, never mind his German," 
 said the Vice-Principal, — who, strange to 
 say, is an excellent modern linguist, — to 
 my pupil's father ; "he can pick it up in six 
 weeks (!) after he has left us." I think it 
 must have taken about the same time for 
 the clergyman of that establishment to pick 
 up his French, with its club-footed and 
 hoof-like accentuation. 
 
 Now, Reader, reflect for one moment 
 upon the paradox that is presented to us. 
 We have two languages, Greek and Latin — 
 neither of which has ceased to be spoken in 
 continental Europe ; two languages, which 
 have become our chief instruments of 
 higher education, irrespectively altogether of 
 the chief end of any language ; to wit, the 
 
AND CLOSED LIPS. 103 
 
 expression of thought by speech. There is 
 a good deal of tomfoolery in the teaching 
 of many of our boarding-schools; but I have 
 never yet heard of any enterprising and 
 philosophical German illustrating to young 
 ladies a course of musical lectures by means 
 of a violin that went thud-thud^ and a piano 
 that went jingle-jangle. 
 
 I once dined with a friend, whose rooms 
 were in the house of a patissiere^ who gave 
 lessons in pastry-making to a class of young 
 ladies. I formed a good idea of her didactic 
 system from the indigestibility of a pie- 
 crust, which was served up in my honor ; 
 for, detecting the hand of a novice in the 
 pastry, I inferred that the teacher's method 
 was strictly practical; aiid indeed, at the 
 time, I selfishly regretted that it was so. 
 
 Again, good Reader, reflect for another 
 moment upon another paradox. Let us 
 suppose that by advertising, or some other 
 omnipotent means, we could obtain a nur- 
 sery-maid, a housemaid, and a cook, who 
 could all speak Latin ; and that your little 
 daughter, from the age of seven to nine, 
 should hear them daily conversing in her 
 
104 TEETH ON EDGE, 
 
 nursery. Why, in two years she would talk 
 Latin as fluently as you talk English. Now, 
 do you suppose that the power of speaking 
 it with ease would be a barrier to her under- 
 standing the theory of its grammar ? Or 
 will you venture to affirm that this imper- 
 ceptibly-acquired power would not be a very 
 powerful assistance to her and you, if you 
 should ever carry her in that language to 
 the analytic study of its syntax? Well, 
 Eeader, you have, I will suppose, a son, who 
 has been acquiring an English accent, and 
 a partial control over the elegiac metre in 
 some public school; say for the last six 
 years. When he next dines at home, take 
 him unawares at dessert-time, and offer him 
 a guinea if he can express the following sen- 
 tence in correct Latin : " I have been learn- 
 ing Latin for six years; and, upon my 
 word, I don't think I could, in that lan- 
 guage, say Bo to a goose." Your guinea 
 will be quite safe. But if your little daugh- 
 ter has had a French governess for six 
 months, a similar experiment in French 
 would be attended with some risk. 
 
 A member of my own family, who re- 
 
AND CLOSED LIPS. 105 
 
 ceived his early education in Florence, and 
 graduated very recently at our Edinburgh 
 University, was making a tour of Holland 
 during the last summer. He had introduc- 
 tions to some of the chief medical professors 
 in Utrecht. He went through the various 
 wards in the hospital with the Professor of 
 Clinical Surgery and his posse of students. 
 For an hour and a half^ the Professor, out 
 of compliment to the stranger, made every 
 remark to his students in Latin. And in- 
 stead of giggling, or nudging each other, 
 the students took notes, and seemed to fol- 
 low with ease all that was said. And, what 
 is more curious still, the stranger followed 
 all the remarks made, as easily as if they 
 had been given in English, French, Italian, 
 or German, although his Latin studies had 
 been discontinued at a much earlier period 
 than Avhen a scholar usually leaves an Eng- 
 lish school for the University. But then, 
 in boyhood and early youth he had studied 
 Latin with a view of reading it with ease 
 and speaking it with fluency, and not with 
 a view of writing stilted prose, trashy hex- 
 ameters, and trashier alcaics. In fact, Latin 
 
106 TEETH ON EDGE, 
 
 had taken its part with other studies in ren- 
 dering him an accomplished man, and had 
 not been used in excess for the purpose of 
 stuffing him into an useless University- 
 Prize Pig. 
 
 Now, Reader, not to speak of our schools 
 of medicine, do you think you could find 
 any Englishman, even after twenty years 
 spent in teaching Latin, who could do with 
 an effort what was done w^ithout an effort 
 by this unscholastic Dutchman? Or, if you 
 could hit upon such a native Phoenix, do 
 you think he could gather a class, not of 
 medical students, but of first-class Tripos- 
 men, who could follow him for half an hour? 
 
 And now. Reader, I fear I have tried your 
 temper too far. Confess it. You are a little 
 angry with me. "Do you mean to say, a 
 true Briton is not as good as a Dutchman?" 
 Nay, Reader, nay: I am as national as 
 yourself. In all departments of science, 
 and ii\ a few branches of polite learning, our 
 countrymen can hold their own against 
 all Continentalists. But there is no doubt 
 that, in the familiar handling of the classic 
 tongues — of Latin especially — we are far 
 
AND CLOSED LIPS. 107 
 
 beliind Germany, Holland, and Italy. And 
 the simple reason is that they, to a certain 
 extent, follow nature in their method of 
 teaching at least one of these languages ; 
 and make it, to some extent, a living lan- 
 guage by their method of communicating 
 it. With our present system of teaching, 
 and our impossible pronunciation, any at- 
 tempt at a practical use of the same lan- 
 guage would present the ghastly phenome- 
 non of galvanism upon a corpse. 
 
 Is there any chance then of amendment 
 in our great public schools? In those of 
 England, I think there is none ; in those of 
 Scotland, there is a possibility of change. 
 
 The fact is, the Reformation, that im- 
 proved religion in England, spoiled its 
 Latinity; and the pedantic dread of false 
 quantities has strangled Italian accent. In 
 Scotland, a servile imitation of what is bad 
 in English scholarship has nearly led to the 
 extinction of a music, which, at the com- 
 mencement of the present century, might 
 have been heard in every parish-school. 
 
 And now, your ClericO'didaskalos of Eng- 
 land is a plump and comfortable blackbird. 
 
108 TEETH ON EDGE, 
 
 who, from over-feeding, has forgotten his 
 ancient song. His lay-brother of the North, 
 however, is a thrush, who is kept on very 
 wholesomely-spare diet. Cover his cage 
 with a towel : let him wait a while for his 
 seed ; and my goodness, how that hungry 
 bird will sing ! 
 
PLACE AUX DAMES. 109 
 
 PLACE AUX DAMES. 
 
 OuB sex is incorrigible. Eighteen cen- 
 turies of Christianity have rained upon it 
 with no permanently softening result. We 
 speak of the feudal times as the dark ages ; 
 a title coined by the after-envy of a more 
 logical, but more vulgar civilization. For 
 some three hundred years there was a dim 
 light in Christendom ; and warriors, super- 
 fluously helmeted, with sword and battle- 
 axe dinned into each other's heads a proper 
 respect for the ladies. But in an unhappy 
 hour, the Medicis of Florence made fashion- 
 able the study of Greek ; and since Europe 
 has taken to learning and logic, it has lost 
 one-half of its old fun, and nearly all its old 
 chivalry. 
 
 Strange to say, the most barbarous tribes 
 we have ever unearthed, seem as deficient 
 
110 PLACE AUX DAMES, 
 
 in politeness as the most civilized and re- 
 fined of western nations. But your bar- 
 barian is, at all events, no hypocrite. In 
 the old Mexican hut, the unheeded squaws 
 would in silence chew the narcotic Aveed 
 whose subsequent chewing was to make 
 their lord as like a pig as alcohol can make 
 a Christian. An African monarch fattens 
 his mistress out of all shape ; not, as trav- 
 ellers say, to humor a low sense of female 
 beauty, but in obedience to the impulse of 
 a deeply-rooted male jealousy. The Turk 
 immures his wives in a dull Harem, and 
 feeds them on sickening sweetmeats, in re- 
 venge for the loss of a paradise, that he 
 would be too stupid to enjoy. The China- 
 man squeezes the feet of his women into 
 lumps of helplessness; but the more in- 
 genious European transfers the pressure to 
 the female brain. 
 
 You will wonder. Reader, what spirit of 
 impertinence leads me to meddle with the 
 arcana of our Boarding-schools. I am quite 
 aware that I have no more right to pry into 
 the mysteries of a lady's education than into 
 those of her toilet. But I cannot help 
 
PLACE AUX DAMES, HI 
 
 hearing what I hear; seeing what I see. 
 In every street I pass wonderingly beneath 
 overshadowing domes of crinoline ; and 
 dainty silken stays peep out of the windows 
 of that shop in George Street, which is, I 
 believe, termed a Magasin from the inflam- 
 matory and inflammable nature of its con- 
 tents. In another shop-window in that 
 same street, I often see what are called ob« 
 JECT CAEDS, which were invented by some 
 spiteful, and, of course, male wretch, for the 
 purpose of frittering away the time and 
 intellects of all subsequent generations of 
 girldom. To one of these cards I saw at- 
 tached a small piece of coal, and underneath 
 it was printed a farrago of chemical and 
 other gibberish, which goes by the satirical 
 name of " useful information." To another 
 was attached a piece of sponge, too small to 
 clean a slate, but apparently large enough 
 to absorb a whole page of wishy-washy 
 observations. To another was pinned a 
 butterfly's wing. I am convinced that, in- 
 side the shop, I might have seen cards, il- 
 lustrative of natural history, ornamented 
 with impaled cockroaches and nasty mar- 
 
112 PLACE AUX DAMES. 
 
 tyred earwigs. What do instructors of 
 young girls do with these cards ? Do they 
 read out loud the nonsense written under- 
 neath, as texts for informational sermons ? 
 And, in doing so, can they retain their 
 gravity? If they have such command of 
 facial muscle, O why do they waste in a 
 school-room those talents for low comedy, 
 which would win them renown and fortune 
 at the Adelphi ? 
 
 I heard, only a few days since, that our 
 girls were fed upon Lathi roots. I asked 
 through what process of cookery these roots 
 might have passed. I was informed that 
 they were invariably given raw. Such indi- 
 gestible food I knew to be fit only for pigs. 
 And my blood boiled within me, to think 
 that such should be the dewless nurture of 
 the sweet acorn-cups of future womanhood ; 
 the pretty embryo-possibilities of mater- 
 nity ; that such copper-handling should be 
 made of the silver pieces of small change, 
 whose universality makes the golden guinea 
 of a Madonna. 
 
 Then, again, I have heard of globes, 
 whose use is taught in secret. I wonder 
 
PLACE AUX DAMES. 113 
 
 hoiv they use them. Do they roll them up 
 and down their schoolrooms ? or toss them 
 up, to catch them in gigantic cups? or, more 
 gracefully than acrobats in the Circus, pat- 
 ter them with pretty feet up and down in- 
 clined planes? 
 
 But, my little lady-reader, if you have 
 mysteries in your Boarding-school, so has 
 your brother at Rugby, and your cousin who 
 is preparing for examination at the Horse 
 Guards. The former is improving into 
 Alcaics the aphorisms of Tupper : the latter 
 is gathering universal history from the pic- 
 tured page of a Chepmell. O little Reader, 
 did you ever study the work of this great 
 historian ? I wish I had a portrait of him. 
 I should hang it over my mantel-piece in an 
 inverted position ; which position I should 
 alter to the natural one, so soon as I should 
 fall in with one individual who could make 
 head or tail of his cui-earthly-bono writings. 
 
 Music is supposed to be a sine qua non in 
 the education of all girls. The boarding- 
 schools of Dunedin are allowed a very high 
 position in the field of feminine didactics ; 
 for Dunedin is the intellectual capital of an 
 
114 PLACE AUX DAMES. 
 
 education-loving kingdom. In one of our 
 very fashionable and aristocratic schools 
 you will see a music-master, in the course 
 of three hours, pass fifteen little strumming 
 maidens through his hands. He gives this 
 lesson, of superintendence it is called, once 
 a Aveek. In another still more fashionable 
 school this electric-telegraph superintend- 
 ence is given once a fortnight. In twelve 
 minutes the master has to hear an old lesson 
 played, to settle the piece for the next les- 
 son, to write a good or bad mark in a note- 
 book, and occasionally to take a pinch of 
 snuff, or blow his weary nose. The little 
 pupil, in the latter school, has about eleven 
 minutes of male-supervision in the course 
 of a fortnight; which would give fifty-five 
 seconds per diem, if the work were dis- 
 tributed over all the week-days. Have 
 these music-masters never heard of Rich- 
 ardson's Theatre, where a tragedy, a com- 
 edy, and a comic song are all enacted within 
 the limits of their perspiring lessons ? 
 
 May not this electric-telegraph system 
 of musical instruction explain the general 
 shallowness of our drawing-room music? 
 
PLACE AUX DAMES, 115 
 
 The fault can hardly be in the brains or 
 fingers of our girls, for they came of a race 
 that has produced the most exquisite ballad- 
 system and the best collection of love-songs 
 in all Europe. Some thousands of our girls 
 are studying music year by year; j^et for 
 every girl-musician in Dunedin you would 
 find thirty in less populous Brussels, and 
 ten in insignificant Bruges. And what are 
 Belgian girls to the girls of Scotland? 
 
 Modern languages are taught at all 
 schools to all pupils. How often. Reader, 
 have you met with a girl of fifteen who 
 could write French correctly, or speak it 
 with a good accent; although she might 
 have studied the language for four years at 
 a flourishing school ? This is not the fault 
 of our girls: the cause lies deeper. Our 
 boarding-schools are too often mere busi- 
 ness speculations, whose proprietors have as 
 much real interest in the mental culture of 
 their charges as a hotel-keeper in the spir- 
 itual welfare of his guests : men of talent 
 are often employed by them in work degrad- 
 ing to themselves and useless to their 
 pupils ; and very often sharp and ready fel- 
 
116 PLACE AUX DAMES. 
 
 lows are employed, that never received the 
 education of gentlemen, and were never 
 intended to address a lady without the inter- 
 vention of a counter. If a system is vulgar 
 that employs incompetency, that sweats and 
 underpays talent ; is there no vulgarity in 
 those patrons whose call for cheap teaching 
 is the source of all the mischief? What do 
 we want with your fine musicians and over- 
 educated scholars ? Give us teaching-stuff 
 that will stand wear and tear; catgut 
 nerves and gutta-percha brains ! 
 
 Your German master is often a man of 
 learning, and is always well educated : your 
 French master of the old school was a man 
 of elegant accomplishments and a preux 
 chevalier ; but the manners of France appear 
 to have degenerated under the ell-wand of 
 a Shop-king, and the spurred boot of a 
 Barrack-emperor. 
 
 Italian — beautiful, musical, classic Italian 
 — is, alas ! not very generally appreciated, 
 although its teachers are usually men of a 
 high caste. Not long ago, a royal Prince 
 at Holyrood read, for a while, Italian with 
 an accomplished soldier and gentleman; 
 
PLACE AUX DAMES. 117 
 
 and this circumstance raised in the estima- 
 tion of our citizens the language of Dante, 
 Ariosto, Tasso, and Alfieri. What a good 
 thing it would be if we were honored with 
 a mere udix)lov of royality in the old palace, 
 whose shadowy Highness might be repre- 
 sented as patronizing, from time to time, 
 such accomplishments as we seemed in 
 danger of forgetting ! And it would not 
 be a change to be deplored, if we could 
 hear more music from the Italian nightin- 
 gale, and a trifle less of chatter from the 
 magpie of France. 
 
 But after all, modern languages should 
 be taught practically and conversationally. 
 The only grammar taught to girls below 
 the age of twelve should be that of their 
 own language ; and its terms should be 
 made as plain and intelligible as possible. 
 Perhaps no subject is better taught than 
 this latter one in our schools. But to girls 
 of superior intelligence, even English is not 
 the language upon which to found general 
 and comprehensive ideas of grammar, such 
 as may facilitate the after-acquisition of 
 any modern language. You would never 
 
118 PLACE AUX DAMES. 
 
 inculcate ideas of filial duty on a child, by 
 continually obtruding upon him impertinent 
 mention of his own parents. You would 
 tell him. amusing and instructive stories of 
 other children and other parents. Even so 
 with grammar. 
 
 In the education of boys, it has been 
 agreed, perhaps truly, that Latin is the best 
 instrument for inculcating the general laws 
 of language. Are there genders in educa- 
 tional systems, like as in Latin or French 
 nouns? Is there anything in Latin gram- 
 mar peculiarly male ? How did they talk 
 at dinner-time in ancient Rome ? Did the 
 men speak only masculine nouns ; the ladies, 
 feminine ones; and the servants, common 
 ones ? We have no warrant for such a con- 
 clusion. I believe the Latin language to 
 have been, and still to be, incapable of such 
 partitioning. It is not of the masculine 
 gender ; nor of the feminine ; nor of the 
 neuter or neither ; but, like other languages, 
 of the either gender. And, if properly taught, 
 it would be found a far easier language than 
 German ; considerably easier than French ; 
 and a little easier in its old form than in 
 
PLACE AUX DAMES. 119 
 
 its slightly altered form of modern Italian, 
 wliich is very easy indeed. 
 
 Heaven forbid that our girls should be 
 taught Latin with the grammars now in use, 
 and those annotated books, that may help 
 an incompetent master over an occasional 
 stile, but can only enervate a pupil's brain, 
 and transfer coin from the pocket of an 
 exasperated parent to the pocket of an un- 
 deserving publisher. 
 
 I assert that a good Latin grammar might 
 be limited to twenty-four pages, and sold, 
 with a large profit, for sixpence ; and that 
 this bookling, with an extra outlay of half- 
 a-crown, might, with a competent master, 
 carry scholars over two years of work. And 
 I also assert that girls might, with great ad- 
 vantage, pass through two or even three 
 years of Latin teaching, if that language were 
 taught on an easy, simple, and natural 
 method. 
 
 Although a schoolmaster of boys. Reader, 
 I have still a touch of gallantry. Smile at 
 my proposal. I would undertake to teach 
 Latin to a class of girls twelve years of age, 
 without the use of pedantic and expensive 
 books, or of pedantic and meaningless gram- 
 
120 PLACE AUX DAMES. 
 
 mar rules. My pronunciation would be 
 Italian, as nearly Tuscan as I could make 
 it. I would never forget that I was train- 
 ing children, not to be school-mistresses, 
 but gentle ladies in a drawing-room, and 
 gentler mothers in a nursery. I would so 
 teach a young class, that if a master of a 
 great English school were to interrupt us 
 in our work, he would say: "Ah! they are 
 engaged in a lesson of trumpery Italian." 
 And I would, perhaps, mildly quiz him to 
 my pupils in correct Latinity, which, from 
 being rapidly and musically spoken, he 
 would not understand. And in two years, 
 perhaps ; and in three years, most certainly • 
 I would have girls on my class, who would 
 speak an old language, not unlike the lan- 
 guage of modern Tuscany, in a way that 
 would shame their brothers and cousins, 
 who had been five years at any grammar- 
 school in the kingdom, and trained on the 
 old system of Elementary Unintelligibility. 
 And I would teach them Latin in such a 
 way, that very soon they would read a par- 
 able in either Italian or Spanish without 
 stumbling over either word or construction. 
 And I would engage to say that my pupils 
 
PLACE J4OC DAUE§, J 121 
 
 ' CALIFOR^ 
 would like their work, ana would not dis- 
 like their master. 
 
 And consider the collateral effects of so 
 bracing and healthful an education of our 
 girls. Boy-classics would be forced, in em- 
 ulation, to dispense with much of their dull 
 pedantry: and youths would be ashamed 
 to continue ignorant of modern tongues 
 that their sisters spoke with elegance and 
 ease. We have now a smattering of youths 
 that cram reluctantly some knowledge of 
 French, German, Italian, or Spanish, to win 
 marks in our Chinese examinations. What 
 a vulgar and profane usage of the dialects 
 of Corneille, Goethe, Dante, and Cervantes ! 
 
 But, Reader, you are alarmed. You are 
 afraid that such a system would make Blue- 
 stockings of our girls. Prejudice, Reader : 
 unmanly, unchivalrous prejudice. The 
 ladies of the Russian noblesse can speak al- 
 most every language of Europe ; but they 
 are exquisitely feminine. My brother sat 
 for a week opposite a fair creature at a ta- 
 hle-d'hdte in Venice; and perhaps he never 
 eat less, or enjoyed dinner more, for a week 
 together. He heard her speak all the lan- 
 guages he knew; and some that he did not 
 
122 PLACE AUX DAMES. 
 
 know. But for her linguistic powers, he 
 would have taken her for an English girl, 
 from her English accent and her blonde 
 beauty. Of course, she was a Russian. 
 She had no appearance of the Blue. If 
 she was one; then I could wish that all 
 were even as that sweet, young, blue-eyed 
 polyglot. 'Twas a lucky fellow, I should 
 think, that caught that little Tartar. 
 
 Do, Reader, disabuse your reasonable 
 mind of unreasonable crotchets. Women 
 have just as keen intelligence as men; less 
 powers, maybe, of abstract reasoning; but 
 far finer perceptive and linguistic faculties. 
 They need not be trained to exhaustive 
 scholarship; but refinement of mental cul- 
 ture suits them, perhaps, even more than it 
 does our own sex. 
 
 I imagine that the Lady Jane, who read 
 her Phsedo when the horn was calling, had 
 as pretty a mouse-face as you ever saw in a 
 dream ; and I am sure that gentle girl was a 
 better scholar than any lad of seventeen is 
 now in any school of England or Scotland. 
 
 And once upon a time. Reader — a long, 
 long while ago — I knew a schoolmaster 
 and that schoolmaster had a wife. And 
 
PLACE AUX DAMES. 123 
 
 she was young, and fair, and learned ; like 
 that princess-pupil of old Ascham; fair 
 and learned as Sydney's sister, Pembroke's 
 mother. And her voice was ever soft, gen- 
 tle, and low. Reader : an excellent thing in 
 woman. And her fingers were quick at 
 needlework, and nimble in all a housewife's 
 cunning. And she could draw sweet music 
 from the ivory board ; and sweeter, stranger 
 music from the dull life of her schoohnaster- 
 husband. And she was slow of heart to un- 
 derstand mischief, but her feet ran swift to 
 do good. And she was simple with the sim- 
 plicity of girlhood, and wise with the wis- 
 dom that Cometh only of the Lord, — cometh 
 only to the children of the Kingdom. And 
 her sweet, young life was as a Morning 
 Hymn, sung by child-voices to rich organ- 
 music. Time shall throw his dart at Death, 
 ere Death has slain such another. 
 
 For she died. Reader : a long, long while 
 ago. And I stood once by her grave ; her 
 green grave, not far from dear Dunedin. 
 Died, Reader: for all she was so fair and 
 young, and learned, and simple, and good. 
 And I am told it made a great difference to 
 that schoolmaster. 
 
124 SOLAR SPECKS, 
 
 XI. 
 
 SOLAR SPECKS. 
 
 During the last Summer Vacations, I 
 devoted ten weeks to the sedulous and un- 
 interrupted study of Homer. I had repeat- 
 edly read both Iliad and Odyssey, but usu- 
 ally in detached books, with an intermixture 
 of other work, or in places where I knew at 
 least one living soul. I now gave literally 
 my whole thoughts and attention to the 
 rhythm and story of these splendid poems, 
 fondly imagining I might solve to my own 
 satisfaction some of the many riddles they 
 held involved. 
 
 It was not so much from the then unsat- 
 isfactory condition of my health, as from a 
 general conviction, founded upon observa- 
 tion and tables of statistics, of the ridiculous 
 brevity of human life, that I refrained from 
 the use of German commentaries. I was 
 
SOLAR SPECKS. 125 
 
 also impressed with the idea that Homer 
 could only be explained by Homer; that 
 the answer to the riddle was to be found 
 latent in the question. And I felt thankful 
 that I had never read any tediously-learned 
 book, in my own or any other language, 
 that could warp my views or muddle my 
 conceptions. 
 
 I need hardly say, that I did not read these 
 poems according to the ordinary principles 
 of scansion. Such a continuous narcotic 
 would have been dangerous to my physical 
 health, and would have kept me dormant 
 through two of the finest months we have 
 had for years. I contrived, to my own satis- 
 faction, to combine the rules of metre with 
 those of accent ; and in my pronunciation 
 of the words where the vowel-sounds of mod- 
 ern Greek seemed thin, I adopted without 
 hesitation the richer vowel-music of Italy. 
 
 I may as well premise that, as I read for 
 my own selfish amusement, I did not hold 
 myself bound to any code of laws, metrical 
 or accentual. Thus when the old gram- 
 marians accentuated av^i^Mnov on the first 
 syllable, and av^QCJicovg or av^^MTCOvc, on 
 
126 SOLAR SPECKS. 
 
 the second, I disagreed \;\^ith them, and ac- 
 centuated both words alike on the first syl- 
 lable, in defiance of all authority, ancient or 
 modern. And I argued thus : If the mere 
 addition of a plural s were to modify the 
 accent of a word, then such a word as milites 
 or militems might be expected to be other- 
 wise accentuated t\\?inmilitem ; which would 
 seem absurd : and whilst we say mdnnikin^ 
 whirligig^ cdckle-shell^ we might expect to 
 find mannikins^ whirligigs^ cocklS-shells ; 
 which would he very absurd indeed. 
 
 Of course, I should not be so peremptory 
 in dealing with such words as av^i)ix)noVy 
 av6i)(x)n([\ for in the last syllable of these 
 words are latent two distinct vowel sounds ; 
 and the words may have once been of the 
 forms, avi^()W7iotXQ, av^QMnol'v ; or some- 
 thing of the kind. Even in these words, 
 however, I am inclined to be a little skepti- 
 cal. At all events, I should never speak of 
 a deficiency of dpples in an apple-pie; or of 
 cleaning my chimney with a little chimney- 
 
 From these and similar considerations, 
 while I followed the received rules for 
 
SOLAR SPECKS. 127 
 
 accentuation to a very great extent, I ven- 
 tured to contravene them on those not rare 
 occasions, when they seemed to me intrin- 
 sically ridiculous. And in these cases, it 
 appeared to me that the old grammarians 
 having laid down laws of accentuation that 
 were generally true, adhered rigidly to them 
 on all occasions; forgetting the wise saying, 
 that must have been old even in their day, 
 that tJiere is no rule without an exception. 
 
 During the course of my reading, I trans- 
 lated, for the first time in my life., some pas- 
 sages of English verse into Greek hexa- 
 meters. I shall append them to the present 
 article, by way of substantiating an asser- 
 tion already made, that an enthusiastic stu- 
 dent will fall naturally into an imitation of 
 a favorite author, without the help or an- 
 noyance of years of specific training. Should 
 they be considered as inferior in kind, the 
 most inveterate opposer of school-reform 
 will give me credit for frankness in submit- 
 ting my arguments and their proofs, to his 
 logic for refutation, and to his scholarship 
 for suggestions of improvement. 
 
 Meanwhile, I was heaping up a pyramid 
 
128 SOLAR SPECKS. 
 
 of laborious notes. I had classified the 
 words that occur once or twice or thrice in 
 the two poems; innumerable instances of 
 irregularity in tense and mood; natural 
 confusions of number and construction ; the 
 recurrences of special cadence in metre with 
 a view of discovering the tune or tunes of 
 the old Singers; the names of mountains 
 and rivers, with a view of tracing Celtic 
 synonyms; the similes, with the vain hope 
 of bounding the scope of the poet's imagin- 
 ative experience ; the description of wounds, 
 with the view of defining his knowledge of 
 anatomy ; peculiarities in the collocation of 
 words, with the view of tracing the extent 
 of his artificiality; irregularities of case- 
 ending, which, commencing with the noun, 
 would naturally extend to its imitators, the 
 adjective and participle ; and innumerable 
 instances of verbal forms, which grammars 
 and lexicons call passive, but whose reflec- 
 tive meaning may be thoroughly and idiom- 
 atically rendered by the Saxon auxiliary ^g^. 
 These notes cost me two months of hard 
 w^ork to write, and three subsequent months 
 of moderate work to arrange in order. 
 
SOLAR SPECKS. 129 
 
 But O the vanity of human toil! My 
 fondest and my most humble hope is, that 
 my boy may one day be a schohir, and a 
 devout and enthusiastic student of the 
 poet whose poetry to me is only equalled by 
 the music of Mozart and Beethoven. And, 
 behold,' I was preparing a dull, ponderous 
 boob, which he might hereafter consider it 
 a pious duty to peruse ; and which might 
 possibly throw a dulness not their own into 
 the works they were tediously illustrating. 
 Furthermore, I called to mind how the read- 
 ing of such annotations had transformed 
 many a healthy scholar into a dreary ped- 
 ant ; and how the writing of the same had 
 turned many a pedant into a Bishop. And 
 I trembled for the safety of my own lay- 
 estate; and saw the risk I was running 
 of being ordained without a word of warn- 
 ing, and of being hurried away, unpre- 
 pared, into the House of Lords, to preside, 
 as a father in God, over a gigantic church- 
 establishment, and, as a temporal peer, over 
 the destinies of a great nation. I deter- 
 mined, therefore, to conceal my perilous 
 intimacy with heathen particles and metres, 
 
130 SOLAR SPECKS, 
 
 yial Xav&avtiv ' Elh^vio^dg. Accordingly, 
 I surrendered my note-bundles to my good 
 landlady; who, unwittingly, for a week past, 
 has, in kindling her kitchen fire, been ex- 
 tinguishing my first and last chance of a 
 book-stall immortality. 
 
 With regard to the main subject of the 
 Iliad, I was convinced that it was the glory 
 of Troy, and that Hector was the real hero 
 of an Ionian poet's fancy. The commence- 
 ment of the first book seemed to me worded 
 with an exquisite artfulness, with the view 
 of throwing the reader off his guard. As 
 Ilium did fall, it was requisite for the poet 
 to make it fall without honor to the victors. 
 One of the latter is therefore selected as the 
 type of beauty, strength, and passion ; the 
 undeserving favorite of unreasoning For- 
 tune and partial gods. He is kept out of 
 view for a very long while, to give his col- 
 leagues the opportunity of showing them- 
 selves inferior to the real hero. The absence 
 is due to a prolonged sulkiness, occasioned 
 by the loss of a feminine companion, to 
 whom he does not appear to have been 
 chivalrously attached. He might have 
 
SOLAR SPECKS. 131 
 
 caught the measles from Thersites, had the 
 tale been told in prose. It would have 
 served him right ; and have answered effec- 
 tually the purpose of the story. He is 
 eventually roused to action by the death 
 of his friend, who, at the close of a sum- 
 mer's day, after the slaughter of some 
 scores of Trojans, falls, as is not unusual 
 with warriors, on the field of battle. The 
 mock-hero is as brutal in avenging his com- 
 panion, as though Hector had murdered 
 him at a banquet, and Hecuba had served 
 him up at supper as a dainty dish before 
 old Priam. 
 
 The magnificent description of the He- 
 phsestian arms all tends to glorify the hero 
 against whom they were forged, and to de- 
 tract from the credit of the wearer. The 
 deceit of Athene in the final combat puts 
 the extinguisher upon the glory of Achilles, 
 and makes a splendid martyr of his antag- 
 onist. And the whole poem closes simply 
 and majestically, like a funeral march of 
 Beethoven: " So bare they knightly Hector 
 to his grave ; " the kindest husband that 
 ever loved and honored wife; the most 
 
132 SOLAR SPECKS, 
 
 courteous gentleman that ever spake softly 
 to fair and frail lady ; the tenderest father 
 that ever dandled boy-baby ; and the stern- 
 est knight that ever struck with sword 
 round Ilium. 
 
 While in the Iliad the master-hand had 
 wrought a variety of war-songs into one 
 long, homogeneous recitative, I saw that 
 in the Odyssey he had had to deal with 
 subject-matter more homely and less con- 
 gruous. Some quaint old Bunyans had in 
 earliest times quaffed the cup of Circe on 
 the island of ^sea. And mariners, Ionian 
 and Phoenician, by winter fires had spun 
 yarns for the great Weaver to incorporate 
 in his imperishable web. And he, who in 
 his old age drew from music a solace for 
 light denied, had in earlier manhood been 
 a bright-eyed sailor ; had in Tyre seen the 
 works of cunning sons of Moloch; had 
 heard upon the Nile of the hundred-gated 
 Thebes, and the gloomy River, and the land 
 of Shadow^s. But not in Italy had he seen 
 the cannibal Laestrygons; nor in Sicily 
 great Polypheme. This latter worthy was 
 never suggested by Tauric Sun-god, with 
 
SOLAR SPECKS. 133 
 
 metal disc upon liis head. No: the poet 
 had heard all about him in his childhood 
 from his dear old grandmother. And, 
 Reader, we have all seen him in our nur- 
 series, where he is still at his old work of 
 crunching men's bones. For Polypheme is 
 but a Cyclops; and a Cyclops is but a 
 KmXwt, ; and a Kyklo-oks is nothing but 
 our old friend. Goggle-eyes. 
 
 The reason why the Odyssey had, in 
 course of time, triumphed over other poems 
 that sang the return of other heroes, was 
 firstly due to the fact that a type of charac- 
 ter was wanted to illustrate other qualities 
 than pride, obstinacy, and physical courage ; 
 a type around which might naturally cluster 
 all that was beautiful, serious, pleasant or 
 ridiculous in oommon life; a type of the 
 roving, adventurous, cunning island-rover, 
 to contrast vividly with the somewhat 
 monotonous mailed heroes of the LaT/ of 
 Grreat Hector^ or the Lays of the Achcean 
 Kings. Again, Ithaca was at a more con- 
 venient distance from Troy than Salamis, 
 or Agros, or Pylos, or Lacedsemon. Had 
 the poet selected the Telamonian Ajax in 
 
134 
 
 SOLAR SPECKS, 
 
 preference to Ulysses, a premature gale or 
 his own piglieadedness, might have hurried 
 the hero into port at the opening of the 
 second book. 
 
 After diligent and mature consideration 
 of the metre, I came to the conclusion that 
 it belonged to i\\Q genus vertehratum ; that 
 the spine was Saturnian, and the vertebrae 
 trochees ; that in the old Italian hymn of 
 the Salian priests we have the almost 
 amorphous form that, on the sea-board of 
 Ionia, had developed into the Homeric epic. 
 The first rude hymns and ballads would 
 probably run to the following simple metre: 
 
 -KJ KJ 
 
 A 
 
 — \J 
 
 — KJ 
 
 — V-^ 
 
 — \j 
 
 — KJ\J 
 
 _ _ 
 
 — w v-» 
 
 — \j\j 
 
 A 
 
 
 A 
 
 A 
 
 \j — \j 
 
 
 \j — \j 
 
 V/ — VJ 
 
 and it is a singular coincidence that the old 
 Salii should have perambulated the streets 
 of Rome, with the sacred shields, dancing 
 to their hymn of 
 
 -^no' Las | os ju | vato. 1| Triumpe ! | Triumpe ! | Triumpe ! 
 
 to a metre, and perhaps a music, not dis- 
 similar to that of the Methodist's sweet 
 
SOLAR SPECKS. 135 
 
 simple lines, the simplicity of which verges 
 on the ridicnlous : 
 
 O but I that will be I joyful H joyful | joy-y-ful | joyful, 
 
 O but I that will be | joyful 1| when we | meet to | part no 
 more. 
 
 Indeed, it occurred to me that all poetry- 
 must resolve itself eventually into a system 
 of trochees or iambi ; which feet are easily 
 interchangeable by a change of syllabic 
 emphasis. However, I felt convinced that, 
 in the Arian languages, the trochee em- 
 phasis would prevail, while a dialect pre- 
 served its rich vowel inflexions; that the 
 iambic emphasis would creep in, as a dia- 
 lect began to use contracted endings ; and 
 would, finally, be predominant, when the 
 dialect should take to the use of prefixes 
 and the disuse of vowel endings. Conse- 
 quently, I was not surprised to find the 
 iambus in the Attic drama and Teutonic 
 modern epic ; and the trochee dominant in 
 Dante, whose dialect has lost, indeed, its 
 case-affixes, but conserved its sweet vowel 
 terminations. 
 
 Now, in the skeleton metre above given, 
 a continuous sequence of trochees over a 
 
136 SOLAR SPECKS. 
 
 long poem would be next to impossible ; 
 and, if possible, would be very unmusical. 
 The dactyl would seem to me the natural 
 efflorescence of the trochee ; as the anapsest 
 of the iambus. All metres of a ballad 
 kind might be expected to show something 
 answering to a refrain, or something anal- 
 ogous to our rhyme. I shall consequently 
 expect to find in the above a dactyl towards 
 the close of the line ; not at the very end, 
 as the effect would be jerky, and unsug- 
 gestive of repose ; and not too far from the 
 end, or else the echo would be lost. And 
 this consideration explains to me the almost 
 invariable presence of the dactyl in the fifth 
 foot. 
 
 As for the spondees that occur, I hold 
 that the majority of them were accentuated 
 or read as trochees. They certainly would 
 conduce to give variety to the metre, and 
 at times to introduce a purposed stateliness 
 and majesty. Very often they would in- 
 trude as the children of necessity. 
 
 From the extreme perfection of the metre 
 in the two poems, and the extreme inaccuracy 
 in the use of conditional and duhitative moods^ 
 
SOLAR SPECKS. 137 
 
 it is obvious that the poems were brought to 
 a completion in an age of high civilization. 
 
 Furthermore, we may guage the civiliza- 
 tion of a poet by the use of the adverb, as 
 we test that of a lady by the handling of a 
 fork. For, as a musician once remarked to 
 me, the adverb is the index of mental re- 
 finement. It is a Nilometer of rising taste. 
 Your Helot has but a limited store of ad- 
 verbs, but they are cayenne-ish, superlative. 
 In a very simple and early ballad the ad- 
 verb would scarcely appear at all. In 
 Homer, it varies through chiaro to chiar^- 
 oscuro^ and again to chiaro : no oscuro or 
 oscurissimo ; for only an indifferent painter 
 would heighten a contrast by the vulgar use 
 of black. If the poetry of Homer is simple 
 and primitive, then, maybe, painting at one 
 stride achieved the Madonnas of Raffaelle 
 and the sunsets of Claude. 
 
 To me the Iliad appears a congeries of 
 warlike lays, grouped by the artifice of a 
 most simple plot into a homogeneous story. 
 The lays were in a rude Saturnian metre, 
 and adapted for singing. The story is told 
 in a stately but ever-varying measure, that 
 
138 SOLAR SPECKS. 
 
 flows in a majestic recitative. The Odyssey 
 seems to have stolen from all possible 
 sources ; allegory, travellers' tales, and nur- 
 sery-lore. The story is not homogeneous, 
 but kaleidoscopic ; as the story should have 
 been that was destined to give birth to Jack 
 the Giant Killer and Sinbad the Sailor; to 
 lend grace to the jEneid, and majesty to 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 In both the poems, with more especial 
 care in the Iliad, the primitive trochee sys- 
 tem is modulated into the richer music of 
 intermixed spondees and dactyls. For a 
 long while the trochee would be found 
 scattered through the metre, where of yore 
 he was predominant; but at length he 
 would fade away like a Red Indian before 
 his stalwart supplanters. I am convinced, 
 however, that a great many of the super- 
 fluous monosyllabic appendages, as tc and 
 yg, are due to scribes, who carried on a war 
 of extermination against the remnant of the 
 old Trochees. . I wish the Trochees had 
 risen with a war-whoop and scalped them 
 by the dozen. 
 
 Again ; I am led to consider the Homeric 
 
SOLAR SPECKS. 139 
 
 poems as the production of a high civiliza- 
 tion, from the fact that they admit of an 
 abnormal position of words, as evinced, 
 chiefly, in the unnatural separation of epi- 
 thet and noun. As this license, however, 
 is but sparingly/ used, I infer that the metre 
 of the poem was the gradual growth of 
 an autochthonous system of versification. 
 Thus, in a highly finished poem like the 
 sixth book of the Iliad, I only find in five 
 hundred and twenty lines about thirty in- 
 stances where the position of words is ques- 
 tionable ; and no instance where the posi- 
 tion is very distorted. 
 
 But when I come to the examination of 
 the chief Roman poems, I find thirty in- 
 stances of false position in the first eighty- 
 eight lines of Lucretius ; in the first fifty- 
 one lines of the first book of the iEneid ; in 
 the first sixty-four lines of the second book 
 of Ovid's Metamorphoses ; and in the first 
 seventy-four lines of the second epistle of 
 the second book of Horace ; in none of 
 which cases is the adjective in the predicate. 
 That is to say, while in Homer I find a 
 liberty taken with natural construction once 
 
140 SOLAR SPECKS, 
 
 in every eighteen lines ; I find one taken in 
 every alternate line by the poets of and 
 about the Augustan age. And furthermore, 
 in these latter poets I find certain construc- 
 tions, which for harshness have no analogue 
 in their simpler and grander metrical proto- 
 type ; as, for instance, in such lines as — 
 
 Qu^m quse Dardanium tellus mihi servat Acesten 
 Et patris AnchissB gremio complectitur ossa. 
 
 Interea, medium ^neas jam classe tenebat 
 Certus iter. 
 
 Cxrulesd cui terga notx maculosus et aiiro 
 Squamam incendebat fidgor. 
 
 Cujus ehur nitidum fastigia summa tegebat: 
 Argenti bifores radiabant lumine valvas. 
 
 Proteaque ambigunm, balxnarumque prementem 
 Mgadona, suis immania terga lacertis. 
 
 Inde loco mediiis rerum. novitate paventem 
 Sol oculis juvenem, quibus aspicit omnia, vidit. 
 
 Jussa Desd celeres peragunt, ignemque vomenteSy 
 Ambrosiae succo saturos, prsesepibus altis 
 Quadrupedes ducunt. 
 
 Occupat ille levem juvenili corpore currxim, 
 
 Utque labant curvse justo sine pondere naves. 
 
 Tum primum radiis gelidi caluere Triones. 
 
 Ita fertur, ut acri 
 Prsecipiti pinus Boredy cui victa remisit 
 Frena suus rector. 
 
SOLAR SPECKS. 141 
 
 Hie relicto — 
 Nam Ligurum populos et magnas rexerat urbes — 
 Imperio. 
 
 Lnculli miles coUecta viatica multis 
 ^rumnis, lassus dum nocta stertit, ad assem 
 Perdiderat. 
 
 Dura sed emovere loco me tempora grato, 
 Civilisque rudem belli tulit ssstus ad arma, 
 
 Obturem patulas impune legentibus aures. 
 
 Obscurata diu populo bonus eruet, atque 
 Proferet in lucem speciosa vocabula rerum. 
 
 In each of the passages here quoted there 
 is a constr action that spoken Latin Avould 
 have undoubtedly eschewed ; and in some 
 of the passages, a strict and regular trans- 
 lation, independent of the context, would 
 make downright nonsense ; and indeed, in 
 such Ovidian lines as 
 
 Non mihi, qu3B duri colerent pater arva juvenci, 
 Lanigerosve greges, non ulla armenta reliquit, 
 
 we have an instance of a word being un- 
 grammatically choked by an accumulation 
 on all sides of relative mud. And remember, 
 these more than questionable passages are 
 culled from only about six pages, taken at 
 random, of the most finished Augustan verse. 
 The fact is, the sudden influx of Grecian 
 
142 SOLAR SPECKS, 
 
 refinement had as brilliant and disastrous an 
 effect upon Roman genius, as had the influx 
 of Transatlantic gold upon the morals and 
 political power of Spain. In the last gene- 
 ration of the Republic, and in the first of 
 the Empire, men were in a hurry to acquire 
 intellectual wealth, and paid the penalty 
 for their imprudent haste. 
 
 Again ; in Homer, the cadence of such a 
 line as the following — 
 
 Tudeog exyovog tooi^ da'icpqovog OU'e'cdao^ 
 
 recurs once in every nine lines on an average. 
 Such aline occasionally occurs in Lucretius ; 
 but may be said to be non-existent in the 
 Augustan poets. That is to say, Lucretius 
 imitated the musical cadence of Homer, and 
 the after poets followed the stricter rules 
 of conventional scansion, which in all prob- 
 ability were wholly unknown to Homer. 
 The rhythm of Lucretius is monotonous, 
 but it is trochaic, dactylic, Italian. Catullus 
 is more trochaic, more Italian. Virgil, 
 Horace, and Ovid are more varied, more re- 
 fined, and decidedly un-Italian. 
 
 That is to say, these three poets performed 
 a feat completely unparalleled in the history 
 
SOLAR SPECKS, 143 
 
 of all plastic art. They had a somewhat 
 unformed language to work upon, and used 
 for their models the most finished works of 
 the most perfect of all languages. Nay, 
 they even insisted on burdening themselves 
 with accuracies of rhythm to which their 
 prototypes were strangers. And they so 
 exquisitely moulded their rude language to 
 the wished-for shape, that the licenses, 
 taken with it in the process, have escaped 
 the ken of all succeeding scholars and crit- 
 ics. Their very blunders have become the 
 touchstones of elegance. 
 
 Lucretius, from the nature of his subject, 
 addresses himself only to an esoteric set of 
 readers; as do Virgil, Horace, and Ovid 
 from the exquisite though unnational polish 
 of their style. A Roman noble of good nat- 
 ural abilities, who had spent a few years at 
 the University of Athens, would have en- 
 joyed equally the grandeur of Lucretius, the 
 sweet dignity of Virgil, the lyrical chastity 
 and bantering wisdom of Horace, the wit 
 and fancy and flexile adaptativeness of 
 Ovid. But Catullus alone, with the tro- 
 chaic and dactylic ring of his Italian hende- 
 
144 SOLAR SPECKS, 
 
 casyllables and the unapproaclied native 
 force of his Atys, could have sent a thrill 
 to the heart of a shop-boy in Rome, or a 
 shepherd on the Calabrian hills. 
 
 The Augustan poets anticipated the due 
 season of metrical perfection; prceripuere 
 musicen postero sceculo dehitam; but they 
 warped their language in the process. Greek 
 mental wealth, a Maecenas and an Emperor 
 ripened prematurely the delicious fruit; 
 and killed the seed. For Virgil, Ovid, and 
 Horace had no successors. There are pas- 
 sages in Juvenal that would lead us to 
 suppose he might have been a poet hadjie 
 never studied rhetoric. A green glade opens 
 at long intervals in the dreary wood of 
 Lucan. The dull lamps of Silius and 
 Statins flare up momentarily from time 
 to time. Claudian was a revolving light, 
 that sent a few intermittent gleams through 
 thick darkness, and went out after doing 
 little service. But a priest is to sit on the 
 throne of the Caesars, and waves of war 
 are to surge over Italy. The old gods will 
 linger in remote places, and in the hearts 
 of common men : they are lingering there 
 
SOLAR SPECKS. 145 
 
 still. The ancient speech will live in the 
 mouth of peasant-folk, safe from the pedan- 
 ticisms of an aristocratic literature, and 
 bending, undestroyed, before the hurri- 
 canes of war. After dark and stormy cen- 
 turies, a Dante will sing to a Christian lyre 
 a song, grand and eternal as the Apen- 
 nines ; in words of native, pure, indigenous 
 Italian; in a dialect older than the great 
 grandmother of the elder Cato. 
 
 Now, supposing we commenced our sys- 
 tem of instruction in Latin upon a viva-voce^ 
 conversational method, and approached Lat- 
 in literature through natural passages of 
 prose, such as we might extract from Plautus 
 — ay, and from Erasmus — a pupil would de- 
 tect instinctively the offences committed 
 against universal grammar by the polished 
 poets of the Augustan age. As it is, we ig- 
 nore altogether the conversational method in 
 our teaching, and profess to teach Latin only 
 for the inculcation of the rules of abstract 
 grammar ; and the majority of the examples 
 to our rules of syntax are elaborate passages 
 from the most artificial class of all poets. 
 
 In other wards, we inculcate the rules of 
 
146 SOLAR SPECKS, 
 
 abstract grammar by the aid of examples 
 where the rules of natural grammar are 
 ignored in favor of a style conventional 
 and artificial ; and, to convey to young 
 children intelligible ideas of general gram- 
 mar, we pass by with contempt the teaching 
 of their mother-tongue, and the lessons of 
 an easy-flowing, unconventional Latinity, 
 and puzzle their little brains by introducing 
 them at once to constructions, whose essen- 
 tial faultiness and conventional grace are 
 visible only to a trained and finished scholar. 
 Indeed, am I presumptuous in asserting, 
 that hitherto all our best Latinists have 
 gone repeatedly over Augustan ground, 
 never dreaming that it was riddled with 
 grammatical pit-falls? Nay ; am I presumpt- 
 uous in stating also that even Italian Lati- 
 nists have passed unnoticed the flaws that, to 
 a certain extent, denationalize the master- 
 poems of their own ancient literature? If 
 I am presumptuous. Reader, I am so in a 
 good cause. I am not exalting my own puny 
 ideas of language against the taste and wit 
 and genius of the Augustan trio. The Hel- 
 lenized Latinity of these giants is splendid 
 
SOLAR SPECKS. 147 
 
 enough — heaven knows ! — in spite of, and 
 perhaps by reason of, its foreign cadence 
 and its daring disregard of simplicity. But, 
 leaving to Horace the undisputed throne 
 of Wit and Wisdom, I recognize in Ariosto 
 the equal of Ovid, and in Dante one greater 
 than the great Mantuan. And the fancy 
 of Ariosto and the sublimity of Dante are 
 of Italian growth, autochthonal. So, Reader, 
 if I am presumptuous, I humbly hope this 
 presumption will prove to be a malady in- 
 curable and contagious. 
 
 Upon what meat hath our schoolmaster fed, 
 
 That he is grown so big ? Can Isis send 
 
 No sallow, hungry-visaged Cassiiis north, 
 
 To prick the veins of his o'er-swoln conceit ! 
 
 Come, envious Ca^ca ; thin-lipp'd Cassias, come ; 
 
 Draw near him, as he unsuspecting stands 
 
 Before his pyjn:my, sj'cophant senators ; 
 
 And, hissing thro' your teeth, *Take this, and that !* 
 
 Stab him, as ye stabb'd Caesar, with steel-i)ens ! 
 
148 PROLUSIONES HOMERIC^, 
 
 XII. 
 
 MORTE D'ARTHUR. 
 
 So all day long the noise of battle roll'd 
 Among the mountains by the winter sea, 
 Until King Arthur's table, man by man. 
 Had falFn in Lyonness about their Lord^ 
 King Arthur : then, because his wound was deep, 
 The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him, 
 Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights, 
 And bore him to a chapel nigh the field, 
 A broken chancel with a broken cross. 
 That stood on a dark strait of barren land. 
 On one side lay the Ocean, and on one 
 Lay a great water, and the moon was full. 
 
PROLUSIONES HOMERIC.E, I49 
 
 riav 8^ ii^ag ^6.qv(xpto naqdi Qriy^Xva 6aX(xoai]g 
 ;^£«-ue^tj^TJg, alsl d' iv ogeaat yivXlvdsx' di3iTJ* 
 b(pQ^ eiagov ^aaLkrpg tv aivy\ dr/C6n]Tt 
 Tidrisg inaaaviSQOt aq)£Te()Co niuov djLiq)l apay.ji^ 
 '^QiovQCO' TOTS d^i ^aoiXr^a ydiQ Elxog eieiQei^y 
 dficpl (5' dg' ibf^iouv XQaTFQog Bedur^Qog dalqag 
 i^dcpegEf nolefiov bkjcqmv ydcQ h]v tQii^ocof 
 loiadiog' og dk dvctyix'' ov jriXhaev i\-^E x«t' dxr^g; 
 iqhg Wi rj]6g ovv kIoolv 7jqto Qayelaaig^ 
 (JTTJ 6k fielafiTiiTQOv dt^oqjSQQ h oielve'i ycxlr^g* 
 ryj ^^^ t' *Jlxeav6g fniyag snlexo, ttj di re Xl^vrj 
 OLdTiEjog, id"* ag' vTt^gdsp Mnv TikThdovau. ^eX^vq^ 
 
150 PROLUSIONES HOMERICJE. 
 
 ULYSSES. 
 
 The loDg day wanes: the slow moon climbs: 
 
 the deep 
 Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 
 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. 
 Push off, and, sitting well in order, smite 
 The sounding furrows ; for my purpose holds 
 To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 
 Of all the western stars, until I die. 
 It may be that the gulfs will wash us down : 
 It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, 
 And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. 
 Tho' much is taken, much abides ; and tho' 
 We are not now that strength which in old days 
 Moved earth and heaven ; that which we are, 
 
 we are ; 
 One equal temper of heroic hearts, 
 Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 
 To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 
 
PROLUSIONES HOMERIC^.. 151 
 
 ^H^aQ d' drerat, dfi^ahei di is dia Sel'^vri 
 ovQctvov, r^de ddXaaaa nsqi^Qi^ei fj/rj^o-'ja* 
 El 8^ liyere, eig oka, 8Xav igvoaaTS vr^a /nelaivav, 
 dipe TtSQ rjhxlag bfreg t' eTzl y^oaog odd(bj 
 
 jimBTB' vvv (5' l^h Ov/uog h'l (nrfleauLP dcprixs, 
 
 xocl Zeq)iL)QOvo dofiovg daTQOJV di ts xald IdeiQcc, 
 ocpga fzs McIqu xl/ri Oavdwv, ^ioiov xs reXiaoof. 
 Tig J' oid\ r^i TiEP dfijiie xaicc^QO^eLS duXaaaa, 
 T^i xev ^Hlvaiop nediov juaxdQCJp di le v/^aovg 
 l^6^ed\ EpQa (5' a^' aWig idil^^eOu IlrjXioc vldr, 
 0^ Qa nor* di}xfiiP eijv negVlliMP iaOlog eiaigog. 
 ^j4Xkdc. rdd' dOcivdubiv ye Oeihv iv yovpaoi xeiiar 
 nolldc fjihv ohp (irroXwAe, fiivei di is nolld- xal ridrjy 
 si xal yovvaoiv ovxii' evecnv fiivog ts ^Ltj ts, 
 (hg nor'' sj^p, insv d^^ip iniaxsvev s^qsTu ;(0(x)p, 
 iufusp d^ olol y"* ia^ip' £PS(Ttv dk Ov/uog dcy^PcoQ, 
 ei'g ndPTsacrip ofibg, delofisp d^ en noXXd. naddpisg 
 isiXdcjisP r^ds (fiQSiv, dXX^ oV rt fiivvpOd nsg ei'xBiP. 
 
152 PROLUSIONES HOMERIC^. 
 
 EDWIN OF DIERA. 
 
 While the tale 
 Was being told, the people silent stood, 
 But at its close their grief broke out afresh, 
 When some fond memory brought back Regner*s 
 
 face, 
 His gait, his voice, some cordial smile of his. 
 And all the frank and cunning ways he had 
 To steal a gazer's heart. The long day waned. 
 And, at the mournful setting of the sun. 
 Up through the valley came the saddened files. 
 With Regner's body borne on levelled spears. 
 And, when they laid the piteous burden down 
 Within the gate, with a most bitter cry 
 The loose-haired Bertha on it flung herself. 
 And strove, in sorrow's passionate unbelief. 
 To kiss dead lips to life. The sternest lids 
 Were wet with pity then. But when the King 
 Was, like a child, led up to see his son. 
 With sense of woe in woe's own greatness 
 
 drowned. 
 With some obscure instinct of reverence 
 For sorrow sacreder than any crown. 
 The weeping people stood round, hushed as death. 
 
PROLUSIONES HOMERIC^. 153 
 
 Slg oig* oy* iv fiiaaoiaiv hrirvfiog ay y slog ehisv* 
 ol d' e'lMg (xhv aiyr^ uxovd'Qovjo liyovTog' 
 dW iTTcl ig lilog dyyeXh^g nsmuOoPT^ uXeysivrigy 
 naacy ivl (JTt'fieoai nuXiv y6cv ?fi6Qog cb^TO, 
 fiVTjaaftlpoLdi (pllov "^ Prj^^^voqog l7in;od(jc^oto, 
 oI6g t' -^p (ptxiPTjv T6 ^uGiv 0\ (hg d^ ^id^ yikacrxevy 
 ag t' dg' dXiTQog crjv, xcd ocr' oiac dnocp^bha eldibgy 
 &g ^' hdgoig t' dyavhg XaoXot re naaiv iri]rig. 
 
 ^'Avexo (5' Ibquv rifiag in' dpdgdui (xvgo^iVOLOL' 
 ^ftog J' 'lUliog xixridv, y.al enl uptcpag i^WeVy 
 oi'geog dfi^ixlpovreg dvd 7iru/ag dunLdionTai 
 q)aivovTO (ng{xnr^:jv (5' in' iy/eir^cn laOiPta 
 dfiq)* lo^OLGi (pigov ^Frj^rivoga redpijma. 
 ^viug inel pexgop xaiiOevi' epiouds nvXdoaVy 
 &g idep, (hg oAoAu^ej/ ivnloxa^og ^yfgriTi], 
 dficpi dd /eTgs ^ulocau xdgr/ t' exva' rfik ngoaibna, 
 neldeodai d' IpI Ov^uQ, o dri gd ol aviog oXihXeiy 
 v-qntri, ovx iOiXeaxev dpe(TT7](Tep di fitv oid' &g. 
 
 *// ga fiep ovv ndpieacnv vcp' l[uegor ugGS yooio' 
 avidg inch naitg'' udioPy ^EgevOaXiovT' aldolop, 
 digijgol Oegdnopieg dyop q:tlop vIop IdiaOui, 
 d^ t6t' dg' da/aXoujp (7(pi yigmp iaefiuaaaTO Ov/uop^ 
 xal asfipog nolv (xdXkop ieloraj', dxj];(8fi£p6g7iag' 
 al66[X6POv de fiip taTap, dxr^p t' iyePOPTO aiom'^. 
 
154 PROLUSIONES HOMERIC^. 
 
 ENALLOS AND CYMODAMEIA. 
 
 She saw him in the action of his prayer, 
 Troubled, and ran to soothe him. From the 
 
 ground 
 Ere she had clasp t his neck, her feet were borne. 
 He caught her robe ; and its white radiance rose 
 Rapidly, all day long, through the green sea. 
 Enallos loost not from that robe his grasp, 
 But spanned one ancle too. The swift ascent 
 Had stunn'd them into slumber, sweet, serene, 
 Invigorating her, nor letting loose 
 The lover's arm below ; albeit at last 
 It closed those eyes intensely fixt thereon, 
 And stil as fixt in dreaming. Both were cast 
 Upon an iland till'd by peaceful men 
 And few (no port nor road accessible) 
 Fruitful and green as the abode they left. 
 And warm with summer, warm with love and song 
 'Tis said that some whom most Apollo loves 
 Have seen that iland, guided by his light ; 
 And others have gone near it, but a fog 
 Rose up between them and the lofty rocks ; 
 Yet they relate they saw it quite as well. 
 And shepherd-boys and pious hinds believe. 
 
PROLUSIONES HOMERIC^, 155 
 
 ^Og di fiiy'' 6/dT\(Tag rdd^ ag^ eij/STO, xsTgag dgeyrig' 
 ^ de fiiif evx^t^^voy y.ovQt^ i'de, ^r^ dk OeifrxeiVf 
 fieiXij^ioig Ineeouv ngocreinifisi^ai fiefiavla* 
 ulXdc nqlv ijiOeio dsigri neql /eTgag Idlletv, 
 iioaalv d.v^ ix dansdov loeideog &gvvT* llaq)goig' 
 "//" ga navi^uegh^ ui)V 'Evdllco Kvjuoddfieia 
 ibofVTO xvavioLO di' ^fLxeavoXo geeOgcov, 
 xagnaKfitiig' luroT) d^ dg^ ^EvalXog x^^Q^ g)aetvov 
 el'XBTO de^irigri, krigr^ dS li fii>v aq){)gov eilev. 
 ^jJlicpoi^goiv d^ aua vnvog inl ^Xeq)(jcgoi(JLV Bmme, 
 t>^ygETo;, ^dioiog, Outt^ixia aj';^tO"Ta ioixcbg. 
 'H 8^ ovp, xal ^giQovGix neg, f^ev, 6 J* sl/t fiiP alel- 
 vTcrov d' ov x^^Q^S f^^^ ^^o ylvxegoTo lilvvjo, 
 avT&g ol dcpOaluol y"* InEni^yBuav ^ &g £v dvelga. 
 ^H8rj d' dc/ucporegovg /Ltiya ndviov xvjita nilaaae 
 t'Tianr in'' 'tjyaOcTjP' ioOlol cV (xgoojvio fiiv dvdgeg 
 navgol x', ov8^ ivirjv jig d-TagniJOg ovts hjuifiv jig- 
 xX(xigy\v, 71VT6 xal (Tq)heg6v y' idnd ^ivOeai^p dvjgovj 
 xagjioqjdgoP' Odliftsv di t* hfiojg, fiolnri ts hag re. 
 0a(Th. d^ wg noTS xal jiveg, ovg ''Exdsgyog *An6llMv 
 Tie fiahai' dcvSgwp, ti^v y' dq)6a'K^oXGi IdiaOai. 
 ngog ^' dlloi ttot^ xal TTsXccuaPT^y dvidv ^' dg opl/lt] 
 avii^p ^EGGiiy^g nsrg&MV t' dxgioiaaoiv 
 dll^ xal w^ (puaxovGL IdeXv rdde' tcop Si re nalSfg 
 noijUBPsg evnlGTOjg dgoxrigeg t' dvdgsg dxovGav. 
 
156 PROLUSIONES HOMERIC^, 
 
 THE DEATH OF ARTEMIDORA. 
 
 ^ Artemidora ! Gods invisible, 
 While thou art lying faint along the couch, 
 Have tied the sandal to thy slender feet 
 And stand beside thee, ready to convey 
 Thy weary steps where other rivers flow. 
 Refreshing shades will waft thy weariness 
 Away, and voices like thy own come near 
 And nearer, and solicit an embrace." 
 
 Artemidora sigh'd, and would have prest 
 The hand now pressing hers, but was too weak. 
 Iris stood over her dark hair unseen 
 While thus Elpenor spake. He lookt into 
 Eyes that had given light and life erewhile 
 To those above them, and now dim with tears 
 And wakefulness. Again he spake of joy 
 Eternal. At that word, that sad word, joy. 
 Faithful and fond her bosom heaved once more : 
 Her head fell back : and now a loud deep sob 
 Sweird thro' the darken'd chamber; 'twas not 
 hers. 
 
PROLUSIONES UOMERICuE. 157 
 
 Egfielocg 5' dx&xijia fidla a/edbv ^Ivdev rjc^jy, 
 i^bmigoig d^ ocq' trjv oix d(p6alfiOL(nv ivagyrig, 
 e'liog ToTaid^ clxLxvg inl XexieUGi jfjidrjada' 
 ^Ivde, uoiGi d' irrd Ismoig nool driae TiiSday 
 ndiQ dd GOV Ibgti] vvp, jLidla jEiqofiivi^v ue xaid^MV 
 yaTap ii^ aXlodan'^v xocl in* d.ev6L0VTa giEdga' 
 aol d' uvi^i})v hagal nvoial axioeaaa dd 0' vIt] 
 gia fifxV dLTioipv^ovav nhvov js xal alyeoc n&vici* 
 ipv/(xl d' (\uq:l negl^f yXvxvqjMvoi lad ooi a^jr^^ 
 hygofxevav /slgdg uol ugaidg dfucpi^alovai^v, 
 
 ^11 d' oliyodgaviova' (hg rideXev uviilu^iodav 
 dE^negi]g- dlV ovx idwi^^aaTO, isfidvi] nEg. 
 Tocpga (5' {tnhg nXoxd^ovg loEidtdi" Igig ini(nrj' 
 OS ^' El* Jtt' dq)6alfioT(TtP idegxETO ijg ul6/oio, 
 x&llE'i d* ol axLl^Eiv fiiy EihdEuav uylatri te, 
 iygofiEPri d* dg* ino GivyEgov xafidiOLO dapdadEv. 
 ^EvTEgov al) nvfiaTOP ts fitp ''Elnripcog TigooieinEv 
 ^Jl gd pv Oaknoigri egetoii ipv/alat xajuoPTtup, 
 rdgipOPTuL di nov aiel Ip daq)o5sl(jj lEip^vi,. 
 
 °fLg cpdw Tov d* dlo/og (flhj sxIvep avdr^aixpwg, 
 xal nifioLTOP xga6h] ol M axrfiEOUi ndru^EP' 
 ei'traro ydg ol L,rip noli) ^iljEgop ^ xal undar^g 
 dyXatjjg Tag(f)dr^vai> ip dGq)o6El(o XEvp^vi' 
 d^ T(5i' dg^ ovp riuvGs xdgij ndXvP' alipa d* InEiia 
 iv dpog)EgoTg Oaldjuoig xXavOpog noXvdaxgvg dgwger 
 xlavdfjov (5' ri pdV dq^Mvog h]oda tot', ^yfgTEfiid(})grj, 
 
158 BACK TO BABEL. 
 
 m 
 
 XIII. 
 
 B^i^CK TO BABEL. 
 
 I FOUGET, for the moment — and perhaps 
 1 never knew — the exact date of the simul- 
 taneous emigrations from Babel. I think 
 there must have been many grammarians 
 that carried hods up the spirals of that 
 never-finished tower. And I imagine they 
 must have contracted a more than ordinary 
 share of dizziness at the summit, and de- 
 scended to transmit vertigo to all succeed- 
 ing generations. 
 
 I have had on three occasions to march 
 through Coventry with a little regiment of 
 Latin and Greek tyros. Oftentimes, while 
 jogging on at their head over a dreary com- 
 mon, I have Quixotically attacked gram- 
 matical windmills, under the conviction 
 that their sails were going whirr-whirr to 
 the grinding of no corn. 
 
BACK TO BABEL, 159 
 
 After laying it down as an initiatory 
 dogma, that the two classical languages are 
 sisters of our own good Saxon mother, I 
 have often found it difficult to prove to my 
 young disciples that their linguistic aunts 
 are sisters of one another. To instance one 
 difficulty that faces us at the outset. Their 
 nouns are stretched upon diverse skeletons. 
 The sides of Latin are furnished with six 
 case-ribs, and those of Greek with but five. 
 This would seem to indicate a difference of 
 sex, and an Adam-and-Eve relationship. 
 Was it in the Ante-Deucalion days, when 
 Greek was fast asleep, that the rib was re- 
 moved from his flank along Epirus ? 
 
 The genitive case in Greek is made to do 
 the entire work of the genitive and some 
 work of the ablative of Latin ; the dative of 
 the former, the entire work of the dative 
 and another part of that of the ablative in 
 the latter ; and many syntax rules of Latin 
 seem to allow an unreasonable choice be- 
 tween the genitive and ablative. The rules 
 for the gerund are ludicrous enough ; but 
 in that for the locative case we reach the 
 acm^ of grammatical unreason : — 
 
160 BACK TO BABEL, 
 
 In or at a place is put in the genitive case, if 
 the noun he of the first or second declension, and 
 of the singular number ; hut in the ablative case, 
 if the noun be of the third declension, or if it be 
 a plural noun of any declension. 
 
 Now, if this rule were correct in sub- 
 stance, it would seem to indicate as much 
 coherence in Latin syntax as in the dreams 
 of a maniac. After swallowing such a bolus 
 of indigestibility, we might safely bolt 
 anything: brace-buttons, tee-totums, cork- 
 screws. I venture to suggest some analo- 
 gues: 
 
 An active-transitive verb governs an accusative 
 case, if the verb be of the first conjugation, and 
 the noun of the fourth declension and of the femi- 
 nine gender ; otherwise, the verb may govern any 
 case or no case, as you please. 
 
 An adjective agrees with its noun in gender^ 
 number, and case ; excepting in the case of femi- 
 nine nouns defective in the singular, and irregu- 
 lar in their habits. 
 
 I have an idea of publishing a cookery 
 book upon the same principles of unreason. 
 The following recipe I quote as an antici- 
 patory advertisement : — 
 
HACK TO BABEL. 161 
 
 To make an apple-pie, you will compose the 
 interior of currant-jam, if the pie he made on 
 Wednesday, and the weather out-of doors he windy ; 
 hut of soap-suds, if it he your washing day, and 
 the dish he of the willow pattern. 
 
 However, Reader, the fault is ascribable 
 not to Latin, but to the exponents of its 
 grammar. In or at a place, of course, was 
 never, even in the Cannibal Islands, ex- 
 pressed by case-endings in so arbitrary a 
 way. Such a locative rule would be lumber- 
 some, if it were true; but, as you are aware, 
 Reader, it is a tissue of nonsense from 
 beginning to end. 
 
 I have an idea that some extra confusion 
 was caused by the introduction of the abla- 
 tive case into Latin grammar. And yet one 
 should deal cautiously with a case that was 
 begotten of the first and greatest of the 
 Caesars. There had been Dictators before 
 Julius ; but never an one with so catholic a 
 spirit of autocracy. Like a steam-hammer, 
 he could flatten a ball of metal, or settle 
 daintily on an egg ; and took an imperial 
 part in the declension of his country's 
 liberties, aristocracy, adjectives, and nouns. . 
 The tyranny of an emperor, however, was 
 
Ib2 BACK TO BABEL. 
 
 usually limited in action to a select few. It 
 was a perquisite of noblesse. I think it 
 was so with the blunder of the ablative. I do 
 not suppose any tradesmen, excepting those 
 Avho served the Court, would take kindly 
 to the bad grammar of the upper circles. 
 
 Half, if not all, the absurdities in our 
 grammars arise from the fact, that the rules 
 -were enunciated Avhen the theory of lan- 
 guage was imperfectly understood, and when 
 the two great languages were considered as 
 alien to one another. Now, that Ave allow 
 them to be kindred dialects of one great 
 Arian form of speech, why should not a 
 brief and simple and cheap manual be pre- 
 sented to young students, such as should 
 bring out in clear relief so interesting a 
 fact? 
 
 For my own part I am conscious of 
 possessing one qualification for the task of 
 writing one ; the directness and plainness 
 of speech that characterize my countrymen. 
 But here my fitness ends. I have, indeed, 
 studied some six modern languages, with a 
 view of generalizing linguistic rules ; but, 
 I must confess, in a desultory way, and 
 chiefly for my own amusement. I feel the 
 
BACK TO BABEL. 163 
 
 poverty of my resources, and fear the light 
 of mtuition and of desultory study might 
 prove a Will-o'-the-wisp. I have all the 
 courage for the task, but lack breadth of 
 philology. I fear those who are gifted with 
 the latter will lack the former. It is so 
 difficult to prove to such men that their 
 linguistic knowledge has come in spite of 
 an early training that has plunged nine- 
 tenths of their school-comrades in an eternal 
 Latin-and-Greek night. 
 
 Let us, then, borrow a Hercules from 
 Germany ; and having solemnly bound him 
 over to an un-German brevity in the opera- 
 tion, send him with mop and broom and 
 pail into the Augean stables, to cleanse 
 them of their grammatical litter. 
 
 I venture, meanwhile, to suggest a case- 
 classification of my own ; partly for my own 
 amusement in the building, and partly for 
 the amusement of those who enjoy having 
 something to demolish. 
 
 Praspositive == Nominative ; 
 
 Appositive = Accusative ; 
 
 Directive = Dative ; 
 
 Possessive = Genitive in s ; 
 
 Definitive = . Genitive in a vowel. 
 
164 
 
 BACK TO BABEL. 
 
 Praep. 
 
 forma 
 
 fl6Q(p7J 
 
 App. 
 
 for man 
 
 ^6Q(f>riP 
 
 Dir. 
 
 formal 
 
 ^6o(pr^c 
 
 Poss. 
 
 
 fioQCffjg 
 
 Def. 
 
 formae 
 2. 
 
 
 Praep. 
 
 nautas 
 
 va{)Tj]g 
 
 App. 
 
 nautan 
 
 vaiuxTiv 
 
 Dir. 
 
 nautdi 
 
 vavirjv 
 
 Poss. 
 Def. 
 
 
 
 nautae 
 
 pa^fiao 
 
 Praep. 
 
 dies 
 
 l^COXQ&TTjg 
 
 App. 
 
 dien 
 
 SWKQIITTJV 
 
 Dir. 
 
 diet 
 
 ^MXqdLTeX 
 
 Poss. 
 
 
 SoiiKQikieog 
 
 Def. 
 
 die'e 
 
 
 4. 
 
 Praep. 
 
 navis, navs 
 
 bg)tg 
 
 App. 
 
 navin 
 
 OCplf 
 
 Dir. 
 
 navi'i 
 
 bq;u 
 
 Poss. 
 
 navios, navis 
 
 ocpiog 
 
 Def. 
 
 
 
BACK TO BABEL. 165 
 
 
 5. 
 
 
 Praep. 
 
 Deos 
 
 Sebg 
 
 App. 
 
 Deon 
 
 Gebv 
 
 Dir. 
 
 Deo'i 
 
 0S&C 
 
 Poss. 
 
 
 
 Def. 
 
 Deoe 
 6. 
 
 eeo'e 
 
 Praep. 
 
 alius, alios 
 
 dillog 
 
 App. 
 
 alium, allon 
 
 mov 
 
 Dir. 
 
 alii, allo'i 
 
 aXloL 
 
 Poss. 
 
 alius, allo'is 
 
 
 Def. 
 
 7. 
 
 aUo's 
 
 Praep. 
 
 currus 
 
 ^diQvg 
 
 App. 
 
 currun 
 
 ^OlQVV 
 
 Dir. 
 
 currui 
 
 (^OTQVl 
 
 Poss. 
 
 curruos 
 
 (idrgvog 
 
 Def. 
 
 8. 
 
 
 Praep. 
 
 peds 
 
 nodg 
 
 App. 
 
 pedn 
 
 TTody 
 
 Dir. 
 
 pedi 
 
 nodi 
 
 Poss. 
 
 pedis 
 
 nodog 
 
 Def. 
 
 
 
166 BACK TO BABEL, 
 
 The names of the first four cases of my 
 system speak plainly enough for themselves. 
 The fifth presents a little difficulty. 
 
 I may as well premise that only a noun 
 can correctly be said to have a case or 
 relative ending. An adjective and a par- 
 ticiple may musically imitate a noun ; but 
 strictly speaking they can only be said to 
 have cases of their own,, when they are used 
 as nouns. In conversation a final consonant 
 wafe continually dropped ; especially a nasal 
 one, as m or n. This would be more often 
 the case with the adjective or participle, 
 when used as mere epithet, than with noun 
 or verb, as they would, in most instances, 
 immediately precede their noun, and the 
 termination of the latter would sufficiently 
 determine the case of both. The noun and 
 verb would also drop their final consonant, 
 when from position they could do so eupho- 
 niously and without causing ambiguity. 
 
 The Prepositive case is the shadow thrown 
 in front by a coming verb. It is the fore- 
 runner of the king of the sentence ; a gram- 
 matical gold-stick. Its termination was, 
 perhaps, originally the letter s ; which may 
 
BACK TO BABEL. 167 
 
 possibly be a corruption of the verb asen of 
 existence. 
 
 The Appositive is a page that follows 
 close upon its king, holding up his train. 
 It follows a verb of action or motion. All 
 verbs of action are transitive. An active- 
 intransitive verb would be a horse-marine 
 in grammar or in common sense. An appo- 
 sitive would follow ahire even more natur- 
 ally than it would follow amare ; as the 
 physical motion of the former verb is more 
 easily grasped than the mental or spiritual 
 motion of the latter. Consequently, if a 
 special rule were required at all, it would be 
 required rather to explain amat patrem than 
 ahiit domum. The final m or n^ which was 
 often used separately as a preposition in the 
 forms of aj/a, tV, dg^ or ivg^ in^ probably 
 ms, and of our own on^ was possibly the 
 root or infinitive of a verb signifying to 
 flow or move. We may detect this verb in 
 '£2xeav6g, annus^ amnis or annis^ Aniens^ 
 Evenus^ Simoents^ no^ anat%^ aivao^g ; in 
 iaravai^ TiMvai, dtdovai^ Ltvyvvvai, %im^ 
 Tuv ; in the old Latin infinitives amaen^ 
 moneen^ audien^ gnoen^ soluen^ regen ; in 
 
168 BACK TO BABEL. 
 
 %vx\iavxoQ^ Ti&tvTog, TVTCTovTog, Levyvvv- 
 Tog ; in amantis^ monentis ; in participial 
 nouns as dente^ monte ; in the Latin infini- 
 tives when they pass into the form of verbal 
 nouns or active verbal adjectives, as aman- 
 dum^ monendum^ amandus^ monendus ; in 
 ous own Teutonic, kommen^ essen; in read- 
 ing^ writing^ or the more archaic readend^ 
 writend. In translating ista domus est ven- 
 denda by yon house is selling or to sell^ 
 we see how the end of Latin and the ing of 
 Saxon is rendered by the preposition of 
 motion to. We may as well observe that 
 ista domus est ad vendendum or ad venden 
 is older and correcter Latin than ista domus 
 est vendenda^ where music has changed ad 
 venden or da venden into a verbal adjective 
 corresponding to our selling or saleable. 
 
 The Directive case is a sort of city-mar- 
 shal, that orders rightly a procession. Its 
 termination i is a modification of the word 
 that terminates the Appositive, and parti- 
 cularizes, in the way of m, at, on, or upon, 
 the action of some previous word, usually 
 of motion, but not so necessarily ; as, dedit 
 milii ; Carthagini re stab at ; utilis urbi; in 
 
BACK TO BABEL. 169 
 
 oppido ; cum exercitu. Wherever I find a 
 noun attached to in or cum., I am very much 
 inclined to think we at one time had no 
 case at all; and, I am convinced that, if 
 fashion introduced a superfluous case-end- 
 ing, it was the directive or dative. 
 
 The Possessive case denotes ownership or 
 possession; and, of course, it must either 
 have a noun clinging to it, or it must cling 
 to another noun, as a sort of barnacle or 
 parasite. It invariably ends in s, and has 
 a provoking tendency to turn adjective, and 
 imitate the noun to which it is attached. 
 In such words as patris^ militis^ ejus., illius^ 
 alterius^ it is content to remain unalterable : 
 in cujus it is apt to let music turn its head, 
 as in cuja puella est., cujum filium vidisti ; 
 though, one would think, cujus had no more 
 business to decline itself than its synonym 
 whose : as for meus^ tuus., suus, eaog, aoQ^ tog, 
 they have totally forgotten their noun-ori- 
 gin. I may as well state my suspicion that 
 the adjectival use was possibly the first use of 
 all possessives. If so, cuja puella is more cor- 
 rect than cujus puella ; and patris., militis de- 
 serve a declension as much as tmis and suus. 
 
170 BACK TO BABEL. 
 
 And now, not without fear and trembling, 
 I proceed to treat of the Definitive ; remem- 
 bering the trible warning — Be bold : Ever- 
 more be bold : Be not too bold. 
 
 The Definitive case was that case which 
 enabled one noun, when applied to another, 
 to define^ qualify^ limit., specialize or parti- 
 cularize this latter noun in almost every 
 way EXCEPT POSSESSION. Its termination 
 was probably a corruption of a preposition 
 answering to (XTTO, abs^ ah; eks^ eh., ef ; 
 von; of. 
 
 It would seem to be with case-endings 
 as with theological disputants. If the latter 
 differ toto coelo from one another, there is 
 room, perhaps, for mutual forbearance : if 
 they overlap each other in doctrine, there 
 is war to the knife ; as between men that 
 jostle one another on the road to heaven. 
 So is it with the Definitive and Possessive. 
 They appear to have been quite unable to 
 live at peace in any one noun together. 
 Whichever of the two cases in any parti- 
 cular noun were the oftener needed, would 
 gradually usurp the duties of the other. 
 The Definitive, in Latin, is exiled from the 
 
BACK TO BABEL. 171 
 
 declensions of u and of consonants; or, if it 
 appears at all, is dogged by an adjective : 
 the possessive is extinct in the declensions 
 of a and e ; and in the o declension, lingers 
 in the back settlements of ille^ qui^ is, ipse, 
 unus, totus, alius, and alter. This civil strife 
 of grammar-kinsmen has proved a Kilkenny 
 warfare in the end ; for both cases have 
 disappeared from modern Italian, French, 
 Spanish, and Portuguese. 
 
 The disagreements of these cases led to 
 grammatical mesalliances at times. Thus 
 in such sentences asfillus erat boni patris ; 
 pater erat excellentis viei ; we have a 
 definitive adjective united to a possessive 
 noun, and a possessive adjective to a defi- 
 nitive. It is wrong in grammar, but what 
 can you do? bonus has lost its possessive, 
 and pater its definitive. It is ridiculous 
 to be always quarrelling. A compromise 
 is requisite for mutual preservation. So, 
 in Indian warfare, the Ojibbeway widower, 
 Bald-eagle, scalps the Great Snake, a Bene- 
 dict of the Mingoes ; but falling a prisoner 
 into Mingo hands, is permitted to assume 
 the name and dignity of the dead hero : 
 
172 BACK TO BABEL. 
 
 with the wig of the departed dangling from 
 his chdtellaine^ he takes possession of a 
 cuckoo-wigwam, and comforts a not un- 
 comfortable widow. 
 
 I have given, as the only specimens of 
 surviving definitives, nautae\ diee\ deoe\ 
 We do meet with a few others, as in an 
 occasional neuter of the fourth or u declen- 
 sion, where we detect the case by the 
 adjective attached ; and in a proper name, 
 as Ulyxei. But we shall confine our atten- 
 tion to such ordinary instances as the three 
 above. Their probable dialectic changes 
 would be : — 
 
 nautavs 
 
 dominovs 
 
 dievs 
 
 nautav 
 
 dommov 
 
 diev 
 
 nautau 
 
 dominou 
 
 dieu 
 
 nautao 
 
 dominoe 
 
 die'i 
 
 nautae 
 
 dominoi 
 
 die 
 
 nautce 
 
 domini 
 
 
 nautd 
 
 domino 
 
 
 They would be invariably attached to another 
 noun., and never governed by a verb. In 
 such a sentence as hoc non boni viri est^ 
 boni viri is governed by a noun, that is so 
 obviously implied in est as to be omitted 
 
BACK TO BABEL. I73 
 
 without risk of ambiguity. The case was 
 strictly definitive or qualitative in its opera- 
 tion ; and is correctly used in such senten- 
 ces as the following : — 
 
 Erat homo magni ingeni ; 
 Erat homo magno ingenio ; 
 Erat matrona praeclarse formoe ; 
 Erat matrona praeclara forma ; 
 Erat animal permirae specie! ; 
 Erat animal permira specie ; 
 Erat tibia recurvi cornu ; 
 Erat tibia recurvo cornu ; 
 Erat filius honesti viri ; 
 Erat filia hones tee matronae : 
 
 in the two latter sentences the Definitive 
 meaning appears to approach the Posses- 
 sive: it certainly does not reach it. 
 
 In the following sentences we have speci- 
 mens of fashionable, ordinary but incorrect 
 Latinity : 
 
 Erat filius sapientis viri ; 
 Erat ^Wdi, prudentis matronce; 
 Erat vir ingenuce indolis ; 
 Finis erat morientis diet. 
 
 Now, as the meaning of the Definitive 
 was so very apt to clash with that of the 
 
174 BACK TO BABEL, 
 
 Possessive, it is very probable that wherever 
 it was resolved into two different forms, 
 such as nautce^ nautd; domini^ domino ; diei^ 
 die ; that for convenience and perspicuity, 
 one form would monopolize the meaning of 
 the dispossessed Possessive, although both 
 might retain the original Definitive signifi- 
 cation ; thus we should use only domini for 
 a possessive, but either ingeni or ingenio in 
 a qualitative expression. 
 
 In regard to this phenomenon of the 
 disagreement between Possessive and De- 
 finitive, the classic languages differ only 
 in degree from that of our own Teutonic. 
 Theoretically, all our nouns have a posses- 
 sive ; but practically only a certain number 
 of nouns require them. The nouns, tahle^ 
 piano-forte^ and side-hoard^ would seem to 
 merit a possessive as well as the nouns, 
 man^ hoy^ and dog; but while we should 
 say, a maul's hat^ a hoy^s cap^ a dog^s tail ; 
 we should say, the leg of a table,, the tone of 
 a piano-forte,^ the price of a side-hoard. 
 That is to say, the idea of possession chimes 
 in easily with the meaning of some words, 
 and not with that of others. These latter 
 
BACK TO BABEL. I75 
 
 words would be the first, then, to use a 
 definitive case to the exclusion of a posses- 
 sive, even under those few chance circum- 
 stances where a possessive case might be 
 more appropriate. In course of time the 
 possessive endings for such nouns, from de- 
 suetude, would sound barbarous or pedan- 
 tic ; they would therefore be dropped al- 
 together. Gradually, the gramma of anal- 
 ogy^ imitation^ or fashion would exclude the 
 possessive case for dmilarly-soundiyig nouns, 
 that really were in continual need of them ; 
 as it appears to have fared with Dominus; 
 puer: aXXo^ ; Qeog. 
 
 At first sight, we should be inclined to 
 consider a Possessive case as a very marked 
 one in its signification, and one deserving 
 of special conservation. It has been, how- 
 ever, very scurvily treated. Greek and 
 Teutonic have dealt the most kindly with 
 it. Latin was moving in the direction of its 
 obliteration. Its place of refuge was in 
 the third and fourth declensions, as the de- 
 clensions are badly named in our ordinary 
 grammars. The daughters of Latin have 
 condemned it, most unreasonably, to per- 
 
176 BACK TO BABEL, 
 
 petual banishment from France and the 
 great southern peninsulas. 
 
 The Possessive has been well preserved 
 in Teutonic dialects; as also in the gran- 
 ite-strata of Latin and Greek consonantal 
 nouns. Our own Saxon is, in fact, a far 
 older form of speech than the Greek of 
 Homer. The Greek wore once the kingly 
 crown of music, but surrendered it to the 
 Italian, who wears it still. But the German, 
 or, more correctly speaking, the Teuton- 
 Hebrew, is now the emperor of instrumental 
 sounds. However, the grimness of the old 
 Teuton-pure lingers still in the final con- 
 sonants of his language. Such words as 
 puela^ puerula^ die^ navi^ av&^Mno^ aOTV 
 are not primitive : their terminations are the 
 children of civilization. The words of old 
 were gwelas, gwerulas^ dags^ navs^ aytQaxjiy 
 aTCcTC, which rude forms were softened by 
 the worshippers of a God of many names. 
 Call him Sunlight ; Music ; Wine ; Joy ; Bac- 
 chus; Mercurius; Apollo. For Apollo took 
 away the rude consonantal bagpipes of lan- 
 guage, and replaced them with a flute of five 
 stops, and gave the latter to the dwellers in 
 
BACK TO BABEL, 177 
 
 the Sea of Islands ; to a race that loved music 
 and dancing. For the vowels are the music 
 and the light and wine and joy of language : 
 the notes of the human flute, which instru- 
 ment, when breathed upon by love through 
 the lips of Youth and Maiden, is more 
 thrilling than the song of matin-bird, more 
 subtle-sweet than the even-song of nightin- 
 gale, more ravishing than the strains of 
 Israfel that hold the Angels mute. 
 
 We may trace the chain of ideas which 
 would lead to the extinction of a possessive 
 case in one language, or of a definitive in 
 another. Supposing I were to land on an 
 unknown island, and find a race of men 
 with something like a caudal appendage, I 
 should probably tell my friends, on my 
 return home, that I had seen a tribe of men 
 who wore monkeys'^ tails. And I should 
 be understood, although my grammar were 
 incorrect: I should have said, the tails of 
 monkeys. For a man may wear a monkey^ s 
 tail^ of which he has deprived some unfor- 
 tunate and surviving monkey, and may 
 wear it round his neck, or he may carry 
 it attached to him as a watch-guard, or 
 
178 BACK TO BABEL, 
 
 as a novel stimulant for educational pur- 
 poses. But a man who wears the tail of a 
 monhey^ or the tail of the monkey^ will be 
 wearing it as his own tail ; only, that the 
 appearance of it will suggest the idea of 
 that kind of tail, which at once proceeds 
 from^ or is connected with^ or is defined^ 
 specified,, limited^ or particularized hy our 
 ordinary ideas of a monkey. 
 
 Again ; any butcher's boy may raise your 
 laughter by attaching a tin-kettle to a dog^s 
 tail ; but only a man of fine genius can draw 
 your tears by tying pathos to the tale of a 
 dog. A man, also, may be supported on 
 asses^ milk; but he can only be said, correct- 
 ly, to have the brains of an ass. There may 
 be special cases, however, where the use of 
 the possessive in the latter phrase may ap- 
 pear the more correct. 
 
 Let us now proceed to a brief treatment 
 of the Plural Number : — 
 
 Praep. 
 
 1. 
 
 nautai 
 
 >avTai 
 
 App. 
 
 nautans 
 
 vaiiavg 
 
 Dir. 
 
 nautats 
 
 paiiaig 
 
 Poss. 
 Def. 
 
 
 
 nautaion 
 
 vavT^nxiv 
 
BACK TO BABEL. 
 
 179 
 
 Pra3p. 
 
 App. 
 
 Dir. 
 
 Poss. 
 
 Def. 
 
 PrjEp. 
 
 App. 
 
 Dir. 
 
 Poss. 
 
 Def. 
 
 Prasp. 
 
 App. 
 
 Dir. 
 
 Poss. 
 
 Def. 
 
 Deoi 
 
 Seol 
 
 Deons 
 
 Qtbvg 
 
 Deo'is 
 
 esoig 
 
 Dcoion 
 
 Qeibv 
 
 3. 
 
 
 navies 
 
 ocpieg 
 
 navins 
 
 6(f)irg 
 
 naviis 
 
 bcpiig 
 
 naviesn 
 
 6(f)l(x)v 
 
 4. 
 
 
 pedes 
 
 Tiodeg 
 
 pedns 
 
 7ib6vg 
 
 pediis 
 
 TiodUg 
 
 pedesn 
 
 odibv 
 
 The real, and perhaps the only, pural 
 letter is s. Those prepositives plural would 
 gradually assume a vowel-ending, where the 
 addition of an s to the prepositive singular 
 would be sounded with difficulty, or would 
 lead to a confusion with other cases. 
 
180 BACK TO BABEL, 
 
 The formation of the appositives plural is 
 plain enough. I may as well state that such 
 an appositive singular, as nodcc^ has merely 
 dropped its final nasal consonant v ; and 
 that, probably, pedem dropped its m as 
 often. 
 
 In the directives plural, a 6 or t; would 
 continually intrude, as in pedibus^ hominibus 
 nobis^ vobis : in Greek, euphony was occa- 
 sionally preserved by transposition, as in 
 oyerrt or ocpiOi for ocpug. 
 
 There are no such cases as possessives 
 plural ; for a very simple reason. We should 
 have had to forni them by the addition of 
 a plural s to a possessive s, and they would 
 have sounded very harshly to musical ears. 
 I may as well say that possessives plural are 
 very rare even in our own language. 
 
 The definitives plural are, perhaps, more 
 puzzling than their singular correlatives. 
 I believe they are nothing more than un- 
 declinable adjectives, like what I sus- 
 pected patris^ militis to be. They are 
 formed by adding ov oy en to the preposi- 
 tive plural. In such a word as illorum^ the 
 r, softly pronounced, is interchangeable with 
 
BACK TO 
 
 i; as in legitur^ Xiy^tai ; and we can now 
 
 perhaps, account for the anomalous accent- 
 uation of such a word as the latter on the 
 grounds that the final syllable rai is not a 
 diphthong but a corruption, probable oi%a{) 
 or %oq ; as also for the accentuation of 
 av^Qconoi^ and the like ; and, reversely, for 
 that of optatives where an oi does represent 
 a diphthongal sound. The r intrudes, eupho- 
 niously, in amare ; or it may replace an s. 
 As we say in provincial English, this is not of 
 yourn^ so in old Latin they would say, hoc non 
 est vostri^ or hoc non est di vostrn. However, 
 in vostrn we are startled with the appearance 
 of a t. The word should have been vosrn 
 for vosn. The termination is the same as 
 that of mine^ thine^ unsern, sein ; and of 
 yoiirn^ hisn^ theirn^ which, in the predicate, 
 are more correct forms than yours^ his, theirs. 
 Perhaps the Spanish vosotros, and the French 
 vous autres will illustrate the anomalous 
 spelling of vostrilm, nostrum. 
 
 Indeed, wherever I see the termination 
 ter or tr, I suspect an idea of otherty, or the 
 suggestion of a correlate ; as in nostr, vostr ; 
 i]ueTtQ,vutTrQ ; either, neither ; uter; alter; 
 
182 BACK TO BABEL, 
 
 O0(p(ore() ; better; magior or major ; fa-tlier^ 
 mo-tJier ; hro-ther^ sis-ter ; ma-ter-ter-a ; and 
 daugh'ter^ whose correlative is obvious in 
 meaning, but lost in language. 
 
 Let us recur to illorum. Have you ever 
 heard a Welshman, Reader, speak the word 
 Llangollen ? The sound of the double ? is a 
 sort of compromise between a whistling and 
 a spitting. I could express it on paper with 
 a pen that spluttered. Remembering this, 
 we may follow illorum through strange 
 windings ; thus : illoion^ illony illorn^ llorn^ 
 thlorn, thiorn^ theirn^ their. So aliorum 
 would suggest aXkoiov^ used indeclinably ; 
 and eorum the Teutonic ihren. And aliarum 
 or aXXaiov is more correctly used than 
 akXoiov^ui speaking of women. And alienus 
 is a declinable form of them all, and is in- 
 correctly formed as having one termination 
 appended in two ways. The termination on 
 OT en or n was, I believe, recurred to in 
 Semitic or Arian languages, to form such 
 words as were not worth the trouble of de- 
 clining, under which category would come 
 all neuter nouns, and neuter adjectival 
 forms, that might be used as definitives 
 
BACK TO BABEL. 183 
 
 plural or dual. Indeed, I imagine that the 
 greater part of Greek dual words would dis- 
 appear before a strict scrutiny; and that 
 such Avords as tivain^ kine^ oxen^ are not duals 
 or plurals, but adjectival words used in an 
 indefinite and somewhat lazy manner. And 
 I also imagine that the n of third persons 
 plural is grammatically incorrect, but lazily 
 convenient. Am I in earnest. Reader, or 
 simply havering ? Have I made some curi- 
 ous discoveries ? or, what is more probable, 
 some curious blunders? Have I sprung a 
 mine of philology, or sprung a leak ? The 
 issue either way will serve to point a moral : 
 will encourage or deter, by demonstrating 
 the advantage, or the danger, of trusting to 
 mother-wit. 
 
 I now proceed to treat of classes of 
 words not included in my case system, such 
 as patre^ milite^ prudente ; domine^ asine. 
 These are respectively termed in our Gram- 
 mars Ablative and Vocative cases. I assert 
 that they are not cases at all ; that the so- 
 called Ablatives above given are only crude 
 forms or Name- words ; and that such Voca- 
 tives as domine have merely exchanged a 
 
184 BACK TO BABEL. 
 
 short into a short e, from the fact that a 
 short e is the shortest of all vowel sounds. 
 In such sentences as — 
 
 Ibat trans pontem : 
 Ibat per urhem : 
 Ibat contra murum : 
 
 we have the appositive pontem^ urbem^ mu- 
 rum^ correctly attached to the transitive 
 words tranSy per^ contra, which are corrup- 
 tions of participles, or of similar words used 
 absolutely. But in such a sentence as — 
 Ibat in SiciUam, 
 
 we have the preposition in superfluously 
 prefixed to Siciliam, according to the gram- 
 mar of analogy and imitation. 
 In such sentences as — 
 
 Turba ruit ex oppido: 
 Id dixi de puero tuo: 
 
 I consider that the words oppido and puero 
 admit of two explanations. If their final 
 vowels be really long, then they are defini- 
 tives, and the prepositions de and ex are 
 usefully, but somewhat incorrectly prefixed. 
 I am inclined, however, to think that the 
 words are really only crude forms, or name- 
 
BACK TO BABEL. 185 
 
 words, and that their final vowels should 
 be short. The final vowels of name-words, 
 being often the same as those of corrupt 
 forms of the definitive cases, might possibly 
 usurp the pronunciation of the final vowels 
 of these latter, which are properly long as 
 being contractions. Or, perhaps, the ambi- 
 guit}^ would be confined to reading ; as in 
 spoken Latin we should pronounce the o in a 
 name-word like the o in cot^ lot^ martello ; 
 and the long o of a definitive like the o in 
 wrote^ smote^ hocca : the o in cosa being dif- 
 ferent from both as representing the diph- 
 thong au. At all events, I am convinced 
 that, in familiar speech at least, the ancient 
 Latins would continually prefix preposi- 
 tions to forms crude in such expressions as : — 
 
 Id dixi de tuo patre: 
 
 Non erat in tola urhe : 
 
 Saxum ruit de summo monte : 
 
 Id feci clam meo patre et tua matre. 
 
 With regard to what are called Ablatives 
 Absolute in Latin and Genitives Absolute 
 in Greek, I am convinced that originally 
 and correctly we should have no case at all. 
 A case is a relative termination^ implying 
 
186 BACK TO BABEL. 
 
 somsthing that has preceded or something 
 to follow. If so, an absolute ease is a con- 
 tradiction in terms. In absolute or indepen- 
 dent expressions, only name-words or crude 
 forms should be used. I have already ob- 
 served that many name-words would be 
 easily confounded with definitive cases ; and 
 definitive cases are continually confounded 
 with possessive cases ; consequently, a name- 
 word might in. an absolute expression in 
 Greek be occasionally but incorrectly re- 
 placed by words really possessive. We 
 must not forget, also, that a possessive case 
 is possibly an adjectival word in disguise. 
 
 I conclude with the consideration of some 
 peculiar expressions. In the following : 
 
 Vir erat excellenti ingenio ; 
 Vir erat prcestanti sapientia ; 
 
 the words in italics may be considered as 
 definitives ; and, if so, their final vowels are 
 long. But I think it would be correct 
 familiar Latin to say — 
 
 Uomo erat eccellente ingenio ; 
 Uomo erat prcestante sapienza; 
 
 and that here the words in italics are name- 
 
BACK TO BABEL, 187 
 
 words or crude forms, and that a preposition 
 such as de or di is omitted, as in such a 
 German sentence as : — 
 
 Geben sie mir ein Glas-wein ; 
 where von is omitted, as being clearl}'- 
 implied. 
 
 In other words, I am convinced that we 
 have pure conversational Latin, such as 
 Virgil may have heard in his nursery by 
 the Mincio, in such modern sounds as — 
 
 Uomo era di eccellente ingenio ; 
 
 Uoino era di prsestante sapienza ; 
 
 Meo' padre non e in casa ; 
 
 Tua figlia era donnicilla di ammiravile 
 
 venusta ; 
 lo e meo' fratellos eramo molt6 attoniti ; 
 S\ facta ilia tua volonta .; 
 Erano gioveni toto pieni di virtu. 
 
 I subjoin a pair of riddles, with one of 
 which the future poet may be supposed to 
 have puzzled his grandmother, and with the 
 other to have made love for the first time to 
 a young milliner of Mantua. The latter is 
 in a rude dactylic measure ; for Maronello 
 is, of course, as yet unacquainted with the 
 severities of scansion. 
 
188 BACK TO BABEL. 
 
 *^Quid fares," disse puellulos porcello, *' .' i 
 essem te." " Mallem, m' ercule," responde por- 
 cellos, " me esse te, quam id esse, quod essem io, 
 quodque esses tu." " Ah ! " responde puellulos, 
 " si essem porcello', non essem porcello'." 
 
 O mea bellula, cara Puellula, 
 
 In meo pectore quod micat, Primiilom 
 
 Est et erit tui plenom amore : 
 O si calfar' io Primuli ignibus 
 Illud Sequundiilom, quod gremi' in tuo 
 
 Uiit me f rigidiore nitore ! 
 Dom mea carmiua vesperi perlegis, 
 Mai' ominato' ne Totulom impleat 
 
 Crudelitate te meque dolore ; 
 Sed te, Puellul', Amoris auccellula 
 Praetrevolans tuom impleat gremiom 
 
 Debito tu' amatoris amore. 
 
 In some of which sentences, I have modi- 
 fied such words as sapientia^ est^ dominicilla^ 
 venustate^ sit^ erant^ pleni^ dixit^ ego^faceres 
 dixit^ respondit^ avicellula^ prceter^ only in 
 such ways as I see clearly indicated in my 
 scanning of Plautus and Terence, and ratified 
 by what I have read of Italian and Spanish ; 
 and I have made a free but Italian use of 
 diminutives. The boy-poet's first riddle is 
 easily solved ; if a classical reader is puzzled 
 with the second, he may go, for all I care, 
 
BACK TO BABEL, 189 
 
 Whatever may be the flaws in the case 
 system of my suggesting, I can at all events 
 explain to a young pupil the meaning of 
 the terms employed, which I will defy any 
 one to do with the terms genitive,, accusative,, 
 ablative. If an inquisitive lad were to 
 question me regarding the meaning of these 
 words, or their fellow-inexplicables, infini- 
 tive^ gerund^ supine^ and participle^ I should 
 say peremptorily : " Boy, you must call a 
 gerund a gerund, as your father did before 
 you." If he still asked me why his father 
 did so before him ? I should say humbly : 
 " I don't know. They might have called a 
 gerund a genitive, and a genitive a supine, 
 and a supine a trumpeter. B nt they didn't." 
 
 You are tired. Reader, by this time. I 
 can hear you somewhat indistinctly mutter- 
 ing : " Confound these cases : do let them 
 alone." No : gentle but masculine Reader, 
 it is just because these cases are confounded, 
 that I am not for letting them alone. No ; 
 Reader : mejudice,, ilia antiqua vocabula non 
 CONFUNDENDA Sunt,, quippe quce jam satis 
 confusa sint; sed prorsiis et in ceternum 
 
 DAMNANDA. 
 
190 DISSOLVING VIEWS. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 DISSOLVING VIEWS. 
 
 ^6g ^loi nov OTco, ymi ttiv yriv vivi^aa), 
 said Archimedes, as I once read in my Greek 
 Delectus ; and it was a very hard sentence 
 to parse. Luckily for us he never obtained 
 his stand-point, or, heaven knows, we might 
 now be rolling on the far side of Uranus. 
 I am inclined to think, that, if a stand-point 
 be requisite, it will be as hard to move an 
 orange as a world. For a stand-point de- 
 notes rest; and rest, I fear, is denied to 
 more than the wicked. 
 
 The Hebrews have only a Future and a 
 Past Tense ; and by a slight modification 
 they can interchange these two. Why have 
 they no Present? We can hardly suppose 
 a tense more often needed than the latter. 
 It is possible that this curious gap in the 
 Hebrew verb was caused by a corresponding 
 
DISSOLVING VIEWS. 191 
 
 gap in our intellectual condition. Let us 
 consider whether those languages, with 
 which we are familiar, are better provided 
 with times or tenses than their far-off Se- 
 mitic cousin. 
 
 The first verb to which I am introduced 
 in a Greek grammar has the following tenses 
 usually assigned to it : — 
 
 TVTiTOt}, sTVTTioVy jiijjai^ Eivipa^ STVTiov^ rhvcpix^ 
 
 Now, the root of the verb is obviously 
 TVTX ; our own tap^ dah^ duh^ and thump; in 
 the latter of which words the m is comple- 
 mental to the ^, as the p is complemental 
 to the m in the name of the writer of this 
 bookling. Consequently, in tvuth), tTvnrov 
 we have derivative forms, habitual or fre- 
 quentative tenses. Of the original verb then 
 we have only left us, — 
 
 Tvipo)y sTvipoCy sTvnofy Thvcpa^ thuna^ heiTucpeiP^ 
 
 In other words, we have only means left us 
 of expressing future and past time. 
 
 Again ; tvtizcd^ being a tense of habitual- 
 ity or frequentativeness cannot be a present 
 tense ; for the idea of the present is con- 
 
192 DISSOLVING VIEWS. 
 
 nectecl with the idea of a point of time, and 
 the idea of habituality with duration. 
 
 Again ; let me search the wished-for tense 
 through the Passive. In my grammar I find 
 the following tenses : — 
 
 jvTiTOfiai^y iTV7n6iLi7]P, Tvq)d'/i(TOfiai, Turrrjo'o/ywij 
 TSTuipo/Liai., Mq)dr^p, M7i7]P, liTV/ifiuL, iT£Tti,(/,wr/r ; 
 
 and, eliminating the tenses that are bur- 
 dened with the T or tT of habituality, I 
 have — 
 
 TvjLtui^p : 
 
 Futures, Past-futures, Pasts, Present-pasts, 
 Past-pasts — ^but no Present. 
 
 Let me search the Middle or Reflective 
 Voice. I find : — 
 
 jvTjTOfiaiy hvnTO^Tjv^ i^iipofiixi^ hvipdfiijVy hv- 
 7i6ui]v : 
 
 eliminating as before, I have for tenses of 
 
 the primitive verb, only 
 
 Tvifjo/Liaiy hvifjd^rjVy irvndiHTjv : 
 
 only Future and Past. No Present. The 
 dove has returned to the ark ; but there is 
 no leaf in her bill, to tell of dry ground on 
 which the foot may rest. Close the win-^ 
 dow ; and let us sail on through the dark. 
 
DTSSOLVING VIE^S, 193 
 
 But, for a moment, Reader, let us return 
 to examine our remnants of the Passive. 
 We had left us, 
 
 or in older forms : — 
 
 or, in other dialectic forms : — 
 
 Tvn-eQOu-ocQ^ xeivn-eQau-aQ^ irvTTSQafi, tetutt- 
 
 O'XUQ^ ilSTVTl-OUEQaU, 
 
 And in oaaq, ofieQaa, t()ouaQ, I fancy I can 
 detect reflective forms of fi,ut,7'^v, erroj; som^ 
 esam^ esom; sum^ eram^ erom. If this be 
 the case, my Passive Voice has dwindled 
 down to one tense, hvm]V or hvn^qa^ ; 
 and my passive can only express the Past. 
 And is this incapable of explanation ? 
 Not at all. The Passive Voice is seldom 
 needed : when it is, the verb to he alone can 
 help us. I should say of a man : lie WAB 
 drowned^ if he were thrown overboard ; but, 
 he GOT droiuned^ if he jumped overboard. 
 And when a cowardly ruffian is brought to 
 the Old Bailey, we should say of him, in the 
 Middle or Reflective Voice, he got hanged; 
 
194 DISSOLVING VIEWS. 
 
 which expression would imply, And serve 
 him rigliL It is only a mawkish sentimen- 
 tality and a sham philanthropy that would 
 describe the circumstances in the Passive 
 Voice. And let me here observe also, how 
 ridiculous it is to tell a man to go and be 
 hanged. The man will tell you that such 
 a result depends on others, not on himself. 
 A passive imperative is a blunder in any 
 language. For he substitute get^ and the 
 above command is grammatical and feasible. 
 Again : I can say of a man, with gram- 
 matical correctness, he was hanged; for 
 both was and hanged are past. But if I say, 
 he is hanged; while is seems present, hanged 
 is undoubtedly past, so that I am using a 
 Past-present. If I say, he is being hanged^ 
 I talk nonsense; for I am speaking of a 
 man being now in the 'past condition. And 
 if I say he will be hanged^ I have here a 
 future in will be and a past in the participle, 
 so that lam using not a future but a Past- 
 future. Our own passive, therefore, has 
 only a Past, a Past-present, and a past- 
 future, and cannot clearly express a pure 
 Present or a pure Future - 
 
DISSOLVING VIEWS, 195 
 
 But again ; let us examine those termi- 
 nations, oiiai^ ouTiv, taoaai. They are 
 probably reflectives of tmi, i]V^ doio ; of 
 which I here give possible dialectic varie- 
 ties : — 
 
 bXhX \v Maojn 
 
 ea^v saafi eaofi 
 
 aafii> eaixfi eaofi 
 
 aaofi saafi saofi 
 
 asom esam esom . 
 
 sum eram erom ; 
 
 where an attempt is made to express pre- 
 sent, past, and future, by a vowel-play upon 
 the root, as,, es^ or is^ in combination with 
 the objective case of the first pronoun. 
 We shall return erelong to this mysterious 
 verb of existence, which plays in so strange 
 and pretty and subtle a way with the tripar- 
 tite divisions of time. 
 
 But to return to my riddle of the Present. 
 Surely if this time can be arrested at all, it 
 will be so in the verbs to he^ to do^ to have ; 
 and 1 seem to have caught the shadow in 
 such sentences as. How do you do ? I am 
 tolerably well. J'ai terriblement faim. But 
 neither health nor hunger are momentary. 
 
196 DISSOLVING VIEWS. 
 
 They indicate conditions, and conditions 
 imply duration. And when I read, How 
 DOTii the little busy bee improve EACH shin- 
 ing hour? the word each makes of doth 
 a tense of habitualit}^ an indefinite, an 
 Aorist. Another trial or two ere we give 
 up in despair. God HAS mercy upon all that 
 turn to Mm. Why, friend, this has is eter- 
 nal, and embraces all the past and all the 
 future. And God is good; but I dare not 
 limit the duration of this little is. 
 
 Again, when I say Pater mens me amat^ 
 I probably mean my father loves me habit- 
 ually^ not at this special moment more than 
 at any previous one : if so, I am again using 
 a frequentative tense, or an indefinite tense, 
 or an Aorist tense ; which in plainest Eng- 
 lish may be called a what-d'ye-may-call-it 
 tense. Now, the expression My father does 
 love me is only a little more emphatic than 
 My father loves me; and the- emphasis is 
 given by simply breaking up loves or loveth 
 into its constituent parts, and inverting 
 their order. Hence, if the one sentence 
 refers not to present time specially, the 
 other will not so either. 
 
DISSOLVING VIEWS. 197 
 
 Shall I then be nearer the mark if I say 
 My father is loving me. It certainly would 
 seem so at first sight. But, alas ! while is 
 appears to repose in the present, loving is 
 saddled with a termination that suggests 
 motion, and this motion neutralizes imme- 
 diately the previous suggestion of repose. 
 
 Let me now pull to pieces two tenses of 
 old Greek and new Romanic : — 
 
 TV^b) 
 
 chanterai 
 
 Tvipsig 
 
 chanteras 
 
 liipsi, 
 
 chaiitera 
 
 riyjofisv 
 
 chanterons 
 
 Tvipezs 
 
 chanterez 
 
 riipovcTi^ 
 
 chanteront ; 
 
 1 older forms would be — 
 
 Tvnsaoiti 
 
 clianteraveo 
 
 Tunsaeg 
 
 chanteravsti 
 
 ivneaeT. 
 
 chaiiteravt 
 
 rvniaofieg 
 
 chanteravomes 
 
 ivniasoeg 
 
 chanteravstis 
 
 ivniaevi ' 
 
 chanteravnt 
 
 Why dear me. Reader, I find my supposed 
 essentially present words, am and have^ do- 
 ing duty as Futures. They are Detective 
 Officers ; Policemen in plain clothes. 
 
108 DISSOLVING VIEWS. 
 
 Again ; observe the following three tenses: 
 
 canom 
 
 canem 
 
 can am 
 
 canis 
 
 canes 
 
 canas 
 
 canit 
 
 canet 
 
 canat 
 
 canimus 
 
 canemos 
 
 canamos 
 
 canisis 
 
 canesis 
 
 canasis 
 
 can on t, 
 
 canent, 
 
 canant : 
 
 These tenses are called respectively, the 
 Present Indicative, the Future Indicative, 
 and the Present Subjunctive. They are 
 obviously modifications of one tense : which 
 of the three is the primary one? If canom; 
 then upon an indefinite foundation we build 
 our tenses of futurity and dubitation. Most 
 correctly. Were dubitation to rest on firm- 
 er ground, it would cease to be dubitation. 
 Surely there is a Proteus in grammar as well 
 as on the ribbed sea-sand : an Isis in every 
 class-room, whose veil even a schoolmaster 
 may not lift. 
 
 In Algebra, I speak of a man as possess- 
 ing + two pennies or — two pennies ; w^hich 
 expressions interpreted into common speech 
 mean that the man has eitlier twopence in 
 his pocket, or owes twopence, which he will 
 have to give up as soon as he gets that 
 
DISSOLVING VIEWS. 199 
 
 sum. But how can I grasp the idea of a 
 man's having no pennies ? how shall I illus- 
 trate his condition? The fact is, the in- 
 stant the idea of a penny is presented to my 
 mind, the idea of negation becomes impossi- 
 ble. What could a man do with no pennies or 
 nuppence ? Could he play heads or tails with 
 it? or put it in the bank? or in the plate 
 at church? He might swallow it, perhaps, 
 without doing himself harm; or give it 
 to a beggar, without doing him much good. 
 
 I have a dim idea that past tenses begin 
 with negative infinity; and that future 
 tenses end in positive infinity; and that 
 the grammatical present is the mathemati- 
 cal zero. 
 
 Are you a little confused. Reader, with 
 the apparent irrelevance of Nuppence? and 
 Present Time? If you were the writer of 
 this little book, you would know how 
 closely connected were these intellectually- 
 illusory, but practically-palpable ideas. 
 
 Well, Reader: 'tis a transitory world: 
 let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. 
 What says the Epicure? Carpe diem: 
 Enjoy the Present, The Present ? why, it is 
 
200 DISSOLVING VIEWS, 
 
 gone ere the word is uttered. How futile 
 must be a moral bidding, that enjoins the 
 performance of a grammatical impossibility ! 
 
 But what says the Apostle? Here have 
 we no abiding city. We seek a country. 
 Yes, Friend, the Past is gone ; the Present 
 crumbles beneath our feet : the Future is 
 a stern reality, and all else is dream. 
 
 We are indeed walking in a vain shadow. 
 The inner spirit endeavors ineffectually to 
 express her thoughts by Language, Music, 
 and Painting. Homer, Mozart and Raffaelle 
 spake her meaning with a superhuman 
 clearness. But, after all, Language is but 
 a subtle intermixture of four sounds ; den- 
 tal, palato-lingual, guttural, and vocalic; 
 and even these have a tendency to inter- 
 change. Music is but an infinite modifica- 
 tion of a few simple notes ; and Painting 
 but the skilful blending of a few simple 
 colors. Could we resolve them into their 
 elements, we should probably find they 
 were three in one ; and that the one was 
 Silence, or a Still Small Voice. 
 
 So with the tripartite division of time : 
 asom, esam. esom : one word but very 
 
DISSOLVING VIEWS, 201 
 
 slightly modified. Ah ! Reader, the grand 
 old Hebrews had a serious and subtle 
 reason for not facing the riddle of the illu- 
 sory Present. They knew it was an idea in- 
 consistent with the transitoriness of human 
 things. And therefore with them, God 
 was the only and unpronounceable I AM ; 
 the great, eternal and only Present ; em- 
 bracing all Pasts and all Futures. He is, 
 indeed, the Word, the Verbum ; and there 
 are parts of speech, his Ministers, that 
 modify the relationship of us mortal Nouns 
 to the one primary Verb. For we are all 
 governed by Him. They say that some 
 are forgotten of Him, given over utterly. 
 It must be a terrible thing for a Noun to 
 be in that Absolute Case. 
 
 It may be heterodox in me. Reader, but 
 I cannot help thinldng these poor Nouns 
 are never wholly absolute or disconnected. 
 I think there is some Preposition of Mercy 
 latent or understood, that links them to the 
 surrounding clause ; which Preposition will 
 be supplied and made apparent, when the 
 MASTER comes to parse the ravelled sen- 
 tence of circumstance. 
 
202 THE KING OF 
 
 XV, 
 
 THE KING OP THE ALPHABET. 
 
 There are three letters that play an im- 
 perial part in language, P, K^ and T; but 
 the greatest of these is K, Thought is the 
 soul of the universe ; language is thought in 
 action. Silent thought is electricity in abey- 
 ance. Our brains are charged batteries: 
 our nerves are conductors : with the friction 
 of circumstance the force explodes in the 
 faint thunder of continuously-rolling words. 
 JT, then, is emperor of a dominion to which 
 the realms of Alexander, Augustus, Charle- 
 magne and Kubla-khan were, in compare, 
 but the farms of bonnet-lairds. He is the 
 Pluto of the alphabetic trio, and his dwell- 
 ing is in the throat-caverns of humanity, 
 where, as we shall see, he is conversant with 
 toil and trouble and lamentation and pain. 
 
 In conversation once with my friend, the 
 
THE ALPHABET. 203 
 
 Professor of Natural Philosophy in Dunedin 
 University, I stated my conviction that it 
 was possible to represent the vowels and 
 the primary consonantal sounds musically, 
 pictorially, and mathematically; by vibra- 
 tions, drawn curves, or equations to curves. 
 I also gave it as my opinion that we should 
 probably find the vowels and liquid sounds 
 represented by continuous vibrations or con- 
 tinuous curves; and discontinuous sounds 
 by points or cusps, or those discontinuous 
 curves which suddenly quit a plane, to re- 
 appear at a distance, like that runaway 
 streamlet of Elis of which we read in old 
 story-books. 
 
 He informed me that an ingenious 
 philosopher had carried out my idea ex- 
 perimentally ; had set a suspended needle 
 vibrating to definitive sounds, while a sheet 
 of sooted paper was being moved horizon- 
 tally against the needle-point ; and that the 
 vibrating point had traced upon the sliding 
 paper special curves for special letter-sounds. 
 The m, for instance, was represented by 
 a continuous wave, which, strange to say, 
 was its original shape in the old Phoenician 
 
204 THE KING OF 
 
 alphab(3t, as its name was the wave-letter. 
 You will remember, Reader, how m or n 
 enter into numerous terminations that con- 
 vey the idea of motion. The letter r was 
 found to be represented by a continued 
 series of convex and concave lines, resem- 
 bling the edge of a saw. I am convinced 
 that such a sound as mud would be pic- 
 torially discontinuous ; that every syllable 
 ending with m ot n or I oy r would roll 
 continuously; and that such a sound as 
 sticJc^ kicJc^ or pecJc^ would, if pronounced 
 with Stentorian energy, make a hole in the 
 experimental paper. 
 
 In almost every alphabet the letter k 
 resembles a pole with an arrow-head or a 
 wedge fixed in it. Passing from the roots 
 of words to derivative forms, it is subject in 
 all Arian languages to a great diversity of 
 phonetic corruption. It changes into c, ch, 
 A, (/, gli^ y^ wh^ quh^ qu^f^ v^ w. In many very 
 ancient roots it occurs, in its harshest forms, 
 in combination with a simple vowel sound, 
 and unaided by any other consonant. These 
 roots will almost invariably be found to con- 
 vey the cognate ideas of sharp-pointedness^ 
 
THE ALPHABET, 205 
 
 sharpness, pain^ fixature and conjuncture. 
 It is the hook and eye of language ; it is 
 reiterated in liook^ and liquefied in eye ; it 
 beads together sentences with que and Kal 
 and X£ ; begins all relatives, as qui and ^^A^ 
 and 05 and Kelvog and ^oti; and sticks, a 
 relative barnacle, on to hie and 9^?^7i(? and 
 tunc and quisque and 6a(?A ; is embedded in 
 this and ^Aa^ and ovrog ; is the substance of 
 the first pronoun ; is present in the kindred 
 and antediluvian words was and went; is 
 the affix that gives his rhetoric to the 
 orator, and her music to the Muse. 
 
 United with the letter n in the root of 
 a word, it will be found to convey the idea 
 of a cusp or barb or angle; and from thence 
 will flow rivers of words conveying cognate 
 notions of difficulty^ pressure^ pain and 
 sorrow. It is horribly obvious in hanging^ 
 in whatever tongue you conduct the opera- 
 tion. And remember the shape of the 
 Roman yoke of shame, and our own gibbet. 
 The former was the upturned angle of a 
 h^ and the latter is a capital gamma. How 
 ridiculous it would be to suspend a criminal 
 from a gallows shaped like a poplar ! Why, 
 
206 THE KING OF 
 
 he would dangle like a minnow from a 
 fishing-rod, or a blot from a long/ in round- 
 hand. 
 
 And while I am on this lugubrious theme, 
 let me draw attention to the oaiinous names 
 of (7aZ-craft and Ketch^ which are obviously 
 corruptions of CfeZ-craft and Tcheh. Is it a 
 chance coincidence, that the root of the 
 former word is identical with that of col- 
 lum ; and that of the latter with the root of 
 Tiviyco^ ayx^)^ ango^ hang^ chohe^ and Thug? 
 
 You will find the kn or nk or gn or ng^ 
 or other varieties of this angular sound, 
 scattered over all the organs of the human 
 frame : which makes me think that the 
 w^ords cliin^ knail^ knose, knee^ ancle^ gena^ 
 ytvvQ, knuckle^ were originally applied only 
 to the ruder-shaped sex, and afterwards 
 transferred, incorrectly and impolitely, to 
 the sex whose form is a series of entrant 
 and re-entrant graceful curves. Observe the 
 statue of a Venus or a Hebe : you have the 
 deification of curvature: you marvel at 
 what Nature or Genius can effect w^ith an 
 infinity of round or oval o's. But gaze 
 upon the man who is just stripped for bath- 
 
THE ALPHABET. 207 
 
 iiig in that exquisite Cuyp in our Dunedin 
 gallery : he puts one leg in front of the 
 other; he squares both arms preparatory 
 to a dive ; and the fellow is a dislocated K. 
 
 The consideration of this sexual differ- 
 ence of shape convinces me that men are 
 but bodily consonants, and women spiritual 
 vowels. Your vowel may give a flute-mu- 
 sic by itself; but your consonant is dumb, 
 unless quickened to sound by vowel inspir- 
 ation. And this explains to me why no 
 poet can sing a song worth hearing, no 
 painter draw a face worth regarding, unless 
 the tongue of the one, and the fingers of 
 the latter move responsive to the influence 
 of love; and also, how, in a celibate condi- 
 tion, women may be suggestive of beauty 
 and music, while bachelors are but unsug- 
 gestive symbols of unpronounceable, dumb 
 nothingness. In true and perfect wedlock 
 the vowel should retain its music, and the 
 consonant its directive force. Wherever 
 this latter force is unsexed or vocalized by 
 petticoat usurpation, there have we in mar- 
 ried life a flabby symbol of the diphthong. 
 
 Again; the conjuncture of letters, hn^ 
 
208 THE KING OF 
 
 conveys often the idea of connection ; as ir 
 cowjunctwiQ and Gonneciiow^ and con and 
 t^vv, and link and Cevyvvo) : and the aaalo- 
 gous idea of mental power ; as in ken^ gnovi^ 
 yvibvai. 
 
 Unite the k or guttural with the liquid 
 r or Z, and you pass from the region of an- 
 gles to that of curves ; and you will usually 
 find that kr will denote a short curve, or a 
 rough sound ; and/cZ a long, sweeping curve, 
 or a reverberant and rolling sound. There 
 are three horned animals ; the gnu^ the 
 cervus or Kti)aog, and the elk; in whose 
 respective names we have indicated the an- 
 gular-sharpness, the curvilinearity, and the 
 branching sweep of horns or antlers. 
 
 If you place a p before the k^ you will 
 come upon a host of words which all spring 
 from the one idea oi sharp-pointedness. And 
 you will not often find a root to which you 
 may attach every vowel sound in three 
 languages, and detect through all phases 
 the primary idea; as in pack^ peck^ pike^ 
 poke, punch ; pac-tum, pecten, pix^foc-us, pu- 
 pug-i; TTccy-og, ni]y'Vm)^ 7iLX-Q6g, Trox-og, 
 nvt, ; where the vowels in turn amalgamate 
 
THE ALPHABET. 209 
 
 with p and ^, while the force of these latter 
 is distinctly marked in every word ; in the 
 crj^stallization that suggested Jtayog and 
 nv^ ; in the pointed flames of the focus or 
 fuoco ; in the tangled rcoxog, that suggested 
 the pecten ; in the flame-tapering shape of 
 the pix^ or nevxrj, or pikn, ot pine. 
 
 Again; if you put p after k^ you will 
 . come upon the series of words of a very 
 different kind ; where the idea of hollowing^ 
 or scooping^ or digging out is discernible, 
 and the shape suggested is that of a channel^ 
 or hoivl^ or skull ; as you may see in curve, 
 grave, groove, cup, gulph, scoop, ship, shape, 
 schaffen ; caput, cavus, scapha ; axdnruv, 
 yi)aifuv^ yXvcpeiv, 
 
 Our k does not seem to agree very well 
 with t. If they go in pairs at all, the dental 
 is apt to struggle for precedence in place 
 and predominance in sound : under all cir- 
 cumstances he holds his own. 
 
 I have endeavored to show, then, that 
 there are a series of classes ; each class com- 
 prehending a very great number of words ; 
 of which classes — 
 
 One consists of words where k, or some 
 
210 THE KING OF 
 
 equivalent, is in combination only with 
 a vowel ; 
 
 A second of words, where Ic is in com- 
 bination with the ringing nasal 7i ; 
 
 A third, were h and r combined ; 
 
 A fourth, where h and I ; 
 
 A fifth, where f and k ; 
 
 A sixth, where h and ^. 
 
 It would thin a dictionary remarkably to 
 remove from it every word that could be 
 brought under one of the above six cate- 
 gories. I should have no objection to such 
 a removal, could we simultaneously remove 
 all the pain and sorrow of which the gut- 
 tural words are the exponents. Your Gaelic 
 mountaineer and honest Teuton retain the 
 guttural in all its pristine harshness. Your 
 effeminate southern discards it ; but there 
 is as much of virulence in his odiare^ that 
 has lost his chief letter, as in the hate that 
 has softened it, or thei'/^og where it shows 
 in force. 
 
 Our conversation, then, would be wonder- 
 fully limited, if the k or its equivalents were 
 eliminated No wonder, you will say : for is 
 not k the guttural; and is not the guttural 
 
THE ALPHABET. 211 
 
 the specific sound of the throat, the channel- 
 pipe of all sounds? Of course it is, Reader, 
 and all our Fs, and half our wickednesses 
 come out of it; and if they stuck there thej^ 
 might choke us; and if they did, we might 
 be submitted to a post-mortem examination, 
 and the doctors would all agree that, in ad- 
 dition to the disobedience of our first par- 
 ents, there had been a conspiracy of garot- 
 ting gutturals concerned in our cJioking, 
 
 But, Reader, I have hitherto amused my- 
 self, and perhaps wearied you, with discur- 
 sive bantering upon a really solemn sub- 
 ject. All human knowledge, as you are 
 aware, was obtained by the sacrifice of im- 
 mortal simplicity. The letters of the alpha- 
 bet are the elemental atoms of all language ; 
 language is the poor human exponent of all 
 knowledge ; and Solomon has told us — and 
 we might have learnt it without his telling 
 — that all knowledge is but vanity ; that he 
 who gathereth knowledge, doth but garner 
 sorrow. For let the Sun shine ever so 
 brightly, he cannot pierce the darkness that 
 Sin has brought into the world ; and let the 
 winds make ever so tuneful music, they 
 
212 KING OF THE ALPHABET. 
 
 cannot drown that universal cry of pain 
 which Death, who is the child of sin, wrings 
 out of poor guilty Humanity, and poor in- 
 nocent, dumb Beastdom. 
 
 And now. Reader, you are more than 
 prepared for my concluding statement. It 
 must be as obvious to you as to me that 
 this horrible K^ whose catholic angularity is 
 at work in all our bodily agues^ stomachic 
 acidities^ heart-acAe^, and ^ovl-agonies ; in 
 the canker-woi^m. of remorse ; in the cegri- 
 tudo of a body or a mind diseased ; in the 
 axta of the sorrowful; the tl'^ta of the 
 wounded; the y,{oy.v%ol of the mourner; and 
 the y.ay/ia of us all ; is the stern aNAFKr] 
 of the Greek, and the dura N'EK-essitas of 
 the Roman; whom we vainly attempt to 
 propitiate, by a change of gender and an 
 irreverently-familiar epithet, in our soubri- 
 quet of OLD NICK. 
 
FALLACIES, 21o 
 
 XVI. 
 
 FALLACIES. 
 
 " There is nothing new under the sun," 
 said Solomon ; and his apophthegm was as 
 old as the truth it embodied. " Our learn- 
 ing is but recollection," said Plato; and 
 what a deal he must have known, ere his 
 memory was dimmed by his humanity! 
 " What hath been, is, and will be," said, 
 or thought, Pythagoras ; and the sentiment 
 was as true and trite as that of King Sol- 
 omon. 
 
 Wise men of old have given us the potted 
 essence of sagacity, in small canisters, such 
 as we may carry about with us, without 
 trouble, to the Equator or either Pole. 
 Alas ! too often, in starting on our life- 
 journey, we hamper ourselves with burden- 
 some provisions, that are found in a green 
 mould ere the journey is half over. 
 
214 FALLACIES. 
 
 Keeping in view the maxims above 
 quoted, and that of Plato in particular, let 
 us review the several words that at various 
 times have been adopted to define or specify 
 the occupation of a school-master. 
 
 He may be called a Teacher. But the 
 root of the verb teach is the middle syllable 
 of the word inc?/^ate ; and he who teaches, 
 merely points out this or that with his 
 digits^ doigts^ or toes ; and it is obvious that 
 the objects, to which he points, must be ex- 
 traneous to himself. 
 
 Or he may be said to be employed in 
 the business of instruction or edification. 
 But these are simple building terms ; and 
 no bricklayer can make a wall out of his 
 own head, however thick that head may be. 
 
 Or, again, in old-fashioned speech, for 
 which we have Old Testament authority, he 
 may be said to learn his pupils this or that 
 language or science. And herein I observe 
 how directly vulgar speech goes to the bull's 
 eye of truth. For the verb learn may be 
 used in a sort of reflective sense ; and a man, 
 who teaches Latin to his pupils, may be said 
 to get them to learn or recollect Latin. 
 
FALLACIES, 215 
 
 I have known a teacher of French laugh 
 most unphilosophically at a pupil — behind 
 his back — for pronouncing chie7i like cay- 
 enne. But the boy was in the right. The 
 substance of cliien he had been familiar with 
 from childhood in the shape of its English 
 homonym, hound : it was only with its ac- 
 cidents that he was unacquainted. How 
 on earth could he, as a reasonable being, 
 guess that a nation, in pronouncing such 
 a word, would insist upon mis-pronouncing 
 the strong guttural cl^ upon dropping the 
 final /I, and sounding the word as though 
 there were a ^ a mile off? Depend upon it, 
 any logical little fellow will pronounce the 
 word correctly,^ until he learns from his 
 instructor how unreasonable and incorrect 
 are the rules of speech. 
 
 Again ; a teacher of Latin is apt to deal 
 harshly with a novice who, in a catholic 
 spirit, makes boiius agree with a single 
 soldier in the nominative, or a dozen old 
 women in the ablative. The fact is, the boy 
 would be wrong if he did anything else at 
 starting. He is unconsciously making an 
 improvement in language, which we prac- 
 
216 FALLACIES. 
 
 tical people in England made long ago ; to 
 which the French, Italians, and Spaniards 
 have partially advanced ; and towards which 
 the Germans are progressing with the same 
 rapidity that characterizes their diplomacy. 
 
 The logical and praiseworthy pupil is in- 
 culcating the absurdity of saying one thing 
 twice over. " Why," he argues, " in the fol- 
 lowing sentence, I am a sensible lad^ I am 
 quite aware that lad is nominative and sinr 
 gular and masculine., and also that a and sen- 
 sible are inseparably connected with it, from 
 the mere meaning of the passage. Why then 
 should I bother myself about their spelling, 
 for the purpose of proving to myself by oc- 
 ular means what I know by the inspiration 
 of mother-wit ? " 
 
 Hereupon, the Master will say to the 
 logical but troublesome student : " Sir, the 
 people of ancient Italy, like many other 
 ancient people, had very musical ears ; and 
 consequently, when words agreed together 
 in sense, they wished them to agree in sound. 
 Not that the latter agreement was absolutely 
 requisite. It w^as probably a harmony that 
 owed its origin to an aural civilization of 
 
FALLACIES, 217 
 
 music and speech, and its decay to an ocular 
 civilization of logic and paper. Perhaps it 
 was found troublesome, like the pretty pro- 
 lixities of a rococo politeness, and the stately 
 tediousness of the old minuet. But although 
 this agreement of mere sound was not 
 peremptorily requisite, it is valuable as a 
 suggestion of perfect concord. Thus, in 
 married life, it is not enough that husband 
 and wife should agree in essentials. I have, 
 indeed, read of a married pair finding it 
 prudent and economical for one to lean to 
 fat and the other to engross the lean. The 
 one-ness of the motive might justify the 
 diversity of habit. But the experiment was 
 fraught with peril. I am of opinion that 
 there is but little prospect of harmony being 
 maintained, either in married life or in 
 Latin, — or at all events, in the relations of 
 master and pupil, — unless concord be pre- 
 served in the minutest particulars." 
 
 And the pupil will now reply : " Well, 
 sir, there is much in what you say; conse- 
 quently, after this, whatever vagaries a 
 noun may take into its head, I'll take good 
 care that the adjective shall follow the lead. 
 
218 FALLACIES, 
 
 If homo chooses to whistle into a dative 
 plural, /(^Zz:r also shall whistle like a mavis. 
 But surely, sir, you are not going to hurt 
 my hand, because the old Italians had such 
 provokingly fine ears for music?" 
 
 And hereupon the Master will smile, and 
 drop something back again into his pocket, 
 and will think to himself : " Why, this 
 3'oung fellow knows as much as I do about 
 the substantialities of noun and adjective ; 
 it is merely the accidents of their dress, or 
 sound, or appearance, with wliich he is 
 unacquainted." 
 
 Again ; when a boy, apparently dull, has 
 his first lesson in geometry, he reads that 
 a point has no parts and no magnitude. 
 Why, this is a definition that would apply 
 to a thought; a smell ; the tail of a guinea- 
 pig ; to pigeon's milk ; a mare^s egg ; or to 
 nothijig-at-all. I am convinced that many 
 a boy, apparently dull, would grasp the idea 
 of a mathematical point, who could never 
 catch the force of the above definition. He 
 could easily understand that a solid body 
 occupies space ; that space is bounded by 
 surfaces; that surfaces are bounded by 
 
FALLACIES. 219 
 
 lines, that lines are bounded by points. 
 And thus, from an intuitive idea of bulk, 
 he is led to a mathematical 3onception of 
 surfaces, lines, and points, without the aid 
 of a single definition. To commence the 
 study of geometry with a novice by the 
 definition of a point, is like commencing a 
 series of anatomical lectures with an account 
 of our once cellular condition, or the biog- 
 raphy of a polemical theologian with a def- 
 inition of his Christian charity. 
 
 Again : to define a straight line as that 
 whieh lies evenly between its extreme points^ 
 is to give a definition that still requires de- 
 fining; for the word evenly seems to beg 
 the whole question at issue. I believe a 
 better definition of a straight line would be 
 that it was a line not crooked ; or, perhaps, 
 a better one still, that a straight line is a 
 straight line. And if I wished a child to 
 grasp the idea of a point, I should ask him 
 to think of the sharp end of a needle, with 
 his eyes shut ; or of the respect paid to learn- 
 ing in Dunedin, with his eyes open ; and to 
 aid him in grasping the idea of a straight 
 line, I should ask him again to shut his eyes, 
 
220 FALLACIES. 
 
 and picture to himself an arrow so thin that 
 he could shoot it through a window-pane 
 without breaking it; or I should ask him to 
 imagine the course which an ecclesiastic 
 would take, if a bull were behind him or a 
 bishropric in front. 
 
 In arguing once with a mathematician of 
 eminence, I asserted that I would make 
 clear and intelligible to any non-mathemat- 
 ical man of common sense any symbolical 
 expression however complex; provided only 
 that I clearly understood it myself. He 
 desired me to make the experiment with 
 the expression 
 
 ao = ^0 _ c° = 4-c. = a/^ = 1. 
 I did so in his presence, and was allowed 
 to have carried my point. And the infer- 
 ence I wish to be drawn from this is sim- 
 ply : that mathematical symbols very often, 
 like moral aphorisms, are but brief and con- 
 venient ways of putting universally-known 
 truths. 
 
 A pupil often dislikes a master unreason- 
 ably in his youth, and eulogizes him as un- 
 reasonably in manhood. " Ah ! " says he, 
 as he sips his wine ; " what little knowledge 
 
FALLACIES. 221 
 
 I have was all got from old So-and so." Of 
 course, he does not mean any one else to 
 believe what he does not believe himself: 
 and what, indeed, is not true. 
 
 When the praises of some great scholar 
 or mathematician are being rehearsed, you 
 may hear a master say with a pardonable 
 pride : " Ay ; So-and-so was my pupil for 
 many a year." And he believes in the in- 
 ference of his words, and wishes you to 
 believe in it too. He is perfectly honest ; 
 but his inference is not true for all that. 
 It may be partially true : it may be wholly 
 false. 
 
 Your bricklayer plods with trowel at the 
 foundation of the column ; and the crow 
 builds its nest at the top, adorning the cap- 
 ital with natural bird-lime ; and the brick- 
 layer and the crow deserve equal credit for 
 the pillar's aerial grace. 
 
 A very poor teacher and a poorer scholar 
 was speaking in my presence of a Cambridge 
 star. " He read with me," said he, " for six 
 years together." And I thought to myself: 
 " Had he read with you for twelve, he would 
 still have been an excellent scholar." 
 
222 FALLACIES, 
 
 I grant that a vigorous and energetic 
 tutor may cram to almost any extent a 
 youth, whose health is robust, and whose 
 bent of intellect is very prosaic and very 
 acquisitive. He may, with a tremendous 
 effort, push him very near to a First Class 
 at Oxford ; with a great effort, he may push 
 him into the First Class at Cambridge ; with 
 a prolonged, but not exhausting effort, he 
 may push him one-third of the way up the 
 list of Wranglers; he may without diffi- 
 culty, but not without patience and a long 
 course of pdtS-de-Strashourg feeding, make 
 of his pupil a Mandarin of the Blue Button 
 in our Chinese Examinations for India and 
 the Civil Service. So in the pages of The- 
 odore Hook have I read, how a dog-fancier 
 prepared an often-stolen dog for diverse 
 markets ; how, by processes of rubbing, pol- 
 ishing, cutting, clipping and fattening, the 
 chameleon-hound passed through various 
 metempsychoses, as spaniel, greyhound, re- 
 triever, bull-terrier, and mastiff. 
 
 But with a youth of fine talents, and a 
 love of knowledge for its own sweet sake, 
 a master can only fire his ambition by his 
 
FALLACIES. 223 
 
 precepts and his example. He can no 
 more digest his mental than his physical 
 aliment. 
 
 Does a master ever meet with such a 
 pupil? very, very rarely. And, indeed, if 
 a boy be gifted with good natural parts, and 
 inclined to follow knowledge for herself 
 alone, his motives for study are nearly sure 
 to be corrupted by the foolish but pardon- 
 able ambition of his parents or his school- 
 master. " How is it," says a father, " that 
 my boy is so low down in his class ? " "I 
 think,*' said the master to an old pupil, 
 " you need not read such and such a book, 
 for it's sure not to pay in any examination." 
 
 However, if your genius is rare, I verily 
 believe that your dunce is a Phoenix still 
 more rare. Indeed, I have never met with 
 an undoubted specimen of the hoohy. Per- 
 haps, a physically-healthy booby is as great 
 a rarity as a live Dodo. I have known many 
 lads to be classified under the category; 
 but, on investigation, I have alwa^^s found 
 that their training was at fault ; that the 
 gravelly part of their intelligence was being 
 ploughed, and the loamy part left fallow. 
 
224 FALLACIES, 
 
 It seems to me that, in his intellectual 
 capacity, a teacher has to point out to his 
 pupils a writing on the wall, to direct their 
 gaze, and to throw a good light upon the 
 inscription. It is possible that young eyes 
 will decipher it more easily and correctly 
 than he does himself. 
 
 But, though young eyes are sharp, young 
 judgment is not very trustworthy. So a 
 boy may draw a wrong inference from what, 
 in one sense, he clearly apprehends. He 
 can run at great speed ; more quickly than 
 a grown man. Then keep him on the right 
 road. When he comes to where many ways 
 meet, let him find signposts, with inscrip- 
 tions clear and short and legible ; and be 
 very careful that the signboards point the 
 right way. 
 
 I have known instances where these sign- 
 boards were duly set up, but the boards were 
 considerably larger than those we see on 
 turnpikes, and the inscriptions so long and 
 indistinct, that, long before they could be 
 deciphered, it was time to go to bed. 
 
 You remember. Reader, how Diogenes, to 
 be busy like the rest of his fellow-citizens. 
 
FALLACIES, 225 
 
 rolled his tub up and down the market- 
 place. Now if he had rolled it up and down 
 a back-alley, he would have done no harm ; 
 ' and it was certainly not his intention to do 
 any good. But in the market-place, you 
 may depend upon it, he was terribly in the 
 way. There are a great many respectable 
 men among ourselves, who, with the best of 
 motives, are unconsciously imitating the ill- 
 natured Cynic, and who pass their whole 
 lives in rolling big, empty tubs up and 
 down our most crowded thoroughfares. — 
 Were you ever present, Reader, at a debate 
 in either House of Parliament ? — In a cen- 
 tury or two, I am convinced, the policeman 
 will be making these tub-rollers move on. 
 
 In all her works, Nature, who is the 
 handmaid of God, is simple and direct. We 
 have no well-authenticated instance of her 
 tying knots for the mere amusement of un- 
 ravelling them. Man, in the majority of 
 his works, displays a love of intricacy and 
 obstruction ; and more so in mental opera- 
 tions than in handiwork. A carpenter 
 comes provided only with tools for chisel- 
 ling and planing, and never turns aside to 
 
226 FALLACIES, 
 
 sweep a chimney or whitewash a ceiling. 
 A surgeon proceeds at once to the amputa- 
 tion of a wounded limb, and never thinks 
 of commencing operations by making the 
 wound worse. But a schoohnaster, in teach- 
 ing a language to a young pupil, burdens 
 his lessons with explanations that are infi- 
 nitely more perplexing than their subject. 
 Many a child would have found Latin easy 
 and interesting, had we not been at such 
 pains to make it difficult and dull. 
 
 Many a child would find the Lord's day 
 a day of calm and happiness ; would grow 
 up in the belief that religion was a sweet 
 and pleasant thing ; that virtue was not a 
 hardship ; that vice was of itself detestable ; 
 and that God was far wiser than even his 
 own father, and kinder than even his own 
 mother, — but for those ingeniously obstruc- 
 tive means that divines have invented for 
 the purpose of checking the spontaneous 
 spirituality of children. A child is supposed 
 to be religiously brought up, if his Sunday 
 hours are choked with liturgies and collects 
 and catechisms. He repeats definitions of 
 doctrines that are beyond the comprehension 
 
FALLACIES. 227 
 
 of humanity. He is taught to regard as 
 sinful, actions as extraneous to morality as 
 the neighing of a horse. His duty to God 
 is made obscure by the midnight of super- 
 lluous words. His duty to his neighbor, 
 that intuition or example would impercept- 
 ibly have taught, is made odious by being 
 communicated in a long and difficult for- 
 mula, which he has to repeat like a parrot. 
 He prattles innocently of so wonderful a 
 doctrine as that of eternal salvation for the 
 good: and there is no harm in that: and of 
 so terrible an one as that of the eternal con- 
 demnation of the wicked. But he is not 
 told that the word eternal means everlast- 
 ing^ and that everlasting means eteimal ; and 
 that the meaning of either word is as much 
 beyond the comprehension of a Newton as it 
 is beyond that of a theologian or a baboon. 
 While the jumbling of a child's mental 
 and spiritual nature is the business of the 
 schoolmaster and divine, the jumbling of the 
 interests of manhood, social, commercial, 
 and political, is the prerogative of the states- 
 man. How many a petty kingdom would 
 have risen long ago into wealth and import- 
 
228 FALLACIES. 
 
 ance, but for the obstructive ingenuity of 
 its well-meaning but tub-rolling rulers ! 
 
 In former days the Faculty of Medicine 
 rolled a tub terrible as the car of Jugger- 
 naut. Charged with a deadly erudition, the 
 professional healer passed a knee-breeched 
 life doing all manner of mischief among the 
 people. To many an one a weeping Martha 
 might have said : " Sir, if thou hadst not 
 been here, our brother had not died." But 
 of late years an ebb-tide of repentance has 
 happily set in, and the Faculty now set an 
 example to other professions of a reverence 
 for Nature and simplicity. 
 
 The combined effects of the jumbling 
 system, as pursued by teacher, divine, and 
 statesman, make of society an easy prey to 
 that cormorant profession which thrives on 
 the garbage of man's follies and vices. In 
 whatever country the lawyer class is wealthy 
 and powerful, we may be sure that the 
 schoolmaster and the divine are there either 
 wholly idle or mischievously active. For 
 the lawyer is, as you are well aware. Reader, 
 
 the very incarnation of the ; but no : 
 
 my chapter is on Fallacies, and would close 
 most inappropriately with a truism. 
 
NURSERY REFORM. 229 
 
 XVII. 
 
 NURSERY REFORM. 
 
 I AM very fond of dogs. They are re- 
 ligious beasties: but idolaters; for they 
 worship us. The old Egyptians worshipped 
 them. The dogs have the better of it in 
 the comparison. On week-days a dog may 
 suggest morality and religious faith ; but he 
 has a painfully profane look on Sunday. 
 Poor heathen brute: he should run into 
 hiding-places on Saturday at midnight, as 
 a ghost vanishes at cock-crowing. 
 
 I am equally fond of cats. But they are 
 utterly devoid of religion : sleek epicures, 
 that live only in the present. They may 
 coil cosily into roley-poley cushions ; wash 
 daintily behind their ears ; and drone their 
 drowsy little humdrum fireside-hymns ; but 
 with the best of them there is a faint, lin- 
 gering odor of Beelzebub. 
 
230 NURSERY REFORM. 
 
 I should not wonder if, on the other side 
 of Styx, some faithful friend were to wel- 
 come rae with the wagging of a shadowy- 
 tail, and the utterance of a thin and ineffec- 
 tual bow-wow. But the boat of Charon will 
 push a difficult furrow through innumerable 
 bodies, brickbat-laden, of purrless, soul-less, 
 dead-as-door-nail cats. Poorc pussies ! 
 
 But though I love these hairy favorites 
 much, I love little children more. And I 
 care not whether they be blonde or brown ; 
 clean or dirty; lordlings or chimney-sweep- 
 kins. Not a button. I would ratlier they 
 were not too good ; or goody. Let us have 
 a little naughtiness, sprinkled in at inter- 
 vals : it gives a flavor to the insipidity of 
 vegetable innocence. 
 
 A Pharisee is not a pleasant object, be he 
 clad in swallow-tails or cotton frock. And 
 there is a social Pharisee as well as a re- 
 ligious one. Clean face and glossy curls 
 must never frown upon little, smutty, street- 
 ling Publican. No, no: it is quite possible 
 that this little sparrow-boy but rarely washes 
 his face ; more rarely says his prayers ; and 
 never blows his nose : which practices are 
 
NURSERY REFORM. 231 
 
 common with genteel canary-children. But 
 not a sparrow falleth to the ground with- 
 out our Father. Let us all have a share of 
 natural commonness ; of wholesome naugh- 
 tiness ; of clean dirt. Let us stand occa- 
 sionally in the corner of repentance ; " out- 
 side of all joy, like Neptune in the cold." 
 Then will we promise to be good ; we will 
 throw tiny arms haft' round papa's neck, 
 will kiss him half-way through his yellow 
 beard ; we'll be happy for ever, and ever, 
 and ever, and live on toffey and almond- 
 rock. O the bliss of making up ! The rain 
 after drought! the sunshine after rain! 
 Yea : 'tis a sweet thing and a pleasant to 
 have been a little naughty. 
 
 Eliminate misdoing from the world, and 
 you annihilate charity. The air is unin- 
 habitable from a surplus of oxygen. The 
 good deed shines no longer that glistened 
 like a glow-worm in a naughty world. Im- 
 agine, Reader, the humiliating condition of 
 a good parson who has overdone his duty ; 
 the vestrymen are better than he ; the clerk 
 is better than the vestrymen; the pew- 
 opener is suspected of being better than 
 
232 NURSERY REFORM, 
 
 them all. Why, the church is top-heavy : 
 another effort, and it will stand upon its 
 spire. Come back to -the old ways, my 
 friend. There must be degrees : there must 
 be degrees. 
 
 But while I can regard with complacency 
 a little naughtiness in children, I am grieved 
 to the heart to see their eyes dimmed ever 
 so little, and their cheeks ever so slightly 
 pale. O me, for the faces that one sees at 
 times, so wee, and wan, and old ! for the 
 little tiny Elders who begin life at the 
 wrong end ! 
 
 I regret, also, that children are under 
 the absurd necessity of growing bigger ; of 
 developing from baby-buds into boy tulips 
 and men-cabbages. They keep pet-spaniels 
 permanently small; but by means that 
 imperil their little lives. I wonder if an 
 elixir could be suggested that would keep a 
 child always a child. Nay : I know there 
 is such an elixir ; and I know, also, from 
 what fountain it may be drawn ; and has 
 been drawn. It is bitter, if you sip of it ; 
 but sweet, they say, if you take a full quaff. 
 But he that drinks thereof cares not after- 
 
NURSERY REFORM. 233 
 
 wards for earthly meat or drink ; but passes 
 away, and leaves us ; with a look of strange 
 joy upon his countenance. And we follow 
 him a little way, sorrowing. And I think 
 he must wonder at our sorrow ; and from 
 under his green counterpane must hear, as 
 from the depths of a sweet dream, our cry 
 of Vale ! vale ! in ceternum vale ! 
 
 Did you ever sit. Reader, with your Babe 
 upon your knee, and its dear, good Grand- 
 mother before you ? Stretch out both hands, 
 and you will touch very nearly at the zero 
 and the infinity of life ; the mystery of the 
 forgotten Past, and the mystery of an un- 
 known Future. 
 
 But to return to our dogs. I am glad 
 that our homeless ones have found of late 
 a genial and kindly advocate. But I could 
 find it in my heart to deprj ve them of their 
 patron ; for to me they seem to be appro- 
 priating the children's bread ; and I would 
 employ his humor and his pathos to plead 
 the more melancholy cause of our own poor, 
 grammarless little ones. I would use all 
 my eloquence to dejjict the miserable con- 
 dition of these sweet victims of parental 
 
234 NURSERY REFORM. 
 
 indifference : I would point to them, as they 
 stood, blue and shivering, without a rag of 
 syntax round their little loins; and show 
 them dwining away before our eyes be- 
 neath the pitiless influences of grammat- 
 ical destitution. 
 
 And moved by the eloquence of my 
 pleading, and impressed with a conviction 
 of its truth, some aged hosier in his latter 
 days, ignoring the paltry claims of kindred, 
 would leave a colossal fortune for the reali- 
 zation of my philanthropic schemes. And 
 I should found a magnificent institution 
 in the neighborhood of our Dunedin, and 
 should call it the Caieteum, or the Normal 
 Institution for the training of Nursery- 
 maidens. And the building should be a 
 palatial one, with green lawns and shrub- 
 beries and massive gateways; and there 
 should be lodges at the gates, wherein 
 should dwell porters, whose business it were 
 at distant intervals to open and to shut 
 those gates. And I would appoint a board 
 of twenty Guardians, who should on stated 
 occasions dine sumptuously out of its funds, 
 for the benefit of the Caieteum. And T 
 
NURSERY REFORM, 235 
 
 would select a Governor of a grave and 
 dignified demeanor, and a numerous staff 
 of masters well skilled in the turning of 
 the gerund-stone. And from the Board of 
 Guardians should be selected a sub-com- 
 mittee of three members, who should be 
 named the Special Aggravators, and their 
 business it should be to worry the Governor 
 of grave demeanor, and to set the Governor 
 a-worrying the turners of the gerund-stone. 
 And the palace and the Board and the 
 staff, should be for the housing and the 
 superintending and the instructing of ten 
 little Nursery maidens, who should be 
 chosen exclusively from such families of 
 the name of Thomiyson as should spell it 
 with a p. And for a term of years these 
 little maidens should apply their noses to 
 the outer edge of the rapidly-turning gerund- 
 stone. And when their brains were cleared 
 of the weeds of nature, and mother-wit, and' 
 unassisted sense, I should send them forth 
 as Missionaries into the outer world for the 
 reformation of our nurseries. 
 
 And wherever these little Missionaries 
 came, they would sweep away, as with a 
 
236 NURSERY REFORM. 
 
 besom, all idle games and silly puzzles and 
 unedifying tales. And Jack would flee in 
 terror to the summit of his own beanstalk ; 
 Cock-Robin would be borne unpitied to his 
 grave ; and Mother Hubbard, led by her 
 own dog, would beg her bread, an exile in 
 far distant lands. And our children should 
 be instructed upon those scientific and 
 theoretic principles, which in other and 
 higher departments of education have stood 
 the test of ages. And these Missionary- 
 maidens should be furnished, each with her 
 Gerund-stone; and resolute parents should 
 apply the noses of their prattlers to the 
 outer edge thereof, as it turned rapidly. 
 But, forasmuch as the process might for a 
 while prove disagreeable to the instructed, 
 the Maidens should be further equipped 
 with an implement of hardened leather, 
 highly charged with a subtle electricity, 
 whose dexterous application to the palm 
 should have the propert}" of endearing to 
 the little ones these Maidens and their 
 gerund-stones. 
 
 Follow me, gentle Reader, into a model 
 Nursery, and behold our system in full 
 
NURSERY REFORM. 237 
 
 operation. Those little children yonder, 
 blue-eyed and flaxen-haired ; fresh from the 
 Eden, where innocents still wander ; are 
 standing for the first time before the mys- 
 terious engine of their mental training. 
 From dawn to eve, this summer's day, they 
 are committing to memory all words that 
 end in oc/c, as cock^ hnoch, block ^ rock^ stocky 
 smock^ flock: beginning with a cock that 
 must not crow : for the fowl is as yet un- 
 provided with verb, and conjugation, and 
 voice — most essential this for crowing — and 
 mood and tense, and number and person : 
 and ending with a flock that must neither 
 frolic nor bleat. To-morrow they will give 
 undivided attention to words that end in 
 dom^ as kingdom^ beadledom; the day follow- 
 ing, to words in ition^ as deglutition^ perdi- 
 tion ; then to words in ation^ as trituration^ 
 botheration; and so on for a month or two, 
 till the category of ordinary words is ex- 
 hausted. Then are they to be put to 
 wholesome tribulation upon words that lack 
 a singular, as, tongs^ scissors^ spectacles, stock- 
 ings, trousers, breeches; then on nouns that 
 lack a plural, as, butter, beef, mutton, glue, 
 
238 NURSERY REFORM. 
 
 alicompayne ; then on nouns that lack a 
 possessive case, as gruel^ wash-hand-stand^ 
 microcosm; then on nouns that lack a voca- 
 tive, as, ninepins^ oatmeal^ cosmogony^ philo- 
 progenitiveness. And if, meanwhile, they 
 yawn over the work, or ask idle questions 
 of curiosity, they will be subjected to the 
 influence of the Electric Leather. 
 
 When sufficiently bewildered, it may be 
 irritated, with months of substantives, they 
 shall pass through similar ordeals of un- 
 diluted adjectives, participles, verbs, ad- 
 verbs, numerals, prepositions, and conjunc- 
 tions. Then shall they be put through a 
 course of syntax, which shall daily be ad- 
 ministered to them in infinitesimal doses, 
 according to the received principles of 
 grammatical Homoeopathy. 
 
 Then shall be put into their tiny hands 
 the interesting and exhausting Biographies 
 of the great Busbequius Bungfungus ; and 
 by homoeopathic treatment each Biography 
 shall be made to occupy many weeks ; so 
 that the children, in reading the death of 
 Palseologus and Mithrobarzanes, and other 
 favorite heroes, may have forgotten all the 
 
NURSERY REFORM. 239 
 
 circumstances of their lives. And if they 
 read a fable, they shall read it in minute 
 portions, so that, on arriving at the tail or 
 moral, they may be unable to apply it to 
 the body. And in their daily readings they 
 shall continually sing their verbal and syn- 
 tactic formulae, which shall sound like 
 mystic hymns in the ears of their delighted 
 parents. 
 
 It is true that the children, by this 
 method, will be powerless to express their 
 passing thoughts, or to describe occurrences 
 that take place before their eyes ; but they 
 will be imbued with theories of speech, 
 too sacred to be employed in the profani- 
 ties of idle talk ; and for this their parents 
 will feel duly grateful to the Leather of 
 Electricity and the rapidly-turning Gerund- 
 stone. 
 
 But ah ! Reader, all human devices are 
 marred with imperfection. My own system, 
 perfect as it may seem, is lop-sided, as it 
 affects but the mental part of our nature. 
 It is true, the lilies of the field toil not as 
 they grow. The lambkin on the hill-side 
 thrives pleasurably into sheephood : I wish 
 
240 NURSERY REFORM, 
 
 I could add, passes painlessly into mutton. 
 The beaver learns his pontifical trade, un- 
 stimulated by flaps of the parental tail. To 
 the brain of man is decreed the proud pre- 
 rogative of uncomfortable growth. No; 
 not decreed : in this matter, I imagine, the 
 sagacity of man has improved upon the 
 wisdom of Omniscience. 
 
 The mental training of my own boyhood 
 was a continuous sensation of obstruction 
 and pain. By the aid of catechisms, Cross- 
 mans, and burdensome observances, I was 
 grooved laboriously into a secure and per- 
 manent orthodoxy. My mental and spiritual 
 parts were furrow^ed ; but, alas ! my physical 
 part remained fallow. My growth in stature 
 was left carelessly to my Maker, and pro- 
 ceeded without a hint of artificial tribula- 
 tion. This flaw in our educational system 
 it is my ambition to remove. I have in- 
 vented a mechanical adjustment of powerful 
 magnetic needles, whose permanent appli- 
 cation to the frame will render child, boy, 
 or youth continuously sensible of physical 
 growth. The feeling will be as though five 
 minutes of acute toothache were diffused 
 
NURSERY REFORM. 241 
 
 over a space of months. A youth will lit- 
 erally develop into manhood through pins 
 and needles. We shall then have realized 
 the perfect organism of the Roman poet's 
 fancy, the — 
 
 Mens TORTA in corpore TOETO. 
 
242 DEAD LANGUAGES. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 DEAD LANGUAGES. 
 
 A DEAD language : what a sad and sol- 
 emn expression ! Trite enough, I own ; but 
 to a reflective mind, none the less sad and 
 solemn ; for in the death of which it speaks 
 are involved deaths untold, innumerable. 
 
 I can understand what is meant by " a 
 Dead Sea;" and should suppose it to be a 
 sheet of water cut off from all intercourse 
 with the main ocean ; never rising with its 
 flow ; never sinking with its ebb ; never 
 skimmed by the sail of commerce ; never 
 flapped by wing of wandering bird ; undis- 
 turbed by the bustle of the restless world ; 
 but slumbering in a desolate wilderness, far 
 from the track of caravan, or railwa}^, or 
 steamship, in a stagnant, and tide-forgotten 
 and unheeded repose. 
 
 The chance-directed efforts of an enter- 
 
DEAD LANGUAGES. 243 
 
 prising traveller exhumed, but recently, the 
 sculptured monuments of a dead civiliza- 
 tion. We thus learned that Nineveh and 
 Babylon were not only the homes of con- 
 quering kings, but the seats of tranquil 
 learning and treasured science, before ever 
 a fleet had sailed from Aulis, or the eagles 
 had promised empire to the watcher on the 
 green Palatine. 
 
 The language of priestly and kingly 
 Etruria is revealed to us only by dim marks 
 upon vase or tablet, or by melancholy in- 
 scriptions on sepulchral stones. That is, 
 indeed, a language unquestionably dead. 
 
 But can such a term be applied to that 
 Hellenic speech that in the Iliad has rolled, 
 like the great Father of Waters, its course 
 unhindered down three thousand years; 
 that in Pindar still soars heavenwards, 
 staring at the sun ; that rises and falls in 
 Plato with the long, sequacious music of an 
 JEolian lute ; that moves, stately and black- 
 stoled, in ^schylus ; that reverberates 
 with laughter half-Olympian in Aristopha- 
 nes ; that pierces with a trumpet-sound in 
 Demosthenes; that smells of crocuses in 
 
244 DEAD LANGUAGES. 
 
 Theocritus ; that chirrups, like a balm- 
 cricket, in Anacreon? If it be dead, then 
 what language is alive ? 
 
 Or again, is that old Italian speech dead 
 and gone, that murmurs in Lucretius a 
 ceaseless, solemn monotone of sea-shell 
 sound ; that in Virgil flows, like the Eri- 
 danus, calmly but majestically through rich 
 lowlands, fringed with tall poplars and 
 rimmed with grassj'' banks ; that quivers to 
 wild strings of passion in Catullus ; that 
 wimples like a beck in Ovid ; that coos in 
 Tibullus like the turtle; that sparkles in 
 Horace like a well-cut diamond ? 
 
 No : Heaven forbid it ! No ! Pile upon 
 these twin daughters of Omphsean Zeus 
 mountains of Grammars and Grammatical 
 Exercises and Latin Readers and Greek 
 Delectuses and Graduses and Dictionaries 
 and Lexicons, until Ossa is dwarfed and 
 Pelion is a wart. Let dull, colossal Pedantry 
 — unconscious handmaid of the Abstract 
 Bagman — with her tons of lumbal lead 
 press heavily on the prostrate forms. For 
 a while they may lie, breathless and ex- 
 hausted; but when that is grown again 
 
DEAD LAN 
 
 wherein their great strength lay, then will 
 they make a mighty effort, and fling high in 
 air the accumulated scoria of ages : like a 
 hailstorm in the surrounding sea will fall 
 the fragments of a million gerund-stones ; 
 and the divine Twain will clothe themselves 
 anew in their old strength and beauty, and 
 sit down by the side of Zeus Omphseus, 
 exulting in glory. 
 
 No, No ! The music of Homer will die 
 with the choral chants of the Messiah, and 
 the strains of Pindar with the symphon- 
 ies of Beethoven ; una dies dahit exitio Aris- 
 tophanes and Cervantes and Molidre ; the 
 Man t nan will go hand in hand to oblivion 
 with the Florentine, divinus Magister cum 
 Dlscipulo dlviniore ; the Metamorphoses of 
 Ovid will deca}^ with the fantastic tale of 
 Ariosto and the music of Don Giovanni ; 
 Horace will fade out of ken, linked arm in 
 arm with that sweet fellow-epicure, Mon- 
 taigne ; Antigone will be forgotten maybe 
 a short century before Cordelia ; and Plato 
 and Aristotle will be entombed beneath the 
 Mausoleum that covers for ever the thoughts 
 of Bacon, Kepler, Newton, and Laplace. 
 
246 DEAD LANGUAGES. 
 
 Moreover, before the last echoes of Greece 
 and Rome shall have died away, a Slavo- 
 nian horde will throng the Morea and the 
 Cyclades ; and in some crumbling cathedral, 
 Catholicism will have chanted, for the last 
 time, its own Nunc dimittis^ in the grand 
 imperial language of the City of the Seven 
 Hills. . 
 
 When all this shall have come about, then 
 may it be said with truth : " Rome is dead ; 
 and Athens is no more ! the words of whose 
 wise ones w^ent out into all lands, and the 
 songs of whose singing-men to the ends of 
 the world : their pomp and their glory have 
 gone down with them into the pit." 
 
 But, gentle Reader, long, long before this 
 desolation shall have come about, you and I 
 will be lying in a very sorry plight, with a 
 strange and not beautiful expression on our 
 human countenances : our quips, our cranks, 
 our oddities all gone: quite chapfallen 
 Yes, Friend, a very long while, indeed, be 
 fore all this shall have come about. 
 
A VISION. 247 
 
 XIX. 
 
 A VISION. 
 
 I WAS engaged one afternoon with my 
 class in the study of that portion of the 
 ^neid where the hero of the poem and the 
 Sybil journey together by dim, uncertain 
 moonlight, through the shadowy spaces of 
 the under-world. And when the lesson was 
 over, I begged of my boys to learn one 
 splendid passage by heart ; and leaning back 
 my chair against the wall by the monoto- 
 nous murmuring of their voices I was lulled 
 into a strange reverie. 
 
 For in the darkness of the under-world I 
 saw three figures moving slowly; and the 
 one was gentle and benign of aspect, and 
 in him I recognized the Divine Master of 
 Mantua, " the honor and the light of poe- 
 try ; " and the second was of a sad and stern 
 countenance, who regarded the Master with 
 
248 ^ VISION. 
 
 the admiration of a disciple ; and the third 
 was like the Spirit of Myself. 
 
 And we had reached the rim of the 
 seventh circle; but from the inner circle 
 there rose a stench so terrible and noisome, 
 that I looked aside, if perchance there might 
 be a place of refuge. And in the dark wall 
 of stone there was a wide fissure like a 
 natural doorway; and over the fissure was 
 an inscription that I read with difficulty : 
 
 — PiEDAGOGOllUM DEFUNCTORUM SEDES. 
 
 And the Divine Master went therein ; and 
 the stern and sad Disciple followed ; and I 
 went, holding by the garment of the latter. 
 And the fissure opened into a great vaulted 
 cavern, the farther end of which was 
 wrapped in gloom ; and there were millions 
 of gigantic engines shaped like mill-stones, 
 and fitted each one with a handle ; and the 
 handle of each was like the sail-arm of a 
 ship of war. And suspended from these 
 handles were the forms of men; and the 
 mill-stones were motionless, and the place 
 was empty of all sound. And suddenly, 
 from the farther gloom came rushing three 
 Erinnyes; and the one was armed with a 
 
A VISION. 249 
 
 scourge, and the second with a yellow reed, 
 and the other with what seemed to me a 
 long thin broom, from which the handle 
 had been shorn. And rushing to and fro, 
 they scourged the susj^ended figures, and 
 the place was suddenly filled with the whir- 
 ring and the creaking of a million stone 
 wheels. And the Disciple and I looked in- 
 quiringly in the face of the Master; but 
 there was a look of unwonted pain in his 
 benign countenance ; and while we gazed 
 wonderingly, he gave a shrill cry, and fell to 
 the ground as one suddenly bereft of life. 
 
 And when at length his spirit revived, 
 we lifted him gently, and guided him, in 
 our turn, back through the fissure to the 
 rim of the seventh circle. But we feared 
 to ask him aught ; seeing he had been sore 
 troubled. But he, interpreting our secret 
 thoughts, said in tones gentle and very sad : 
 " They whom ye saw were pjedagogi in the 
 upper world ; and their business it was to 
 turn rapidly the gerund-stone. And foras- 
 much as I w^as born upon the skirts of 
 Ignorance, and knew not the darkness of 
 my day, therefore am I doomed to suffer 
 
250 ^ VISION. 
 
 sorely in the spirit with the turning of 
 their gerund-stones. And I shall be paesed 
 thereby for twice a thousand years. And 
 thereupon, the Pedant shall sit upon the 
 Bagman, crushing him; and the Pedant 
 shall choke in his own fat. And after that 
 my spirit shall have rest. 
 
 At this moment I was roused by the sud- 
 den cessation of the wonted murmuring ; 
 and looking up, I saw the hour was on the 
 stroke of one, and dismissed my boys to 
 play. 
 
THE LOVE-LETTER. 251 
 
 XX. 
 
 THE schoolmaster's LOVE-LETTER. 
 
 mea cara^ pulcra Mary, 
 
 Qudm vellem tecum concordare ! 
 
 What bliss with thee, my Noun, to live, 
 
 Agreeing like the Adjective : 
 
 Not — Heaven forbid it ! — genere^ 
 
 Si esset id possibile ; 
 
 But being one, and only so, 
 
 Concordaremus numero ; 
 
 And I'd agree with thee, my pet, 
 
 Casu ; ay, casu quoUbet : 
 
 Likewise, as Relative, I'd fain 
 
 A Concord Personal maintain ; 
 
 Thus borrowing from two parts of speech 
 
 The partial harmony of each : 
 
 Maybe, from qui if more we'd borrow, 
 
 I'd be in quod^ and thou in sorrow ; 
 
 For, Mary, better 'tis to give. 
 
 Than borrow with your relative. 
 
252 THE SCHOOLMASTERS 
 
 Three grades are in Comparison ; 
 My love admits of only one ; 
 Only Superlative to me 
 Thy beauty is, like optime. 
 O Mary, Mary, seal my fate ; 
 Be candid, ere it be too late : 
 Is thy heart open to my suit, 
 V Free as an Ablative- Absolute ? 
 
 Do, while I'm in the mood Optative, 
 Follow me, darling, in the dative : 
 Though I should be, for that condition. 
 Compounded with a Preposition : 
 Well, sure, of all the girls I see, 
 To each and all proepono te^ 
 Te omnibus proepono^ quare 
 Thou art my Preposition, Mary. 
 Ah ! dear, should everything go well, 
 And love should ring our marriage-bell, 
 Our happiness — to be prospective — 
 Would still, like Amho^ be defective : 
 But V\MT^\-caret should we miss. 
 While Singular and complete in bliss ? 
 No, no : for a while, my Pearl, my Jewel, 
 We'd linger patiently in the Dual ; 
 Or ere a year had circled round, 
 In cursu rerum naturally 
 
LOVE-LETTER. 253 
 
 Some morn or eve we should be found 
 
 Happy, in numero plurali. 
 Then one in heart and soul and mind, 
 We'd grow in love as years Declined : 
 Moods of Command and Dubitation 
 We'd blot from out life's Conjugation : 
 Our love, like all things sweet and good. 
 Were best express'd, when Understood ; 
 Timidly-noiseless, purely shy. 
 
 Unheard of all, yet plain to see — 
 Like peeping Moon in fleecy sky, 
 
 Or II in Hora and Homine, 
 But life, alas ! to all that live, 
 Unlike true love, is Transitive : 
 To love. Intransitive love, is given 
 To Govern all in earth and heaven : 
 Yes, Mary ; the ring, that would bind you to 
 me, 
 
 Were a poor Conjunction that death 
 might sever — 
 A thin frail et^ and a life-long que ; 
 
 But the link of our love would bind for 
 ever. 
 And so, when came the certain Finis^ 
 
 We'd be content, my own, my dearie, 
 
254 THE LOVE-LETTER. 
 
 Sub uno tumulo duplex cinis, 
 
 Two Supines, in one giSiYe^jacere. 
 
 With folded hands upon heaveless breast, 
 Side by side in our little earth bed, *- 
 
 Silent, as Gerunds in Dum^ we'd rest, 
 While the thunder of noisy years roird 
 overhead : 
 
 And we'd sleep a sleep, still, calm, and sweet. 
 
 Till our graves grew forgotten and Obsolete ; 
 
 Waiting the Voice that, as good men trust. 
 
 Shall make Active of Passive, and Spirit of 
 dust. 
 
SUUM CUIQUE. 255 
 
 XXI. 
 
 SUUM CUIQUE. 
 
 Nascitur^ non fit^ may be said as truly of 
 the schoolmaster as of the poet. The popu- 
 lar, but mistaken idea is, that any young 
 man, who at the age of twenty-one is well 
 enough educated for a learned profession, 
 but lacks the means or spirit to push his 
 way in the world of Law or Medicine, may 
 subside into a teacher of the Classics. 
 Many young Englishmen think so them- 
 selves, and take clerical orders at the time 
 of entering the despised profession, that 
 they may escape from it, if on any white 
 day a vicarage should fall from the clouds. 
 These are they that are not born school- 
 masters, but made schoolmasters of men. 
 
 In the matter of education, Scotland is, 
 in mauy points, in advance of her southern 
 neighbor. The middle-class preparatory 
 
256 SUUM CUIQUE. 
 
 schools of Dunedin are unapproachably 
 superior to anything of the kind — if there 
 be anything of the kind — in England. The 
 teaching of the elementary classes in our 
 High School and Schola Nova is even at 
 present far superior to that of similar 
 classes in any public schools in England 
 with which I have been directly or indi- 
 rectly acquainted ; and that includes ahnost 
 all the public schools of importance in the 
 country. With a few, but, I must own, 
 very important modifications, our training 
 of junior classes might be made almost 
 perfect of its kind. 
 
 In our High School is still retained much 
 of the beautiful vowel-music of Italian- 
 Latin. The Greek Professor of our Dunedin 
 University — faithful among the faithless, in 
 this respect — can read a simile of Homer, 
 without marring rhythm or ignoring accent. 
 
 In Scotland, also, the profession of teach- 
 ing, though not sufficiently honored from a 
 social point of view, is rightly considered as 
 specific^ and calling for specific qualifccations^ 
 When Adam and Carson of our High School, 
 Melvin of Aberdeen, and Carmichael of 
 
SUUM GUIQUE. 257 
 
 our own Scliola Nova, first apprenticed 
 themselves to their craft, they left no plank 
 behind them for re crossing at a favorable 
 opportuaitj" to ease or affluence in an ex- 
 traneous calling. They put their hands to 
 the plough, these simple men; and there 
 was no looking back. They devoted them- 
 selves to the business of classical instruc- 
 tion as single-heartedly as did the Apostles 
 to the dissemination of Christian doctrine. 
 They knew well enough that spiritual dark- 
 ness abounded, but they left its enlighten- 
 ment to another calling — the only one that 
 in the dignity of usefulness takes precedence 
 of their own. 
 
 And one of them lived too short a life ; 
 but they all lived lives laborious and useful 
 and honorable. From dawn to sunset of 
 their day of toil they sowed the seed, or 
 drave the plough, or brake with harrows 
 the obstructive glebe. And when at length 
 it was growing dark^ these husbandmen dis- 
 missed their little reapers and gleaners.; 
 and gat them home, wearied ; and turned 
 to; and fell on sleep. No foretaste of 
 earthly glory sweetened the bitterness of 
 
258 SUUM CUIQUE, 
 
 the last cup. From modest homes they were 
 borne, unnoticed, to modest graves. But the 
 statues of these Cincinnatus-teachers stand, 
 not unwreathed with laurel, in the Valhalla 
 of great and good and single-hearted school- 
 masters. With all the other good men and 
 true. And the Valhalla is not in Dunedin, 
 Reader ; but in a great and distant city ; a 
 city not built with hands; a city more 
 beautiful by far than beautiful Dunedin. 
 
 About a furlong from my own lodgings, 
 in a room as near to heaven, burns the 
 midnight lamp of one who could read a 
 play of Sophocles ere I could inarticulately 
 scream. He has read more of ancient lit- 
 erature than many literary men have read 
 of English. He has purified his Greek seven 
 times in the fire. He has resuscitated many 
 Aorists, that for centuries had lain dormant 
 under mossy stones. He has passed, alone 
 and fearless, through waste places, where 
 no footfall had echoed for a hundred years. 
 In England, nothing but a special interpo- 
 sition of Providence could have saved this 
 scholar from the Bench of Bishops : in Scot- 
 land, nothing short of personal violence 
 
SUUM CUIQUE. 259 
 
 could have pushed him into a Professorial 
 Chair. The fact is, this man, with all his 
 learning, is bowed down with the weight 
 of a most unnational modesty. Indeed, of 
 this quality, as of erudition, there is as much 
 contained in his well as would serve to irri- 
 gate his native country. Heaven knows 
 what he might have been, had he consented 
 in earlier life to play in public the cymbals 
 of claptrap and the tom-tom of self-conceit. 
 But his voice was never heard in the Pala- 
 verium of Dunedin. My friend, in fact, 
 was ostracized by his fellow-citizens of the 
 Modern Athens. You may hear of him at 
 Jena, Gottingen, or Heidelberg; but, in 
 perusing the list of Doctors of our own 
 Universities, after running your finger 
 down some columns of mediocre Rabbis, 
 you will experience a sensation of relief in 
 missing the name of Veitch. Prcefulget ihi 
 nomen eo ipso^ quod non eernitur. 
 
 In day-schools, like the two great institu- 
 tions of Dunedin, where the boys only give 
 a morning and noon attendance for five days 
 in the week, there is no call for the clerical 
 element whatsoever. Their pupils combine 
 
260 SUUM CUIQUE. 
 
 the advantages of a public school with the 
 inestimable and civilizing influences of home 
 life. As their parents and guardians may 
 reasonably be supposed to be in all cases 
 Christian, there would seem to be no need 
 for religious instruction in their school- 
 hours ; and it might be thought sufficient, 
 if such Institutions opened the work of each 
 day with the reverent reading of some 
 chapter of the New Testament, and a short 
 and appropriate prayer ; and if a weekly 
 lesson were given from the historical por- 
 tions of the older Scriptures. Not to speak 
 of the heterogeneous admixture of doctrinal 
 lessons with those in Latin syntax and Rule 
 of Three, the boys are supposed to hear fam- 
 ily prayers each morning and evening; to 
 attend Divine Service regularly ; and to hear 
 the Bible read and expounded by a devout 
 father or mother. The hearing of one para- 
 ble from the gentle voice of the latter is 
 worth all the religious instruction that a 
 master can impart in class, where in the 
 hearts of boys the spirit of gentleness is too 
 apt to succumb to the sterner spirit of 
 class-ambition. 
 
SUUM CUIQUE. 261 
 
 However, the question is different in re- 
 gard to large schools where children are, 
 with questionable propriety, removed en- 
 tirely from home. Here I can perfectly un- 
 derstand how well the moral and religious 
 training of pupils might be entrusted to dis- 
 creet clerical hands ; and would allow to the 
 chaplain of such an Institution a pre-emi- 
 nence in rank and emolument^ as due to the 
 sacredness of his calling. There would be 
 some studies, also, in which he could give 
 valuable help ; as, in that of Biblical and 
 even Secular history ; and over all he might 
 exert a wholesome influence. But I am 
 wholly at a loss to account for the fact, that 
 in England, the teaching of the classical 
 languages should be considered as almost 
 necessarily devolving upon the clergy. Why 
 should it require Holy Orders to fit a man 
 to teach the heathen tongues of Athens and 
 Rome, any more than to teach the Christian 
 tongues of France, Germany or Italy? or, 
 indeed, any more than to teach drawing or 
 music or dancing ? Greek and Latin are 
 important elements in the education of a 
 gentleman, but they enter very indirectly 
 into the training of a Christian. They may 
 
262 SUUM CUIQUE. 
 
 lead a man part of the way to the Wool- 
 sack ; but they cannot carry him one step 
 on the road that leads to the Everlasting 
 Gates. No : many children have gone in 
 thereat, that never stumbled through a de- 
 clension; or that stumbled through one, 
 and nothing more : many men, that in boy- 
 hood fell through the Asses' Bridge, have, 
 in spite of corpulence, passed safely over 
 the suspended camel's hair, that breaks only 
 beneath iniquity : many dear, illiterate old 
 saints have outstripped wits and critics and 
 scholars and theologians on their journey to 
 an unaspirated Heaven. 
 
 But it may be contended, that in a Chris- 
 tian country it is requisite to Christian- 
 ize the whole curriculum of education. 
 Granted : I question, however, from my own 
 experience, whether the means taken are 
 suited to the ends, and whether we may not 
 so Christianize our education as to secular- 
 ize our Christianity. I have known of a 
 Clerical Master who, on a Sunday after- 
 noon, could set a little congregation weep- 
 ing with the rich mellowness of his voice 
 and the depth of his pathos; and many 
 
SUUM CUIQUE. 263 
 
 members of his little congregation had wept 
 during the previous week, and would weep 
 during the following week, beneath the 
 force of his arm. Should the same foun- 
 tain bring forth sweet and bitter ? 
 
 One of my Classical Masters at St. Ed- 
 ward's was ordinarily mild and gentle ; but 
 he was abnormally severe on the days when 
 we said our Grossman^ as the Catechism 
 was appropriately named. There was less 
 danger to us in a false concord or a false 
 quantity, than in unwitting heterodoxy in 
 the matter of the Sacraments. This was 
 not a method calculated to render religious 
 instruction pleasing in our eyes : and, in- 
 deed, it was very far from pleasing ; it was 
 associated with ideas of fear, and curiously 
 jumbled with associations of Sallust and 
 Xenophon. It was of the earth, earthy. 
 
 But, apart from the interests of children, 
 what can the effect be upon clerical school- 
 masters of their having to devote nearly 
 their whole time and energies to the incul- 
 cation of secular studies ? Does it never 
 strike them that there is an incongruity 
 between the solemn obligations they once 
 
264 SUUM CUIQUE. 
 
 took, and the secular occupations they now 
 follow? I can hardly think that St. Paul, 
 if he were permitted to abide with us awhile, 
 would lay hands upon any young Timothy, 
 and enjoin him strictly to edify the brethren 
 in turning Gibbon into Tacitean prose, or 
 Shakespeare into Greek Iambics. 
 
 Again ; when a distinguished Fellow of 
 some great Oxford or Cambridge college 
 condescends to accept a Head-Mastership, 
 he does so on the tacit understanding that 
 he will in due time be rewarded with clerical 
 promotion. Maybe over a space of some 
 twelve years, his capacities as • a teacher 
 will be honorably attested by the Class 
 Lists of the Universities, and a sprinkling 
 of Camdens, Porsons, Hertfords, and Ire- 
 lands : he will have successfully conducted 
 a very lucrative establishment of Boarders ; 
 he will have thrown a flood of Latin light 
 upon some ill-appreciated Equivoques gros- 
 sieves in the Thesmophoriazusse : he will 
 have plastered some severe masterpiece of 
 ^schylus with annotatory stucco ; he will 
 have published a most interesting and pop- 
 ular series of Lectures on The Bite of Con- 
 
SUUM CUIQUE, 265 
 
 firmation^ or the Laying on of Hands — and 
 I may as well warn the reader, that the lat- 
 ter part of this title is to be understood in 
 an episcopal rather than a paedagogic sense. 
 When he has thus reached his zenith of 
 fame and usefulness in one calling, he is 
 translated to another, entailing duties and 
 requiring talents of an entirely different 
 kind. How many a Head-Master, beloved 
 of his senior pupils, has passed the autumn 
 of his days in worrying the clergy of a 
 grumbling diocese ? 
 
 At all events, if such translations be right 
 in themselves, why should they be confined 
 in their operation ? We might transfer a vet- 
 eran Barrister to the Presidency of the Royal 
 Academy ; or reward a decayed Admiral 
 with the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. 
 
 There is another light in which to view 
 the subject. There are a few instances, a 
 'very few, in our great English schools, 
 where men of good repute in scholarship 
 refrain from taking Holy Orders. They 
 might take these orders any day it pleased 
 their bishop to hold an ordination. They 
 would rarely or never be called upon to do 
 
266 SUUM CUIQUE. 
 
 clerical duty. Then why on earth are they 
 so stupid as not to take a step which would 
 at once improve their social standing, and 
 open for them a path to distinction ? Why, 
 the ridiculous fellows carry an old-fashioned 
 conscience trailing awkwardly at their sides ; 
 and, of course, it gets between their legs, 
 and trips them up ; and it serves the stupid 
 fellows right. 
 
 A simpleton might argue, that, by such 
 a course of proceeding, they devote them- 
 selves entirely to the business of teaching, 
 and demonstrate a special call to that special 
 occupation. But this argument is obviously 
 ludicrous. For, were it correct, we should 
 see the highest prizes in the scholastic walk 
 opened to these self-denying laymen. But 
 these latter are the very men to whom, by 
 a discerning public, those high prizes are 
 closed and barred. For there is some mys- 
 tic Ope7i Sesame, that unbars the gates to 
 all Head-Masterships ; and the words are 
 known only to the clergy; who, with the 
 consent of the Laity ^ guard their secret, and 
 pass it on and round, in whispers, only to 
 one another. 
 
SUUM CUIQUE, 267 
 
 Not many years ago, the patrons of a 
 large proprietary^ school in the West of Eng- 
 land offered their head-mastership to a very 
 distinguished scholar, a friend of my own, 
 on condition that he would take Holy Or- 
 ders. It was more than insinuated that 
 these Orders would merely affect the fash- 
 ion of liis neck-tie, and the prejudices of an 
 enlightened public. My friend was a man 
 of middle age, with habits and character 
 thoroughly formed, and with as much idea 
 of turning clergyman as of buying the prac- 
 tice of a dentist. Consequently, the offer, 
 though pecuniarily a very tempting one, 
 was not accepted. My friend is prosecut- 
 ing his journey heavenwards with a well- 
 stored brain; a rather ill-stored scrip; a 
 white conscience ; and a black tie. For 
 my own part, I regard such martyrdom as 
 utterly out of place in a practical age. 
 When the head-mastership is next vacant, 
 I trust the patrons will make a similar offer 
 to me. They have merely to name their 
 salary — and their Bishop. 
 
268 THE SOCIAL POSITION 
 
 XXII. 
 
 THE SOCIAL POSITION OP SCHOOLMASTERS. 
 
 Ma]SIY of my School Vacations I passed 
 in Bruges and Brussels, and made the ac- 
 quaintance from time to time of boys of 
 my own age attending the Athenees or 
 Public Schools of these towns. Indeed, m}^ 
 own brother received at such schools the 
 greater part of his education. The Masters 
 were laymen ; in a country next to Spain 
 perhaps the most bigotedly Catholic in 
 Europe. The means of coercion at their 
 disposal seemed to my young English ideas 
 barbarously simple. No birch ; no cane ; 
 not even the ridiculously mild strap. How 
 on earth could pupils learn Latin Versifica- 
 tion, or any other useful accomplishment, 
 without such obviously requisite stimu- 
 lants ? However, their Classes of Rhetoric, 
 or Senior Classes, did turn out well-edu- 
 
OF SCHOOLMASTERS, 269 
 
 cated and most gentlemanly-mannered men. 
 But the strangest thing to me was that the 
 masters were never spoken of as occupying 
 any peculiar or comical position in society. 
 It never seemed to strike a boy to speak 
 in terms of ridicule of his schoolmaster any 
 more than of his Clergyman or Medical 
 Attendant. In fact, society at large seemed 
 unconsciously to regard the Master of an 
 Athdnee as an ordinary gentleman^ neither 
 more nor less. 
 
 One of the. most polished and accom- 
 plished men I have ever had the honor of 
 knowing was my brother's Music-master, 
 whose lessons were given at a rate that 
 would appear to us ludicrously small. He 
 associated on terms of perfect intimacy with 
 families of very ancient lineage in the neigh- 
 borhood of Bruges. He used to describe in 
 the most humorous fashion the treatment 
 he occasionally met with in English salons^ 
 whose occupants, of undoubtedly high posi- 
 tion at home, were temporarily residing 
 abroad for reasons of financial retrenchment. 
 
 I have had many relatives educated en- 
 tirely in Florence, and have heard that the 
 
270 THE SOCIAL POSITION 
 
 masters, who visited the leading schools 
 there, held a social position in that not 
 nnaristocratic city quite equal to that of an 
 ordinary barrister amongst ourselves. And 
 these masters had no ecclesiastical title to 
 raise them in the social scale. 
 
 In England, at a very early period, the 
 birch and cane were engrafted upon our 
 educational system. They naturally made 
 the position of a schoolmaster odious in the 
 sight of children, and somewhat ludicrous 
 in the eyes of the world, and especially so 
 in the eyes of women. Now the English 
 character is essentially practical, but by no 
 means bigoted to logic. Their political 
 Constitution might be theoretically assailed 
 on many points ; but it works satisfactorily 
 as a whole. Their Church is an obvious 
 compromise : its Articles are allowedly 
 incongruous: but it works well. It cer- 
 tainly never produces a Xavier or a Carlo 
 Borromeo : no saint with apostolic halo 
 round his brow : but it also lacks the super- 
 lative vices that Rome cherishes in her 
 catholic bosom. In the matter of educa- 
 tion, England shows an equal disregard of 
 
OF SCHOOLMASTERS. 271 
 
 logic and an equal determination of working 
 good ends by any practical means. The po- 
 sition of a schoolmaster needed backing up, 
 it seemed, in some way. Then make the 
 schoolmaster a Clergyman. Never mind 
 the absurdity of calling upon a man to 
 swear that he will spend and be spent in 
 preaching the Glad Tidings, when A^ knows, 
 and everybody knows, that he will pass his 
 life in teaching the Rudiments of Greek 
 and Latin. With a practical people such 
 obligations are generally understood in a 
 practical way; and the practical way of 
 understanding them seems, in' this one in- 
 stance, to lie in ignoring them partially or 
 altogether. 
 
 There can be little doubt that, without 
 the aid of clerical prestige, no body of men 
 could have continued to command public 
 respect in spite of the odium and ridicule 
 attached to such flagrantly cruel implements 
 as the cane and birch. The former of these, 
 as I know to my cost, is painful in the ex- 
 treme ; and the infliction of the latter is 
 always brutal, and very often abominably 
 indecent. 
 
272 THE SOCIAL POSITION 
 
 Now, in Scotland, whatever our faults 
 may be — and Scottish writers on the Lon- 
 don press purge us from time to time of 
 our conceit — we are acknowledged to be 
 a logical race. Consequently, we call a 
 schoolmaster a schoolmaster. We no more 
 think of allowing him to take fictitious or- 
 ders, than we should think of giving a haber- 
 dasher the fictitious title of m.d. : and yet a 
 schoolmaster in Scotland has certainly need 
 of any aid that could be rendered for the 
 improvement of his social status. The latter 
 is far below that of any other professional 
 body. Yet, low as is comparatively the 
 social position of the Scottish schoolmaster, 
 he can point to his ridiculous but almost in- 
 nocuous leather strap, and boast that he 
 has contrived therewith to maintain disci- 
 pline and stimulate to exertion, while a 
 wealthier body, with rich endowments and 
 ecclesiastical prestige, have made unsparing 
 use of two instruments, whose barbarity as 
 far exceeds that of his own strap, as the in- 
 come of an Eton Provost exceeds that of a 
 Rector of our High School. 
 
 But to revert to the consideration of 
 
OF SCHOOLMASTERS, 273 
 
 the social rank of a master in a Scottish 
 grammar-school. The Rectors of the two 
 chief Edinburgh Schools are exceptions to 
 the ordinary rule. They enjoy a social rank 
 befitting the dignity of their official duties. 
 But how is it that the masters of classics, 
 mathematics, and modern languages, in 
 these and similar institutions, take by gen- 
 eral consent a lower place at feasts than a 
 medical man of little practice, and an advo- 
 cate of few briefs ? 
 
 In the social estimate of a whole order of 
 men, I am inclined to think the world at 
 large cannot be altogether wrong. There is 
 generall}^ fault on both sides. If then w^e 
 schoolmasters ar^ at fault, it woukl be of 
 use if we could only hit upon our weak 
 point. We might then give it a fair and se- 
 rious consideration ; and use means, if they 
 could be suggested, for remedying the evih 
 
 I have heard it said by a gentleman of 
 very high position, and of reputed scholar- 
 ship, that the subordinate master in a great 
 Scottish school is only expected by a Scot- 
 tish public to be a man of ordinary attain- 
 ments, who can drill his pupils well in the 
 
274 THE SOCIAL POSITION 
 
 rudiments, and just keep pace with them in 
 their higher reading. While such melan- 
 choly opinions are generally entertained of 
 our craft, it is especially incumbent upon us 
 to endeavor by our teaching and our lives 
 to belie them. It is because we too often 
 give in, for want of courage or proper pride, 
 to such a condemnation of our order that 
 we continue to be members of a Pariah pro- 
 fession. We are too often contented with 
 the limited intellectual stores that were laid 
 in at College. We too often go uninquir- 
 ingly through a dull routine ; caring little 
 whether or no we carry the inclinations and 
 sympathies of our boys along with us, so 
 long as we get through the prescribed work, 
 and preserve a mechanical discipline. We 
 are not impressed with the fact, that a 
 schoolmaster cannot be too learned, too 
 accomplished. Under any circumstances, 
 something of the tedious must creep into 
 the routine of school-work, and it will need 
 a wide field of continual reading to enable 
 one to illustrate and vivify daily lessons, 
 that vary from the declension of perma to 
 the study of the Agamemnon. 
 
OF SCHOOLMASTERS. 275 
 
 The pupils at our chief public schools 
 study German and French. Should a mas- 
 ter of the two great ancient languages be 
 ignorant of linguistic studies, in which his 
 pupils may be proficient? No: he should 
 outstrip them immeasurably in every de- 
 partment of study that bears upon his own. 
 He should be so impressed with the dignity 
 of his calling, — and what calling, save the 
 cure of souls is more dignified ? — so full of 
 chastened respect for himself, as to command 
 the respect of his pupils, though he may fail 
 for a while to command that of the more un- 
 thinking of the public. If we could only 
 work ourselves up to some such standard, 
 we might then gradually dispense with that 
 little leathern instrument, that still keeps 
 a burr of ridicule attached to our black 
 gowns. 
 
 But, stop : am I again travelling to Uto- 
 pia ? Let me turn my hobby's head, and 
 gallop back to dear Dunedin. When a 
 man's liver is out of order, what on earth 
 is the use of his doctor's telling him to keep 
 early hours ; to use a cold tub ; to live tem- 
 perately, and take frequent out-door exer- 
 
276 THE SOCIAL POSITION. 
 
 cise ? Why, his grandmother might have 
 suggested that. What the man wants is a 
 blue pill or two. They can be taken in a 
 minute ; and he need not materially change 
 his dietetics. Could not some such violent 
 but easy remedy be suggested for the cure 
 of our social abasement? Certainly. Why 
 should Baring-out be confined to boys? or 
 Strikes to Artisans? A fig for political 
 economy! Let us form ourselves into a 
 League and proclaim a general Strike of 
 Schoolmasters ! There will be some 
 sneaking recusants among us : but we will 
 brain them with their own dictionaries. 
 
 Some Summer morning Scotland will 
 awake, and find every grammatical fountain 
 frozen. What fun it will be for the boys ! 
 For a week the parents may outface the 
 inconvenience ; but in a month the animal, 
 always latent in boyhood, will be growing 
 rampant and outrageous. Gradually will 
 it develop, unsoothed by the influences of 
 grammar, unchecked by the sterner influ- 
 ences of our magic leather. No father will 
 be safe in his own house. The smaller boys 
 will be smoking brown poper in the drawing- 
 
OF SCHOOLMASTERS. 211 
 
 room, and the older boys wallowing in Bass 
 and cavendish in the lower kitchen. 
 
 Meanwhile, calmly reposing in the still- 
 ness of his back parlor, M'Gillicnddy will 
 be putting the finishing stroke to that folio 
 edition of Cornelius Nepos, on which his 
 fame in after ages is to rest; and I, in my 
 aerial lodgings, shall be setting to Greek 
 iambics the moral aphorisms of the great 
 Tu})per, whose terseness and originality are 
 the wonder of a grateful people. 
 
 Our hospitable Provost, like his prede- 
 cessor in olden days when the English were 
 marching north, will hold a meeting of 
 troubled citizens. They will meet in arms : 
 each father will be provided with his life- 
 preserver of cut leather. One speaker will 
 tell how nouns are at a fabulous premium ; 
 that an adjective may not be had for love 
 or money. Another will tell the horrible 
 tale, how whole families have for weeks sub- 
 sisted on the smallest prepositions. They 
 will attempt a compromise. We shall de- 
 cline treating on such terms. They will 
 surrender unconditionally ; and our terms 
 
278 POSITION OF SCHOOLMASTERS, 
 
 — monstrous as they may seem — shall be 
 as follows : — 
 
 A Schoolmaster, who shall have gradu- 
 ated at an University, shall hereafter be 
 addressed, personally or epistolarily, with 
 the courtesy usually shown to a second- 
 rate Solicitor or a briefless Advocate. 
 
 Whosoever shall wittingly and wilfully 
 offend against the above decree, let him for 
 the first offence be dismissed after due 
 admonition ; but, on a second offence being 
 proven, let him be sentenced to parse ver- 
 batim the folio edition of M'Gillicuddy's 
 Nepos, declining all nouns, conjugating all 
 verbs, and repeating all syntax rules, usque 
 ad Rei ipsius et totius Curice nauseam. 
 
TINT, TINT, TINT 279 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 TINT, TINT, TINT. 
 
 It is now twelve years ago that I was for 
 the first time brought face to face with a 
 class some fifty in number, of little Latin 
 novices. They all regarded me with sensa- 
 tions of wonderment and awe: they had 
 but a faint idea, luckily, of the terror with 
 .which I regarded them. I had, certainly, 
 the recollections of my own long elementary 
 training to guide me in my proceedings ; 
 and I had the traditions of the school, to 
 which I had been recently appointed as 
 master, to direct mj uncertain steps. But 
 the recollections of my own training were 
 all tinged with melancholy ; and with the 
 traditions of my new sphere of duty I was 
 but imperfectly acquainted. 
 
 In the middle of my class-room stood a 
 machine, somewhat resembling a patent en 
 
280 TINT, TINT, TINT, 
 
 gine for the simultaneous polishing of many 
 knives ; and I was desired to take a firm 
 grasp of its wooden handle, and to turn it 
 with vigor and rapidity. And an implement 
 of simple leather was put into my hands, 
 by the dexterous application of which I was 
 to quicken the apprehensions of such child- 
 ren as might be uninfluenced by the mo- 
 notonous music of my gerund-stone. 
 
 And for many a day, obedient to tradi- 
 tion and to my orders, I turned rapidly the 
 wooden handle, and flourished vigorously 
 the simple implement to the very best of my 
 ability. But, strange to say, although I was 
 then youthful and strong, and eaten up with 
 a superfluous zeal for my calling, I could 
 never turn the machine without its creak- 
 ing painfully ; and whenever I applied my 
 leathern implement to a child's palm, I was 
 immediately conscious of a thrill, as of 
 electricity, that ran from my finger-tips to 
 the very centre of my nervous system ; and 
 sometimes, after the performance of such 
 an ordinary act of duty, I would find myself 
 standing before my pupils with a heightened 
 color upon my face, and a tingling in my 
 
TINT, TINT, TINT. 281 
 
 ears ; and to a looker-on I should have ap- 
 peared as one ashamed of having done some 
 questionable deed. 
 
 Finding all my efforts unavailing to work 
 smoothly and noiselessly my mechanical 
 engine of instruction, I at length relin- 
 quished it altogether ; and it has been now 
 standing for years in a side-room adjoining 
 my place of business, and is covered over 
 with cobwebs, and rusted at the juncture 
 of the stone and handle. 
 
 To supply the place of its simple mech- 
 anism, I brought to bear upon my pupils 
 all the moral and intellectual' means at my 
 disposal. I spared myself neither in the 
 matter of time nor trouble in my endeavors 
 to educe the dormant faculties of my 
 charges; and enjoying as I did for many 
 years a bodily health impervious to fatigue, 
 and having a keen sympatliy with boy- 
 hood, I succeeded more and more until I 
 almost ceased at length to regret the disap- 
 pearance of my gerund-stone. 
 
 But the more I gave satisfaction to my- 
 self, the less I gave satisfaction to the ma- 
 jority of my so-called patrons ; the guard- 
 
282 TINT, TINT, TINT. 
 
 ians of my youug pupils. From time to 
 time, when I was indulging in a dream of 
 appreciated toil, I heard of complaints be- 
 ing circulated by such as were favorers of 
 mechanism in instruction. Pupils, in whose 
 progress I had begun to take a keen inter- 
 est, were from time to time removed with- 
 out a word of explanation or the civility of 
 a farewell. " They were not grounded^'' 
 said these waggish but unmannerly guard- 
 ians ; meaning all the while, " They were 
 not ground^ 
 
 I had almost begun to despair of my 
 system, and to think that I had mistaken 
 my calling ; and was casting about my eyes 
 for some honest trade to which I might 
 apprentice myself, when one afternoon my 
 class was honored with a lengthened visit 
 from a gentleman of acknowledged rank and 
 worth and judgment. After the lesson was 
 over, I complained to this distinguished 
 visitor that my system of conveying in- 
 struction, as being natural and philosophic, 
 was popularly considered a more difficult 
 one for a pupil than the ancient turning of 
 a piece of mechanism. My visitor, who had 
 
TINT, TINT, TINT. 283 
 
 a son under my charge, stated his firm con- 
 viction that my system was not only likely 
 to produce better results, but was also in its 
 operation far more easy and interesting for a 
 young pupil to follow. For that moment I 
 felt re-assured, and determined never again 
 to regret the absence of my gerund-stone. 
 
 And now to treat of the loss of my other 
 auxiliary implement. The application of 
 this latter, I can honestly say, was never 
 made excepting with the view of stimulating 
 ever-dormant energies, and of repressing 
 tendencies to chronic negligence or miscon- 
 duct. I considered myself as an abstraction ; 
 as the embodied representative of the class ; 
 and used the implement only to protect the 
 interests of the latter, which suffered, to my 
 mind, whenever one of its members, by 
 carelessness or lack of study, turned upon 
 himself that stream of time and energy that 
 should have run uninterruptedly to the 
 irrigation of the body corporate. In fact, 
 I made myself the dividend in a long divi- 
 sion sum, whose divisor was duty ; the quo- 
 tient, I found, was teacher -\- superintendent^ 
 and the remainder, personal identity^ wliich 
 
284 TINT, TINT, TINT, 
 
 was very small in comparison with the di- 
 visor, and might practically be ignored. So, 
 when a little fellow walked after me for a 
 few days at the striking of the bell, with his 
 hands beneath imaginary coat-tails in imita- 
 tion of my gait, I considered him as only 
 joking with me in my c^L^Koit j oi remainder ; 
 and I merely asked him to desist, as other- 
 wise I should make fun of him in revenge ; 
 and he desisted. And when a boy wrote 
 my name upon the desk, I was contented 
 with showing him how he had mis-spelt it; 
 and he rubbed it out at my request. And 
 when a boy, years ago, put his tongue into 
 his cheek after an admonition, I showed his 
 comrades what little control he had over 
 that organ ; knowing as I did that he in- 
 tended to protrude it on the side that would 
 have been invisible to me. And I may state 
 that such trifling incidents were of so rare 
 occurrence, that I could enumerate them all 
 upon the fingers of one hand. 
 
 But still, although I Avas conscious that 
 I used the implement with good intent, and 
 aware that it was similarly used by men 
 who were my superiors in age, and certainly 
 
TINT, TINT, TINT. 285 
 
 not my inferiors in kindliness and sympathy 
 with boyhood, I was haunted with an idea 
 that the use of it was founded on an error 
 in our system of instruction ; and 1 was 
 long pondering where the error could lie ; 
 and I found the subject far more difficult 
 than I had at first supposed ; and I confess 
 it still to be a problem difficult of solution. 
 I was in this frame of mind one day, 
 when, according to an unalterable rule, 
 there came under the influence of the elec- 
 tric implement a little, quiet, well-behaved, 
 and intelligent foreigner. The application 
 had scarce been made, when a young com- 
 rade — bless the lad ! — gave vent to an un- 
 mistakeable hiss I Order, of course, was im- 
 mediately and energetically re-established. 
 But in my walk that afternoon by the sea, 
 and in many a lonely walk afterwards, I 
 thought about that little foreigner and his 
 courageous comrade. And I thought how 
 that little foreigner, returning to his own 
 land, the ancient home of courtesy and gen- 
 tle manners, would tell his friends of our 
 rude, northern ways. And I tremble at the 
 idea of my usage of the Electric Leather 
 
286 TINT, TINT, TINT. 
 
 being narrated in the hearing of one of 
 those terrible Colonels, whom their Emperor 
 holds with difficulty on the leash. For I 
 thought if ever our great metropolis were 
 in their hands, how ill it would fare with all 
 therein that turned the gerund-stone, and 
 with those therein that bare my hapless sur- 
 name. And the name of these is Legion. 
 And knowing that the comrade was no vul- 
 gar and low-natured boy, I felt sure in my 
 heart that there was at least something 
 right in the impulse that had pushed him 
 into danger and disobedience. But still I 
 was afraid of allowing sentimentalism or 
 impulsiveness on my part to take the place 
 of duty however stern and unpalatable. 
 
 I was standing not alone one morning 
 in the lobby of my own home, just before 
 leaving for the day's work. A great-coat 
 of mine was hanging from the wall. My 
 Companion, in a playful mood, put a small, 
 white hand into one of its pockets, and 
 drew a something out ; then thrust it back 
 hurriedly as though it had been a something 
 venomous. And over a very gentle face 
 passed a look of surprise not unmingled 
 
TINT, TINT, TINT. 287 
 
 with reproof; but the reproof gave way 
 almost momently to the wonted smile. But 
 I long remembered the mild reproof upon 
 that gentle face ; for it was an expression 
 very seldom seen there ; and it came after- 
 wards to be numbered with other sad and 
 sweet memories. 
 
 Meanwhile, at the end of the last bench 
 upon my class sat a boy who was very back- 
 ward in his learning. He was continually 
 absent upon what seemed to me frivolous 
 pretences. These absences entailed upon 
 me much additional trouble. I had occa- 
 sionally to keep him and a little remnant in 
 the room when the others had gone out to 
 play ; to make up to him and them for lost 
 time. And on one occasion my look was 
 very cross, and my speech very short ; for 
 it seemed to me provoking that children 
 should be so backward in their Latin. And 
 when the work was over, arnd we two were 
 left alone, he followed me to my desk, and 
 said : " You have no idea, sir, how weak I 
 am." And I said: "Why, my boy, you 
 look stout enough." But he answered: "I 
 am really very weak, sir; far weaker than 
 
288 TINT, TINT, TINT. 
 
 I look ! " and there was a pleading earnest- 
 ness in his words that touched me to the 
 heart ; and, afterwards, there was an unseen 
 chord of sympathy that bound the master 
 to the pupil, who was still very dull at 
 Latin. 
 
 And still he would be absent ; at times, 
 for a day or two together. But it excited 
 no surprise. For the boy seemed to sit 
 almost a stranger among his fellows ; and 
 in play-hours seemed to take no interest in 
 boyish games. And by and by he had been 
 absent for some weeks together. But I was 
 afraid to ask concerning him ; thinking he 
 might have been removed, as many boys 
 had been, without a letter of explanation, or 
 his shaking me by the hand. And one morn- 
 ing I received a letter with a broad black 
 edge, telling me that he had died the day 
 previously of a virulent contagious fever. 
 
 So when school was over, I made my way 
 to his whilome lodging; and stood at the 
 door, pondering. For the fever, of which 
 the child had died, had been to me a Death- 
 in-life, and had passed like 'the Angel of old 
 over my dwelling, but, unlike that angel, 
 
TINT, TINT, TINT. 289 
 
 had spared my first-born, and only-born. 
 And because the latter sat each evening on 
 my knee, I was afraid of the fever, and in- 
 tended only to leave my card, as a mark of 
 respectful sympathy. But the good woman 
 of the house said: "Nay, nay. Sir, but ye'll 
 see the Laddie ; " and I felt drawn by an in- 
 fluence of fatherhood more constraining 
 than a father's fears, and followed the good 
 woman into the small and dim chamber 
 where my pupil was lying. And, as I passed 
 the threshold, my masterhood slipt off me 
 like a loose robe ; and I stood very humble 
 and pupil-like, in that awful Presence, that 
 teacheth a wisdom to babes and sucklings, 
 to which our treasured lore is but a jingling 
 of vain words. And, when left alone, I 
 drew near the cheerless and dismantled bed, 
 on which ray pupil lay asleep in his early 
 coffin. And he looked very calm and happy, 
 as though there had been to him no pain in 
 passing from a world where he had had few 
 companions and very little pleasure. And 
 I knew that his boyhood had been as dreary 
 as it had been short ; and I thought that 
 the good woman of his lodging had perhaps 
 
290 TINT, TINT, TINT, 
 
 been his only sympathizing friend at hand. 
 And I communed with myself whether 
 aught I had done could have made his dul- 
 ness more dull. And I felt thankful for the 
 chord of sympathy that had united us, un- 
 seen, for a little while. But, in a strange 
 and painful way, I stood rebuked before 
 the calm and solemn and unrebuking face 
 of the child on whom I had frowned for his 
 being backward in his Latin. 
 
 That evening, as usual, my own child was 
 seated on my knee, making sunrise out of 
 sunset for myself and his Mother's mother. 
 And the table was alive with moo-cows, and 
 bow-wows, and silly sheep. And we sang 
 snatches of impossible songs ; or hid our- 
 selves behind chairs and curtains in a bare- 
 faced and ■ undeceitful manner. And the 
 Penates at my hearth, that were chipped 
 and broken, blinked merrily by the fire- 
 light ; and the child was taken to his tiny 
 bed ; and the chipped Penates, thereupon, 
 slowly faded out of view, and disappeared 
 among the cinders. 
 
 And I sat, musing; alone. And yet not 
 all alone. For in the chair, where recently 
 
TINT, TINT, TINT, 291 
 
 had been sitting the mother of my child's 
 Mother, there sat a grey, transparent Shape, 
 And the Shape and I were familiar friends. 
 lie had sat with me many a time from mid- 
 night until when the morning had come 
 peeping through the green lattice. And he 
 had peopled all the chambers of my house 
 with sad thoughts and black-stoled memo- 
 ries. So, never heeding my familiar friend, 
 I sat, staring in the lire, and thinking. 
 
 And I thought, sadly and almost vindic- 
 tively, of the dreary years of nly own early 
 boyhood, with their rope of sand, and the 
 mill-wheel that had ground no corn. And 
 I remembered how at times there would 
 come to me in my exile the sound of my 
 brother's laugh, and the sweeter music of 
 my Mother's voice. But I remembered 
 thankfully, that through years of monoto- 
 nous work and rough usage I had enjoyed 
 sound health, and had had companions, with 
 whom I had walked, and talked, and 
 romped, and fought, cheerily. 
 
 And I wondered wli ether I should be 
 spared to see my own child grow to be a 
 
292 TINT, TINT, TINT. 
 
 merry and frank-hearted little fellow; to 
 hear the music of his ringing laugh ; to see 
 his face flushed with rude but healthful 
 sport ; to hear of him as beloved for many- 
 boyish virtues, and reproved, not unlov- 
 ingly, for his share of boyish faults. And I 
 longed to be climbing with him the hill of 
 Difficulty; and lightening the ascent for 
 him with varied converse ; resting now and 
 then to look down upon the valley, or to 
 let him gather blue-bells that grew on the 
 hillside. 
 
 And then I thought of a boy, who had 
 sat of late on the last bench in my class- 
 room ; with a timid and scared look beside 
 his bluff and bold companions ; who had 
 stood in the noisy play-ground, lonely as 
 in a wilderness ; whom I had seen that 
 afternoon in his early coffin, with the seal 
 upon his forehead of Everlasting Peace; 
 the peace that passeth all understanding. 
 
 So I determined ; from the recollections 
 of my own dreary boyhood ; for the mild 
 reproof that once had clouded momently 
 very gentle eyes ; for the love I bare my 
 
TINT, TINT, TINT. 293 
 
 own little one ; and for the calm and unre- 
 buking face I had seen that afternoon ; that 
 I would do as little as possible in the exer- 
 cise of my stern duties to make of life a 
 weariness to young children ; and especially 
 to sucli as should be backward in their 
 Latin. 
 
294 THE PRESSURE 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 THE PRESSURE OF GENTLENESS. 
 
 A CLOSE relation of my own was for 
 twelve years an officer in almost the severest 
 of all continental services. In that chival- 
 ric arm}^ is conserved a traditional disci- 
 pline, whose details would appal a democrat, 
 and the exactions of which could only be en- 
 dured by an obedient and military race. He 
 tells me that, in his long experience, he only 
 met with one Captain, who in dealing with 
 his company avowedly ignored all means of 
 physical coercion. On this Captain's breast 
 were the Orders of two kingdoms and two 
 empires: after one well-fought day he had 
 been voted by acclamation as a candidate 
 for the Order of the Iron Crown, which he 
 would have obtained had he added his own 
 signature to those of all his brother officers ; 
 and yet so soft-hearted was this Chevalier 
 
OF GENTLENESS. 295 
 
 sans peur that any slattern beggar-woman 
 could draw from hira an ill-spared florin. 
 In a village, where a portion of the regiment 
 were once quartered, the good Cur^, at the 
 close of a sermon on Christian Character, 
 told his flock that, if they wished to see 
 Christianity in action, they might see it in 
 a Captain of Grenadiers, who clothed their 
 poorest children with his pocket-money, 
 and whose closest companion was ignorant 
 of his good deeds. This Captain's company 
 was noted as being the best-dressed and the 
 best-conducted in the regiment. There 
 were at Solferino (and there are, alas ! such 
 cases in all engagements) cases of gallant 
 but stern officers that fell by a traitorous 
 bullet from behind. There was not one 
 man in the company of this Captain that 
 would not have taken in his stead a bullet 
 aimed at him from the front. 
 
 A year and a half ago I met in Yorkshire 
 an invalid young sailor. From his smooth 
 face, short statue, and attenuated form, I 
 should have taken him for a senior midship- 
 man. To my complete astonishment I 
 found he was commander of a Pacific liner, 
 
296 THE PRESSURE 
 
 with a numerous crew under his orders, and 
 in receipt of a splendid income. He had 
 been third in command, when the two sen- 
 iors had taken fever, and his gallantry under 
 trying circumstances of all kinds had pro- 
 cured his unusually early promotion. T dis- 
 cussed with him the theory of discipline. 
 He considered physical chastisement as bru- 
 tal ; swearing as un-Christian ; and hector- 
 ing as unmanly. " The man who cannot 
 control himself is not fit to command a 
 crew," he said, tritely and truly. I looked 
 in wonder at this shrimp of a man, that was 
 speaking with such calm confidence. " I 
 never," he continued, " raise my voice above 
 its usual tone to enforce an order." He was 
 worn to skin and bone by a chest disorder 
 of long continuance, Avhich he considered 
 would close his life at no distant date. I 
 could have pushed him over with a rude 
 jostle of my elbow. But there was some- 
 thing in his face that told you unmistaka- 
 bly he was not the man with whom to take 
 a liberty. He gave me a remarkable anec- 
 dote of himself. His ship was alongside of 
 an American liner in the Liverpool docks. 
 
OF GENTLENESS, 297 
 
 The Yankee captain was dining with him, 
 and the conversation fell upon the means of 
 maintaining order in a crew. The Yankee 
 scouted all means but the stick. He and his 
 mates used on principle the most brutal 
 means of coercion. During their argument, 
 the steward came to announce that the Eng- 
 lish crew were fighting the Yankees on the 
 neighboring vessel. The captains went on 
 deck, and the Englishman, slinging himself 
 by a rope, alighted in the midst of an up- 
 roarious crowd. " Well, my men," said he, 
 " so you are making beasts of yourselves, 
 and disgracing your captain." And the big 
 fellows slunk off without a word to their 
 own vessel, and one or two of the ringlead- 
 ers were set for an hour or two to swab the 
 decks. But of the quarreling tars there was 
 not. a man but could have lifted his wee 
 captain, and dropped him overboard with- 
 out an effort. I trust to God he may yet be 
 living, and may long be spared, as a speci- 
 men of a quiet, resolute, English, Christian 
 Skipper. 
 
 My chiefest friend at school was a man of 
 widest mental culture, of even temper, and 
 
298 THE PRESSURE 
 
 of sound judgment. Among his friends and 
 my own at Trinity I knew a few men of a 
 similarly high stamp. I remember one man 
 in particular, in whom the Scholar and the 
 Christian so curiously blended, that it would 
 be difficult to say where his Latin ended and 
 his religion began. He was a spiritual and 
 mental Merman. But if I were called upon 
 to name the Aristides of my life-acquain- 
 tance, I should name a man, whom I never 
 knew till I had crossed the Tweed. I be- 
 lieve it would be as hard to warp a Carlyle 
 into sentimental or religious cant, and a 
 prophet-Cumming into common-sense and 
 modesty, as to twist the nature of my friend 
 into petty words or illiberal action. 
 
 He was once the superintendent of a 
 public educational institution. He had been 
 present one day in the drill-ground, where 
 an honest sergeant with a good deal of su- 
 perfluous bluster was putting a little regi- 
 ment through its facings. When the boys 
 were dismissed, the sergeant approached 
 his superior, and said : " Excuse the liberty, 
 Sir, but really, when you are more used to 
 boys, you'll find that you must put more 
 
OF GENTLENESS. 299 
 
 pepper into what you do and say." " Well," 
 said my friend, " every man has his own 
 way : for my own part, I don't believe in 
 pepper." 
 
 A few weeks afterwards, the Principal 
 was in his library, when the sergeant was 
 ushered in. "I've come, Sir," said the 
 latter, " to ask a favor. Those boys are a 
 little troublesome at times. If you'd be 
 kind enough just to stand at your drawing- 
 room window for a few minutes when drill 
 was going on, it would do a deal of good ; 
 if you'd only stand for a few minutes, read- 
 ing a newspaper." 
 
 Ah! worthy sergeant; your pepper won't 
 do after all. No, friend, keep it for your 
 vegetables, and use it then in moderation. 
 
 I hold that men may be called of God to 
 more offices than the holy one of the Chris- 
 tian ministry. There was an under-officer 
 at my old school, who to me seemed always 
 to partake largely of some of the finest at- 
 tributes of the gentleman. He had failed 
 through continued ill-health in business as 
 a bookseller, and was a well-read man. He 
 was uniformly civil and respectful to us, 
 
300 '^^HE PRESSURE 
 
 senior scholars; but, while we could tip 
 and bribe others, we could never venture on 
 the liberty of an unadorned surname witli 
 him. This man was called to the humble 
 office of maintaining order in the school- 
 yard. So there are men called to command 
 men on the field of battle, and boys in the 
 school-room. I have met with a school- 
 master in Scotland who could govern a 
 crowd of boys in one room, though they 
 might be divided into scattered groups, and 
 engaged in varied work; and his only im- 
 plements of discipline were a word or two 
 of good-natured banter or kindly encour- 
 agement, and occasionally a calm and stern 
 rebuke. I have been much struck by the 
 expression of his opinion, that physical co- 
 ercion cannot be dispensed with altogether. 
 In defiance, however, of a kindness, a sagac- 
 ity, and a judgment that I respect, I do 
 most firmly believe that the necessity for 
 physical chastisement rests mainly upon 
 two blemishes in our ordinary school sa^s- 
 tem : the mechanical nature of our routine 
 of work ; and the crowding of our class- 
 rooms. In the latter respect we are more 
 
OF GENTLENESS. 301 
 
 at fault than our English brethren ; in the 
 former we are far less sinning. In the teach- 
 ing of our elementary classes we employ far 
 more spirit, and far less wood ; and I wish 
 I could add, no leather. There is less of a 
 gulf between pupil and master. The se- 
 verest means of physical chastisement at 
 the disposal of the latter is almost innocu- 
 ous. But mild as our implement may be 
 from the point of view of physical pain in- 
 flicted, its employment is of necessity asso- 
 ciated with some degree of odium, and a 
 more formidable amount of ridicule. I am 
 convinced that many children imagine that 
 we, schoolmasters, were as naturally born 
 with tawse, as foxes with tails. Did you 
 ever see children in a nursery play at 
 school? The rule seems to be for the elder 
 brother to play our part ; and that part is 
 limited to the fun or business of flogging 
 all his little sisters. 
 
 We have gone a great way already in 
 Scotland in the way of civilized teaching, 
 in forbearing to use an instrument of acute 
 pain and an instrument of indecent brutal- 
 ity. Let us make a further advance, and if 
 
302 THE PRESSURE 
 
 we can invent some intellectual and moral 
 substitute for our ridiculous scourges, let 
 us send the latter in bundles to the public 
 schools of England, to be there adopted 
 when their system is suflBciently ripened by 
 a few extra centuries of Christianity. Let 
 us close their scholastic nakedness with 
 the last rags of our barbarism. Our boys 
 will be none the less manly and respectful. 
 Flogging can never instil courage into a 
 child, but it has helped to transform many 
 an one into a sneak. And sneakishness is 
 a vice more hard to eradicate than obdu- 
 racy. So far from curing an ill-conditioned 
 boy of rude and vulgar ways, it is calculated 
 rather to render inveterate in him a dis- 
 taste for study, and a solid hatred of our 
 craft. 
 
 Let us be less careful of the mere number 
 of our classes, and more careful of their in- 
 tellectual culture. Let us care more for 
 what we think of ourselves, than what the 
 public think of us. The respect of others 
 follows close upon self respect. Let us not 
 care to be called of men, MabM, Rahhi, Let 
 us be content with classes of limited num- 
 
OF GENTLENESS. 303 
 
 bers, every member of which can keep pace 
 with a properly-advancing curriculum. Let 
 us aim at a broad and invigoratmg culture, 
 not a narrow and pedantic one ; let us ig- 
 nore examinations of College or Civil ser- 
 vice, and aim only at the great and search- 
 ing- examination of actual life. Let our aims 
 be high and generous, irrespective of the 
 exactions of unreasoning parents and well- 
 meaning but unqualified intermeddlers ; 
 let our means of coercion be dignified, in 
 spite of the trials to which our tempers may 
 be exposed. Let us endeavor to make our 
 pupils love their work without fearing us. 
 They may hve — God knows — to love us. 
 Whether they ever love us or not perhaps 
 matters but little, if we do our work single- 
 heartedly. The mens eonseia recti is of itself 
 no mean reward. I am, perhaps, an enthu- 
 siast ; but I have an idea, that, ere a gener- 
 ation is passed away, the last sound of the 
 last tawse will be heard in the leading gram- 
 mar-schools of Scotland. Her scholars will 
 be none the worse taught, and her school- 
 masters none the less respected, when in- 
 struction has been made less rugged in her 
 
30^ THE PRESSURE 
 
 aspect, and discipline is maintained by the 
 more than hydraulic pressure of a persistent 
 and continuous gentleness. 
 
 And, O brother schoolmaster, remember 
 evermore the exceeding dignity of our call- 
 ing. It is not the holiest of all callings ; 
 but it runs near and parallel to the holiest. 
 The lawyer's wits are sharpened, and his 
 moral sense not seldom blunted, by a life- 
 long familiarity with ignorance, chicanery, 
 and crime. The physician, in the exercise 
 of a more beneficent craft, is saddened con- 
 tinually by the spectacle of human weak- 
 ness and human pain. We have usually to 
 deal with fresh and unpolluted natures. A 
 noble calling, but a perilous. We are dress- 
 ers in a moral and mental vineyard. We are 
 undershepherds of the Lord's little ones ; 
 and our business it is to lead them into 
 green pastures, by the sides of refreshing 
 streams. Let us into our linguistic lessons 
 introduce cunningly and imperceptibly all 
 kinds of amusing stories ; stories of the real 
 kings of earth, that have reigned in secret, 
 crownless and unsceptred ; leaving the vain 
 show of power to gilded toy-kings and make- 
 
OF GENTLENESS. 805 
 
 believe statesmen ; of the Angels that have 
 walked the earth in the guise of holy men 
 and holier women ; of the Seraph-singers, 
 whose music will be echoing for ever ; of 
 the Cherubim of power, that with the 
 mighty wind of conviction and enthusiasm 
 have winnowed the air of pestilence and 
 superstition. 
 
 Yes, Friend, throw a higher poetry than 
 all this into your linguistic work ; the poe- 
 try of pure and holy motive. Then, in the 
 coming days, when you are fast asleep un- 
 der the green grass, they will not speak 
 lightly of you over their fruit and wine, 
 mimicking your accent, and retailing dull, 
 insipid boy-pleasantries. Enlightened by 
 the experience of fatherhood, they will see 
 with a clear remembrance your firmness in 
 dealing with their moral faults, your pa- 
 tience in dealing with their intellectual 
 weakness. And, calling to mind the old 
 schoolroom, they will think : " Ah ! it was 
 good for us to be there. For, unknown to 
 us, were made therein three tabernacles; 
 one for us, and one for our schoolmaster, 
 and one for Him that is the Friend of all 
 
306 PRESSURE OF GENTLENESS. 
 
 children, and the Master of all school- 
 masters." 
 
 Ah! believe me, brother mine, where two 
 or three children are met together, unless 
 He, who is the Spirit of gentleness, be in 
 the midst of them, then our Latin is but 
 sounding brass, and our Greek a tinkling 
 cymbal. 
 
SCHOLA IN NUBIBUS. 307 
 
 XXV. 
 
 SCHOLA IN NUBIBUS. 
 
 A LEARNED botanist informs us that no 
 flower is perfect. I am sorry to think he 
 should be able to prove so saddening an 
 assertion. What a world is this of ours, in 
 which our very symbols of purity are im- 
 pure ; of perfection, imperfect ! Will chem- 
 istry detect a flaw in elemental diamond ? 
 
 Poor Eve, as she went weeping out of 
 Eden, plucked a last nosegay; but every 
 flower she touched became infected with a 
 petal-plague ; and the malady has gone 
 spreading through all the vegetable king- 
 dom from that sad day to this. Each plant 
 has now its special part a-wanting. No 
 leafy thing can jeer at its green brother. 
 All come short of the perfect type of plant- 
 hood. A specimen, complete in all its parts, 
 may be sketched on paper to serve as a 
 
308 SCIIOLA IN NUBIBUS. 
 
 criterion of the special deficiencies of par- 
 ticulars: but a perfect plant or a perfect 
 flower can no more be found in Nature, 
 than in the world a man utterly unselfish, 
 or a woman utterly devoid of goodness. 
 
 Naturalists give an account equally hu- 
 miliating of the existing animal creation. 
 There appears to have been a physical Fall 
 of man and beast. It must have been a 
 curious sort of Zoological Garden where all 
 w^ere corporeally perfect. But how strange 
 it is that all living creatures, biped or quad- 
 ruped, should be foxes that have lost their 
 tails? Why should we upbraid the mole 
 with blindness, or the sloth with inactivity ? 
 A cat may point derisively to our now un- 
 flexile ears ; a marmoset to our now unpre- 
 hensile toes; a baboon may grin at our 
 miserably poor, unswingable suggestions 
 of abortive tails. 
 
 Man then appears to have had two Falls ; 
 or, perhaps, more correctly speaking, a 
 spiritual Fall, and a physical Rise. There 
 is an ebb and flow in everything. Nature 
 is for ever playing a simple, a monotonous, 
 but a terrible game. Odd and even, Heads 
 
SCIIOLA IN NUBIBUS. 809 
 
 and Tails. See-saw, Marjory Daw. Here we 
 go up, up, up ; and here we go down, down, 
 down. If on the street a silver coin I find. 
 Forthwith my elbow through a window 
 goes : If Fortune on my right smile sweet 
 and kind. Fate on the left comes treading 
 on my toes. And so divines inform us 
 that spiritually we have been degenerat- 
 ing for six thousand years ; and naturalists 
 comfort us with the assurance that we have 
 the while been physically improving. On 
 the whole, then, we have been losers. By 
 the time we are as bad as Beelzebub, we 
 shall be as beautiful as Apollo. And Beel- 
 zebub and Apollo are philologically one. 
 — What a wonderful study is Philology I 
 
 It was after indulging in a train of some 
 such desultory reflections, and observing 
 the necessity of demonstrating actual im- 
 perfections by reference to a non-existent 
 type, that I was led, about the middle of 
 the next century, — in the spirit, or the 
 clouds of my tobacco-pipe, — to pay a visit 
 to an olim friend, whose name is carved by 
 the side of my own on the upper bench of 
 Old St. Edwards. 
 
310 SCHOLA IN NUBIBUS, 
 
 He now held a subordinate mastership in 
 a public school, that was pleasantly situated 
 at the foot of the Grampians. The build- 
 ings were stately, and the grounds charm- 
 ing. The playground commanded a not 
 very distant view of noble, rugged moun- 
 tains: and a short walk brought you to the 
 banks of a romantic trouting-stream. The 
 pupils were some hundred and fifty in num- 
 ber and belonged chiefly to the class of gen- 
 try, or to the upper middle-class of society. 
 The staff of masters was selected from the 
 most distinguished scholars and mathema- 
 ticians of our Universities ; and the curri- 
 culum of study included English, French, 
 Italian, German, Latin, Greek, and Mathe- 
 matics. The latter branch extended over 
 Euclid, Algebra, Trigonometry, and the 
 Conic Sections. The pupils entered usually 
 at the age of nine, and remained for a term 
 of seven years. A few, who were destined 
 for the learned professions, stayed some- 
 times for an extra year, or even longer, by 
 way of preparation for the highest honors 
 of our Universities. 
 
 The Principal of the place was a Clergy- 
 
SCHOLA IN NUBIBUS. 311 
 
 man or Minister : tlie religious and moral 
 training of the boys was under his sole 
 charge. Consequently on Sundays he was 
 undisputed master of all arrangements ; and 
 on week-days he presided in chapel, morn- 
 ing and evening. His tuition was confined 
 to Biblical and Profane History, in which 
 subjects he delivered two prelections daily 
 to the classes in turn, in such a way that 
 each class attended one Biblical prelection, 
 and two prelections on Profane History, 
 every week. His classes were the favorite 
 ones, I was told ; and no wonder ; for the 
 Principal had learning and tact sufBcient 
 to make his lectures wonderfully interest- 
 ing, and the sacredness of his calling ex- 
 empted him from the necessity of employing 
 punishment of any kind as a stimulant or 
 preventive. 
 
 The pupils of the first year were engaged 
 in the close and analytic study of their o wii. 
 language, and in Writing and Arithmetic. 
 French was taught them upon a conversa- 
 tional rather than a philological or gram- 
 matical method. During the second year 
 Italian was thrown in on the same method. 
 
312 SCHOLA IN NUBIBUS. 
 
 and continued with the former studies to 
 the close of the session. 
 
 The third year commenced with Latin, 
 and this with the previous branches carried 
 the jjupils to the* end of their fourth year. 
 
 German w^as now introduced; but the 
 modern tongues were taught almost entirely 
 as spoken languages ; and, as no very exten- 
 sive preparation was required for them out 
 of class, these studies did not weigh very 
 heavily upon the young pupils. Latin 
 was commenced upon the vivd voce princi- 
 ple, but became gradually more and more 
 analytic, and was made the chief instrument 
 for inculcating the philosophy of language. 
 As every Classical Master was more or 
 less conversant with the modern tongues, 
 ample use was made of the idioms of these 
 latter in illustrating the idioms of an ancient 
 language. 
 
 At the commencement of the sixth year 
 a select few, generally boys of superior 
 talents, began the study of Greek ; and from 
 their previous linguistic training it was 
 marvellous with what rapidity they pro- 
 gressed in the study of this intricate tongue. 
 
SCIIOLA IN NUBIBUS. 313 
 
 For a time the vivd voce method was adhered 
 to, and it was really refreshing to hear the 
 natural music of the spoken Greek. The 
 other pupils, who were not intended for the 
 learned professions, continued their former 
 studies, which carried them gradually into 
 wide and interesting fields of History, Ora- 
 tory, Poetry, and Philosophy. 
 
 The plan of study, here drawn out, was 
 not rigidly adhered to in all cases. There 
 were several pupils, who, from reasons of 
 health or comparative mental deficiency, 
 were allowed to drop one or more of the 
 Modern languages ; and some, after a while, 
 were exempted from the study of Latin. 
 
 The study of Geometry was commenced 
 in the fourth year ; but, after a fair trial, 
 pupils were sent back to practical arithme- 
 tic who evinced no capacity for abstract 
 mathematical studies; and those who 
 showed a marked and special turn for the 
 latter were allowed exemptions from many 
 other branches, to admit of their giving full 
 attention to their favorite pursuits. In- 
 deed, there were one or two instances of 
 senior pupils, of about eighteen years of age, 
 
314 SCIIOLA IN NUBIBUS. 
 
 who had stayed beyond the usual term, and 
 were engaged in the study of the Calculi. 
 
 I was especially pleased with the chapel 
 service on Sundays, which was judiciously 
 short and reasonably long. The singing of 
 the hymns and anthems was exquisite. I 
 was informed that, with the exception of 
 a few boys who were physically unable to 
 whistle a tune, the pupils generally could 
 read simple music with ease; and that 
 several of them could play on one or two mu- 
 sical instruments with considerable effect. 
 A concert was given at the close of my 
 visit, and at my special request, in the great 
 hall; where several glees and madrigals 
 were admirably sung, in some of which one 
 of the masters took a prominent part ; and 
 a quartette was played more than passably 
 by three of the pupils and the same master, 
 who was an excellent player, it appeared, 
 on the pianoforte and organ. 
 
 I must confess, I was a little amused to 
 find that even dancing was not entirely lost 
 sight of; but the lessons in this department 
 were entirely optional. 
 
 The Principal and all the masters break- 
 
SCHOLA IN NUBIBUS. 315 
 
 fasted and dined with the boys in the great 
 hall; and once a month the dinner-table 
 was honored with the presence of their 
 wives, and lady-visitors from the neighbor- 
 hood. These days were, of course, cretati ; 
 and every one was bound to appear in his 
 best clothes and his best manners ; and 
 very often on these occasions the evening 
 was spent in music or theatricals, or both, 
 in the great hall. 
 
 I went round the dormitories, and found 
 that each boy had a separate^ well-ventilated 
 room. On the table of each room was a 
 New Testament ; but whether it was much 
 read in each instance, I am of course unable 
 to state ; at all events, if it was ever read 
 in any one instance, it would be read spon- 
 taneously^ and not from the motives of 
 either fear or hypocrisy. 
 
 The Sunday arrangements struck me as 
 being remarkable for the extreme, and, to 
 my mind, excessive liberality they evinced 
 in the Principal; who was, as I have stated, 
 a minister of the gospel. The boys attended 
 service twice ; once in the morning and 
 once in the evening. In the afternoon they 
 
316 SCHOLA IN NUBIDUS, 
 
 were allowed to walk in the grounds ; under 
 the cloisters in wet weather; or to read 
 quietly in the public library. There was a 
 considerable range of book-shelves from 
 which books might be selected ; and these 
 books were by no means confined to re- 
 ligious subjects. I was, although a layman, 
 startled, and indeed a little shocked, to find 
 that the Principal had not excluded from 
 the Sunday shelves many books of profane 
 travels, and many of the works of Johnson, 
 Goldsmith, Washington Irving, and a ter- 
 rible phalanx of secular poets, such as Cow- 
 per. Gray, Southey, Wordsworth, and Ten- 
 nyson. However, as the reverend Principal 
 was a man of undoubted piety, of very ex- 
 tensive learning, and capable of defending 
 his views with sound logic and good-hu- 
 mored banter, I kept my opinions to myself; 
 but I resolved in my own mind, that if ever 
 I sent a son or nephew to this school, I 
 should previously stipulate that on Sundays 
 his readings should be confined entirely to 
 useful sermons and entertaining tracts. 
 
 I was so charmed with all I saw in my 
 short visit to this beautiful valley, that at 
 
SCHOLA IN NUBIBUS. 317 
 
 times I thought I was enacting the part of 
 Rasselas. One morning, however, in my 
 rambles I stumbled, in a sequestered place, 
 upon a knot of little fellows who were in 
 a great state of excitement, and somewhat 
 annoyed, apparently, at my fortuitous in- 
 terference. In a moment I perceived the 
 cause of the meeting. There had been a 
 fight. One little fellow was being led away, 
 victorious,' with a bloody nose; and an- 
 other, with a black eye, was being com- 
 forted under defeat. I was at once bound 
 over to secrecy. However, the combat was 
 discovered, all through the unfortunate 
 black eye, that very evening b}^ the Prin- 
 cipal, who certainly did not visit the matter 
 very severely upon the chief delinquents. 
 "The fact is," said he to me in private, "the 
 boys were pretty much of a size, and there 
 was a little bad blood between them, which 
 this fight has let in a wholesome way. I 
 gave them an imposition, and some words of 
 kindly counsel ; but really, in my heart, I 
 was not very angry ; for they are both capital 
 lads, and will now be the fastest of friends." 
 In the case of bullying, however, I was told 
 
318 SCHOLA IN NUBIBUS, 
 
 that the Principal was exceedingly severe. 
 One case of a very aggravated description 
 had come before him two years previously, 
 and he had had recourse to a singular mode 
 of jury-trial. A council was held of all the 
 Masters and the Captain of each year: the 
 vote of each individual, man or boy, being 
 of one value. The Principal, who had no 
 vote, stated the case fully, and the culprit 
 was allowed to make his defence in words 
 or in writing, personally or by proxy. In 
 this instance the culprit was expelled, al- 
 though one vote in four would have ex- 
 empted him from that extreme penalty. 
 
 I was particularly struck with one feature 
 of this Institution. I was speaking to the 
 Principal of the open Scholarships, and 
 Medals, and Fellowships at our great Uni- 
 versities, and the prizes in the various de- 
 partments of our Civil Service that had 
 been thrown open to public competition ; 
 and I inquired if any special arrangements 
 were meant to qualify — I meant cram^ but 
 I was afraid to use the word — to qualify 
 pupils for those special ends. The Principal 
 answered me half-gravely, half-smilingly : 
 
SCIIOLA IN NUBIIiUS, 819 
 
 '' When I preach to my little fellows on 
 Sundays, or lecture to them on week-days, 
 I endeavor continually to bring before 
 them the example of One, who went about 
 doing good, simply because goodness was 
 good. And from early and later Christian 
 history, and from profane history as well, I 
 can show them instances of men, who 
 throughout laborious lives preferred virtue 
 to profit, goodness to glitter. To my col- 
 leagues is entrusted the intellectual edu- 
 cation of my charges. They would be 
 counteracting much of my teaching, if they 
 were continually to be placing before their 
 pupils sordid motives of gain, or even the 
 less ignoble but still unholy motives of am- 
 bition. I should prefer a boy to be led on 
 to work, merely because work was his duty ; 
 and I should wish a teacher to do his ut- 
 most to make that duty a pleasure. It is 
 the business of my colleagues to give a 
 general and broad intellectual training to 
 their pupils, that the latter may be fitted, 
 some for professional life hereafter, and all 
 for the position of gentlemen : should prizes 
 fall in their way, they will be welcome. 
 
320 SCHOLA IN NUBIBUS. 
 
 although they were never our special ends 
 in view. My duty is to prepare my boys, 
 by my poor teaching and my poorer example, 
 for the fulfilment in after life of simple so- 
 cial and Christian duties. There is only 
 one prize for which my teaching prepares 
 boys or men : it is a very high prize, and 
 very hard in the gaining. And whether or 
 no that prize is ever gained, I am unable to 
 tell. For I stand upon my little Pisgah, and 
 am forbidden to follow in haste. 1 can only 
 state this for my colleagues and myself, 
 that, while we should be glad enough to hear 
 of particular instances where brilliant suc- 
 cess at our Universities or in the busy world 
 were attained by our pupils, we should be 
 far more thankful to find that they were 
 generally esteemed in after life as intelli- 
 gent gentlemen and good Christians." 
 
 Towards the close of my visit, I was pres- 
 ent one afternoon in the private library of 
 the Principal, when a small posse of senior 
 pupils came to bid him farewell before 
 leaving for the University. After a long 
 and pleasant and familiar conversation, the 
 Principal rose, and, standing in front of the 
 
SCHOLA IN NUB IB US. 321 
 
 fireplace, addressed his small but attentive 
 audience to the following effect. As I 
 write from memory, I give the purport only 
 of his words. 
 
 " I am now addressing you. Boys, for the 
 last time ex catherdrd. Listen then to a few 
 words of advice, and give them hereafter 
 some little heed. On entering the Univer- 
 sity, do not follow the received dogma, that 
 a Freshman is traditionally bound to ex- 
 travagance or folly. Be in no hurry to form 
 acquaintances. Sympathetic friendships 
 will cluster round you in due time. Asso- 
 ciate, by preference, with those of your own 
 rank, or with those a little above it. Neither 
 seek nor avoid the company of the very 
 exalted; but never associate with men 
 beneath you in social position, however 
 wealthy, affable, or good tempered they 
 may be. Of course, if a man be possessed 
 of surpassing abilities or unusual force of 
 character, in his case social distinctions 
 are annihilated. 
 
 " Read with a view to Final Honors only, 
 without swerving aside to win special prizes 
 or scholarships. Should these latter fall 
 
322 SCHOLA IN NUBIBUS. 
 
 naturally in your way, you can try for them 
 without harm. In the perusal of classic 
 authors observe closely all mannerisms, and 
 imitate none ; though to do so would give 
 you extra marks in an Examination. In 
 translating an ancient writer never strain 
 an idiom of your own tongue for the purpose 
 of showing the accuracy of your scholarship. 
 The idea is incorrect that pure scholarship 
 of necessity entails a corruption of native 
 taste. The idea was at one time generally 
 entertained ; and has now, I regret to state, 
 many learned supporters, whose hybrid 
 English should be a warning to young 
 scholars. 
 
 " In your College lecture-room listen with 
 respectful attention to what is said ; but 
 abstain from taking notes. Half of what 
 you hear were better forgotten ; with much 
 of the remainder you will probably disagree : 
 what residue is worth remembering will be 
 remembered for its singularity. 
 
 "Your chronology is more favorable 
 than my own. There are three public 
 Professors now at Oxford, whose catholic 
 and unpedantic lectures are replete with 
 
SCHOLA IN NUBIBUS. 323 
 
 interest and instruction ; their united efforts 
 have thrown a new vitality into the old dry 
 Academic) teaching. Cambridge can boast 
 of no genial and wise philosopher that can 
 render tlie study of Greek a study of mor^ 
 than verbal subtlety, like the Friend of 
 youth at Balliol: no Cantab Latinist can 
 compete in combined learning and useful- 
 ness with Mr. Conington ; though a parallel 
 to Mr. Arnold in poetry and enthusiasm 
 may be found in a Cambridge Professor of 
 History. This superiorit}^ of Oxford in pro- 
 fessorial teaching wonld weigh more heavily 
 with me than even her present, but I trust 
 only temporary, superiority in boat-racing. 
 Had I ten sons, I should send them all to 
 Oxford, under present circumstances. At 
 Triidty, Cambridge, an advanced student 
 may now attend not without profit a classi- 
 cal lecture room. In my own day, at ,this 
 latter University, such a student might at- 
 tend for a year the classical lectures of a Col- 
 lege Tutor or an University Professor with- 
 out one sentence falling from the lips of 
 either that was worth picking up, except 
 for the purpose of throwing out of window. 
 
324 SCHOLA IN NUBIBUS. 
 
 " Use a Dictionary as seldom as possible, 
 a Grammar, never ; an annotated edition of 
 a classic only where an author does not ex- 
 plain himself by himself, or is not illustrated 
 by cotemporary writers. I would caution 
 you in particular against the study of 
 German writings on classical subjects. In 
 the notes of Porson and Elmsley you taste 
 the pure and delicate aroma of classical 
 learning : in the exhaustive Excursuses of 
 Hermann and Heyne you have the fibre 
 boiled down with the leaf: in modern Eng- 
 lish critics you have the over-boiled mix- 
 ture of the Germans re-boiled. The lon- 
 gevity of the patriarchal days is passed 
 for ever ; otherwise, a hoary youth might 
 amuse his fiftieth decennium with plodding 
 through the learned volumes that have very 
 nearly made Horace dull. 
 
 " Continue your reading of modern lan- 
 guages, as a wholesome alterative in the 
 midst of classical and scientific studies. Do 
 not avoid the society of ladies. To pass 
 an evening with a high-bred, accomplished, 
 and intellectual Lady is for mental improve- 
 ment equivalent to the perusal of two books 
 
SCHOLA IN NUBIBUS. 325 
 
 of the ^neid, or of one Greek Play. Travel 
 abroad when you have the opportunity: 
 obtain what introductions you can to foreign 
 men of letters ; seek admission to the stu- 
 dios of Artists, and the rooms of Musicians; 
 and perfect your accent of each tongue in 
 these best of all schools, not neglecting the 
 Caf^ and the Theatre. 
 
 " In dress follow fashion at a short dis- 
 tance, so as never to be quite in it, or quite 
 out of it. In everything avoid singularity. 
 Guard against prejudices or superstitions 
 of College and Ujiiversity. There is more 
 wisdom without the walls of either than 
 within them. Let there be nothing about 
 you to designate your School, College, Uni- 
 versity, nationality, or religious denomina- 
 tion. 
 
 " Never mention my name except in an- 
 swer to a question; and in your festive 
 meetings forget me altogether. An eulogy 
 spoken on such occasions is tedious to the 
 hearer, and no compliment to the subject. 
 
 " Be slow in forming your opinion of 
 others ; and slower in expressing it. Use a 
 superlative word as seldom as possible in 
 
326 S CEO LA IN NUBIBUS, 
 
 conversation. In speech or writing aim at 
 perspicuity rather than at wit. He who 
 speaks to be understood is thinking of his 
 hearer ; he who studies his e xpressions is 
 thinking of himself ; and a brilliant talker 
 is seldom a polite one. Never attempt an 
 epigram in conversation, until you have seen 
 more of men and manners. The epigram- 
 matic sharpness of a young man is but the 
 condensation of sciolism. Oracular brevity 
 is the prerogative of age and experience. 
 
 "Never canvass your own characters, even 
 in confidential converse with an intimate 
 friend. He who touches on a good quality 
 of his own is weakening what he touches. 
 But while self-praise enfeebles, self-dispar- 
 agement emasculates. Repentance of the 
 heart is silent, even in the recesses of the 
 closet: it is subtler than any gas or ether, 
 and is sure to escape through open lips, or 
 to evaporate in words. Besides, he who 
 bemoans a weakness to a neighbor is too 
 often preparing himself to give way to it, 
 and repenting by anticipation. 
 
 "If you are in any temporary distress, 
 pecuniary or otherwise, apply frankly to 
 
SCHOLA IN NUBIBUS, 327 
 
 your fathers or to myself. If in spiritual 
 trouble, I would gladly give you help, if 
 help were in my power to give ; but I would 
 counsel you to seek help from the Father 
 of us all, and from Him alone. 
 
 " Respect authority, but never fear it ; 
 and respect yourselves more than all author- 
 ity. Be chivalrous to all women of all ranks 
 for the sake of your mothers or their mem- 
 ories. Be religious in such a way that no 
 one may suspect you of being so, or take a 
 liberty with sacred subjects in your pres- 
 ence as though you were the opposite." 
 
 It was with most unaffected regret that I 
 bade good-bye at last to my friend, his 
 colleagues, and their admirable Principal. 
 I confess I do not even yet fully under- 
 stand the character of the latter. For, while 
 there are phases in it that seem half-apos- 
 tolic, there are other phases that bespeak 
 the man of the world. At my departure, 
 with a smile he presented me with a cigar- 
 case filled with choice cigars; which cir- 
 cumstance I considered, and consider still, 
 as remarkably eccentric on his part; for, 
 although I smoked occasionally of an even- 
 
328 SCHOLA IN NUBIBUS. 
 
 ing in his library, I know for certain that 
 he has not smoked a cigar for years. 
 
 And so, Reader, ended, as it began, my 
 pleasant visit to the Schola in Nuhihus ; 
 appropriately; in smoke. Which thing is 
 an allegory. 
 
UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Due two weeks after date. 
 
 H isaf ' 
 
 JUN 2 8 1983 
 
 30»n-7,'12 
 
YB 05498 
 
 / 
 
 ^C/cTDS. 
 
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