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Claffical Learning.

PART II.

CHA P. I.

The USEFULNESS of fuch INQUIRIES in general; with REMARKS on our modern COMMENTATORS

SCHOOL-EDUCATION.

and

HE ufefulness of antiques towards explaining the claffics appears from the

TH

reason of the thing. The works of the old artists and poets must naturally throw mutual light on each other. As they were both converfant in the fame fort of knowledge, and often employed on the very same subjects, they must of course be the best interpreters of one another.

The

The best comments therefore on the ancient poets, might be drawn from the works of the artists, their cotemporaries, whofe remains (fuch as ftatues, pictures, medals, gems, and relievos) often present to the eye, the very things which the poets have delivered down only in words ".

Inftead of a comment of this kind, which is fo much wanted, our only recourfe now is to our commentators, who by their explanatory notes, råther mislead and confound, than guide and inform the reader Þ.

It were to be wished that our commentators had followed the rules laid down by the promoter of the Dauphin-edition of claffics .

It was obferved

a Hence the Italians may be faid to enjoy a fort of contemporary comments on Virgil and Horace, in the nobler remains of sculpture and painting. As we are placed out of the reach of consulting these remains of antiquity so much and fo often as could be wished, the only way of supplying that defect to any degree among us, is by copies, prints, and drawings, which accordingly our author has done, in relation to the fubject of his work.

Agreeably to our author's obfervation, Mr. Sandby has, lately published elegant editions of Virgil, Horace, Terence, and juvenal, embellished with prints of fuch antiques as serve to illustrate and explain the paffages they refer to.

This edition was planned by the duke de Montaufier, encouraged by Monfieur Colbert, and carried on by the bifhop of Avranches, who chose the commentators who were

to

obferved by him, that the difficulties which occur in reading the claffics arife either from not knowing in what fenfe fuch a word was formerly ufed, or else from ignorauce of fome cuftom, thing, or opinion, familiarly known at the time. Hence these two great rules were recommended to the commentators, 1. That they fhould determine the meaning of the word in question, by confulting how it is used in other places by the fame author, or by any other of the fame country, and (as near as may be) of the fame times. 2. That they should, as briefly as is consistent with clearness, fubjoin the custom, thing, or opinion alluded to.

Inftead of following thefe two fenfible and eafy rules, the ufual aim of the commentators is at present to show their own learning, rather than to clear up a difficult paffage. There can be but one meaning wanting, and they are fo bountiful as to give half a dozen, or else they play at cross purposes with you.

to be employed, and who complained of not being able to find out a fufficient number equal to the work. See the bifhop's Comment de rebus fuis, and his Huetiana, c. xxxvii.

P. 93.

d For example, What colour did the Romans mean by glaucus? Says the commentator, glaucus fignifies blue, brown, green, red, and iron-grey.

• How far was Alba from Rome? Alba (fays the commentator) is the place where Æneas faw the white fow with

her

The abfurdities of the commentators will ferve to support a paradox of our author, who says, "That his greateft difficulty in understanding "the claffics now, arifes from his having ftudied "them too much at school." He used to be perpetually confulting his notes, and could have given three or four meanings for the moft obfcure paffages in Virgil, Horace, or Juvenal. This way of studying, by drawing off the eye (almot at every line) from the proper object to the fide lights, often makes the intention of the author to be forgot, and the connexion of his thoughts to be loft. At beft, you know perhaps what the commentator fays what Virgil fays for himfelf. way of studying the claffics had ferved to blind our author, he shows by the following fact. When Pope published his imitations of Horace, our author immediately faw a chain of thoughts in the Epiftles and Satires, which he had never obferved before in the originals. He was furprized with the new lights and beauties that ftruck him all at once. Comparing Pope with Horace, he found that they were much the fame, as to the true fpirit, the connexions, and their way of

for Virgil, but not

How far this early

her thirty pigs: a flitch of bacon of this very fow was kept in the chief temple, even to the time of Auguftus, as Dionyfius Halicarnaffeus informs us. Such inftances as thefe are without number.

thinking

thinking. He then began to reflect, how he came not to fee that in Horace which he now faw fo plainly in Pope. The only way he could account for it was, that he had at first been used to study the originals by piece-meal; that he had been drawn off every inftant from what Horace said, to what he did not fay: that this false impreffion of Horace's thoughts in his youth, had given him a wrong idea of his manner of thinking, and prevented him from feeing those pieces in a right light, till the entire pictures of his thoughts were by Pope placed before his eyes, who was himself the better enabled, perhaps, to conceive Horace fo clearly, by his not having taken his first impreffions of him in the manner we ufually do at schools.

Here our author adds what he has long fufpected, that the method of education, followed for fo many ages in our schools, is chiefly founded on a mistake. In the fchool-education among the Romans of old, were taught only two languages; their mother-tongue for converfatior, reading, and feaking in public; and the Greck, the language of their neighbours, who had long been in poffeffion of the arts and fciences. In teaching

By what is faid here and there in the Roman writers about their school-education, it appears, that in the infancy

of