which classical education was excluded, as radically erroneous, and completely absurd." That vast advantages, then, may be derived from classical learning, there can be no doubt. The advantages which are derived from classical learning, by the English manner of teaching, involve another, and a very different question; and we will venture to say, that there never was a more complete, instance in any country, of such extravagant and overacted attachment to any branch of knowledge, as that which obtains in this country, with regard to classical knowledge. A young Englishman goes to school at six or seven years old; and he remains in a course of education till twenty three or twenty four years of age. In all that time, his sole and exclusive occupation is learning Latin and Greek.* He has scarcely a notion that there is any other kind of excellence; and the great system of facts with which he is the most perfectly acquainted, are the intrigues of the heathen gods: with whom Pan slept; with whom Jupiter; whom Apollo ravished.— These facts, the English youth get by heart the moment they quit the nursery, and are most sedulously and industriously instructed in them, till the best and most active part of life is passed away. Now, this long career of classical learning, we may, if we please, denominate a foundation; but it is a foundation so far above ground, that there is absolutely no room to put any thing upon it. If you occupy a man with one thing, till he is twenty four years of age, you have exhausted all his leisure time. He is called into the world, and compelled to act; or is surrounded with pleasures, and thinks, and -reads no more. If have neglectyou ed to put other things in him, they will never get in afterwards; if you have fed him only with words, he will remain a narrow and limited being, to the end of his existence. and The bias given to men's minds is so strong, that it is no uncommon thing to meet with Englishmen, whom, but for their gray hairs, and wrinkles, we might easily mistake for school-boys. Their talk is of Latin verses; and it is quite clear, if men's ages are to be dated from the state of their mental progress, that such men are eighteen years of age, and not a day older. Their minds have been so completely possessed, by exaggerated notions of classical learning, that they have not been able, in the great school of the world, to form any other notion of real greatness. Attend, too, to the publick feelings; look to all the terms of applause. A learned man! a scholar! a man of erudition!Upon whom are these epithets of approbation bestowed? Are they given to men acquainted with the science of government? thoroughly masters of the geographical commercial relations of Europe? to men who know the properties of bodies, and their action upon each other? No: this is not learning; it is chymistry, or political economynot learning! The distinguishing, abstract term, the epithet of scholar, is reserved for him who writes on Eolick reduplication, and is familiar with Sylburgius, his method of arranging defectives in ∞ and μια The picture which a young Englishman, addicted to the pursuit of knowledge, draws, his beau ideal of human nature, his top, and consummation of man's powers, is a knowledge of the Greek language. His object is, not to reason, to imagine, or to invent; but to conjugate, decline and derive. The situations of imaginary glory which he draws for himself, are the detection of an anapæst in the wrong place, or the restoration of a dative case which Cranzius had passed over, * Unless he goes to the university at Cambridge; and then classicks occupy him entirely for about ten years; and divide him with mathematicks for four or five more. and the never dying Ernesti failed to observe. If a young classick, of this kind, were to meet the greatest chymist, or the greatest mechanician, or the most profound political economist of his time, in company with the greatest Greek scholar, would the slightest comparison between them ever come across his mind? would he ever dream that such men as Adam Smith and Lavoisier were equal in dignity of understanding to, or of the same utility as Bentley and Heyné? We are inclined to think, that the feeling excited would be a good deal like that which was expressed by Dr. George about the praises of the great king of Prussia, who entertained considerable doubts whether the king, with all his victories, knew how to conjugate a Greek verb in μ. Another misfortune of classical learning, as taught in England, is, that scholars have come, in process of time, and from the effects of association, to love the instrument better than the end; not the luxury which the difficulty encloses, but the difficulty; not the filbert, but the shell; not what may be read in Greek, but Greek itself. It is not so much the man who has mastered the wisdom of the ancients, that is valued, as he who displays his knowledge of the vehicle in which that wisdom is conveyed. The glory is to show; I am a scholar. The good sense and ingenuity I may gain by my acquaintance with ancient authors is matter of opinion; but if I bestow an immensity of pains upon a point of accent or quantity, this is something positive. I establish my pretensions to the name of scholar, and gain the credit of learning, while I sacrifice all its utility. Another evil in the present system of classical education, is the extraordinary perfection which is aimed at in teaching those languages; a needless perfection; an accuracy which is sought for in nothing else. There are few boys who remain to the age of eighteen or nineteen at a publick school, without making above ten thousand Latin verses; a greater number than is contained in the Eneid: and after he has made this quantity of verses in a dead language, unless the poet should happen to be a very weak man, indeed, he never makes another as long as he lives. It may be urged, and it is urged, that this is of use in teaching the delicacies of the language. No doubt it is of use for this purpose, if we put out of view the immense time and trouble sacri ficed in gaining these little delicacies. It would be of use that we should go on till fifty years of age making Latin verses, if the price of a whole life were not too much to pay for it. We effect our object; but we do it at the price of something greater than our object. And whence comes it, that the expenditure of life and labour is totally put out of the calculation, when Latin and Greek are to be attained? In every other occupation, the question is fairly sta ted between the attainment, and the time applied in the pursuit; but, ir classical learning, it seems to be sufficient if the least possible good is gained by the greatest possible exertion; if the end is any thing, and the means every thing. It is of some importance to speak and write French; and innumerable delicacies would be gained by writing ten thou sand French verses; but it makes no part of our education to write French poetry. It is of some importance that there should be good botanists; but no botanist can repeat, by heart, the names of all the plants in the known world; nor is any astronomer acquainted with the appellation and magnitude of every star in the map of the heavens. The only department of human knowledge in which there can be no excess, no arithmetick, no balance of profit and loss, is classical learning. The prodigious honour in which Latin verses are held at publick schools, is surely the most absurd of all absurd distinctions. You rest all reputation upon doing that which is a natural gift, and which no labour can attain. If a lad won't learn the words of a language, his degradation in the school is a very natural punishment for his disobedience, or his indolence; but it would be as reasonable to expect, that all boys should be witty, or beautiful, as that they should be poets. In either case, it would be to make an accidental, unattainable, and not a very important gift of nature, the only, or the principal, test of merit. This is the reason why boys, who make a very considerable figure at school, so very often make no figure in the world; and why other lads, who are passed over without notice, turn out to be valuable, important men. The test established in the world, is widely different from that established in a place which is presumed to be a preparation for the world; and the head of a publick school, who is a perfect miracle to his contemporaries, finds himself shrink into absolute insignificance, because he has nothing else to command respect or regard, but a talent for fugitive poetry in a dead language. The present state of classical education cultivates the imagination a great deal too much, and other habits of mind a great deal too little; and trains up many young men in a style of elegant imbecility, utterly unworthy of the talents with which nature has endowed them. It may be said, there are profound investigations, and subjects quite powerful enough for any understanding, to be met with in classical literature. So there are; but no man likes to add the difficulties of a language to the difficulties of a subject; and to study metaphysicks, morals, and politicks in Greek, when the Greek alone is study enough without them. In all foreign languages, the most popular works are works of imagination. Even in the French language, which we know so well, for one serious work which has any currency in this coun try, we have twenty which are mere works of imagination. This is still more true in classical literature; because what their poets and orators have left us is of infinitely greater value than the remains of their philosophy; for, as society advances, men think more accurately and deeply, and imagine more tamely. Works of reasoning advance, and works of fancy decay. So that the matter of fact is, that a classical scholar of twenty-three or twenty-four years of age, is a man principally conversant with works of imagination. His feelings are quick, his fancy lively, and his taste good. Talents for speculation and original inquiry he has none; nor has he formed the invaluable habit of pushing things up to their first principles, or of collecting dry and unamusing facts as the materials of reasoning. All the solid and masculine parts of his understanding are left wholly without cultivation. He hates the pain of thinking, and suspects every man whose boldness and originality call upon him to defend his opinions and prove his assertions. A very curious argument is sometimes employed in justification of the learned minutia to which all young men are doomed, whatever be their propensities in future life. What are you to do with a young man up to the age of seventeen? Just as if there was such a want of difficulties to overcome, and of important tastes to inspire, that, from the mere necessity of doing something, and the impossibility of doing any thing else, you were driven to the expedient of metre and poetry; as if a young man, within that period, might not acquire the modern languages, modern history, experimental philosophy, geography, chronology, and a considerable share of mathematicks; as if the memory of things was not more agreeable, and more profitable, than the memory of words. The great objection is, that we are not making the most of human life, when we constitute such an extensive, and such minute classical erudition, an indispensable article in education. Up to a certain point we would educate every young man in Latin and Greek; but to a point far short of that to which this species of education is now carried. Afterwards, we would grant to classical erudition as high honours as to every other department of knowledge, but not higher. We would place it upon a footing with many other objects of study; but allow to it no superiority. Good scholars would be as certainly produced by these means, as good chymists, astronomers, and mathematicians are now produced, without any direct provision whatsoever for their production. Why are we to trust to the diversity of human tastes, and the varieties of human ambition, in every thing else, and distrust it in classicks alone? The passion for languages is just as strong as any other literary passion. There are very good Persian and Arabick scholars in this country. Large heaps of trash have been dug up from Sanscrit ruins. We have seen, in our own times, a clergyman of the university of Oxford, complimenting their majesties in Coptick and Syrophenician verses; and yet we doubt whether there will be a sufficient avidity, in literary men, to get at the beauties of the finest writers which the world has yet seen: and though the Bagvat Gheeta has (as can be proved) met with human beings to translate, and other human beings to read it, we think that, in order to secure an attention to Homer and Virgil, we must catch up every man, whether he is to be a clergyman or a duke, begin with him at six years of age, and never quit him till he is twenty; making him conjugate and decline for life and death; and so teaching him to estimate his progress in real wisdom, as he can scan the verses of the Greek tragedians. The English clergy, in whose hands education entirely rests, bring up the first young men of the country, as if they were all to keep grammar schools in little country towns; and a nobleman, upon whose knowledge and liberality the honour and welfare of his country may depend, is diligently worried, for half his life, with the small pedantry of longs and shorts. There is a timid and absurd apprehension, on the part of ecclesiastical tutors, of letting out the minds of youth upon difficult and important subjects. They fancy that mental exertion must end in religious scepticism; and, to preserve the principles of their pupils, they confine them to the safe and elegant imbecility of classical learning. A genuine Oxford tutor would shudder to hear his young men disputing upon moral and political truth, forming and pulling down theories, and indulging in all the boldness of youthful discussion. He would augur nothing from it, but impiety to God, and treason to kings And yet, who vilifies both more than the holy poltroon, who carefully averts from them the searching eye of reason, and who knows no better method of teaching the highest duties, than by extirpating the finest qualities and habits of the mind? If our religion is a fable, the sooner it is exploded the better. If our government is bad, it should be amended. But we have no doubt of the truth of the one, or of the excellence of the other; and are convinced that both will be placed on a firmer basis, in proportion as the minds of men are more trained to the investigation of truth. At present, we act with the minds of our young men, as the Dutch did with their exuberant spices. An infinite quantity of talent is annually destroyed in the universities of England, by the miserable jealousy and littleness of ecclesiastical instructers. It is in vain to say we have produced great men under this system. We have produced great men under all systems. Every Englishman must pass half his life in learning Latin and Greek; and classical learning is supposed to have produced the talents which it has not been able to extinguish. It is scarcely possible to prevent great men from rising up under any system of education, however bad. Teach men demonology or astrology, and you will still have a certain portion of original genius, in spite of these or any other branches of ignorance and folly. There is a delusive sort of splendour in a vast body of men pursuing one object, and thoroughly obtain ing it; and yet, though it is very splendid, it is far from being useful. Classical literature is the great object at Oxford. Many minds so employed have produced many works, and much fame in that department; but if all liberal arts and sciences useful to human life had been taught there; if some had dedicated themselves to chymistry, some to mathematicks, some to experimental philosophy; and if every attainment had been honoured in the mixt ratio of its difficulty and utility; the system of such a university would have been much more valuable, but the splendour of its name something less. When a university has been doing useless things for a long time, it appears at first degrading to them to be useful. A set of lectures upon political economy would be discouraged in Oxford, probably despised, probably not permitted. To discuss the enclosure of commons, and to dwell upon imports and exports; to come so near to common life, would seem to be undignified and contemptible. In the same manner, the Parr, or the Bentley of his day, would be scandalized in a university to be put on a level with the discoverer of a neutral salt; and yet, what other measure is there of dignity in intellectual labour, but usefulness? And what ought the term university to mean, but a place where every science is taught which is liberal, and at the same time useful to mankind? Nothing would so much tend to bring classical literature within proper bounds, as a steady and invariable appeal to utility in our appreciation of all hu man knowledge. The puffed up pedant would collapse into his proper size, and the maker of verses, and the rememberer of words, would soon assume that station' which is the lot of those who go up, unbidden, to the upper places of the feast. con We should be sorry, if what we have said should appear too temptuous towards classical learning, which we most sincerely hope will always be held in great honour in this country, though we certainly do not wish to it that exclusive honour which it at present enjoys. A great classical scholar is an ornament, and an important acquisition to his country; but, in a place of education, we would give to all knowledge an equal chance for distinction; and would trust to the varieties of human disposition, that every science worth cultivation would be cultivated. Looking always to real utility as our guide, we should see, with equal pleasure, a studious and inquisitive mind arranging the productions of nature, investigating the qualities of bodies, or mastering the difficulties of the learned languages. We should not care whether he were chymist, naturalist, or scholar; because we know it to be as necessary that matter should be studied, and subdued to the use of man, as that taste should be gratified, and imagination inflamed. In those who were destined for the church, we would undoubtedly encourage classical learning, more than in any other body of men; but We speak merely of reputation. Sad, indeed, is the fate of this university, if its object has been classical literature alone; and it has failed even in that. |