Classical languages

“ What we are accustomed to call languages, the literary idioms of Greece, and Rome, and India, of Italy, France, and Spain, must be considered as artificial, rather than as natural forms of speech. The real and natural life of language is in its dialects, and in spite of the tyranny exercised by the classical or literary idioms, the day is still very far off which is to see the dialects, even of such classical languages as Italian and French, entirely eradicated. ”

“ Modern languages seem to attempt to win their way at once to the understanding without dwelling in the ear; while the classical languages of antiquity seek at the same time to produce a corresponding effect on the outward sense, and to assist the mind by previously filling the ear, as it were, with an imperfect consciousness of the meaning sought to be conveyed by the words. ”

“ Language is here treated simply as a means. The classical scholar uses Greek or Latin, the oriental scholar Hebrew or Sanskrit, [pg 033] or any other language, as a key to an understanding of the literary monuments which by-gone ages have bequeathed to us, as a spell to raise from the tomb of time the thoughts of great men in different ages and different countries, and as a means ultimately to trace the social, moral, intellectual, and religious progress of the human race. In the same manner, if we study living languages, it is not for their own sake that we acquire grammars and vocabularies. ”

“ It is this necessity of a complex action of the mind which is the principal merit of classical and literary study.
Some modern languages, as English and German, are rich in works which rival those of antiquity in force, clearness, and grace of expression, while imparting much more by the positive knowledge they contain. They might profitably replace the classics, but they would have to be taught by the French; and then, on the other hand, pupils would have small chance of being able ever to understand and read them like the English and Germans. ”

“ Exercises in modern languages should be vehicles of thought without the intervention of the national idiom, and they should be so familiar as to become, through reading and hearing, sources of natural instruction.
The complete knowledge of a language includes four distinct arts—reading, hearing, speaking, writing. In an ancient language we need only the first of these arts. Its study should have no aim but that of giving the pupils the ability to read the classical authors, and appreciate the charm of their compositions. ”

“ Such is the life of language in a state of nature; and in a similar manner, we have a right to conclude, languages grew up which we only know after the bit and bridle of literature were thrown over their necks. It need not be a written or classical literature to give an ascendency to one out of many dialects, and to impart to its peculiarities an undisputed legitimacy. ”

“ The very freedom with which the order of words can be varied in a Greek or Latin sentence—a freedom unparalleled in any modern language—increases the value of the exercise in analysis. And when the classical languages are rhetorically, though not quite accurately, described as "dead," that very epithet suggests one of their chief recommendations. In a modern language, living authority can decide questions of usage or idiom ”

“ There is everywhere evidence of a growing living interest in modern languages, and of an attempt to study them with the thoroughness that has heretofore been confined to the classical languages. At present, although we are comparatively in the dark as to our grammatical forms, we are gradually constructing a history ”

“ It is perfectly true that what we call the literary and classical language is never the really living language of a people, and that a foreigner may know Shakespeare, Milton, and Byron, and yet fail to understand, if not the debates in Parliament, at all events the wrangling of sellers and buyers in the markets of the city. Nevertheless, when we learn English, or German, or French, or any of the dead languages, such as Latin and Greek, we must depend on grammars, which grammars are founded on a few classical writers ”

“ Such things form the subject-matter of universal grammar; and the languages which teach it best are those which have~the most definite rules, and which provide distinct forms for the greatest number of distinctions in thought, so that if we fail to attend precisely and accurately to any of these, we cannot avoid committing a solecism in language. In these qualities the classical languages have an incomparable superiority over every modern language, and over all languages, dead or living, which have a literature worth being generally studied. ”

“ Modern languages, which were formerly treated like Cinderella in our schools and universities, begin to feel of age, and want to have a word to say, because they cannot put up with various arrangements which may have been more or less satisfactory for the classical languages, but do not suit modern languages at all. ”

“ One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name. ”

“ It is a great advantage, for linguistic purposes, which are far more practically important than may be generally believed, that the study of the classical languages still holds the foremost place in this country ”

“ But in these times, when there is such a passion to become familiar with many languages, there is a corresponding neglect of the vernacular, and no end of crude, incompetent writing is the result. We are told perpetually that perfection in English is to be achieved through familiarity with the ancient classical models; or, in other words, to get the completest command of our own speech, it is necessary first to know the Greek and Latin languages. ”

“ However great the natural capabilities of a language, it cannot become suited to the wants of a highly civilised people, except by the cultivation of those languages which already have a classical literature of their own. ”

“ Moreover, our area of comparison must be as wide as possible; where we have but two or three languages to compare, we are in danger of building up conclusions on insufficient evidence. The grammatical errors of the classical philologists of the 18th century were in great measure due to the fact that their area of comparison was confined to Latin and Greek. ”

“ My own opinion is, that, where it is practicable, grammar should be taught by means of the Latin accidence; and I will give you my reason. It may be very true that grammar may be learnt in English; in fact, the most illiterate man must know, practically at least, something of grammar, or he could not put his ideas together in sentences Still, the utmost which can he taught in this way is very much below the knowledge of language attained by those who learn the classical languages. In teaching grammar in English, there is this difficulty to begin with. ”

“ I may remind you that classical words and old flexions are for the very reason employed in modern European languages to give vent to æsthetic ideas in an effective manner. Some fine sentiments and associations may only be best expressed, if, as in English, classical forms are resorted to. ”

“ For this reason a certain amount of critical study of language is essential for every educated man, and such study is not likely to be gained except through the great ancient languages; the advocates of classical scholarship frequently say, can not be gained. ”

“ In like manner, I would abolish the language-examination in modern languages, and give 250 marks for the literature of each of the three modern languages—French, German, Italian. The history would be taken as modern history, with an adequate total value. ”

“ Let us give up the preposterous doctrine that Latin must be learned in order to learn French, and let us teach French in order to teach Latin. In so doing we do not sacrifice literature to mere business, for the modern languages have literatures as well as the ancient. There exists a French literature which comprises books of poetry, devotion, philosophy, science, history, politics—a literature not less but more extensive and various than Greek and Roman literatures themselves. ”

“ I want to know Greek and Latin and French and German and Italian and Spanish, and Old French and Russian and Chinese and Japanese, oh, and Provençal, and every blessed language that has or has had a literature. I can learn languages quite fast. ”

“ The assertion is often heard that the ancient languages supply a permanent standard by which to judge of the progress and the decay of modern languages; also that the ancient classics must be regarded as furnishing the models for purity and beauty in style. ”

“ In the next place, the Latin language (and still more the Greek) is superior in point of structure to our own. The clumsy contrivance of auxiliaries and particles, instead of inflection, takes away very much from the beauty of the English. In truth, the real beauty and force of language can scarcely be understood by one who is conversant only with modern languages. ”

“ It is in meditating on the thoughts of the great writers of antiquity, and in translating their masterpieces, that we discover their beauties, and are able to transfer them into our native language.
In living languages these four arts should be the object of study. To say that one class of languages is learned to be spoken, and the other class to be read, does not express the exact difference of aim in the two cases. The art of speaking is useless unless we understand what is said, and this talent of understanding is a hundred times more useful than that of speaking. ”

“ To get up endless rules and gigantic lists of exceptions by heart, to turn Latin and Sanscrit into English for the purpose of learning these languages, and to give little or no thought to the subject-matter or to the picture of human life presented, is surely not the system by which the classics can be rendered either attractive or instructive. ”

“ When our system of education was first established on the revival of literature, by means of the introduction of the languages of Greece and Rome, men's thoughts were wholly turned to books, and consequently to written language. ”

“ In the infancy of our tongue, when the learning of the past was locked up in Greek and Latin, and the key to these languages, as well as the care of education, was in the hands of ecclesiastics, the study of the ancient classics became in some sort a necessity, the teachers being unable or unwilling to move in any other direction, and the learners having no choice but to follow. ”

“ You must see things through their eyes and hear the far-off articulate voices of the ages from their tongues. Most of you must rest content with this; but he who seeks to be a teacher and guide of men in a particular branch of knowledge, the fountains of which are in the Latin and Greek tongues, cannot escape from the task of studying these languages—especially the former. ”

“ There were some who despaired of the French language altogether, who thought it naturally incapable of the fulness and elegance of Greek and Latin—cette élégance et copie qui est en la langue Greque et Romaine—that science could be adequately discussed, and poetry nobly written, only in the dead languages. ”

“ I will only say that I believe that it is precisely the change which the progress of modern philology is bringing about; that it is fitting modern languages, and preeminently our own, to become the instrument of a true mental discipline, so far as language-study can serve as such an instrument. ”

“ No variations in the philological barometer, no fluctuations in the Exchange of Language, will ever bring down the advantage of studying one, two, or even more foreign languages to so low a level as to expel such tongues as the Latin, the Greek, the French, or the German, one and all, from an English curriculum—and vice versâ, English from a foreign one. ”

“ When all has been said that logic or mental philosophy can say about the high value of comparative philology, general grammar, and the like, the lowest value of the least important language will still stand high, and pre-eminently high that of what may be called the noble Languages. ”

“ But a fatal objection to the hypothesis as explaining the universal and complete principle of the phenomenon of language in all its ramifications, is the fact that the noblest and most cultivated languages are found, upon investigation into their earliest state, to possess, even at this date, the most artificial form, and to be manifoldly rich, and at the same time highly regular and simple. ”

“ One other most important point, which we merely notice, is the propriety of providing the most thorough instruction in the modern languages, especially the French, which can more easily be done, as we suppose, in the schools of which we are speaking, that no time whatever, or at most but a moderate amount, is given to the ancient languages. ”

“ Great, indeed, was the genius of those ancient historians, magnificent were the two languages which they made their instruments—languages "very different in their capacity, but both of them superior in originality, beauty, and expressiveness to any which have fallen to the lot of modern nations. ”

“ That condition is, that those who acquire them should be able to use them; that is, should be able to take up a Latin or Greek book, and read as most of those who have learned French and German would be ashamed not to do with French and German books; should be able rapidly by the eye to drink in the sense without the laborious consultation of dictionaries, without having to consider their own language at all; should be able to think in the languages so far as to speak and write in them with tolerable facility, making the words and phrases immediate representatives of thought. ”