If a few fanatics are to go on lauding to the skies the exclusive and
transcendent greatness of the classical writers, we shall probably be
tempted to scrutinize their merits more severely than is usual. Many
things could be said against their sufficiency as instructors in matters
of thought; and many more against the low and barbarous tone of their
_morale_--the inhumanity and brutality of both their principles and
their practice. All this might no doubt be very easily overdone, and
would certainly be so, if undertaken in the style of Professor Price's
panegyric.
The professor's third branch of the argument comes to the real point;
namely, what is there in Greek and Latin that there is not in the modern
tongues? For one thing, says the professor, they are dead; which of
course we allow. Then, being dead, they must be learnt by book and by
rule; they cannot be learnt by ear. Here, however, Professor Blackie
would dissent, and would say that the great improvement of teaching, on
which the salvation of classical study now hangs, is to make it a
teaching by the ear. But, says Professor Price: "A Greek or Latin
sentence is a nut with a strong shell concealing the kernel--a puzzle,
demanding reflection, adaptation of means to end, and labour for its
solution, and the educational value resides in the shell and in the
puzzle".
Pages:
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175