As this strain of remark is not new, there is nothing new to be
said in answer to it. Such puzzling efforts are certainly not the rule
in learning Latin and Greek. Moreover, the very same terms would
describe what may happen equally often in reading difficult authors in
French, German, or Italian. Would not the pupil find puzzles and
difficulties in Dante, or in Goethe? And are there not many puzzling
exercises in deciphering English authors? Besides, what is the great
objection to science, but that it is too puzzling for minds that are
quite competent for the puzzles of Greek and Latin? Once more, the
_teaching_ of any language must be very imperfect, if it brings about
habitually such situations of difficulty as are here described.
[ARGUMENTS FOR CLASSICS.]
The professor relapses into a cooler and correcter strain when he
remarks that the pupil's mind is necessarily more delayed over the
expression of a thought in a foreign language (whether dead or alive
matters not), and therefore remembers the meaning better. Here, however,
the desiderated reform of teaching might come into play. Granted that
the boy left to himself would go more rapidly through Burke than through
Thucydides, might not his pace be retarded by a well-directed
cross-examination; with this advantage, that the length of attention
might be graduated according to the importance of the subject, and not
according to the accidental difficulty of the language?
The professor boldly grapples with the alleged waste of time in
classics, and urges that "the gain may be measured by the time
expended," which is very like begging the question.
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