POSTSCRIPT, 1852.

On the Causes and Remedies of the present neglect of Latin Scholarship in England.

IN

N the first sentence of the preceding Preface, I have stated my belief that Latin Scholarship is not flourishing in England, and this statement was repeated in the preface to the Latin Grammar, which was published in January last. On each appearance of this assertion, I was obliged to defend it from direct attacks on the part of those who felt themselves aggrieved by it. My first assailant was the principal of an educational establishment connected with University College, London, who regarded himself as a champion of "crude-form" philology. My second opponent was the Master of an endowed Grammar School, who came forward as a vindicator of old-fashioned Latinity. But they both agreed in the personality of their opposition to a censure of English Scholarship, which they conceived to be in some measure directed against themselves. The former controversialist gave no indication of superior knowledge or ability, and as a clamosus mercium undique compilatarum venditator, his egotism and presumption would have been simply ridiculous, had not his disregard of those principles, which regulate the conduct of honourable men, suggested some considerations affecting himself of a graver and more painful nature. The second defender of English Latinity needs no testimony from me to his respectability and moral worth, and he is an excellent Greek scholar, if brilliant success at the University may be taken as a criterion; but his pamphlet was chiefly remarkable as showing how unconsciously our best men can

put forth and maintain obsolete and erroneous doctrines in Latin grammar and philology. Whatever other effect these discussions may have produced, they have at least failed to change my opinions respecting the Latin Scholarship of this country. But when I adhere to and repeat those opinions, I do not wish to inquire whether any other persons are disposed to contradict or censure me; I do not ask, with Macaulay's Horatius,

"What noble Lucumo comes next

To taste our Roman cheer?"

Personal considerations do not enter into a general criticism which includes a whole department of classical learning. Even if I could, without presumption, enumerate those whom I consider as exceptions to the laxity of our Latin Scholarship, I should be deterred by the fear of omitting many whose attainments are unknown to me; and I feel assured that, while there are always some who will defend the faults which they exemplify, all those, who are really good scholars, will readily admit the comparative neglect into which the study of the Latin language has fallen among us; and with regard to those who are less conscious of it, I shall hope to point out some of the causes and remedies of our deficiency in this respect, without provoking a contest, which, like those already referred to, might enable me to gain an easy triumph at the expense of some individual.

Latin Scholarship is in a low state among us, because we have abandoned the old inducements to this study, without taking up the new applications which give it an increased interest and value. For the fact, it is sufficient to mention that, although our public schools impart a facility in the composition of Latin verse, which is rarely attained on the continent, and though this is highly valuable as a practical habit of skill and accuracy, examiners

at the Universities and bishops at their ordinations have publicly complained that they very rarely meet with a young man who can write tolerably good Latin prose. And among our maturer scholars, while some cannot write a page without inaccuracy, there are certainly not many whose Latin style will bear a comparison with that of Ernesti, Ruhnken, Garatoni, F. A. Wolf, and Wyttenbach. Then again, although the present generation of our scholars can point to publications of the Greek authors and lexicographers, at least equal to the best specimens of the kind which have appeared on the continent, we have produced no edition of a Latin work, which can be mentioned in the same breath with Orelli's Horace, Lachmann's Lucretius, Ritschl's Plautus, and the Varro and Festus of C. O. Müller; still less can we claim to have done any thing for the classical study of the Roman law, which deserves to be placed beside the labours of Haubold, Dirksen, Hugo, and Savigny.

There can be no doubt that the proper remedy for this comparative neglect of Latin Scholarship, is to increase or revive the demand for a knowledge of Latin, and to point out to amateur or dilettanti students the real interest and practical value of this branch of classical learning. This will amount to a resumption on the one hand, of certain old-fashioned methods and usages" (above, p. ix.), and will involve, on the other hand, a proper cultivation of modern Latin philology in all its applications.

An increased or revived demand for Latin Scholarship will be promoted, if the Universities allow it to be seen that the rewards and honours, which they have to bestow, are at least as attainable by this means, as by an accurate and critical acquaintance with Attic Greek. At present it is well known, that, although the examinations at Oxford

and Cambridge presume an equal attention to Latin and Greek on the part of the candidates for classical honours, practically it is not expected or required that the former language should have been studied with the same minute and scrupulous regard to its texture and idioms. This is shown, in part, by the direct or presumed references to the works of those critics who have written on the Greek language, and by the absence of any similar appeal to the writings of the great Latin scholars. It is required, for example, that the competitor should be familiar with what Porson, Elmsley, and Hermann have written on the text of Euripides, but it is not implied that he must have studied the notes of Drakenborch on Livy, or the miscellaneous observations of Gronovius. During my long residence at one of the Universities, I knew more than one case in which a high place in the Tripos was perilled by an error in Greek syntax or metre, and I was informed of one instance in which the most distinguished classical honours were awarded to a youth, whose knowledge of Latin was so confused and uncertain that he had construed ventos as the passive participle of venio. When University students know that their examiners value and exact as scholarlike and critical an acquaintance with the best Latin, as with the best Greek authors, they will not fail to bring their industry and talents to bear on the neglected literature of Rome. It might be desirable that our Universities should require the use of the Latin language in all books of a strictly learned character, which are published at their expense. At any rate, great advantages would be gained if all theological works of a higher class were clothed in this classic garb. Religious newspapers and other periodicals conducted by unlearned and anonymous writers, who are only anxious to fan the flame of one-sided prejudice, would lose much of their fuel, if

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original and well-informed divines, who are anxious to elicit the truth, which lies mid-way between the opinions of extreme parties, were content to write ad clerum in the first instance. And I should rejoice, if among the contemplated reforms of our Universities, we could revive the discipline of our divinity schools, strenuously refusing the honours of the highest faculty to all who cannot maintain a disputation in precise and accurate Latinity1.

To increase a more general interest in the philological study of the Latin language, we must begin by engaging professed scholars in a proper regard for Roman literature. This will be best effected, if they can be induced to believe that there is still the same room for the display of their abilities and learning in the revision and illustration of the Latin authors, as in their favourite field of Greek criticism. Not to speak of Cicero, many of whose works expect a competent editor acquainted with the highest philology of the day, there is ample opportunity for criticism of the best kind in the proper interpretation of Plautus, Lucretius, Propertius, Virgil, Livy, and Tacitus. Then again we may hope that the general ethnographer and philologer will be more and more persuaded that ancient Italy furnishes the most difficult as well as the most important subject for his speculations. If the new combinations in this work are as valid and conclusive as I believe them to be, a true explanation of even the com

1 As undergraduates were expected to hold Latin disputations in the schools, the Universities must have assumed that they would come up perfectly able to carry on a conversation in Latin. The Grammar schools were instituted expressly for this purpose (see New Crat. § 83), and the old statutes of Bury School direct that "the scholars shall speak continually Latin as well without the school as within." The presumption that Latin will be sufficiently learned before the commencement of a college career is farther indicated by the fact, that neither of our great Universities has a Professor of Humanity or Latin.