quantities, and the accents; not in learning to write and speak the languages, but in getting by rote a few scraps of poetry, to be again forgotten, and in fabricating nonsense, or sense verses, it is indifferent which. In ten years of this labour, privation, punishment, slavery, and expense, what is gained even of this useless trash? Nothing. Let the man who can now write and speak Latin, let him who can read the poets, philosophers, and historians with the facility and pleasure that he reads Hume and, Milton, or even Boileau and Tasso, answer whether he acquired these powers at school, or whether he is not self-educated. If all this had been learned, it would be useless; but even this useless matter is not acquired. What we say of Latin we may doubly say of Greek. If Latin is not learned at school, Greek is not acquired even at college. If it were a general or a common acquisition, a Greek scholar would not be a phenomenon greater than Grimaldi and Matthews united. A Greek scholar is now a Porson, or an Elmsley, or a Gaisford; a thing to be made into a professor and stared at. The question is answered. And even when he has arrived at the rank of canonization, what are the acquirements, and are even these useful, are they even ornamental? He is not desired or designed to be imbued with the learning of those heathens. No: that is left to the Lipsiuses, the Clarkes, and the Cudworths. His apotheosis is, to talk of accents which he knows not the purpose of, and never will discover; to squabble about digammas; to discover metres in Eschylus, of which Eschylus never dreamed; to read Homer in a measure which Homer would not recognise to be his own poetry, perhaps not even his own language.

But we must not now enter on the particulars. Yet we may ask for what reason any language is learned, not for what reason it is taught; for, if we mistake not, these are very distinct things. A language, Latin or Greek, may serve the purpose of occupying time, teaching boys to sit still for a given number of hours, causing them to read, or pretend to read, in a book, to love reading, or to hate it. As the phrase is, it keeps them out of mischief; and, what is not less convenient, it relieves the parents, for ten years, from any further trouble about their offspring than that of paying their bills. These are, unquestionably, valuable results; though Castle Baynard or Richmond answer these purposes as well as Eton and Harrow, and at somewhat less cost.

But these are indirect objects. The direct purpose of learning a language is, to use it as an engine of communication between man and man; between living men, in ordinary cases; in that of Latin and Greek, between a living man and a dead one. The scholar, therefore, has acquired the art of speaking, of writing, and of reading Latin; or, at least, of doing one, or two, of these things. And he that would be a scholar, labours to attain one, or more, or all of these objects; and if he does not acquire them after ten years of school and three of college, ask the deans of West

minster and Christ church the reasons why. If they will not answer, we will. These are not the purposes of learning the extinct languages, and they are not attained. Or there is no desire to teach these languages, or else there is no desire to learn them, or lastly, he who has chanced to learn something, hastens to forget it, because he finds it useless.

And this is the fruit which a great nation draws from ten or fifteen years of the hard labour of its youth; this is the result of its hopes, its anxiety, and its expense, and its wisdom.

If the dead languages were now the modes of communication among living men, there would be a purpose in speaking and writing them. It is an act of wisdom, therefore, not to acquire this art. But it is not one to spend fifteen years in not acquiring it. But we will acquire them, that we may read the precious poetry, the precious philosophy, the precious history, and the precious oratory, of Greece and Rome. That is a purpose, and it is a good one: the only question is, whether it be effected; we may even say, whether it be wished; whether there does exist a practical effort to attain this ostensible end.

He will be a hardy man who will assert, or a clever one who will prove, that, up to the period of leaving school, we may almost add college also, one boy of a thousand does read, or wishes to read, any classical author for the sake of his matter, be that what it may. He will be not less so, who will show that, excepting a very few professed scholars, and a very small portion of the clergy, with perhaps one statesman, and half a lawyer, any man reads with pleasure and facility, reads for the purpose of reading, for any purpose for which history or philosophy are read, or poetry and mere literature cultivated, any Greek author, and we scarcely fear to add, any Latin one. If he do, it is because he has, from communication with the world into which he has been let loose, from the activity and power of modern literature, been turned back to a pursuit which he has now, and almost for the first time, laboured at with sincerity and ambition. The whole world of Britain is taught the classical extinct languages, and is taught little else. But it does not learn them, it does not desire to learn them, it hastens to forget them as far as it has attained them; or else it is compelled to do so, because, finding them purposeless, and finding that it has necessary acquisitions to make, and necessary duties to perform, it must abandon them. If this be true, (and who will disprove it?) what shall we say of the state that maintains, and the people that follow a system of this nature, and which cannot follow it without the sacrifice of that which would be as useful, as conducive to general utility, as this is useless. We learn all other learning that we may remember it, that we may apply it to use, to some one of the numerous duties of man. We learn classical learning to forget it; and the only sensible part of the process is the last; because it is of no use.

But there is an object remaining, which we have designedly VOL. VII. No. 40.-Museum. 2 U

reserved to the last, because we find it more difficult to write about words than things, not easy to find definite answers for indefinite assertions, to oppose rigid logic to vague declamations. Here it is, that we and our principles are most easily opposed, and least easily defended; because it is on such misty subjects as this, that words can be multiplied into an interminable semblance of argument. Who shall hold the "eel of" literature "by the tail," or by the head either?

We must cultivate the classical languages, because, thus only can we acquire taste, literature, poetry, oratory, grammar, etymology, and heaven knows what more. All these things, be it remarked, not as they relate to the two languages in question, but as they relate to our own. In this process also, be it again remarked, we are neither compelled nor desired to cultivate our own grammar, or our own language, with all these and whatever other categories are involved in it. In fact, our own language and its authors are not only neglected, but excluded, by the system; and were it not for our mothers and nurses, it is tolerably certain that we should possess as little language as an Ourang Outang, since we should understand neither English, Latin, nor Greek. This is an ingenious method of teaching and learning the English tongue, it must be granted. It cannot fail, however, to be the best of all possible systems, or how should we have possessed Shakspeare? How also should we have possessed Mrs. Macaulay, and Mrs. Montague, Mrs. Moore, and Mrs. Barbauld, and whatever else of female power, better and worse, has been displayed in the various walks of British literature. We have heard of a royal road to geometry; but the royal road to English is formed upon a somewhat different principle, since it goes precisely in that line which does not lead to the mark in view. This is the man who learns how to build a house that he may be able to cut a coat.

To examine details, here also, would lead us further than we can afford to anticipate arguments and objections, would require a treatise. Yet, in brief. We are told that the Latin grammar teaches the English grammar, that it teaches the principles of grammar, and so on. Those who say this, because they have heard it from their ushers, are little likely ever to know any grammar or any language. Those who do say it, knowing both grammars, know that they are saying what is not true. The Latin grammar is not the English grammar; and though a knowledge of it should casually aid in the understanding of the latter, we are acting in this case as if we should travel from London to Cairo for the purpose of attaining Naples. Why do we not learn the English grammar, if it be the English grammar that we desire to understand? Nor does the Latin grammar teach the general principles of grammar; and if it did, who is there that learns this abstruse branch of metaphysics at any school or college; or how many grammarians, in the true sense of that term, has the world produced? The practical truth respecting the relation of school,

school-boy, and grammar is, that grammar is not learned, and never can be learned, at a school, and that the attempt to teach it, the mode of teaching it, and the pretence of teaching a language through it, are insults to the common sense of mankind, as well as to the experience of ages.

We need not concern ourselves respecting the indirect utility of the Greek grammar; since it is very certain that not one schoolboy in ten thousand acquires any other knowledge of it than what a parrot might. But we are informed, that the Greek tongue is indispensable, because its compounds form our technical terms, and that moreover, because, in short, the English is derived from the Latin or the Greek, or both, we cannot hope to understand it without a previous knowledge of those two "learned" languages. That is somewhat hard upon fair authors, even upon the mothers of the Udolphos and the Rack-rents; it is not very polite towards the fair in general; it treats the great race of undertakers, stockbrokers, booksellers, and fishmongers, and a long "hoc genus omne," with somewhat aristocratical contempt; and, really, is not very civilly predicated of ensigns, major-generals, sea-captains, and attorneys.

This is the question of etymology, more soberly viewed. We hope the dean of Westminster will please to tell us how much he teaches, or knows, of Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, Celtic, French, Italian, Danish, Low Dutch, besides Bengalee, German, and Ashantee; and that he will also inform us how many English words come straightway to us from Greek or Latin. If the etymologist is to master English etymology, he must seek other Almas than those of the monopoly. And what if he knew it all? Doubtless, as to the Greek, it will teach him the meanings of Diatalaiporou, Diorama, Therapolegia, or Apolepsia Alexicacon, if he can find them out; or instruct him how to christen Hunt's blacking, or Rowland's Macassar oil, in heathen.

We approach with trembling humility the regions of poetry and oratory; for, really, on this ground, we cannot precisely side with Mr. Cobbett. Nevertheless, since this is a question of temper on one side, we may as well make it one also; and, therefore, whether we believe it or not, we will say, Cobbett like, that the oratory of Greece and Rome is one thing, and that of Mr. Cobbett himself, Jack Fuller, Sir Joseph Yorke, Mr. Hunt, and the monthly preacher at Whitehall, is another; just as Homer, Pindar, Southey, and Stephen Duck have all written their several poetries. We must therefore either deny that the poetry and oratory of Britain can be formed by those of Greece and Rome, or what is more easily proved, assert that they are not actually so formed; that many of our highest orators and poets have derived nothing from classical learning and models, and that there is no want, in the British language, or in those of modern Europe, of models to follow, or of materials to form a taste. We will further say, (and here Mr. Cobbett would back us, if he knew how) that, so far has

the poetry of Greece and Rome been a blessing and a benefit to modern poets, it has been to them as a stumbling block and as trammels; enchaining free and bold spirits, and producing an endless herd of insipid imitators, who have nauseated the world, for six centuries, with Jupiters, Venuses, and Daphnes. If we had space, we would argue this question more seriously. There are who can do it for themselves, if they will but dare; and as to the rest, they will still cant, whatever we may say: since there is nothing so easy as to sing the old song, and no opinions so little costly as those which do not cost the trouble of forming. We might run through a long parallel list of ancient and modern poets and poetry, and we might, thus, even shake the faith of those who sing the parrot note; but we too have been TTT-ed into a sort of stupid, inexplicable, respect for antiquity, and shall follow Lord Burleigh's sage example.

Demosthenes and Cicero: these are impressive terms. Isocrates; we will say nothing of him. But there were great men in those days: and we hope there have been great men in the present degenerate ones. There were great orators when there were great objects, great minds, and great labour, with, what is not unimportant, hearers. Are we to believe that, if the names of Cicero and Demosthenes had never been heard, there would not be, or might not have been, or will not be, great orators now? Of the two great ends of oratory, to convince the reason and to influence the feelings, what are the debts due to former orators? It is from his own soul that man speaks oratory, as from his own soul he writes poetry. He to whom nature has given voice, fluency, and grace, and to whom practice has given language-his own language, not that of Greece and Rome-he to whom nature has granted the logical faculty, the mind that grasps rapidly and certainly the most remote as the nearest relations, which analyses, arranges, and condenses, and he to whom the study, not of two dead languages, but of all the infinite knowledge of modern days, has furnished materials, that man is the orator. Be his subject what it may, he will not quail before Demosthenes; and to him it is indifferent whether Cicero ever lived. That he may profit by the study of good models, we are not so absurd as to deny. But till the language of modern oratory is that of Greece or Rome; till the matter of modern oratory is the matter that engaged Rome and Athens; till the audiences of Britain are Athenian and Roman audiences, he will profit but scantily by Greek and Roman models. And we will ask any modern orator, how far he has profited by those models, any audience capable of judgment, what are the debts of modern oratory to the ancient masters in that art.

Here, too, we might examine details which we must not. might review, not only our orators, but the subjects of our oratory. We might speak of Chatham, or we might speak of Castlereagh, of the House of Lords, or the hustings at Covent-Garden, of orator Henley or orator Phillips, of Erskine, or Brougham, or of Mr.