Los Angeles daily herald., 1873-11-09


regular college studies, or rather, per-
haps, to the realization of these by
vigorous pursuits of other studies,
while on the other hand those students,
the medalist, the validictorians, and
the indefatigable and preserving In
mastering the studies of the curricu-
lum when they lay down their Lexi-
con and their grammars to take up
the burden of life, but too often prove
to be intellectual dwarfs and mental
paupers. Their mental gymnastics
has trained them to kind OF intellect
ual agility in handling the symbols of
thought, and the verbal signs of ideas,
it has not given them the power or the
knowledge how to use the suppleness
| in the contest of nature or the struggle
for existence. How often have we
heard graduates lament the time
wasted upon the Greek and Latin Clas-
sizes, and that they could bury the
corpse or rather the feshless skeleton
of these dead languages in q grave
from whence there would be no resur-
rection. How many would gladlyex-
change the college debris, which they
have spent years in piling up, for
some knowledge of the truths of ply
steal science, that confOund them at
every turn.
But just here the advocates of the
traditional system may raise the cry
of utilitarianism. You, sir, would
subordinate all the culture, the refine
ment, the polish of an education to
vulgar utility; you would make the
almighty dollar the unit of measure
to ascertain the solid contents of a
mans mind, and would determine the
| specific gravity of mans knowledge
| by the bulk of his bank account.
l answer, Is there not more refine
ment, culture and polish in the prose
of Irving and the poetry of Whittier,
than in the bibidinous songs of HOr-
ace, or in the sneering sarcasms of
Juvenal? Is there not more of love,
hope, faith, charity, truth, virtue and
| honesty in the cOntempOraneOus situa-
tion of our day, than in all the Gre
clan and Roman literature of the
golden age, the silver age, the brazen
age, the iron age, and the dot-age (Or
whatever that age was called in which
they petered OUT?
Nature furnishes us with the only
perfect models. Wherein the spiritual
and intellectual exceptions OF the
ancients accorded with natures mod
els, they are true; wherein they de-
parted from them, they are false. We
read nature through lens of a magni-
| flying power two thousand times
| greater than theirs. Is not our vision
the clearest?
The book of nature was written ages
before the books of Homer and Virgil.
Why not rather go to the original,
than try to draw inspiration from their
imperfect translatiOns?
In reality, utility is the measure of
all values, whether in the intellectual
world or in the commercial. That
culture which will give the highest
moral and intellectual excellence with
the least waste of power, is the best.
One of the highest offices of education
is to economiZe and wisely expend
! mental power. The traditional sys-
tenn, by ignoring the useful facts and
expending upon inutilities, wastes
mental power. 1t first eXpends power
in acquiring the useless fact for sake
Of discipline, and then acquires the
useful fact for its value. 1t costs as
much power to learn the useless fact
as the useful one. Why not save half
this power, by making the useful fact
serve for both knowledge and disci-
pline? "Science, made the basis of
culture, will accomplish this result"
But of this, more anon.
But am l not forgetting the beauties
of the classics, and the human inter-
est that pertains to them? Whilst
| 1u xutt ftnp
external to man-with the Micro
cosm, or the great world. This an
cient literature treats of the Micro
cosm, or the little world constituted
by him. To the Greek or Roman
youth of two thousand years ago there
were no beauties in his literature; but
to the college student of to-day, dig
ging Greek roots, or wearily grubbing
among gerundives and periphrastic
conjugatiOns; its beauties are but dim
ly, if ever seen.
The great aim of the college instruc-
tors in these languages is to secure a
literal translation, and preserve the
idiOm intact, and not to trace their
relation to our language. At least it
was so in my college days, and with
the exception of very few modern
institutions, such as Cornell Univer-
sity and the University of California,
the old methods of instruction still
prevail.
Our Greek professor was man who
had poetry i'm his soul, but it was so
very deep down that it seldom cropped
out. He was stickler for literal
translatiOns. Let some tiedgling poet,
filled with divine afflatus drawn from
HOmer's immortal verse, attempt to
soar to empyrean heights in translat-
ing some beautiful passage, and
straightway the wings OF his Pegasus
would be scOrched by the laundering
base of Professor E.: "Literal transla-
tions, sir, render that literally; stick
to the text"
Could the blind old bard of Scio
have been set down into our class
room some day, and heard us going for
the brave Ulysses, the grass widow
Penelope, the rascalish suitors, the old
dog Tray argos in Creek, and all
that Jolly crowd told of in the Odys-
sey, with our bad English and worse
Greek, he would have prayed the i'm
mortal gods that he might be struck
deaf as well as blind. Our professor
may have been an exception i'm his
hobby for literal translation. Indeed,
he was an exceptional individual take
him all in all. There was college
tradition that he had been crossed in
love in early life, and had been labor
ing in fit of chronic crossness ever
since. He had no liberation for any
but the homliest, most broken and
fragmentary translations, providing
always that they were strictly literal.
| ITO ha Continual