Litchfield enquirer., 1879-02-13
" College Education. !"

our HrSC page IS one that Will be read with interest even by those of a very different way of thinking. The enthusiasm of the true scholar for the classics is one which we net only respect but with which we can to cer- tain extent sympathize. We we'll remember having been spirited up, some quarter of century since, by the contagious enthusiasm of Christopher North" to the reading of the entire Iliad. It was our last Greek; though, to this day, we regard Homer as the one an cient author from whom we derived direct culture. Had there been no literature more accessible, wider in range, more readily conver- tible to practical use, in our own language, we should have no doubt pursued our endeavors to become better acquainted with the dead lan- guages It was the determined search for culture, the means for which no modern tongue then supplied, which gave Greek and Latin the importance they justly occupied in the scholarship of the sixteenth and seven always prevails at great seats of learning, such as the English universities, has kept these lan- guages in position of supremacy which even the college professors of the last quarter of a century have begun dimly to perceive that they no longer deserve
 Before dealing with matters regarding which we really differ in opinion from our correspondent, let us clear away a single mis- conception that pervades all he has said re- garding our views of college education. We da Df fho irip in oaff If no practical utility by any means wasted time for the student "Gerund- grinding" does him some good. Four years of any sort of hard, persistent mental exercise will give him an increased power of mental acquisition, and an increased capacity fer mental effort, that is of great practical value. Chess would per- haps do this as we'll as the higher mathemat- ics Sanscrit, as Latin.
 So far we agree but when our cerrespon- dent speaks of the college reading of the clas- sics as ''familiarizing the mind at its most re- captive period with the grandest models of lit erary excellence the world has eyer seen," we dissent most emphatically. That reading is training not culture. The work is too slow, too laborious, for either appreciation or enjoy ment and, without appreciation or enjey- ment, where is the culture? It is our firm be- | lief, moreover, that the mind of the average co llege student, at the age of seventeen or eighteen, has not arrived at the receptive period' when the artistic excellence of the classic authors, would be appreciated even if he could then master the difficulties of the languages in which they are written. ''W $. C.'s,' commendation of Livy's Preface induc- ed us to bring down from our garret the old text book we have not looked into for over thirty years. With much difficulty (especIal- | ly with the ''quippe qui' of that astonishing | first sentence) we construed the unfamiliar text, no doubt far less accurately than when, at the first meeting of the raw Trinity class of 51, we read it for the first time Then, we saw nothing but its difficulties. Now, we dimly rec ognize an admirable piece of literary workman ship. We say confidently, and our experience is that of most college students with whom we have conversed on the subject, that the literary merit of the classical works we studied left no impression upon us. Once only during our | college course did we become sufficiently in guage to read it, except as a task We took up the Medea of Euripides, read it with some rapidity (not delaying to cipher out problematical choruses), and still retain the lingering impression of a grand work.
 | None of us, teo, could see any wit in the classics. A few sometimes thought they | could, but nobody believed chem. The DOT tions of Horace which purpert to be funny, and the Clouds of Aristophanes which unuues- tionably amused the old Atheniaps. werfs sol, Seql, it, when, after time, we were gwen a term or two in French? With but the most super ficial knowledge of the grammar and idioms of the language, we nevertheless really enjoy ed Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme. True, we had a professor who could turn Mollere's fun into English that was almost as witty. More than all however, French is living, cognate tongue, while Greek is certainly too distant in time and too difficult of construction for the ordinary college student to arrive at any real appreciation of it's more delicate uses So wonderful classical scholar as Macauav seems to have attained it only in has maturer years Writing from India of his renewed classical reading, he says:
 | Nothing has struck me so much in Plato's dialogues as the raillery. At college, Sonaeloao or other, did not understand or appreciate t. l often sink forward on my huge old "Mars- Illus Ficinus'' in a fit of laughter. I should say | 9l l,nf fl0~o of and at the same time so delicate. It is supe- ror to Voltaires; nay, to Pascars. Perhaps there are one or two passages in Cervantes and one or to in Fielding, that might give a modern reader notion of it.
 l Why, then, are our youth condemned to years of preparatory and collegiate labor at languages they never learn-a drudgery which men even of the literary genius of Thackeray remember only with disgust Simply because there is a college tradition that there is not the 'drlll" to be got out of the modern lan- guages that is to be derived from the study of Latin and Greek. In short we are asked to
 believe that the minds of our youth are better
 trained by an elaborate process which results
 in their not learning Latin and Greek than it | WOuiu uC HI lCoiiy 0CIHIdu anu French The reason why these latter lan- guages are not thought useful for mental
 "drilp' is not so obvious. We believe, how ever, that it arises from the fact that college bred men imagine they have learned a lan- guage When they can construe. it in the slow, clumsy way they construe Latin and Greek.
 What we should propose would be that young men aspiring to liberal education should first learn French and German-not any mere smattering-but thoroughly. Then
 those proposing classical culture might ap- proach their Latin and Greek at an advantage
 which they will serely need. The opposite
 practice-which gives the student the hard
 language first-is not only injudicious but in
 consistent with its own theory. Following the order of derivation, we should teach San- scrt first. then Greek, then Latin. Common sense long ago settled thisquestion, by sending