The herald., 1897-09-05

a public speaker or diplomat. there are
many things not worth unraveling, be-
cause there are so many that even ma
tive does not understand without special
study Not one reader in thousand of
Shakespeare understands all the strange
words and illusions. I have vivid rec
objection of youth of 49, who understood
English about as we'll as any one of his
age, enjoying Shapespeare hugely with
out knowing or caring what "caviar"
meant, and supposng OF course that
general meant the general of an army.
There is enough big game in all literature
to hunt first. Bushwhack for the spar
rows later on If you must have sparrows.
Nine times out of ten the larger the game
the more easy it is to bag. 1t is the re-
verse with the small game, and for most
people life is too short to hunt it.
At the age of 26 found it important
to learn to speak German. I went at 1t
in the old style. even to committing to
memory all the irregular verbs, preposi-
tions. conjunctions and rules innumer-
able. OF course it worked, for it was
| business, and since leaving college had
acquired habits of study in the law that
made it much more easy than 1t would
| have been in college, had tried it there.
| One day took up Schlegel and Tieck's
remarkable translation of Shakespeare,
and, the weather being hot, I found 1t
more convenient to take the English
| Shakespeare than to ransack the big die
tionary and grammar as you must do in
| college, where you are taught that a
pony" is dreadful thing for mind,
memory and learning. So it is If your sole
object in using it is to keep from being
kicked out of college because all inter-
est is crushed out of you by the load Of
grammatical difficulties. You will learr
| little more than you will without 1t
| Nevertheless 1 soon found that I was
more interested when studying with this
help Of the translation than was before
and that what 1 had been learning before
was nothing to what I was doing in this
way. Before knew 1t I was dreaming
in German. With the English translation
I went carefully through the entire
thirty-six plays twice, something prob
ably that no other person born In thi:
country ever did. But it paid dpzer
times over. leaving the old method cleal
out of sight.
A little later tried Spanish on mucl
that of driving ahead without transla
ton or anything else, guessing at th
meaning and not caring whether it wa
exactly right or not, using the gramma
or translation later on to solve such diff
; ficulties as met too often. I found thi
very satisfactory also. Then I trie,
French on the same plan without evel
referring to the grammar or translation
A little later I tried italian the sam
} way and found the plan better and fast
er than the old time college plan, thougl
not equal to the use of the translation
But in that way you rapidly acquire
. context that unravels the difficultie
faster and more agreeably than studyin
grammars and turning over dictionaries
At 40 happened to see copy Of Vir
7 gil side by side with Conington's trans
, lation, a very fine piece Of work in tn
, verse of Walter Scott's "Marmion."
never learned any Latin or Greek in col
: lege, or anything else for that matter
escaped expulsion only on my father
' account, and at 40 could hardly have toll
one language from the other with tn
book upside down. But sudden nc
, tion seized me to try the Shakespear
, experiment on Virgil. borrowed th