New-York tribune., 1901-07-06
LATIN AND GREEK.
ON TEACHING THEM, AND ON A TRANS
LATION FROM EsCHYLUs.

THE F EFAeEN Af6NSART 2E EA5S EH6 ANP By
Bennett a B., and George, p Bristol. "A; NJ
Teachers Series, octave PIP. xvi. $S6, Long
mans. Green & Co.
THE oREsTEIA OF EscHYhUs y VT TRANSLATED rs
eKFepW eo of Trinity C9ege Cambridge Pro
fesseT Of GlaSsGal Literature in Kings GGliege 81 e
Longmans Gre9n Co.
Its character as one Of a series produced by
two trained pedagogues for the professional edi
! fcation of those in the same walk of life
counts for and excuses a certain pedagogical
mannersm in the work of Professors Bennett
and Bristol What chiefly makes such man
nerism regrettable is the probability that those
not of the teaching brotherhood will thereby be
deferred from profting by the genuine and most
salutary enlightenment that may be derived
from its pages. Parents. millionaires seeking an
educational scope for their benefcence and all
other persons interested in the choice of subject
matters for school instruction may well take to
heart the reasons given by these authors for
teaching boys Latin and Greek. Any sagacious
man, even if he boasts that never having
learned Latin or Greek. he could never see any
use in learning them. might find his attention
and interest engaged by this, for instance
Reason and experience show that Latin in sec
Cndary education is capable of producing in
/
tically indispensable to the educated man. Ex-
perence has not shown that any other subject
/ (excepting possibly Creek is capable of pro-
ducing equally good results" Possibly the
demonstration that Latin and Greek do pro-
duce these results might have been worked out
more in detail by example, or by something In
/ the way of psychological analysis of the mental
! gymnastics entailed in their study-such
! demonstration. for instance as Cardinal New
/
! education. This is most nearly approached in
/ the careful and logical argument against the
/ claims Of the absorptive method of learning the
ancient languages. child of six living in
/ France learns French.
For non-professonal persons some Of the
most interesting reading 10 be found in the book
1 is in the chapter on the pronunciation of Greek
The treatment of that knotty question. the
orthoepical value of accents, is bold and in
4 genious The question itself for long re-
! garded by scholars as thing which had best be
/ let alone altogether. If the phonograph had
! listed in the days when Demosthenes and
Eschnes clashed the Pnyx might have
/ known exactly how accent affected the sound
of the syllable where 1t belonged: failing the
phonograph and any continuous tradition the
case seemed hopeless. and twenty years ago
! Greek accents were of no use except to expose
| a boys otherwise blameless composition TO un-
seemed certain in this matter that the
Greek accents did not indicate stress upon their
syllables. Later attempt became general
to practise in schools the variation Of vocal
pitch supposed TO be intended by these problem
atical marks, the result being that nowadays
! large number of American schoolboys, shirking
the risk OF making themselves ridiculous by an
apparent affectation Of singsong, substitute a
heartbreaking exhibition of false quantities.
|
hints here given to the rendering OF acutes
ard circumfexes And, indeed, the book is all
through, thoroughly practical guide for the
particular class whom it is designed TO benefit.
The 'Agamemnon' of 41schylus is notorously
difficult in the original; in Mr.. Brownngs trans
lation it is wellnigh impossible" This was
! one reviewers verdict in the days when Brown
! ing's obscurty most disturbed the critics For
| example of Professor Wars success with
the same tragedy consider the following bit
| taken from famous chorus:
But a strange misfare and a ruefuI end she
made Of her bridal: for the shadow of Erinnys
amated her in doleful drear. and Zeus bade their
wives to trysting Of weeping at her bed.
Professor War; has the advantage Of Brown
ing in that his drift be caught in most
passages; for the rest. the English reader for
whose good this thoroughly annotated trans
! lation' is made will need thorough English
education in much more than the conventional
sense Of that phrase, to catch much beyond the
| drift The prose sample here given, 1t is only
just to say, is of unusually recondite wording
and the verse, thanks to a well developed sense
Of poetry in the translator is helped to clarity
Of aesthetic if not strictly logical, expression by
its FORM as 1t should be. One can read the Eng
! lish version of the blank verse soliloauy of
| Clytemnestra's ghost, in "Eumenides" with a
very satisfactory feeling of the severely tragic
grandeur and horror Of that scene and hardly a
thought of the almost grotesque verbal archaisms
scattered through it,
But mocking treatment of it as one more
| imperfectly successful attempt to combine the
! intelligible English expression of 42schvlus' s
! thought with fairly parallel dignity and grace
/ of language would not be just to this volume of
THE Athenian Drama" series This is hook
which ought not to be read without its preface
I in which the reason for the work itself is con-
! vlncingly given;
Considering the obvious advantages offered
| by the combination of translation with con1men
| tary. 1t is strange that the field of Greek and
Roman literature has been far neglected in
this respect that the classcs-the basis of liter
| ary education in schools and colleees-ar re
| STILL so to speak, sealed books for all but SIN
| dents OF Greek and Latin. The difficulty
| seems to he met most simpIy and diractIv rot
| only for the English reader" but for the more
| or less instructed student by thoroughly ammo
tated translations, giving TO the latter the means
| OF widening the area Of his early reading q nd
| following 1t up in after life so as to make the
| ancient literature permanent possession
The value Of the book therefore is opIv +o ha
appreciated by taking the text with the annota
tions, including the two strkngIv luminous ir
troductory essays. The first of the two will