the
Persian Empire, but as to ancient literature, there was nothing for
him to know, whether in Persia, in Babylonia, in Assyria, or even in
Egypt, least of all in India. Literary fame existed for him in Greece
only, and in the Roman Empire, and his own ambition could therefore
hardly have extended beyond these limits. The exaggeration in the
panegyrics passed on everything Greek or Latin dates from the
classical scholars of the Middle Ages, who knew nothing that could be
compared to the classics, and who were loud in praising what they
possessed the monopoly of selling. Successive generations of scholars
followed suit, so that even in our time it seemed high treason to
compare Goethe with Horace, or Schiller with Sophocles. Of late,
however, the danger is rather that the reaction should go too far and
lead to a promiscuous depreciation even of such real giants as
Lucretius or Plato. The fact is that we have learnt from them and
imitated them, till in some cases the imitations have equalled or even
excelled the originals, while now the taste for classical correctness
has been wellnigh supplanted by an appetite for what is called
realistic, original, and extravagant.

With all that has been said or written against making classical
studies the most important element in a liberal education, or rather
against retaining them in their time-honoured position, nothing has as
yet been suggested to take their place. For after all, it is not
simply in order to learn two languages that we devote so large a share
of our time to the study of Greek and Latin; it is in order to learn
to understand the old world on which our modern world is founded; it
is in order to think the old thoughts, which are the feeders of our
own intellectual life, that we become in our youth the pupils of
Greeks and Romans. In order to know what we are, we have to learn how
we have come to be what we are. Our very languages form an unbroken
chain between us and Cicero and Aristotle, and in order to use many of
our words intelligently, we must know the soil from which they sprang,
and the atmosphere in which they grew up and developed.

I enjoyed my work at school very much, and I seem to have passed
rapidly from class to class. I frequently received prizes both in
money and in books, but I see a warning attached to some of them that
I ought not to be conceited, which probably meant no more than that I
should not show when I was pleased with my successes. At