time of the Tudors, when court ladies of a
morning, by way of amusement, read Plato's Dialogues in the original. If
literary edification is the object intended in the study of those
languages, that end is more easily and more effectually accomplished by
a thorough acquaintance with English literature, than by the very
imperfect knowledge which college exercises give of the classics.
Tugging at the Chained Prometheus, with the aid of grammar and lexicon,
may be good intellectual discipline, but how many of the subjects of
that discipline ever divine the secret of AEschylus's wonderful creation,
or receive any other impression from it than the feeling perhaps that
the worthy Titan's sense of constraint could hardly have been more
galling than their own.

Give them Shakespeare's Tempest to read, and with no other pony than
their own good will, though they may not penetrate the deeper meaning of
that composition, they will gain more ideas, more nourishment from it,
than they will from compulsory study of the whole trio of Greek
tragedians. And if this be their first introduction to the great
magician, they will say, with Miranda,

"O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
... O brave new world,
That has such people in it!"

The literary argument for enforced study of Greek and Latin in our day
has not much weight. What I call the glossological argument has more.
Every well-educated person should have a thorough understanding of his
own language, and no one can thoroughly understand the English without
some knowledge of languages which touch it so nearly as the Latin and
the Greek. Some knowledge of those languages should constitute, I think,
a condition of matriculation. But the further prosecution of them should
not be obligatory on the student once matriculated, though every
encouragement be given and every facility afforded to those whose genius
leans in that direction. The College should make ample provision for the
study of ancient languages, and also for the study of the mathematics,
but should not enforce those studies on minds that have no vocation for
such pursuits. There is now and then a born philologer, one who studies
language for its own sake,--studies it perhaps in the spirit of "the
scholar who regretted that he had not concentrated his life on the
dative case." There are also exceptional natures that delight in
mathematics, minds whose young affections run to angles