And paint that sweetly vacant scene
When, all beneath the poplar bough,
My spirits light, my soul serene,
I breathed in verse one cordial vow
That nothing should my soul inspire
But friendship warm and love entire.
I do not mean to inflict upon my readers the tiresome record of my failure to pass Moderations, or the description of how I did eventually get through by a process which came very near to learning by heart English translations of Xenophon's Memorabilia, a portion of Livy's History, and Horace's Epistles. To do so would be both long and tedious. The circumstances have, however, a certain interest considered from one point of view, and that is the use and misuse of the classics for educational purposes.
CHAPTER XI
A CLASSICAL EDUCATION
Though I made such a hash of classical studies and was apparently so impermeable to Latin and Greek literature, I am not one of those people who are prepared to damn the Greek and Latin classics, either with faint praise or with a strenuous invective. I am not prepared to say with Cobden that a single copy of The Times is worth the whole of Thucydides, or to ask, as did the late Mr. Carnegie, what use Homer was either in regard to wisdom or human progress. I believe that in all the things of the soul and the mind the stimulus of the Greek spirit is of the utmost value. The Romans, no doubt, excelled the Greeks on the practical side of law—though not in the pure jurisprudential spirit. Again, the Hebrews did incomparable service to mankind in their handling of such vital matters as the family, the place of women and children in the State, and the position of the slave. On the moral issues, in fact, the Jewish prophet is far the safer teacher:
As men divinely taught, and better teaching
The solid rules of Civil Government
In their majestic, unaffected style
Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.
In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt,
What makes a Nation happy, and keeps it so,
What ruins Kingdoms, and lays Cities flat.
In what concerns the intellectual rather than the moral side of life the Greek is, of course, supreme. It is hardly too much to say that intellectual progress has only pursued a steady and consistent course when men's minds have been in touch with the Greek. The sense of beauty in all the arts, intellectual and figurative, was the prerogative of the Hellenic communities, or, rather, of Athens, for only in Athens was perfection in the arts achieved. The Greek was the best, as he was the first, director and teacher. It is true that the artists of Florence, Umbria, Lombardy, and Venice equalled the Greeks in some of the arts and excelled them absolutely in the new art of painting. In Greece, painting, though it had a beauty of its own, was hardly more than exquisitely-coloured sculpture in the lowest conceivable relief. In painting the Italians were guided by a wholly different series of visual conceptions. Their understanding and use of atmosphere and mass was something of which the Greeks had formed no conception. Apart, however, from painting, the Greeks were the first to light and feed the sacred flame of Beauty.
There is a charming story of the way in which Renan emphasised this fact. Some thirty-five years ago—I well remember the period—it was the fashion, just as, in a sense, it is the fashion now, to say that the Egyptians were the real masters of sculpture, wall-painting, and metal work, that the Greeks learnt from them, and in the fine arts originated nothing. At that time it happened that the Keeper of the Egyptian antiquities at the Louvre was running this theory for all it was worth. One day he showed Renan and a party of distinguished visitors a special exhibition illustrating his contention. Notable examples of Egyptian art were produced, as proving how perfectly and finally the Egyptians treated the human figure in the round, in bas-relief, in the bronze statue, in the wooden statue, and even in earthenware. And to all the treasures displayed was added the chorus of the Professor: "And so, you see, the Greeks invented nothing." Renan assented. "Nothing. Nothing," he echoed, but added as an afterthought: "Seulement le Beau."
I have sometimes thought that these words, "Seulement le Beau," might do as the commemorative epitaph of the Greek race. But of course the Greek was a great deal more than the exponent of the beautiful. I only tell this story to make it quite clear how deep is my reverence and admiration for the Greeks, and how strongly I feel that their philosophers and their poets are lively oracles from which the human spirit may still draw perennial draughts of inspiration.
But if this is so, it will be asked, "How comes it that, with these views, you proclaim yourself an opponent to compulsory Greek and compulsory Latin in schools and universities?" My answer is, it is just because I am such an intense believer in the quickening power of the Greek mind and in the immense advantages secured by getting into touch with the Greek spirit that I desire the abolition of compulsory Greek. No civilised man should ever be out of touch with it at first hand. But this means, translated into action, no compulsory Greek grammar, no compulsory drudgery in acquiring the things which do not really belong to the Greeks but to the vapid pedants of vanished ages. I passionately desire that as many people as possible should enjoy Hellenic culture. I want to clear away the smoky mist of grammatical ineptitude which keeps men from the great books and great minds of antiquity and prevents the soul of the Greek and the soul of the Englishman—natural allies, for some strange reason—from flowing together.