But in spite of this, and much else that can in justice be said against Rome and Latin, we cannot afford to throw the language and literature of the Romans entirely overboard. Their history was too remarkable for that; besides, many scribbled in Latin down through the middle ages, and the Latin language has played so conspicuous a part in English literature, and in the sciences, that no educated man can very well do without it. What we respectfully object to is making it the foundation of all education, this bringing the scholar up, so to speak, on Latin language, history and literature; this nourishing and moulding the tender heart and mind on Roman thought,—thus making the man, intellectually and morally, a slave bound in Roman chains, while we free-born Goths, the descendants of Odin and Thor, ought to begin our education and receive our first impressions from our own ancestors. The tree should draw its nourishment from its own roots; and we Americans are the youngest and most vigorous branch of that glorious Gothic tree, the beautiful and noble Ygdrasil in the Norse cosmogony, whose three grand roots strike down among the Anglo-Saxons, Scandinavians, and Germans. In order fully to comprehend the man, we must study the life of the child; and in order to comprehend ourselves as a people, we must study our own ancient history and literature and make ourselves thoroughly acquainted with the imaginative and prophetic childhood of the Teutonic race. We must give far more attention than we do, first, to English and Anglo-Saxon, and we must, as we have heard Dr. S. H. Carpenter, of the University of Wisconsin most truthfully remark, begin with the most modern English, and then follow it step by step, century by century, back to the most ancient Anglo-Saxon. A living language can be learned ten times as fast as a dead one, and we would apply Dr. Carpenter’s[[5]] principle still further. We would make one of the living Romantic languages (French, Italian, or Spanish,) a key to the Latin; and above all, we would make modern Greek a preparation for old classic Greek. It cannot be controverted that children learn to read and write a language much sooner and easier if they first learn to speak it, even though the book-speech may differ considerably from the dialect which the child learned from his mother; ample evidence of which fact may be found in the different counties of England and Scotland and throughout the European countries.
In the next place, that is, next after English and Anglo-Saxon, we must study German, Mæso-Gothic and the Scandinavian languages, and especially Icelandic, which is the only living key to the history of the middle ages, and to the Old Norse literature. It is the only language now in use in an almost unchanged form, through a knowledge of which we can read the literature of the middle ages. We must by no means forget that we have Teutonic antiquities to which we stand in an entirely different and far closer relation than we do to Greece or Rome. And the Norsemen have an old literature, which the scholar must of necessity be familiar with in order to comprehend the history of the middle ages.
When we have thus done justice to our own Teutonic race we may turn our attention to the ancient peoples around the Mediterranean Sea, the most important of which in literary and historical respects are the Hebrews, Greeks and Romans. The antiquities of these peoples will always form important departments in our colleges and universities, and it is our duty to study them; but they should not, as they still to a great extent do, constitute the all-absorbing subject of our attention, the summa summarum, the foundation and superstructure of our education and culture.
It has been argued by some that the Latin is more terse than English; but did the reader ever reflect that it takes about sixty syllables in Latin to express all that we can say in English with forty syllables? The large number of inflectional endings have also been lauded as a point of superior excellence in the Latin; but as a language grows and makes progress, it gradually emancipates itself from the thraldom of inflection and contents itself with the abstract, spiritual chain that links the words together into sentences; and did the reader ever run across this significant truth, expressed by George P. Marsh, who says that in Latin you have to be able to analyse and parse a sentence before you can comprehend it, while in English you must comprehend the sentence before you can analyse or parse? Forward has been and will forever be the watchword of languages. They must either progress or die.
When the question is asked, whether Hebrew, Greek or Latin should be preferred by the student, we answer that the choice is not a difficult one to make, and our opinion has in fact already been given. Latin is the language of a race of robbers; most of it is nothing but imitation, and besides it is a mere corpse, while Greek is the only one of the three that is still living, and modern Greek—for that is what we must begin with—is the key to the old Greek literature with its rich, beautiful and original store of mythology, poetry, history, oratory, and philosophy. As Icelandic in the extreme north of Europe is the living key to the middle ages and to the celebrated Old Norse Eddas and Sagas, so modern Greek in the far south is the living language, that introduces us to the spirit of Homer, Herodotus, Demosthenes, and Plato; and thus the norns or fates, who preside over the destinies of men and nations, have in a most wonderful manner knit, or rather woven, us together with the Greeks, and the more we investigate the development and progress of nations and civilization, the more vividly the truth will flash upon our minds, that the Greek and the Icelandic are two silver-haired veterans, who hold in their hands two golden keys,—the one to unlock the treasures of ancient times, the other those of the middle ages; the one the treasures of the south and the other those of the north of Europe. But we must free ourselves from the bondage of Rome!
When we get away from Rome, where slaves were employed as teachers, and pay more attention to the antiquities of Greece, where it was the highest honor that the greatest, noblest and most eloquent men could attain to, to be listened to by youths eager to learn and to be taught, then the present slavery both of the teacher and of the student will cease, but scarcely before then.
The case of Shakespeare is an eminent example to us of what the Goth is able to accomplish, when he breaks the Roman chains. His works are not an imitation of Seneca or Æschylus, nor are they the fruit of a careful study of the Ars Poetica or Gradus ad Parnassum. No, he knew but little Latin and less Greek, but what made him the undisputed Hercules in English literature was the heroic spirit of Gothdom which flowed in his veins, and which drove him away from the Latin school before his emotional nature had been flogged and tortured out of him. Shakespeare, and not Roman literature and scholasticism, is the lever that has raised English literature and given it the first rank among all the Teutons. It is not, we repeat, the deluge of Latin words that flood it, that has given this preëminence to English, but it is the genuine Gothic strength that everywhere has tried to break down the Roman walls. The slaves of Latin will find it difficult enough to explain how Shakespeare, who was not for an age, but for all time,—he whose Latin was small and whose Greek was less,—how he, the star of poets, the sweet swan of Avon, was made as well as born. Ay, he was made. He was also one of those who, to cast a living line had to sweat, and strike the second heat upon the Muses’ anvil. It is true that Shakespeare did not arrive at a full appreciation of the Gothic spirit, for he did not have an opportunity to acquaint himself thoroughly with the Gothic myths; but then they ever haunted him like the ghost of Hamlet, accusing their murderer, without finding any avenger. We therefore count Shakespeare on our side of this great question.
May the time speedily come, nay, the time must come, when Greek and Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse and Gothic and German will shake hands over the bloody chasm of Roman vandalism!
We fancy we see more than one who reads this chapter, and does not remember that he is a son of Thor, stretch out his hand for Mjolner, that huge and mighty hammer of Thor, to swing it at us for what we have said and have not said about Rome, Roman mythology, and the Latin language and literature; but, alas! for him, and fortunately for us, the Roman school-master took Thor’s hammer away from him and whipped the strength wherewith to wield it out of him. We only repeat that we know nothing of Roman mythology, but the Greek and Norse are twin sisters, and with the assistance of the Mosaic-Christian religion they have a grand mission in the Gothic-Greek development of the world.