“Great Cæsar’s body dead and turned to clay
May stop a hole to keep the wind away.”
And great Cæsar’s mind has been turned to uses almost as paltry. He has in fact written for the schoolroom not a commentary on the Wars of Gaul—nothing of the kind—but simply a book of exercises in Latin construing; and an excellent book it would be if he had only graduated the difficulties better.
§ 16. IV. There is yet another weakness about the Renascence ideal—a weakness from which most ideals are free.
Most ideals have this merit at least, that he who makes even a feeble and abortive attempt to reach them is benefited in proportion to his advance, however small that advance may be. If he fails to seize the coat of gold, he carries away, as the proverb tells us, at least one of the sleeves; or, to use George Herbert’s metaphor—
“ ... Who aimeth at the sky,
Shoots higher far than he who means a tree.”
But the learned ideal has not even this advantage. The first stage, the study of the ancient languages, is so totally different from the study of the ancient literatures to which it is the preliminary, that the student who never goes beyond this first stage either gets no benefit at all, or a benefit which is not of the kind intended. Suppose I am within a walk, though a long one, of the British Museum, and hearing of some valuable books in the library, which I can see nowhere else, I set off to consult them. In this case it makes no difference to me how valuable the books are if I do not get as far as the Museum.[6] My friends may comfort me with the assurance that the walk must have done me good. Perhaps so; but I left home to get a knowledge of certain books, not to exercise my legs. Had exercise been my object I should probably have chosen another direction.
Now schoolmasters, since the Renascence, have been in the habit of leading all their pupils through the back slums of the Seven Dials and Soho in the direction of the British Museum, with the avowed purpose of taking them to the library, although they knew full well that not one pupil in ten, not one in fifty, would ever reach the door. To produce a few scholars able to appreciate the classics of Greece and Rome they have sacrificed everybody else; and according to their own showing they have condemned a large portion of the upper classes, nearly all the middle classes, and quite all the poorer classes to remain “uneducated.” And, according to the theory of the schoolroom, one-half of the human race—the women—have not been supposed to need education. For them “accomplishments” have been held sufficient.