Classics must, then, be prepared. Dr. Engbers avers that we can safely use what we have, no matter by whom they have been prepared; and in this we must willingly yield to his judgment, because it would be temerity in us, who are not a professor and have so far led a life of quite the reverse of classical application, to make an issue with him. But we must be allowed to differ from him in that “we have not the means to provide for all,
and our educators are unable to satisfy the wants for the whole college course.”
Let us bear in mind that we limit our disquisition to the Latin classics for the present. What we say about them will be equally applicable to the Greek, as well as to the authors of all nations.
It seems to us abundantly easy to prepare books for this department. Let a certain number of colleges, schools, and seminaries join together, and through their faculties make choice of a competent scholar. Set him apart for one year for the purpose of preparing a neat, cheap school edition of the Latin classics for our Catholic schools. He must limit himself to the Ætas aurea, giving some of those authors in their entirety, such as Nepos; some with a little pruning, such as the Æneid; others, again, summo libandi calamo; while of Cicero and Livy we would advise only selections for a beginning. Of Cicero, e.g., give us a few letters Ad Familiares, his De Oratore, six Orations, Somnium Scipionis, De Officiis, and De Senectute. From what we are going to say it will be evident that no more will be necessary at first. Teach the above well, et satis superque satis!
Exclude from your classes the cramming system. Prof. Cram is the bane, the evil genius of our classical halls. Supporters of the “forty lines a day” rule, listen! It was our good fortune to learn the classics in a Jesuit college. We were in rhetoric. Our professor gave Monday and Wednesday afternoons to Virgil, Tuesday to Homer, and Friday to Horace. Of Virgil we read book vi., and of Horace the third book of Odes—that is, what we did read of them. The professor was a perfect scholar, an orator,
a poet, as inflammable as petroleum, and as sensitive as the “touch-me-not” plant, with a mind the quickest we ever knew, and a heart most affectionate, besides being truly a man of God. Well, the session had entered its fourth month, and we had gone through about three hundred verses of Virgil, while from Horace we were just learning not magna modis tenuare parvis. One afternoon the rector suddenly put in an appearance with some of the patrassi. As they had taken their seats, the former asked what portions of the Latin classics we had been reading. “Cicero and Livy of the prose, Horace and Virgil of the poets.” “But what part?” quoth he. “Any part,” replied the master. The rector looked puzzled; the boys—well, we do not know, for we had no looking-glass, nor did we look at one another—but perfectly astounded at the coolness of the teacher. One thing, however, all who have survived will remember: the strange feeling that seized us; for “Was he going to make a fool of every one of his boys?” We were eleven in the class. It was a small college, in a provincial town, that has given some very great men to the world, but of which Lord Byron did not sing enthusiastically. There we were: on the pillory, in the stocks, billeted for better for worse, for “what not?” The rector, with ill-disguised impatience, called for one of the boys, and, opening Virgil at random, chanced on the very death of Turnus. The poor boy, pale and trembling, began to read, and on he went, while the relentless questioner seemed carried away by the beauty of the passage, unconscious of the torture to which he had doomed the unlucky pupil. But, no; we take the word back: because
as he was advancing he seemed to become more self-possessed, and so much so that at the end he described the last victim of the Lavinian struggle with uncommon pathos, until, with a hoarse sound of his voice, he launched the soul of the upstart sub umbras, just as the teacher would himself have read to us a parallel passage. It was evident that, although he had never before read those lines, he had caught their spirit, and the recitation ended perfectly. Then, as he was requested to render the whole passage into vernacular, with a fluent diction, choice words, and not once faltering, he acquitted himself with universal applause. One or two more boys were called up, and the visitors took their leave much pleased.
Then it was our turn to ask the master why he had done that. “Well, boys,” said he, “I expected it all along. You see it now. How many times you have wondered at my keeping you so long on perhaps only three or four lines a whole afternoon! Now you understand. We have not read Virgil, but we have studied Latin poetry, and you have learned it. In future we shall skim the poets here and there, as I may choose, and at the final exhibition you shall be ready to read to the auditorium any part of the Greek and Latin authors the audience may think fit to call for.” And so we did, and did it well.
Once, being on a school committee, we asked the master of the high-school—and a learned man he was—why he hurried through so many lines. “I cannot help it,” said he; “they must have read so many lines [sic] when they present themselves for examination at Harvard”! Nor shall we omit here to note that young men have failed in
their examinations to enter Harvard because, in sooth, they could not get through the recitation. Prof. Agassiz himself told us that one of his favorite students (whom we knew well) failed because he could not repeat verbatim a certain portion of a treatise on some point of natural philosophy. However, the good professor insisted on the youth being examined as to the sense, and not, parrot-like, repeating sentence after sentence, and the candidate carried the palm.