'My astonishment interrupted my dream, and awoke me. Dreams are nothing, to be sure; but how could my mind run into such a fiction?'
'You are right in saying that dreams are not to guide our conduct: but may it not be, that some of your nocturnal suppositions come close upon the truth?'
'Oh no! I should as soon expect to catch Wolf tripping in Homer, as to find any such suppositions correct. I can easily account for my discouraging dream. I had been laboring the whole day upon a passage, of which the original was not indeed controverted, but the sense is given by two learned commentators in direct opposition to each other. One of them, after giving his rendering, says: 'Sensus cuique obvius est.' The other says of this interpretation: 'A genio linguæ Græcæ prorsus abhorret.' But this difference between scholars shows only how wide is the field for investigation.'
Let us now leave the philologist to his studies; to pore over difficulties which time has created, and scholar-like blunders magnified; to extort sense from passages which never contained it; to perplex himself with the attempt to form an opinion where the greatest differ, and where evidence is wanting to the human mind; to solve questions which are of no conceivable importance to human knowledge, and to labor life away upon that which can at best only serve as a monument of patient effort, like the achievement of the monk with his scissors or pen-knife, which represents only the expenditure of years. We would clearly recognise the value of the study of ancient languages in youth, when mind is in its forming state; when discipline is secured by close attention, and systematic action of the faculties by the study of system; but we deem it quite another thing to make the means the end; to pursue the lessons of boyhood, when the time of them is past, and all their benefits secured; to narrow the mind down to the perpetual investigation of minutiæ which have no bearing on human happiness, except as they may create a fictitious fame; to live among trifles, and for them.
Shall we be pronounced traitors to the cause of learning? Is it the object of learning to be learned? Is it not rather to make man a being of higher resources, and nobler action? We confess we are giving utterance to thoughts which have forced themselves upon us, when called to take a survey of the field of learning, to examine its divisions, to become acquainted with its laborers, and to labor ourselves upon its margin. If these thoughts should be derided as proceeding from an indolent or even an ignorant view of the case, we would reply, by asking two questions: First, Is there a limit to study, of the members pursuing it, and the extent of its pursuit? and, second, Where is that limit? Let it not be replied: 'We should fix no limit to the cultivation of the mind.' We are speaking of study, in its common acceptation, and in this acceptation we offer these questions. If this be a strange course of inquiry, is it an unreasonable one?
But let us not be too serious. The mistakes of men may sometimes be laughed at; and if any are found to spend their lives in seeking unprofitable knowledge—if any one delves all his days over learned trifles,
'And prizes Bentley's, Brunck's or Porson's note,
More than the verse on which the critic wrote,
This much at least we may presume to say,
The premium can't exceed the price they pay.'
Such men might certainly be worse employed, and if time is wasted, it is not mischievously abused.
A young friend came lately, in great dejection and discouragement, to ask some advice respecting the obstacles which he had encountered in reading the Iliad. 'I am now studying,' said he, 'the catalogue of the Grecian fleet; and I am exceedingly puzzled to find out the exact situation of all the places which Homer mentions, and to trace all the nations and tribes to which the Grecian army is referred. I have studied carefully all the notes of Heyne and Clarke, but these are not full enough.'
'And why do you wish to trace them?'