In the first written work it may be found that the spelling is all wrong. Great controversies rage on this subject. But it seems right to regard bad spelling as a disease which needs careful individual diagnosis in the earliest stages, when it can be cured so as to give no more trouble. Most often it springs from some fault in the method by which the child has learnt to read. Some people are allowed to grow up incapable of spelling because they make out the printed word by some process of guesswork and never fix the letters upon their memory. Good or bad spelling very rapidly becomes automatic.
Much the same is true of grammar. As I have said before, accurate use of language can be attained by purely empirical and dogmatic methods. Grammar is no essential preliminary to good English, but nevertheless there may be a good case for teaching it later on to those who can afford the time. It is well that English boys and girls should know something of the history and structure of their language as well as their constitution. It may be necessary for the linguist to understand the common grammatical technique of all languages. Moreover, teachers naturally seek to limit the domain of mere dogma and to give explanations where they can. Thus a child can easily be cured of saying "Between you and I" merely through the teacher's command, "Say me." He can be cured of saying "Like I did" in the same way. He will of course be on surer ground if he understands the reason. Only let it be English grammar and not Latin grammar that is used. The reason why the child should say "I am taller than he" is, if a reason must be given, that than is historically identical with then, not that "quam takes the same case after it as before it."
If we could only keep our eyes steadily fixed on the goal and discard formalism, tradition, and antiquated examinations, there is in the work of the best infants' and elementary schools a broad enough base for us to build a sound structure of English up to the University and beyond. Perhaps some day a progressive University may try the experiment of an English Arts Course in which the first part would consist solely of Advanced Reading and Writing, and the second part of options between English Philosophy, English Philology, English Poetics, or English Criticism. It need not be any lower in standard than an Oxford Greats course.
We could not well spare the scholars. On the contrary, those who believe with me that English contains all things necessary to culture will be most anxious to enlist for its service the finest scholarship of the day. Some will think the fare provided in such a course as I have outlined too rich in sugar or fat and wanting in the tougher constituents which produce bone and muscle. It is essential to require more and more precision and accuracy as the child passes through the phases of adolescence. This was the real virtue of the old classical training, and it is too often wanting on Modern Sides. We must contemplate something very like the best of classical teaching applied to English Classics for big boys and girls.
I write as a Pharisee of the Pharisees, brought up at the feet of Gamaliel. A man like Robert Whitelaw loved the literature of Greece and Rome with such devotion that its very forms were sacred to him. A false quantity or a false concord was to him a personal affront: it caused him physical pain. Accents and particles mattered to him and so they mattered to us. There was a right and a wrong. We did not understand why, but we knew and felt his scorn of anything careless or superficial. He read Sophocles aloud with an intensity that at first puzzled and then infected us. Occasionally, but all too rarely, it was his task to do the same with Chaucer or Browning. Why not?
But at this point I labour with a sense of unreality. Is it possible to capture for our language a tithe of that old classical fervour? We have buried our Grammarian upon his peak, fronting the sunrise. He settled hoti's business. I have heard him lecture for an hour upon the future sense of the optative with an enthusiasm that was drawn from some pure source in the depths. Doubtless he survives in disciples. Is it the mere mystery and power of the Word that inspires them? I will not believe that it is any inherent virtue possessed by Propertius but denied to Shelley that inspires the classical scholar. But where are our inspired teachers of English? I have an impression of critical, quizzical gentlemen, deeply learned in Elizabethan drama or Saxon dialect, but all the same terribly mild. I cannot picture one of their disciples seriously moved by a misplaced "and which" or an unrelated participle in English. Something is missing.
There are thousands of genuine lovers of English literature scattered up and down the country, people who feel the thrill of delight in verbal beauty quite as keenly as any classical scholar. But they want leaders and a voice. We suffer our fools too gladly in English studies. Any lunatic is allowed to criticise, traduce, misinterpret Dryden, Carlyle, Addison, even Shakespeare, as if they were our private playthings. They are not. They are worthy of their pedestals of worship just as much as Homer and Aristotle.
The issue of the War has established more firmly than ever the predominance of the English language in the world. If our schools would rise to their opportunity and raise English into a culture worthy of its qualities there seems no reason why it should not become the universal medium of civilisation for the world. The richness and variety of its literature and the simplicity and flexibility of its structure render it, as a language, amply sufficient. Whether this is visionary or not, it is no longer safe for those who cherish the humanities in education to rely upon the old impregnable position of Latin and Greek. The world has received one of those secular shocks in which tradition crumbles to dust.