Frederick County, Aug. 31st, 1836.
THE LEARNED LANGUAGES.
The youthful votary of knowledge, naturally infirm of purpose, is ever prone to despond and falter in a pursuit the utility of which is not immediate and palpable; yet he listens with amiable credulity to the matured in judgment and the ripe in scholarship. It should therefore be the duty and pride of such to cheer onward the ingenuous, even in those studies whose inceptive difficulties alarm him. Hence we read with feelings of regret and surprise an article in the August number of the Messenger, from the pen of Mathew Carey, Esq., the inevitable tendency of which will be to discourage students of the Classics, and to diminish the estimation, already too low, in which they are held in the south. We should be deterred from entering the list against a name so imposing, and one which deserves so well of his adopted countrymen, if we did not reflect that the inherent strength and self-tenability of a good cause greatly outweigh the most splendid abilities in sustaining a bad one. Magna est veritas et prævalebit. So thus we hurl our white pebble from the river of Truth at the forehead of Goliah.
Before we rush in medias res, permit us to premise that, if we chose to decide this question with Mr. Carey by a preponderance of authorities, the rich libraries of our university would supply an array of illustrious names as long as that of John Lackland's barons. But reason and experience shall be our only authorities, than which there are none greater, not even Locke or Carey.
The universality of the study of the dead languages is objected to. “A young Englishman, unless he goes to the University of Cambridge, has scarcely a notion that there is any other kind of excellence.” But one would suppose that the practice of studying them by all enlightened nations, for so many centuries, ought to be conclusive evidence of their utility; because mankind are so much influenced by interest, that they are ever ready to abandon whatever does not promote it. Our opponents, however, tell us that they were engrafted into seminaries of learning in ages less enlightened than the present—that such is the force of prejudice and custom, they have been continued as a course of education despite their many disadvantages. Is this true? Have not mankind long since shaken off their idolatrous veneration for antiquity? The whole cumbrous and chaotic mass of feudal error has fallen before the full blaze of modern discoveries and improvements. But modern reformers and experimentalists, in removing the rubbish of ignorance, and the rust of antiquity from literary institutions, spared the languages in which Mæonides and Maro bequeathed to posterity models more potent for inspiring genius than all the waters of Castalia, in which Demosthenes and Cicero gave utterance to sentiments which, even at this distant day, have impelled many to deeds of noblest patriotism. Spared did we say? They have done more; they have recommended redoubled attention to them. It is a fact, that the learned languages are more extensively cultivated now than at any former period, and that too by utilitarian and practical Englishmen—by intellectual and acute Germans—by scientific Frenchmen—by economical, pence-counting Scotchmen, in the teeth of opponents, powerful, gifted, active. If they are worthy of so much attention in Europe, a fortiori, they are worthy of it here, for the obvious reason that, breathing as they do the spirit of liberty and republicanism, they furnish ideas more congenial and valuable to that form of government in which these principles are recognized, than to an oppressive one, where Brutus is stigmatized as a murderer, and the burning words of the two mighty scourges of tyranny regarded as dangerous food for popular lips. In a free country eloquence is the lever that heaves the body politic. In the Classics the purest models are found. Hence we infer that they are the appropriate study of American youth, and that it would be our highest glory to outstrip Europe in a knowledge of them, as we have already done in the science of government.
In reply to the argument that the languages consume too much time from the acquisition of English, we assume high ground, and lay down the predicate that the study of them is the shortest, best and easiest way to learn English. This idea will be illustrated by attending to the modus operandi of teaching. Before a student can acquire the idea contained in the simplest sentence of a dead language, he must ascertain the English meaning of every word in it; and before he can render it correctly, he must study into what English moods, tenses, and cases the words of his translation are to be put. If he do not this, he will be liable to render a Latin or Greek imperfect by an English future, and vice versa; hence it is evident that he must have not only his classical books, but that an English Grammar, a Geography, and a Dictionary must be ever at his side. Take an illustration. The crude, disarranged sentence, “vinco Scipio Hannibal in Africa,” and the English translation, (Scipio conquered Hannibal in Africa) are given him to reduce to good Latin, and to explain the three proper names. To do this he must refer to his English Grammar, to find in what mood, tense, number, person and voice the verb “conquered” is, and then take up the English books containing the required information concerning Scipio, Hannibal and Africa: thus, in correcting this short sentence, learning, perhaps, more of English Grammar, Geography, and History, than of Latin. We are persuaded that nine-tenths of our southern teachers will tell Mr. Carey, that in their schools, consisting of Classical and English students, the Latin scholars are the better English scholars—that they are the better writers and speakers, the more cheerful and industrious, the more influential with their fellows, and that they require in their studies a larger number of English books than the other.
But if we are answered by Mr. Carey that he did not mean to assert that the verbal and grammatical knowledge of English which has been shown to be the result of the study of the Classics was lost thereby, but that knowledge of a higher order, science and literature were sacrificed to them, we have a reply ready at hand, which obviates this objection, viz: that they are chiefly studied at that infantile period of the intellect, when common sense teaches that it is not prepared to comprehend either the abstrusities of Mathematics, the minutiæ of Chymistry, or the mysteries of Philosophy. To require so much of mere tyros, is as absurd as to exact of one of tender years and feeble frame the labors of a Hercules. Mr. Carey need not be afraid that the nascent stage of the mind above referred to, will be left without its appropriate food, even if the sciences are forbidden to it. It is an established principle of the present day to educate the faculties in the order of their development. In the spring time of existence, Memory is the first to put forth its buds; and therefore, in accordance with the truism just laid down, should receive the earliest culture. What is more proper for this purpose than getting by rote the simple rules of Grammar, tracing out and remembering the definitions of words, and passing from author to author in the order of their difficulties? In thus proceeding from what is easy to what is comparatively difficult, the student would be obeying a law both of reason and nature; his mental powers would be gradually invigorated and expanded, until he would be prepared to enter with greater probability of success on the dreaded path of Mathematics and Philosophy; for the derivation and composition of their abstract and scientific terms, would in many cases instantaneously and perfectly suggest their meaning to the Classical scholar, whilst the English one would be compelled to learn them laboriously and imperfectly from English Dictionaries. It is this happy fitness of ancient languages to that period of youth which, without them, would want a proper object of study, that gives to them a crowning pre-eminence over every other substitute.