[CHAPTER IX.]
THE SECRET OF APT WORDS—(continued).
“To acquire a few tongues,” says a French writer, “is the task of a few years; but to be eloquent in one is the labor of a life.”—Colton.
When words are restrained by common usage to a particular sense, to run up to etymology, and construe them by a dictionary, is wretchedly ridiculous.—Jeremy Collier.
Where do the words of Greece and Rome excel,
That England may not please the ear as well?
What mighty magic’s in the place or air,
That all perfection needs must centre there?—Churchill.
It is an interesting question connected with the subject of style, whether a knowledge of other languages is necessary to give an English writer a full command of his own. Among the arguments urged in behalf of the study of Greek and Latin in our colleges, one of the commonest is the supposed absolute necessity of a knowledge of those tongues to one who would speak and write his own language effectively. The English language, we are reminded, is a composite one, of whose words thirty per cent are of Roman origin, and nearly five per cent of Greek; and is it not an immense help, we are asked, to a full and accurate knowledge of the meanings of the words we use, to know their entire history, including their origin? Is not the many-sided Goethe an authority on this subject, and does he not tell us that “wer fremde sprache nicht kennt weiss nichts von seinen eigenen,”—“He who is acquainted with no foreign tongues, knows nothing of his own”? Have we not the authority of one of the earliest of English schoolmasters, Roger Ascham, for the opinion that, “even as a hawke fleeth not hie with one wing, even so a man reacheth not to excellency with one tongue”?