FLOSCULORUM HORTULUS.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20334, 5 September 1931, Page 13

FLOSCULORUM HORTULUS.

(specially WHITTEX JOB TBI PRESS.) [By W. E. Moon*.] The classics are the subject of fierce dispute nowadays, and, as often happens when disputes are fierce, both sides are apt to be in a false position, while the classics, poor maimed corpse of Patroclus, lie in the middle forgotten. For my part, I. cannot see that a scientific formula is so much better than a dialogue of Plato, or a school history so great an improvement on Livy; and as for Latin grammar, did not Dr. Johnson say that it does not matter what you teach boys, provided it be uninteresting? But surely such disputes are irrelevant. None like anything just because it is good for them; if they did, they would prefer quinine to beer. And as for those who are always looking for original work in the classics, they too miss the mark: they are led astray by the example of science and mathematics, in which, 1 readily believe, much yet remains to bo done. They dig up half a dozen bricks or a penny, and call on the world to marvel, whereas for a few shillings a man may line his walls with the greatest temples of antiquity. If they do it as a hobby, as an alternative to playing bridge, well and good; but they should not think it important. The plight of the original critic is even worse. All the criticism that is worth while has been done by the ancients. Horace has said all that need be said about HomerpQuintilian wrote "curiosa felieitas," and Horace was defined; and no one that has read through a play of Terence would want to add to Caesar's wish. And yet every University goes on demanding original theses —"eacata eharta : ' indeed: it is chastening to think of the forests that have been sacrificed to make paper for t them—and every year obscure authors | are hunted from their graves to provide ! new subjects. To my mind, the charm of the | classics arises from the fact that so little of them survives; Among Latin authors, the most worth reading ®re Virgil and Horace, parts of Plautus, Lucretius, Catullus, Caesar, Tibullus, Livy, Tacitus, and perhaps Juvenal; and a few lines each of Statius and Lucan. One bookshelf holds them all twice over. If wo are to make a habit of reading Latin, wo must read the whole list two or three times, some of it times ,as often. And just as a sick child in bed gets pleasure from his confinement, sees rivers in the cracks of the plaster, and observes every detail with a new and startling vividness, so we, too, get pleasure from our narrow quarters. At the first reading, we can do little but disentanglo rjie syntax; for Latin is a. complicated language. At the second, we get some guess at the sense; at the third and fourth and fifth, we see more and moi'e, until the whole fits into its place in thq compact pattern of Latin literature, and we can say, "How subtly is this adapted from Lucretius, how sadly Ovid mangled that, how strangely this othor phrase runs like a refrain through poem after poem." The very words take on a quoer v life, a "vivida vis" of their own. AVo forget the author and we w;onder how thU word or that from Ennius to Virgil, from Virgil to Livy; whether each work is not one frozen pattern of their endless intelligent dance. The marvel is greater if wo can cajole them into metro for ourselves, and make them posture, forth our own concerns; but that is a stubborn art, which soon departs from the lazy. f

All the wealth of English gives nothing comparable; the field is too vast. Like bees in a flowery meadow, wo sip here and there; and where there are°Ro many, how can we tell what flower we have sipped before? Here is no trim garden, but tho profusenesß of Nature herself. Nor liuve the words »uch magic; they are no longer the rare gold of dreams, but tho common counters of daily life; we cannot open our nibuths without spilling a dozen of them. What has a. technical education to offer in exchange f t A moans of moneymaking; money which cannot buy a passage into the garden, the temple of the wise, but rather fasteua double and triple doors of iron across the entrance. Cato learned to read Greek in his old age/ and I knew a Welsh minor who taught himself both Greek and Latin while working underground—but he was exceptionally lucky,' for he was looking after machinery with nothing to distract him and nothing to do but go round occasionally with an oil-can. Both these, however, were remaijkaMe men. For the ordinary boy, as hcj sits in' forms and groans over a exercise, tho path lies open; for a few-years he is pushed up it, kicking and struggling, until the very scent of the flowers comes to his nose. Then he is let go, he turns away, the gate snaps to; And he goes on his way rejoicing.