GOOD ENGLISH VERSUS LATIN AND GREEK.

Westport Times, Volume II, Issue 242, 11 May 1868, Page 3

GOOD ENGLISH VERSUS LATIN AND GREEK.

Sir J. y. Simpson, in course of a lecture at Granton, near Edinburgh, urged the necessity of a change in the mode of education in schools, in reference to modern and ancient languages. Was it, he asked, a fact that no man could speak good English (as had been averred by Mr Tring, whose arguments he took as a specimen of the whole), unless he had a knowledge of Greek and Latin 1 Why, perhaps the most accomplished orator of the present day knew very little Latin, and, he believed, no Greek—he referred to John Bright; and Mr Cobden knew neither Latin nor Greek, but there were few better speakers of English. The only language he learned was French. The greatest orators America had produced—Mr Clay and Andrew Douglas—were totally without classical education. And if it was said no one could write good English unless they had received a classical education, that would excommunicate from authorship all the ladies ; and he was told by a gentleman well acquainted with magazine literature, that half of the articles in our magazines were written by those belonging to the female sex ; and what were they to say of Mrs Gaskell, Miss Mulock, Mrs Beecher Stowe, Miss Martineau, Miss Bronte, Mrs Somerville, and many others'? or, calculated by money—a thoroughly English mode of calculation—there was one notorious example of a lady receiving <£Booo for a novel, which was far more than Sir Walter Scott ever not. Then, turning to the male sex, he spoke of Hugh Miller, Burns, Hogg, and even Sir Walter Scott, who, although he knew a little Latin, knew so little Greek that he was called the Greek dunce. When it happened that a man was a good writer, it was said it was because he had learned Greek and Latin. It did not follow that that was a consequence, though it might be a coincidence. He had been told that Mr Bright modelled his style on the English translation of the bible; and a Scotch critic of great power had told him that Macaulay's style was built on the same model. Sir James went on to say that in the English Bible 97 out of every 100 words were old Saxon. Shakspeare used 15 foreign words in every 100, and Milton 14. If, therefore, this were a proper argument, it would bring us back to the study of other languages—to the study of old AngloSaxon, to which very little attention was paid till the importance of it was set forth by German and Danish writers. It was now taught in Oxford, and a professor of that language was about to be established in Cambridge.