The London Mercury, Vol. I, Nos. 1-6, November 1919 to April 1920Various
General
The London Mercury, Vol. I, Nos. 1-6, November 1919 to April 1920
Various
English literature -- Periodicals; London (England) -- Periodicals
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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