ESSAY VI.

OF THE STUDY OF THE CLASSICS.

A QUEST

QUESTION which has of late given rise to confiderable difcuffion, is, whether the ftudy of the claffics ought to form a part of the education of youth? In the fixteenth and feventeenth centuries the very propofal of fuch a question would have been regarded as a fort of blafphemy claffical learning was regarded as the firft of all literary accomplishments. But in the present day inquifitive and active fpirits are little inclined to take any thing upon truft; prescription is not admitted as giving any fanction in matters of opinion; no practice, that is not faftened upon us by decrees and penalties, can hope to maintain its full measure of influence in civil fociety, except so far as it can be fupported by irrefragable arguments.

An obvious ground of presumption in favour of claffical learning will fuggeft itself in tracing its hiftory. The ftudy of the Latin and Greek authors will scarcely be thought to deserve this appellation, fo long as their language was the vernacular

vernacular tongue of those who studied them. Claffical learning then may be faid to have taken its rife in the fifteenth century, at which time the human mind awoke from a flumber that threatened to be little lefs than eternal. The principal cause of this aufpicious event was the kudy of the claffics. Suddenly men were seized with the defire of rescuing them from the oblivion into which they had fallen. It seemed as if this defire had arisen just in time to render its gratification not impracticable. Some of the most valuable remains of antiquity now in our poffeffion, were upon the point of being utterly loft. Kings and princes confidered their recovery as the most important task in which they could be engaged; fcholars travelled without intermiffion, drawn from country to country by the faintest hope of encountering a claffical manufcript; and the fuccefs of their fearch afforded a more guiltless, but not a lefs envied triumph, than the defeat of armies and the plunder of millions. The most honoured tafk of the literati of that day, was the illuftration of an ancient author; commentator rofe upon commentator obfcurities were removed; precifion acquired; the Greek and Roman writers were understood and relished in a degree scarcely inferior to their contemporaries; nor were they only perufed

with avidity, their purity and their beauties were almoft rivalled at the distance of almoft fifteen hundred

years.

Such is the hiftory of one of the most interefting æras in the annals of mankind. We are indebted to the zeal, perhaps a little extravagant and enthusiastic, of the revivers of letters, for more than we can exprefs. If there be in the prefent age any wifdom, any powers of reafoning, any acquaintance with the fecrets of nature, any refinement of language, any elegance of compofition, any love of all that can adorn and benefit the human race, this is the fource from which they ultimately flowed. From the Greek and Roman authors the moderns learned to think. While they inveftigated with unconquerable perfeverance the ideas and fentiments of antiquity, the feculence of their own understandings fubfided. The thackles of fuperftition were loofened. Men were no longer fhut up in fo narrow boundaries; nor benumbed in their faculties by the found of one eternal monotony. They faw; they examined; they compared. Intellect affumed new courage, fhook its daring wing, and effayed a bolder flight. Patience of

* I do not infer that they could have flowed from no other fource; I relate a fact,

investigation

investigation was acquired. The love of truth difplayed itfelf, and the love of liberty.

Shall we then difcard that, to which our ancestors owed every thing they poffeffed? Do we not fear left, by removing the foundations of intellect, we fhould facrifice intellect itself? Do we not fear left, by imperceptible degrees, we should bring back the dark ages, and once again plunge our fpecies in eternal night?

This however, though a plaufible, is not a ftrict and logical argument in favour of claffical learning; and, if unfupported by direct reafoning, ought not probably to be confidered as deciding the controverfy. The ftrongeft direct arguments are probably as follow. They will be found to apply with the most force to the study of Latin.

The Latin authors are poffeffed of uncommon excellence. One kind of excellence they poffefs, which is not to be found in an equal degree in the writers of any other country: an exquifite fkill in the use of language; a happy felection of words; a beautiful structure of phrafe; a tranfparency of ftyle; a precifion by which they communicate the firongeft fentiments in the directeft form; in a word, every thing that relates to the most admirable polish of manner. Other writers have taken more licentious flights, and produced

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duced greater aftonishment in their readers. Other writers have ventured more fearlessly into unexplored regions, and cropped those beauties which hang over the brink of the precipice of deformity. But it is the appropriate praise of the best Roman authors, that they fcarcely prefent us with one idle and excrefcent claufe, that they continually convey their meaning in the choiceft words. Their lines dwell upon our memory; their fentences have the force of maxims, every part vigorous, and feldom any thing that can be changed but for the worse. We wander in a feene where every thing is luxuriant, yet every thing vivid, graceful and correct.

It is commonly faid, that you may read the works of foreign authors in tranflations. But the excellencies above enumerated are incapable of being transfufed. A diffufe and voluminous author, whofe merit confifts chiefly in his thoughts, and little in the manner of attiring them, may be tranflated. But who can tranflate Horace? who endure to read the tranflation? Who is there, acquainted with him only through this mediumn, but liftens with aftonishment and incredulity to the encomiums he has received from the hour his poems were produced?

The Roman hiftorians are the best that ever

exifted,