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tion is that this author describes the style of so many other writers in illustration of his own thoughts, and thus the reader gets a broad and comprehensive view of the question of English for those who speak English only. Dr. Mathews says:

"We have had to notice over and over again,' says Mr. Whitney, in his late work on "The Life and Growth of Language," the readiness on the part of language users to forget origins, to cast aside as cumbrous rubbish the etymological suggestiveness of a term, and concentrate force upon the new and more adventitious tie. This is one of the most fundamental and valuable tendencies in name-making; it constitutes an essential part of the practical availability of language.'

"If a knowledge of Greek and Latin are necessary to him who would command all the resources of our tongue, how comes it that the most consummate mastery of the English language is exhibited by Shakespeare? Will it be said that his writings prove him to have been a classical scholar; that they abound in facts and allusions which imply an intimate acquaintance with the masterpieces of Greek and Roman literature? We answer that this is a palpable begging of the question. By the same reasoning we can prove that scores of English authors, who, we know positively, never read a page of Latin or Greek, were, nevertheless, classical scholars. By similar logic we can prove that Shakespeare followed every calling in life. Lawyers vouch for his acquaintance with law; physicians for his skill in medicine; mad-doctors for his knowledge of the phenomena of mental disease; naturalists assert positively, from the internal evidence of his works, that he was a botanist and entomologist; bishops, that he was a theologian; and claims have been put forth for his dexterity in cutting up sheep and bullocks. Ben Jonson tells us that he had "small Latin and less Greek;" another contemporary, that he had "little Latin and no Greek." "Small Latin," indeed, it must have been, which a youth could have acquired in his position, who married and entered upon the duties of active life at eighteen. The fact that transla

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tions were abundant in the poet's time, and that all the literature of that day was steeped in classicism, will fully account. for Shakespeare's knowledge of Greek and Roman history, as well as for the classical turns of expression which we find in his plays.

"But it may be said that Shakespeare, the oceanic, the many-souled, was phenomenal, and that no rules can be based on the miracles of a cometary genius who has had no peer in the ages. What shall we say, then, to Isaak Walton? Can purer, more idiomatic, or more attractive English be found within the covers of any book than that of "The Complete Angler?" Among all the controversialists of England, is there one whose words hit harder,-are more like cannonballs, than those of Cobbett? By universal concession he was master of the whole vocabulary of invective, 220 and in narration his pen is pregnant with the freshness of green fields and woods; yet neither he nor "honest Isaak" ever dug up a Greek root, or unearthed a Latin derivation. Again, what shall we say of Keats, who could not read a line of Greek, yet who was the most thoroughly classical of all English authors,-whose soul was so saturated with the Greek spirit that Byron said "he was a Greek himself." Or what will the Classicists do with Lord Erskine, confessedly the greatest forensic orator since Demosthenes? He learned but the elements of Latin, and in Greek went scarcely beyond the alphabet; but he devoted himself in youth with intense ardor to the study of Milton and Shakespeare, committing whole pages of the former to memory, and so familiarizing himself with the latter that he could almost, like Porson, have held conversation on all subjects for days together in the phrases of the great English dramatist. It was here that he acquired that fine choice of words, that richness of thought, and gorgeousness of expression, that beautiful rhythmus of his sentences, which charmed all who heard him.

"If one must learn English through the Greek and Latin, how shall we account for the admirable, we had almost said, inimitable,-style of Franklin? Before he knew anything of foreign languages, he had formed his style, and

gained a wide command of words by the study of the best English models. Is the essayist, Edwin P. Whipple, a master of the English language? He was not, we believe, classically educated, yet it would be hard to name an American author who has a greater command of all the resources of expression. His style varies in excellence.-sometimes, perhaps, lacks simplicity: but, as a rule, it is singularly copious, nervous, and suggestive, and clear as a pebbled rill. What is the secret of this command of our tongue? It is his familiarity with our English literature. His sleepless intellect has fed and fattened on the whole race of English authors, from Chaucer to Currer Bell. The profound, sagacious wisdom of Bacon, and the nimble, brilliant wit of Sidney Smith; the sublime mysticism of Sir Thomas Browne, and the rich, mellow, tranquil beauty of Taylor; Johnson's learned sock and Heywood's ease; the gorgeous, organ-toned eloquence of Milton, and the close, bayonet-like logic of Chillingworth; the sweet-blooded wit of Fuller, and Butler's rattling fire of fun; Spencer's voluptuous beauty, and the lofty rhetoric, scorching wit, and crushing argument of South; Pope's neatness, brilliancy, and epigrammatic point, and Dryden's energy and "full-resounding line:" Byron's sublime unrest and bursts of misanthropy, and Wordsworth's deep sentiment and sweet humanities; Shelley's wild, imaginative melody, and Scott's picturesque imagery and antiquarian lore; the polished witticism of Sheridan, and the gorgeous periods of Burke, with all these writers and every other of greater or less note, even those in the hidden nooks and crannies of our literature, he has held converse, and drawn from them expressions for every exigency of his thought.

"To all these examples we may add one, if possible, still more convincing, that of the late Hugh Miller, who, as Professor Marsh justly remarks, had few contemporaneous superiors as a clear, forcible, accurate and eloquent writer, and who uses the most cumbrous Greek compounds as freely as monosyllabic English particles. His style is literally the despair of all other English scientific writers; yet it is positively certain that he was wholly ignorant of all languages

but that in which he wrote, and its northern provincial dialects.

"As to the oft-quoted saying of Goethe, to which the objector is so fond of referring, we may say with Professor Marsh, that, "if by knowledge of a language is meant the power of expressing or conceiving the laws of a language in formal rules, the opinion may be well-founded; but, if it refers to the capacity of understanding, and skill in properly using our own tongue, all observation shows it to be very wide of the truth." Goethe himself, the same authority declares, was an indifferent linguist; he apparently knew little of the remoter etymological sources of his own tongue, or the special philologies of the cognate languages; and "it is difficult to trace any of the excellencies of his marvellously felicitous style to the direct imitation, or even the unconscious influence of foreign models." But he was a profound student of the great German writers of the sixteenth century; and hence his works are a test example in refutation of the theory that ascribes so exaggerated a value to classical studies.

"It is a remarkable fact which throws a flood of light upon this subject, that the greatest masters of style in all the ages were the Greeks, who yet knew no word of any language but their own. In the most flourishing period of their literature, they had no grammatical system, nor did they ever make any but the most trivial researches in etymology. The wise and learned nations among the ancients, says Locke, "made it a part of education to cultivate their own, not foreign languages. The Greeks counted all other nations barbarous, and had a contempt for their languages. And though the Greek learning grew in credit amongst the Romans, yet it was the Roman tongue that was made the study of their youth; their own language they were to make use of, and therefore it was their own language they were instructed and exercised in." Demosthenes, the greatest master of the Greek language, and one of the mightiest masters of expression the world has seen, knew no other tongue than his own. He modelled his style after that of Thucydides, whose wonderful compactness, terseness, and strength

of diction were derived from no study of old Pelasgic, Phoenician, Persian, or other primitive etymologies of the Attic speech,—of which he knew nothing,-but the product of his own marvellous genious wreaking itself upon expression.

"No riches are without inconvenience. The men of many tongues almost inevitably lose their peculiar raciness of home-bred utterance, and their style, like their words, has a certain polyglot character. It has been observed by an acute Oxford professor, that the Romans, in exact proportion to their study of Greek, paralyzed some of the finest powers of their own language. Schiller tells us that he was in the habit of reading as little as possible in foreign languages, because it was his business to write German, and he thought that by reading other languages, he should lose his nicer perceptions of what belonged to his own. Dryden attributed most of Cowley's defects to his continental associations, and said that his losses at home overbalanced his gains from abroad. Thomas More, who was a fine classical scholar, tells us that the perfect purity with which the Greeks wrote their own language, was justly attributed to their abstinence from every other. It is a saying as old as Cicero, that women, being accustomed solely to their native tongue, usually speak and write with a grace and purity surpassing those of men. "A man who thinks the knowledge of Latin essential to the purity of English diction," says Macaulay, "either has never conversed with an accomplished woman, or does not deserve to have conversed with her. We are sure that all persons who are in the habit of hearing public speaking must have observed that the orators who are fond of quoting Latin are by no means the most scrupulous about marring their native tongue. We could mention several members of Parliament, who never fail to usher in their scraps of Horace and Juvenal with half a dozen false concords."

"Mr. Buckle, in his "History of Civilization in England," does not hesitate to express the opinion that "our great English scholars have corrupted the English language by jargon so uncouth that a plain man can hardly discern the

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