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390 THE INFLUENCE OF CLASSICAL LITERATUR...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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We Give These Extracts From An Excellent...
single eminent scholar . It is with no ordinary pleasure then , thaij I quote these words from the competent pen of Henry Thomas
Buckle . "We have only to open the Greek literature , "' he says , "to tempt see with with _what what airs mocking of superiority - and biting , with 1 scorn what women serene were and treate lofty d con by - .
, , that lively and ingenious people , who looked upon them merely as toys " Alas ! we need no prophet to show that what pollutes the mind
of youth and lover , by polluting the ideal of society , must soon pollute the mind of maiden and mistress . Is that a Christian
country which permits this style of thinking * , and how many men of the world accept the stainless virginity of Christ as the world ' si
pattern of highest manliness ? Passing from Greece to Rome , you will see that even as we owe
to Roman law , before the time of Justinian , almost all that is obnoxious in the English , retaining still the strange old Latin terms
which were applied to our relations in a very barbarous state of societyso we owe to the time of Augustusto the influence of
satirists , like Horace and Juvenal , almost all the , wide-spread heresies in regard to human nature .
has How to get mean down one Dante feels or when Shakspeare one throws to take down the these taste books out of . one One ' s ¦ .
mouth-The views of women are still lower . Caesar and Cicero may be ;
abstract nullities to our young student , but what can he learn from . Ovid ? Latin mythology was but the corruption of the older types .
What was beauty once , became here undisguised coarseness or noise . The gods who once endured sin , now patronised and made money by
it . These things are not without their influence . Above all , low imageswitty slangand sharp satire have force beyond their own ,
, , when slowly studied out by the help of the lexicon . Classical teachers should not be chosen for their learning alone .
No " Lord Chesterfield should teach manners , but some one whose _( Jaily " good morning" is precious . So no coarselow-minded man
should interpret Greek or Roman , but some noble , soul , not indifferent to social progress , capable of discriminatingand of letting
, in a little Christian light upon those pagan times . Then might the period passed at the Latin school and the college ,
become of the greatest moral and intellectual use . Then would no graduating students run the risk of hearing from their favorite
doctor of divinity , instead of sound scriptural exhortation , some doctrine whisked out of Epicurus , by a clever , but unconscious
" _leg-er-de-plume !" And in leaving this subject to be more fitly pursued by others , we
ought to _add that mental purity is not enough insisted upon for ( in either this sex respect . It is that onl we y by becom the greatest e capable faithfulness of " touching from the pitch beg inning ' at a ; ,
, mature age , in a way to benefit either ourselves or the community .
How desirable it is to keep the young eye steadily gazing at the
390 The Influence Of Classical Literatur...
390 THE _INFLUENCE OF _CLASSICAL LITERATURE *
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Feb. 1, 1860, page 390, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01021860/page/30/
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