Then with respect to aesthetic knowledge and discipline, we have happily
in the English language one of the most magnificent storehouses of
artistic beauty and of models of literary excellence which exists in
the world at the present time. I have said before, and I repeat it here,
that if a man cannot get literary culture of the highest kind out of
his Bible, and Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and Milton, and Hobbes,[81] and
Bishop Berkeley,[82] to mention only a few of our illustrious writers--I
say, if he cannot get it out of those writers he cannot get it out of
anything; and I would assuredly devote a very large portion of the time
of every English child to the careful study of the models of English
writing of such varied and wonderful kind as we possess, and, what is
still more important and still more neglected, the habit of using that
language with precision, with force, and with art. I fancy we are almost
the only nation in the world who seem to think that composition comes
by nature. The French attend to their own language, the Germans study
theirs; but Englishmen do not seem to think it is worth their while.
Nor would I fail to include, in the course of study I am sketching,
translations of all the best works of antiquity, or of the modern world.
It is a very desirable thing to read Homer in Greek; but if you don't
happen to know Greek, the next best thing we can do is to read as good a
translation of it as we have recently been furnished with in prose.
Pages:
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139