Indeed, it is a hasty assumption, that the
majority of boys hate Latin and Greek. I find that most college
graduates, at least, retain some relish for the memory of such studies,
even if they have utterly lost the power to masticate or digest them.
"Though they speak no Greek, they love the sound on't." Many a
respectable citizen still loves to look at his Horace or Virgil on the
shelf where it has stood undisturbed for a dozen years; he looks, and
thinks that he too lived in Arcadia.... The books link him with culture,
and universities, and the traditions of great scholars.
On some stormy Sunday, he thinks, he will take them down. At length he
tries it; he handles the volume awkwardly, as he does his infant; but it
is something to be able to say that neither book nor baby has been
actually dropped. He likes to know that there is a tie between him and
each of these possessions, though he is willing, it must be owned, to
leave the daily care of each in more familiar hands....
I must honestly say that much of the modern outcry against classical
studies seems to me to be (as in the case of good Dr. Jacob Bigelow) a
frank hostility to literature itself, as the supposed rival of science;
or a willingness (as in Professor Atkinson's
case) to tolerate modern literature, while discouraging the study of the
ancient.
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