All the fields which thou dost see, Nor does thy luxury destroy. The shepherd gladly heareth thee, More harmonious than he. Thee country hinds with gladness hear, Phoebus is himself thy sire; Thee Phoebus loves, and does inspire: To thee, of all things upon earth, Happy insect! happy thou! Dost neither age nor winter know; But when thou'st drunk, and danced and sung Thy fill the flowery leaves among, (Voluptuous and wise withal, Epicurean animal!) Sated with thy summer feast, Thou retirest to endless rest. THE WRONG SIDES OF SCHOLARSHIP AND NO SCHOLARSHIP. HERE are two supposed (for they are not real) extremes of pretension upon the strange question, whether a knowledge of the learned languages is or is not of use, against which it behooves an uneducated man of sense and modesty to be on his guard. One is the pretension of those who say that a man can have no idea of the ancient writers, without a deep intimacy with their language; the other, of those who affirm, with equal vehemence, that there is no necessity to know the language at all, and that translations do quite as well as the originals for giving you all that you need be acquainted with of the author's genius. The former of these pretenders is generally a shallower man than the other, though sometimes it is pure vanity and self-will that makes him talk as he does: he has an over-estimation of his advantages, simply because they are his. He is as proud of his learning as another pompous man might be of his park and his mansion. Such is the case, when he really has any thing like an intimacy with his authors; but in both instances he would fain make out his possession to be unapproachable by all who have not had the same golden key. The common run of the class consists of men who really know nothing of their authors but the words, and who unconsciously feel, that, on that account, they must make the best of their knowledge, and pretend it is a wonderful matter. Such a man smiles when you speak of getting some insight into the character of Homer's genius, or Virgil's, by dint of some happy bit of version or some masterly criticism. He says, triumphantly, that "even Pope" is acknowledged not to give a right idea of him, much less. Chapman, and those other "old quaint writers:" for 66 old,” observe, is a term of contempt with him; though "ancient," he thinks, comprises every thing that is respectable. But "old" means a man who lived only a few hundred years back, and who did not write either in Latin or Greek; whereas "ancient" means a man who lived upwards of a thousand, and wrote perhaps a dull book in one of those languages which has contrived to come down to us, owing to some curious things it contains relative to customs and manners, or to the influence of a succession of these sort of critics, and the long fashion they have kept up by dint of the connection that has hitherto subsisted between the power of receiving a classical education and the advantages of wealth and rank. When all the world come to share in that education, some singular questions will take place, both as to the genius of the ancient writers, and the moral benefits derivable from portions of them. If our friend of the above class is a man of consequence, he looks upon his learning as forming an additional barrier between him and the uneducated. He quotes Greek in parlia ment, and takes it for an argument. Or he forgets both his Greek and Latin, but thinks he could recover it when he pleased; and that is the same thing. If he is a professed scholar, he is ignorant of every thing in the world but scholarship, and therefore ignorant of that too. He is a pompous schoolmaster, or a captious verbal critic, or, in his most respectable capacity, a harmless and dreaming pedant, a Dominie Sampson. If England had existed before Greece, he would have been an idolater of Shakespeare and Milton, at the expense of Homer and Euripides; or he would have known just as much of the former as he does of the latter; that is to say, nothing. In short, you may describe him as a man who knows that there is another man living on the upper side of his town, of the name of Ancient; and a very wonderful gentleman he takes Ancient to be, because he is rich, and has a large library, and has given him access to it: but what sort of a man Ancient really is, what is the solidity of his understanding, the subtlety of his imagination, or the contents of the books in his library, except that they are printed in certain kinds of type, — of all that our learned friend knows nothing; and therefore he concludes that nobody else can know. Of the other extreme of pretenders who dogmatize on this subject, that is to say, who pronounce peremptory judgments of Yes and No, and Possible and Impossible, without a due knowledge of the subject, — the best and most intelligent portion sometimes contains persons who know so much on other points, that they ought to know better on this; but, out of a resentment of the very want of the other's advantages, affect to despise them. For herein the exalters of a classical education, as the only thing needful, and the decriers of it as a thing altogether unnecessary, set out from precisely the same ground of self-sufficiency. The former unduly trumpet up the education, merely because they have had it (or think they have); and the latter as rudely decry it, merely because they have not. These latter argue, that you may know all that is useful in ancient books by means of translations; and that the poetry" and all that" may be got equally out of them, or is of no consequence. Their own poetry, meanwhile, such as it is, that is to say, their caprices, their imaginary advantages, and the coloring which their humor and passions give to every thing near them, is in full blossom. To cut short this question, which we feel more loath to touch upon in the latter instance than in the former (because more sympathy is due to the resentment of a want than to the arrogance of a possession), we may, perhaps, illustrate the point at once, to the reader's satisfaction, by the help of no greater a passage than a jest out of "Joe Miller." It is related of Archbishop Herring, that, when he was at college, he fell one day into a gutter; and that a wag exclaimed as he got up, “Ah, Herring, you're in a pretty pickle!" Upon which a dull fellow went away, and said, "So-and-so has been bantering poor Herring. Herring fell into the gutter; and so, says Dick, says he, 'Ah, Herring, my boy, you're in a pretty situation!"" Now, the pedant, who is all for the original language, and is of opinion that no version of their |