GREEK FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS. 129
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ne to do with Milton, for instance ? Even Shakespeare, so original in many respects,
s best appreciated by one who approaches him from the Greek point of view. This is
wbundantly proved by Mr. Moulton’s book. The only section of our literature that
ried to cut loose from Greek methods was the Pope-Goldsmith school, and that is
orecisely the least poetical, least imaginative section of the greal whole.
After all, is not the permanence, the immanence, of Greek thought and method and
orm a fact in our life ? Can it be argued away ? Is it not wiser and honester to admit
it frankly, and make the best of it ? I am no fanatic. T grant you that a plowman,
like Robert Burns, may rise to the front rank of lyric poetry without a scrap of Greek.
But Robert Buruses do not abound. They are sporadic. The great mass of literary
men for centuries have been molded by Greek influences. And if our colleges and
aniversities are to expound our Anglo-American literature, to give the why and
wherefore of literary movement, they must postulate Greek.
At least that is my view and my experience. More than once I have tried to dodge,
or at least tried to help a pupil dodge, the Greek postulate. But it has always been a
failure. My own knowledge of Greek is anything but satisfactory. It has grown
somewhat musty with time. But poor as it is, I could not possibly afford to part with
it. It keeps up my sense of form and mental sanity. It exorcises fads and fopperies.
And fads and fopperies are our besetting danger.
Yours, as ever,
J. M. HART,
Professor of Rhetoric and English Philology in Cornell University.
December 21, 1893.
My DEAR SIR : I have to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of the 18th inst., in
vhich you call my attention to the exact point raised in what 1 may call ‘the Greek
liscussion ” in its present phase. It is whether the degree of Bachelor of Arts should
oe given to candidates for that degree who have received mo elementary training in
Greek. You add that this point I did not argue in my ¢¢ College Fetich.” and ask me
to write a short statement of my opinion upon it.
iu its present common acceptance, as I understand it, the degree of A.B., as it is
called, implies that the person receiving it has acquired a certain degree of proficiency
1 the classic tongues, especially Greck ; that is, he is one who has approached what I
oelieve is respectfully, though somewhat pompously, known as the arcanum, by the
lassic path.
Would it be offensive, and do you think I should use too strong language, if I should
say that this venerable theory is to-day little else than a fraud, not to say a falsehood ?
Also, should I express myself with an undue lack of reverence if I asked you whether
you think it altogether proper for our leading seats of learning to lend themselves to
fraud, if not falsehood ? Yet, on the other hand, can any person connected with those
.ustitutions truthfully assert that the amount of classic learning now achieved by at
east seventy-five per cent., if not more, of those on whom the degree of Bachelor of
Arts is annually conferred, amounts to any knowledge worthy of the name of either
3reek or Latin ? Is it not the ¢ little Latin and less Greek ” of Ben Jonson ?
However it may have been in the more or less remote past, 1 think you will agree
with me that there is not one institution of academic learning in the United States
;o-day, twenty-five per cent. of whose graduates—and I have put the figure, I think, very
high—can, when the degree of Bachelor of Arts is conferred upon them, read at sight
one line of ordinary Greek, or a paragraph of simple Latin. If I am wrong in this
astimate, I shall be glad to be corrected.
Now, for reasons which I am unable fully to account for, as I have grown in years,
and approached what is pleasantly designated as ¢‘ the afternoon of life,” I find myself
