Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Living Languages: A Defence of the Compulsory Study, of Greek at Cambridge
And you would have lost nothing by it an opponent might unhesitatingly rejoin and thereupon the question at issue between us becomes clear and definite: for I think I should have lost a great deal. I write on behalf of those who are not good scholars, but can only claim to have got, while at school, in fair measure, such educational advantages as the present system offers to those boys who Show no particular bent for any special study, but work, or abstain from working, at the ordinary subjects at which they find that they are expected and encouraged to work. I do not write on behalf of born scholars. They, no doubt, will always, under any system, find the way to the Greek and Latin books and study them, sooner or later, with avidity and success. I wholly understand the position of those who say that Greek, if its study be made voluntary, will be learned by all who have the making of first-rate scholars in them, and will be lost to none but those whom nature did not mean for scholars. But between those to whom the study of Greek brings real scholarship, and those to whom it brings nothing but tribulation and confusion, there is a large class who attain in it that reasonable degree of competence which they would secure in any subject prominently put in their way throughout their school days, and therewith, as I believe, many advantages, not growing on every branch of the tree of knowledge. These are the boys for whom I wish to save Greek: and I believe it can only be saved by being made compulsory, as an introduction to academic education and a University degree. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
