“I called with your letter on Mr. Black, who introduced me to the professors, some of whom, judging by their skulls, are clever men.

“There is a lot here for examination, and an Exhibition is to be given to the best. I should like to get it. Young Black,—you saw him once,—is one of them; I knew him at school; he is a large fellow now, though younger than I am. If he be the best of them, I shall not be much afraid.

“Well—in I went yesterday, and was examined. It was such a queer concern. One of the junior Tutors had me up, and he must be a new hand, he was so uneasy. He gave me the slowest examination! I don't know to this minute what he was at. He first said a word or two, and then was silent. He then asked me why we came up to Dublin, and did not go down; and put some absurd little questions about βαίνω. I was tolerably satisfied with myself, but he gave me no opportunity to show off. He asked me literally nothing; he did not even give me a passage to construe for a long time, and then gave me nothing more than two or three easy sentences. And he kept playing with his paper knife, and saying: ‘How are you now, Mr. Brown? don't be alarmed, Mr. Brown; take your time, Mr. Brown; you know very well, Mr. Brown;’ so that I could hardly help laughing. I never was less afraid in my life. It would be wonderful if such an examination could put me out of countenance.

“There's a lot of things which I know very well, which the Examiner said not a word about. Indeed, I think I have been getting up a great many things for nothing;—provoking enough. I had read a good deal of Grote; but though I told him so, he did not ask me one question in it; and there's Whewell, Macaulay, and Schlegel, all thrown away.

“He has not said a word yet where I am to be lodged. He looked quite confused when I asked him. He is, I suspect, a character.

“Your dutiful son, etc.,

“Robert.”

Mr. White to Mr. Brown, sen.

“My Dear Sir,

“I have to acknowledge the kind letter you sent me by your son, and I am much pleased to find the confidence you express in us. Your son seems an amiable young man, of studious habits, and there is every hope, when he joins us, of his passing his academical career with respectability, and his examination with credit. This is what I should have expected from his telling me that he had been educated at home under your own paternal eye; indeed, if I do not mistake, you have undertaken the interesting office of instructor yourself.

“On the whole, then, if you will kindly send him up six months hence he will be more able to profit by our lectures. I will tell him what to read in the meanwhile. Did it depend on me, I should send him for that time to a good school or college, or I could find you a private Tutor for him.

“I am, etc.”

Mr. Brown, sen., to Mr. White.

“Sir,

“Your letter, which I have received by this morning's post, is gratifying to a parent's feelings, so far as it bears witness to the impression which my son's amiableness and steadiness have made on you. He is indeed a most exemplary lad: fathers are partial, and their word about their children is commonly not to be taken; but I flatter myself that the present case is an exception to the rule; for, if ever there was a well-conducted youth, it is my dear son. He is certainly very clever; and a closer student, and, for his age, of more extensive reading and sounder judgment, does not exist.

“Will you allow me to suggest an explanation of this inconsistency? It is found in your confession that the examination is of a ‘particular character.’ Of course it is very right in the governors of a great Institution to be ‘particular,’ and it is not for me to argue with them. Nevertheless, I cannot help saying, that at this day nothing is so much wanted in education as general knowledge. This alone will fit a youth for the world. In a less stirring time, it may be well enough to delay in particularities, and to trifle over minutiæ; but the world will not stand still for us, and, unless we are up to its requisitions, we shall find ourselves thrown out of the contest. A man must have something in him now, to make his way; and the sooner we understand this, the better.

“I have forgotten to mention, he has a very pretty idea of poetical composition: I enclose a fragment which I have found on his table, as well as one of his prose Essays.

“Allow me, as a warm friend of your undertaking, to suggest, that the substance of knowledge is far more valuable than its technicalities; and that the vigour of the youthful mind is but wasted on barren learning, and its ardour is quenched in dry disquisition.

“I have the honour to be, etc.”

On the receipt of this letter, Mr. White will find, to his dissatisfaction, that he has not advanced one hair's breadth in bringing home to Mr. Brown's father the real state of the case, and has done no more than present himself as a mark for certain commonplaces, very true, but very inappropriate to the matter in hand. Filled with this disappointing thought, for a while he will not inspect the enclosures of Mr. Brown's letter, being his son's attempts at composition. At length he opens them, and reads as follows:

Mr. Brown's poetry.

“From all this it appears, that we should rely on fortune only while it remains,—recollecting the words of the thesis, ‘Fortes fortuna adjuvat;’ and that, above all, we should ever cultivate those virtues which will never fail us, and which are a sure basis of respectability, and will profit us here and hereafter.”

On reading these compositions over, Mr. White will take to musing; then he will reflect that he may as well spare himself the trouble of arguing with a correspondent, whose principle and standard of judgment is so different from his own; and so he will write a civil letter back to Mr. Brown, enclosing the two papers.

3.

Mr. Brown, however, has not the resignation of Mr. White; and, on his Dublin friend, Mr. Black, paying him a visit, he will open his mind to him; and I am going to tell the reader all that will pass between the two.

“Well, it is only the sort of thing which any boy would write, neither better nor worse. I speak candidly.”

On Mr. Brown expressing disappointment, inasmuch as the said Theme is not the sort of thing which any boy could write, Mr. Black continues—

“There's not one word of it upon the thesis; but all boys write in this way.”

Mr. Brown directs his friend's attention to the knowledge of ancient history which the composition displays, of Alexander and Diogenes; of the history of Napoleon; to the evident interest which the young author takes in contemporary history, and his prompt application of passing events to his purpose; moreover, to the apposite quotation from Dryden, and the reference to Horace;—all proofs of a sharp wit and a literary mind.

But Mr. Black is more relentlessly critical than the occasion needs, and more pertinacious than any father can comfortably bear. He proceeds to break the butterfly on the wheel in the following oration:—

“Now look here,” he says, “the subject is ‘Fortes fortuna adjuvat’; now this is a proposition; it states a certain general principle, and this is just what an ordinary boy would be sure to miss, and Robert does miss it. He goes off at once on the word ‘fortuna.’ ‘Fortuna’ was not his subject; the thesis was intended to guide him, for his own good; he refuses to be put into leading-strings; he breaks loose, and runs off in his own fashion on the broad field and in wild chase of ‘fortune,’ instead of closing with a subject, which, as being definite, would have supported him.

“ ‘Fortune favours the bold;’ here is a very definite subject: take hold of it, and it will steady and lead you on: you will know in what direction to look. Not one boy in a hundred does avail himself of this assistance; your boy is not solitary in his inaccuracy; all boys are more or less inaccurate, because they are boys; boyishness of mind means inaccuracy. Boys cannot deliver a message, or execute an order, or relate an occurrence, without a blunder. They do not rouse up their attention and reflect: they do not like the trouble of it: they cannot look at anything steadily; and, when they attempt to write, off they go in a rigmarole of words, which does them no good, and never would, though they scribbled themes till they wrote their fingers off.

“When I hear such questions put, I admire the tact of the worthy Milnwood in Old Mortality, when in a similar predicament. Sergeant Bothwell broke into his house and dining-room in the king's name, and asked him what he thought of the murder of the Archbishop of St. Andrew's; the old man was far too prudent to hazard any opinion of his own, even on a precept of the Decalogue, when a trooper called for it; so he glanced his eye down the Royal Proclamation in the Sergeant's hand, and appropriated its sentiments as an answer to the question before him. Thereby he was enabled to pronounce the said assassination to be ‘savage,’ ‘treacherous,’ ‘diabolical,’ and ‘contrary to the king's peace and the security of the subject;’ to the edification of all present, and the satisfaction of the military inquisitor. It was in some such way my young friend got off. His guardian angel reminded him in a whisper that Mr. Grey, his examiner, had himself written a book on Lord Chatham and his times. This set him up at once; he drew boldly on his knowledge of his man for the political views advanced in it; was at no loss for definite propositions to suit his purpose; recovered his ground, and came off triumphantly.”

Here Mr. Black stops; and Mr. Brown takes advantage of the pause to insinuate that Mr. Black is not himself a disciple of his own philosophy, having travelled some way from his subject;—his friend stands corrected, and retraces his steps.

“Now, I will prophesy one thing of Robert, unless this fault is knocked out of him,” continues merciless Mr. Black. “When he grows up, and has to make a speech, or write a letter for the papers, he will look out for flowers, full-blown flowers, figures, smart expressions, trite quotations, hackneyed beginnings and endings, pompous circumlocutions, and so on: but the meaning, the sense, the solid sense, the foundation, you may hunt the slipper long enough before you catch it.”

“Well,” says Mr. Brown, a little chafed, “you are a great deal worse than Mr. White; you have missed your vocation: you ought to have been a schoolmaster.” Yet he goes home somewhat struck by what his friend has said, and turns it in his mind for some time to come, when he gets there. He is a sensible man at bottom, as well as good-tempered, this Mr. Brown.

1.

Mr. White, the Tutor, is more and more pleased with young Mr. Black; and, when the latter asks him for some hints for writing Latin, Mr. White takes him into his confidence and lends him a number of his own papers. Among others he puts the following into Mr. Black's hands.

Mr. White's view of Latin translation.

“There are four requisites of good Composition,—correctness of vocabulary, or diction, syntax, idiom, and elegance. Of these, the two first need no explanation, and are likely to be displayed by every candidate. The last is desirable indeed, but not essential. The point which requires especial attention is idiomatic propriety.

“Take the following English of a modern writer:

“ ‘This is a serious consideration:—Among men, as among wild beasts, the taste of blood creates the appetite for it, and the appetite for it is strengthened by indulgence.’

“Translate it word for word literally into Latin, thus:—

“ ‘Hæc est seria consideratio. Inter homines, ut inter feras, gustus sanguinis creat ejus appetitum, et ejus appetitus indulgentiâ roboratur.’

“Purer Latin, as far as diction is concerned, more correct, as far as syntax, cannot be desired. Every word is classical, every construction grammatical: yet Latinity it simply has none. From beginning to end it follows the English mode of speaking, or English idiom, not the Latin.

“In proportion, then, as a candidate advances from this Anglicism into Latinity, so far does he write good Latin.

“We might make the following remarks upon the above literal version.

“1. ‘Consideratio’ is not ‘a consideration;’ the Latins, having no article, are driven to expedients to supply its place, e.g., quidam is sometimes used for a.

“2. ‘Consideratio’ is not ‘a consideration,’ i.e., a thing considered, or a subject; but the act of considering.

“4. ‘Inter homines, gustus,’ etc. Here the English, as is not uncommon, throws two ideas together. It means, first, that something occurs among men, and occurs among wild beasts, and that it is the same thing which occurs among both; and secondly that this something is, that the taste of blood has a certain particular effect. In other words, it means, (1) ‘this occurs among beasts and men,’ (2) viz., that the ‘taste of blood,’ etc. Therefore, ‘inter homines, etc., gustus creat, etc.,’ does not express the English meaning, it only translates its expression.

“5. ‘Inter homines’ is not the Latin phrase for ‘among.’ ‘Inter’ generally involves some sense of division, viz., interruption, contrast, rivalry, etc. Thus, with a singular noun, ‘inter cœnam hoc accidit,’ i.e., this interrupted the supper. And so with two nouns, ‘inter me et Brundusium Cæsar est.’ And so with a plural noun, ‘hoc inter homines ambigitur,’ i.e., man with man. ‘Micat inter omnes Julium sidus,’ i.e., in the rivalry of star against star. ‘Inter tot annos unus (vir) inventus est,’ i.e., though all those years, one by one, put in their claim, yet only one of them can produce a man, etc. ‘Inter se diligunt,’ they love each other. On the contrary, the Latin word for ‘among,’ simply understood, is ‘in.’

“6. As a general rule, indicatives active followed by accusatives, are foreign to the main structure of a Latin sentence.

“7. ‘Et;’ here two clauses are connected, having different subjects or nominatives; in the former ‘appetitus’ is in the nominative, and in the latter in the accusative. It is usual in Latin to carry on the same subject, in connected clauses.

“8. ‘Et’ here connects two distinct clauses. ‘Autem’ is more common.

“These being some of the faults of the literal version, I transcribe the translations sent in to me by six of my pupils respectively, who, however deficient in elegance of composition, and though more or less deficient in hitting the Latin idiom, yet evidently know what idiom is.

“The first wrote:—Videte rem graviorem; quod feris, id hominibus quoque accidit,—sanguinis sitim semel gustantibus intus concipi, plenè potantibus maturari.

“The second wrote:—Res seria agitur; nam quod in feris, illud in hominibus quoque cernitur, sanguinis appetitionem et suscitari lambendo et epulando inflammari.

“The third:—Ecce res summâ consideratione digna; et in feris et in hominibus, sanguinis semel delibati sitis est, sæpius hausti libido.

“The fourth:—Sollicitè animadvertendum est, cum in feris tum in hominibus fieri, ut guttæ pariant appetitum sanguinis, frequentiores potus ingluviem.

“And the fifth:—Perpende sedulo, gustum sanguinis tam in hominibus quam in feris primæ appetitionem sui tandem cupidinem inferre.

“And the sixth:—Hoc grave est, quod hominibus cum feris videmus commune, gustasse est appetere sanguinem, hausisse in deliciis habere.”

2.

Old Mr. Black's Confession of his search after a Latin style.

“At school I was reckoned a sharp boy; I ran through its classes rapidly; and by the time I was fifteen, my masters had nothing more to teach me, and did not know what to do with me. I might have gone to a public school, or to a private tutor for three or four years; but there were reasons against either plan, and at the unusual age I speak of, with some inexact acquaintance with Homer, Sophocles, Herodotus, and Xenophon, Horace, Virgil, and Cicero, I was matriculated at the University. I had from a child been very fond of composition, verse and prose, English and Latin, and took especial interest in the subject of style; and one of the wishes nearest my heart was to write Latin well. I had some idea of the style of Addison, Hume, and Johnson, in English; but I had no idea what was meant by good Latin style. I had read Cicero without learning what it was; the books said, ‘This is neat Ciceronian language,’ ‘this is pure and elegant Latinity,’ but they did not tell me why. Some persons told me to go by my ear; to get Cicero by heart; and then I should know how to turn my thoughts and marshal my words, nay, more, where to put subjunctive moods and where to put indicative. In consequence I had a vague, unsatisfied feeling on the subject, and kept grasping shadows, and had upon me something of the unpleasant sensation of a bad dream.

“Then I fell in with the Germania and Agricola of Tacitus, and was very much taken by his style. Its peculiarities were much easier to understand, and to copy, than Cicero's: ‘decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile;’ and thus, without any advance whatever in understanding the genius of the language, or the construction of a Latin sentence, I added to my fine words and cut-and-dried idioms, phrases smacking of Tacitus. The Dialogues of Erasmus, which I studied, carried me in the same direction; for dialogues, from the nature of the case, consist of words and clauses, and smart, pregnant, or colloquial expressions, rather than of sentences with an adequate structure.”

Mr. Black takes breath, and then continues:

“The general subject of Latin composition, my dear son, has ever interested me much, and you see only one point in it has made me speak for a quarter of an hour; but now that I have had my say about it, what is its upshot? The great moral I would impress upon you is this, that in learning to write Latin, as in all learning, you must not trust to books, but only make use of them; not hang like a dead weight upon your teacher, but catch some of his life; handle what is given you, not as a formula, but as a pattern to copy and as a capital to improve; throw your heart and mind into what you are about, and thus unite the separate advantages of being tutored and of being self-taught,—self-taught, yet without oddities, and tutorized, yet without conventionalities.”

“Why, my dear father,” says young Mr. Black, “you speak like a book. You must let me ask you to write down for me what you have been giving out in conversation.”

I have had the advantage of the written copy.