Now, of
their worthiness, of their chances of success in the study, Homer
seems the best touchstone; and he is certainly the most attractive
guide to the study.
At present boys are introduced to the language of the Muses by
pedantically written grammars, full of the queerest and most arid
metaphysical and philological verbiage. The very English in which
these deplorable books are composed may be scientific, may be
comprehensible by and useful to philologists, but is utterly heart-
breaking to boys.
Philology might be made fascinating; the history of a word, and of
the processes by which its different forms, in different senses,
were developed, might be made as interesting as any other story of
events. But grammar is not taught thus: boys are introduced to a
jargon about matters meaningless, and they are naturally as much
enchanted as if they were listening to a chimaera bombinans in
vacuo. The grammar, to them, is a mere buzz in a chaos of nonsense.
They have to learn the buzz by rote; and a pleasant process that is-
-a seductive initiation into the mysteries. When they struggle so
far as to be allowed to try to read a piece of Greek prose, they are
only like the Marchioness in her experience of beer: she once had a
sip of it. Ten lines of Xenophon, narrating how he marched so many
parasangs and took breakfast, do not amount to more than a very
unrefreshing sip of Greek.
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