of, pleases them in literature; but they can enjoy at the age of thirteen, as well as ten years later, the strange adventures of Er, son of Armenius, and see, perhaps more vividly than their elders, the treeless plain through which the spirits marched in "terrible, choking heat," and imagine the midnight thunder and earthquake, amid which Er saw those spirits "suddenly borne up to rebirth, like shooting stars." 1 It is a great mistake to suppose that we cannot enjoy the classics long before the stage when they can be read "with our feet on the mantelpiece."

On the whole then, except for setting free boys with no capacity for the subject, where they have not been set free already, the first stage of classical education may be left alone. It is as satisfactory as most things in education are likely to be. The important question, when Greek and Latin should be begun, can only be settled by schoolmasters; but to an outsider with no experience of private schools, it seems as if it might be better to postpone the second classical language to a later age than is at present usual.

The serious difficulties begin in the second 1 Republic, 621.

stage, that of the sixth form boy, and the third, and last stage, the University. Here we come to the weaknesses of English classical teaching. In a sixth form, and still more at the University, we have to deal with boys whose minds are so developing that they can begin to appreciate the real greatness and value of the classics, and whose growing grasp of the languages enables them to cover with fuller understanding a wider field. Obviously, as these changes take place education must be progressively adapted to them, by setting the student work, which is not merely harder, but which is adapted to his new interests. It is not enough that he should pass from Euripides and Livy to Aeschylus and Tacitus, if he reads his new authors from the same point of view as the old; any more than it would be enough simply to give a richer form of milk to a baby which has got its teeth. A new kind of food is wanted to correspond to the new organs which are developing. The merely formal training in the classics which is suitable to a boy of fifteen, must be supplemented and finally largely replaced by the study of their ideas, their lessons, their meaning to the modern world. The changes will come slowly, adjusted to the changing capacities of the student, and they will not be

complete till he reaches the University. But by that time they should be finished, the 'childish things' put away, and the balance shifted from the formal training to the contents of the classics. When we have to teach young men of eighteen and over, if we still lay the chief emphasis on grammar, composition and scholarship, we have ignored the development of their minds and interests, and forgotten to change their mental food.

How do our schools and universities stand in this matter? They differ. The big public school which the author knows best seems to him, as far as the classical scheme in its sixth form goes, to need little or no change. Modern history and divinity have an important place in its teaching: science is done by everyone in the lower division of the form: the study of English literature is encouraged, without regular class work, through an annual prize which includes papers on Shakespeare, on literature since 1837, and on certain set books: an English essay, an English historical essay, and a prize given for the study of some aspect of Greek or Latin literature, life or art, admirably supplement the ordinary classical training. If we assume that the classics are to be the pièce de résistance in

education for the boys whom they suit, this course would seem a satisfactory curriculum; it avoids narrow specialism, and makes definite provision for the growing interest in Realien, in the contents of the classics as opposed to their form, in things as well as in words. On the other hand, there are schools from which boys come knowing little English literature, little history, and very little of the classics except how to translate into and from Latin and Greek. Schools as bad as these are few, and so far as the writer's experience goes, the new big secondary schools, which send pupils to the Universities, are not among them. Still, the weakness of English classical teaching is on the side of Realien. These tend to get swallowed up by scholarship. Schools are apt, in their attention to a side of the classics which is absolutely necessary, to forget other sides, and to send up boys who have mastered the form of Latin and Greek, but not their contents, who can translate them, but have an insufficient idea of their message. General papers in scholarship examinations make for the most part dismal reading.

1I use this convenient German word to mean the subjectmatter of the classics as opposed to their form, to grammar, scholarship, etc.

The remedy for this evil, where it exists, is a change, less of curriculum than of the angle of view. The same books may be read as now, but with very different results, if, instead of thinking only of grammar and scholarship, we think of their contents, their author, and the civilisation which produced them. But it will be difficult to

secure this reform without some change in the Universities.

The University is the key to the whole position, for anyone who wishes to go there is obliged to conform to her standards and demands. The colleges award scholarships and set the papers for them; and a school that wishes to get scholarships is obliged to consider what these papers are like, and to frame its teaching, so that any candidates it sends up can answer them. And unfortunately, the University,1 both in its classical scholarships and in Honour Moderations, pays little attention to the mental development of boys of which we

1I can only speak about Oxford, but from what I know of Cambridge classical scholarships, I imagine that my criticisms here would apply to the sister University. The Classical Tripos is very different from Honour Moderations at Oxford and, to judge from Mr. A. C. Benson's criticisms, has evils of its own.