and refute your rude denunciation against the ntility of the learned languages! Is not this argument, as founded on facts, indisputable? For observe the dilemma into which a rejection of this argument would place you You would have to prove, that a large majority of our countrymen, who are now ignorant of what are called, the "learned languages," do, in fact, possess an equal, or greater degree of knowledge, than the learned gentlemen' who have been educated at our two Universities, but that unhappily, hitherto, they have not had the desire, or capacity, to communicate it to others." De non apparentibus quasi de non existentibus, eadem est retio,' says the proverb. And strange indeed it is, that not one truly learned, though originally poor man, in ten thousand, appears among us, who has not been indebted to the study of the learned languages,' for the expansion and improvement of his mind, for his knowledge, and, in many instances, for his virtues; while the million, whose time and talents are unfettered by the trammels and absurdities of Greek and Latin syntax, remain, generally speaking, in the back ground; unable, in the smallest degree, to cope with their classical friends (for I will not call them their adversaries) in the improvement of, and communication of, those arts and sciences, which most embellish and dignify hu man nature. Let it also be remarked, that the great majority, even, of our first rate mathematicians and natural philosophers, such as Newton, Locke, Boyle, &c. (the promoters of sciences not so immediately connected with an acquaintance with the those treasures of natural, moral, and poli-¡municating it to others," completely answer tical philosophy, which their labours have so abundantly dispensed to us? Or did they derive their wisdom at second hand only through the weak medium of Eugli-1. translations from the works of the learned Greeks and Romans? No! no! Sir; these great scho lars digged and delved for the precious ore itself in the very mines of ancient Greece and Rome. Their labours became more and more animated and persevering, from the idea of hearing those illustrious philosophers of antiquity speak for themselves; and from the hope of being able, in some de gree, to hold converse with them in the same language. Their honourable ardour could not rest, till they were put in possession of the true riches. In order to think as they thought, they found it necessary to be able to speak as they spake.-Or the insipidity and inadequacy of translations, you, yourself, may have some tolerable conception. You would not think, that a good article of your own in the Political Register (si magnis liceat componere parva) could have justice done to it by a translation into any language upon earth. (And yet, perhaps, that would be the best touchstone on which to try its real merit.) Nor would you be desirous, that your spirit and talents, as a political writer, should be measured by the awkward and puny standard of a translation. Is not the same reasoning applicable, in an infinitely higher degree, to translations fim the learned Greek and Roman authors? Are the sentiments and genius of Homer, Xenophon, Thucidydes, Demosthenes, Plato, Aristotle, and of those deeply learned GræcoRomans, Cicero and Horace, Virgil and Quintilian, to be studied to advantage in a language not their own? In order to feel, to catch, and to communicate the true taste and philosophical genius of Cicero, you must read Cicero. So thought Locke, when in enforcing the opinion of La Bruyere, he says: "The sudy of the original text can never be sufficiently recommended. It is he shortest, surest, and most agreeable way o all sorts of learning. Draw from the pring head, and take not things at second and. Let the writings of the great masters e never laid aside; dwell upon them, ttle them in your mind, and cite them on occasion." " Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna.' And now, Sir, will not the above short alsion to the names and acquirements of our sest men and philosophers, or, in other vrds, of those who as far as we know al can judge, possessed the greatest degree nowledge, and had the capacity of com 6 learned languages') has been composed of great scholars, properly so called. Yet it would be possible to mention the names of some excellent and first rate mathematicians and mechanics, both ancient and moderu, who have made little, or no progress in Gre cian and Roman literature; not from want of inclination to do so, but, from want of opportunity to prosecute such studies; for they gratefully acknowledge their eternal obligations to the conservators and translators of the works of Euclid, and will ever revere the memory and talents of an Archimedes, Eudoxus, and Archytas But the fewness of their numbers, comparatively speaking, adds strength to my argument inasmuch as it affords a further proof, that the study of the learned languages, a bar instead of operating, as you assert, as to the acquirement of real learning, is, in every branch of it, on the contrary, as satis factory as it is desirable. I leave you to make the best of this actual result. I will just mention one other argument, as it regards the ability which attends the studying of the learned languages'; and that is, that the attainment of the rudiments of those languages has a peculiar tendency to quicken the powers of observation, to excite, and to form, accurate perceptions of things: and to induce habits of close investigation. It, moreover, wonderfully assists in the improvement of the faculty of the memory, rendering it technically and most extensively useful; and it is worthy also of observation, that this advantage and improvement of the mind is usually acquired at an age when the youth of the lower classes of the community (who have this avenue to science thrown open to them, by the munificence and liberality of those excellent persons, who, after the example of our immortal King Alfred, have been the founders of free grammuar schools) could add little to the public stock of industry by their personal labour; and when it would be difficult to say, what study more generally useful could be adopted, to employ the time, to fix the attention, and strengthen the faculties of youth, at that particular age, previously to their engaging with success in any other liberal pursuit or occupation, to which their various circumstances or condition in life, or inclination might lead them. The mistake, into which your arrogance has led you, is, that, like many others, you would argue against the use of a thing, in consequence of its abuse. An error into which nothing but the odious spirit of detraction, and the overflowings of ignorance and conceit, could have betrayed you on the present occasion. As justly, and almost as gratefully, might you have considered the art of printing, and the liberty of the press (from whence, as from an "alma mater" yon have derived what little light, and information, and consequence you have) to be, like the learned languages, a bar to,' or inimical to, the best interests of mankind, because of the abuse to which they are daily subjected by the folly, the malignity, and selfish designs of those who have recourse to them. For want of a critical knowledge of the learned languages,' you have, yourself, been unable to discover, that it is nothing but men's laziness which hath encouraged pedantry to cram, rather than to enrich, libraries, and to bury good authors under heaps of notes and commentaries." (Locke from La Bruyère.)—I will only notice one other particular, which in the pride and waggishness of your heart, you have introduced into your notable and indecent challenge. I already hear," say you, some pedagogue or pedant exclaim : this is precisely the reasoning of the Fox without a tail." What! would you make the pedant more stupid than he really is? Who, that had not his conceptions obfuscated by the fumes of his own insolence, would compare you, under the present supposition of a want of learning, to the fox which had lost his tail? For that, I fancy, is the fable to which you allude, when you talk of the fox without a tail.-Sir, the absolutely, thorough-bred, no-tail'd foxes have been extinct in our country, I believe, for many generations past. I have been after those animals, man and boy, these many years, and yet you are the first live creature of the kind, that has presented itself to me. Now I have gotten hold of you by the stump, methinks, it would be a good thing to put you into a bag, and to turn you out, on some fine morning, before our gallant pack: depend upon it, we would rattle your old stiff rump well for you. But, good Sir, you never had a tail to lose: (that is, you were never in possession of the learned languages); ergo, you are not circumstanced like the fox to which you compare yourself in the fable, who had forfeited his tail (as many of his betters have done their heads) for his villainy. For it was in consequence of the loss of his tail, that the fox in the table was enabled so ingeniously to plead the want of it, as an advantage, to his compatriots. There would have been much more sense in comparing yourself to the fox, who was unable to reach the grapes. But there is another fable, now I think of it, which, if possible, is still more applicable to yourself. It is prettily told in the Latin language-allow me to transcribe it for your edification, and permit me, at the same time, to subjoin an attempt at doing it into English, that you may thoroughly understand it. Mulus.. Lascivientem plurimo hordeo mulum An ale drinking wight, full of hiccough, and play A Latin quotation attracted his eye; the page, He very soon threw it away-in a rage! Yet asham'd, and confounded, at what came to pass, He then was reminded-he was but an ass! How easy, but how detestable a thing it is, Mr. Cobbett, to be scurrilous! Since the passage, quoted from your Register, which has occasioned this long letter, is no less than a formal challenge from you to the friends and patrons of the learned languages' and consequently (as has been proved) is an attack upon learning itself, I am, therefore, far from presuming to think, that you might not receive a much abler answer than mine, which I communicate to you under the signature of Anacharsis,' in allusion to the name of an ancient admirer and patron of Grecian literature and science. Whose fame, however honorably recorded as a scholar, must, nevertheless, for the present, 'vail' to your modern reputation as a libeller. The best answer to your challenge, as to many others, I am persuaded, would be, to take no notice of it at all: and possibly, if I may risque an Irishism, that will be the notice taken of it by the truly learned. The discussion which you would provoke is now quite out of date. To place the laurel crown now, for the first time, on the brows of the ancient learned Greeks and Romans, or their disciples, would be ten times more officious and ridiculons, than to present now, for the first time, the diadem of France to the Emperor Napoleon. Unhappily, for the world, the Emperor Napoleon, like yourself, and Thomas Paine, is defective in point of education. He is not "literis imbutus humanioribus." And though, he is now the most conspicuous character in Europe, neither his head nor heart is become susceptible of those just sentiments, which distinguish the enlightened friends of humanity and the belles lettres. The error, into which you have fallen, has indeed, been anticipated, and its dangers have been clearly ascertained. Knox, when writing on the Influence of Politics on the State of Literature, has made an observation which may be applied to you with singular force and propriety, "The newspapers form the whole library of a "politician, the coffee-house is his school, " and he prefers the gazette and an acrimo"nious pamphlet, for, or against the minis66 try, to all that was ever written by a Homer, or discovered by a Newton."Again he observes: " he who would add an elegance to politics, and distinguish his conversation on the subject, from the "vociferation, of porters in an ale-house, should inspect the finished pieces of an £tiquity; and learn to view public acts and "counsels in the light in which they ap peared to those whom the world has long "considered as some of the best and poli "test teachers of political wisdom.(Knox's Essays, vol. 2. p. 124.) Now the preservation of the various knowledge, and learning, and wisdom, of ancient Greece and Rome (to recur to the former argument) bas entirely depended upon the cultivation and preservation of the respective languages of those countries, in their original purity. And let it be observed, that the still more inestimable treasures of the second scriptures as connected with the history and doctrines of the Christian religion, have owed their existence to the same cause. If it had not been for the successive labours and perseveing industry of scholars in studying and communicating the knowledge of those languages most critically and grammatically, the glorious light, which we have now so much reason to be thankful for, would probably have been for ever concealed from us! Nor shall we have the power of transmitting this purest, and most perfect, and most transcendent revelation of true wisdom to our children, as an authentic document, unimpaired, unless the same studies be still as earnestly inculcated, and as successfully pursued.ANACHARSIS.—M. S. Feb. 3, 1807. LEARNED LANGUAGES." SIR,The unqualified attack, in your number of the 10th instant, on what are ge nerally termed the Learned Languages, has induced me to step forward in their defence; who am neither the immediate subject of your challenge, nor a champion worthy of such a cause. I am a native of the northern division of this island, of which the inhabitants are very variously represented by their southern neighbours; while the late Lord Orford characterises them as the most ac 66 complished nation in Europe, the nation "to which if any country is endowed with "a superior portion of sense he should be "inclined to give the preference in that par "ticular," by the monks of Oxford and Cambridge (Mr. Gibbon's expression) they are treated with the utmost contempt. When an impartial estimate however is formed, Scotland will be found, for a considerable length of time, to have produced men who have distinguished themselves in literature and science, and in active life, in a greater number proportionally than any other part of the British dominions. And this must be in a great measure owing to the prevailing edu cation, of which while the study of the an tients forms a part, it by no means engrosses the whole attention, to the exclusion of other branches of knowledge equally necessary to be known, but which are said to be disregarded by the English Universities.-While I admire your spirit, Mr. Cobbett, I caunot help thinking, that your ardour and impetuosity sometimes lead you to form sweeping conclusions, which on a calin survey you would have rejected. This ardour of dispo. sition no man however will blame, when he considers how essential a requisite it is to him who stands forward as the political censor of the age, who, were he to waste his time in weighing circumstances with the scrupulous nicety of a dialectician, would frequently allow the favourable moment of reproof to pass by unappropriated.--Had you confined your strictures to the abuse of the antient languages, I should have heartily given you my assent; it is the wish to degrade them frouf any place at all in education that I disapprove of Your definition of learning is, the possession of knowledge and the power of communicating that knowledge. And with respect to the power of communicating knowledge; a command of words, I know no method equally effeacions with the study of a different lincinge from your own. It unavoidably fives the attention on the peculiarities that distinguish ech of the languages; and the import of the ideas received from a foreign aftor must be always measured by corresponding expressions in the mother tongue. At the age † usually devoted to this exercise the memory is almost the only faculty that is possesed in any degree of perfection; and by no other means could this faculty be rendered moré subservient to general improvement. Other acquirements requiring a like degree of tinderstanding may and ought then to be made; but to talk of the higher walks of science or any thing requiring thought and judgment is preposterout in the extreme. Whatever of our own language can be appreciated in early youth and not imparted by these means should also be communicated and can easily be done without interfering in the least with a classical education. You, Mr. Cobbett, although unacquainted it seems with antient learning, are yet what is generally termed a linguist, and I believe you once told us that you taught the English language to foreigners. I appeal then to your experience for what I assert, and I will ask you, whether in the acquisition of the languages you possess you were not conscious, that your knowledge of your own was wonderfully increased, and that many of its niceties were thus forced up on your attention, of which otherwise you would have been conscious? The knowledge that can with most effect.be imparted to youth, that accords the best with their dispositions and inchinations, is history, morals and a taste for poetry; and it is very easy to combine this knowledge with the acquisition of languages: nay, it necessarily results from such acquisition.—` And what languages shall we choose in preference to the autient for this purpose? Shall we make choice of the poorest of the modern idioms, the larguage of the French, whose writers are in general as much distinguished for an affectation of manner, as for rash presumptuous conclusions and an almost universal precariousness of principle? Shall we set before them the models of Tuscan eloquence conveying a morality to which that of Covent Garden is comparatively chaste, or unlock the fountains of High Dutch, the most copious and energetic of the modern languages, in sonie respects superior to the I atin, but profaned by a host of vulgar | scribblers? Let us draw a line of demarcation between the respective merits of the antients and moderns. tients and moderns. In history, morals, oratory, and almost every department of poetry the antients are as superior to the moderns as they are inferior in physical science. That education must therefore be the best which places before the student the purest models in every department, that places before him an excellence of which of his own accord, he could forin no conception. Accordingly, we sce the greatest orators have been always those most familiar with the antients for whom they have entertained the highest veneration. Need I point to Cicero, the most conversant of his countrymen in Grecian literature, to Burke, to Johnson, to Buffon, to Montesquien, Boccace and Wieland. And how rare is it to find in men who have been deprived of a learned education, I do not speak of eloquence, even'a tolerable knowledge of composition, notwiths standing of the multitude of readers in every nation of Europe who fall under this description. Independent of the matter of the an tient authors, they enjoyed the advantage of composing in languages so happily formed that they could model them to every inflection of meaning; they could give to their construction an energy and a harmony which it is in vain for the moderns to attempt. The latter must, always stand at a distance; and we can only admire that they have got over so many difficulties as they have done. But would Burke himself have dared (and after him what other) to bring forth ought that he would place in competition with the Cato Major or the Treatise.de Oratore of Cicero?" and exclusive attachment be avoided.— -Edinburgh, LEARNED LANGUAGES." No. 7. SIR,Ever since I had the good fortune first to cast my eye upon your valuable publication, I have continued your · constant reader and admirer. On Wednesday, the day on which your Regis er anives in this city, I may say in the language of modern epicures, Iaine! This they speak emphatically: it is not meant that they do not get dinner every day, they' take dinner no doubt, but when they dine, there is something more than common, something very delicate and nice. So I, to suply the er iv Will any historian of the present day stand a comparison with the magnidicence of Livy or the energy and sententious gravity of Tacitus? And to the Kuropædia of Xenophon only the Emile of Rousseau can with effect be opposed. The sensations excited by the perusal of such authors will ade from the mind only with the last glimmer of memory." -But why should these alone be studied, and the fruit of the expericnce of the moderns be neglected. In many hings the antients were mere children in comparison of the latter. Modern civilization has produced fruits of which it is impossible that they could have formed any conception. It must also be confessed that for the majority of citizens the study of antient literature is worse than useless; it engrosses that time which could for themselves and their country beings of my literary maw, read something more beneficially employed in the acquisition of knowledge fitted for the humble walks of ordinary life; and for these acquisitions before a sufficient time is afforded they are hurried by urgent necessity on the busy theatre of the world -But can he call himself learned, or boast of the universality of his grasp of mind who is ignorant of the manners, customs, and modes of thinking of nations so differently constituted from us as were the Greeks and Romans; who acted such a grand part on the theatre of the world; and who have left such illustrious memorials behind them? Without possessing their language this knowledge is impossible; no process can effect the decomposition of such an amalgamation as the union of the character of a people, and the language in which it is conveyed; and, when Swift, Addison, and Hume are no longer understood, the name and memory of the English, and their glory will be as a passing dreain.— Let a Hoogeven compile two inmense quartos on Grecian particles, and let a Dalzell swell a treatise on the single particle de; these lucubrations are useful; they smooth the path of the general scholar; they fix doubtful and uncertain points which sometimes lead to important conclusions; and, as Dr. Johnson observes, so limited are our faculties that without we circumscribe our exertions to one province, excellence will probably be denied us. So long as these endless minutiæ are not made a sine qua non in ge neral education, and the study of antient literature is confined within due bouncs, and is so taught as not to interfere with a knowledge of the other important branches of science, and of the constitutions of modern society: so long may beneficial consequences be expected to result, and the contraction of mind inseparable from partial knowledge every day; some periodical work or daily publication. The Morning Chronicle, your old friend, against whom I see you have found it necessary to declare war ;-a war which I am sure you consider just and necessary, otherwise you would not have undertaken it; and which I am confident you wil conduct on principles the most liberal and manly:-himi I always continue to read, not because he is at war with you, (for I take it for granted that, as in all other wars, your hostilities are mutual) but because he is a friend to literature, and seems to have as little fellow-feeling, as little sympathy and compassion as yourself for the fallen friends and advocates of the bankrupt system (which some persons style, no doubt most injuriously, the litt system. That invariable adherence to principles of honour and truth, displayed in every page of your work is, Sir, permit me to say, honourable to yourself, and advantageous to society. Virtue, which in times like those we have lately past, retires confounded and abashed, before the universal prevalence of vice, corruption, and folly, and almost yielding to despair, suspects she's but a name, receives from you new strength and vigour, and fortified with your support returns again, resumes her native dignity, and strikes with ter or and dismay the crowd of vile assailants which beset her. And, Mr. Cobbett, if I did not intend before I have finished this letter to give you spicient proof that I have no design to flatter, would not venture to tell you how much I admire that unwearied industry and application, that power and capacity of mind, which enables you to treat with such success so many subjects of the highest importance, and deepest research; and that, too, with a force, perspicuity, and neatness of stile almost peculiar to yourself. In reading your paper it has often |