There is therefore some prospect that the mistakes of the last generation (possibly due to the influence of Harvard and other universities) will be corrected, and that a proper college education will again replace the bread-and-butter studies in the earlier years of all good courses of training. If such a recovery of sound education takes place, it is impossible that Greek shall not resume its old importance. We now know far more of Hellenic work than did our fore-fathers. We can vindicate Greek studies in a manner wholly strange to them, had they ever thought a vindication called for. But, on the other hand, the teaching of Greek must be reformed. It must be made a human and lively study, taught like a modern language by dictation and recitation, as well as by written composition and reading of authors. In many English public schools, there has been a fashion not only of teaching the old languages as if they were indeed dead, but of spoiling the teaching of modern languages by copying this mistake. Much of the prejudice against the learning of Greek has been created by this blunder, and by its radiation into kindred studies. But this also I trust will be mended, and we shall have a more intelligent method of teaching all languages as living vehicles of human expression. Among these, the Greek is far the most perfect.
If this little book may help toward this great reformation, it will have amply succeeded in its purpose.
I must not send it out without thanking my many American friends for their sympathy and encouragement. During my visit, everybody seemed ready to hear what I had to say, and in some of the discussions which were the result, notably at Philadelphia, there seemed to be quite a body of opinion in my favour. Two observations are worth making here before I conclude: The American professors of Greek and Latin have exactly the same experience that we have in Ireland regarding the abandonment of Greek while professing to retain Latin. Neither there nor in Ireland have we failed to note the deterioration of Latin teaching, and the conviction grows upon us that a teacher who knows no Greek cannot be a Latin scholar in any real sense.
So much for the boasted retaining of Latin while sacrificing Greek.