SECT. V.-PREJUDICIAL EFFECTS OF UNRESTRAINED INDULGENCE IN FOREIGN COMPOSITION.

By cultivating acquaintance with a foreign literature through the perusal of its standard authors, we enlarge our views and lessen our prejudices; but, if we use exclusively the language in which it is embodied, we sacrifice our native originality and narrow our minds to the prejudices of another nation. Useful, then, as the arts of speaking and writing a foreign language may be, we would not recommend learners to indulge habitually in its use, or consume much time in endeavouring to reach perfection in these two arts. It is hardly possible to excel as a speaker or a writer in two languages, particularly when they differ much in their genius: the pains which are taken to write the one must necessarily injure the style in the other. Gibbon, Leibnitz, Humboldt, the Schlegels, Goldoni, Manzoni, some Russian writers, and others, not natives of France, have, it is true, composed French works remarkable for purity of diction; but these brilliant exceptions do not invalidate the general rule; they only prove the extensive use of French, which is learned in many countries as a vernacular idiom.

*

The author of "Essays on Professional Education" + observes that the difficulty which many young men who have been accounted good scholars find in writing their own language, often arises from their having been exclusively accustomed to the idioms and inversions of Latin, which are not suitable to the English language; girls generally write their own language better and sooner than boys who have devoted five or six years to classical studies, or rather to the making of Latin; and they frequently maintain through life great superiority in epistolary writing, which is the most useful species of composition.

If, then, the comparative study of a second language is, as we have seen, ancillary to more profound knowledge of the principles and genius of the native tongue, the habit of speaking and writing it, when once acquired, is, on the other hand, prejudicial to the practical knowledge of the vernacular. Hence it frequently happens that, after having resided a long time abroad, some persons lose fluency in their own idiom without attaining

* See Essai sur l'Universalité de la Langue Française, by C. N. Allou.

† Edgeworth, Essays on Professional Education.

complete command of the foreign, and thus become incapable of expressing ideas fluently or correctly in any language. We could name several eminent foreigners who are precisely in that predicament.

Alfieri, unable to shake off the gallicisms of which he had contracted a habit in his travels, left Asti, where French was frequently spoken around him, and went to Tuscany expressly, he says, “to accustom himself to hear, speak, think, and dream in pure Italian.”* "I am of opinion" says Jefferson, "there never was an instance of a man's writing or speaking his native tongue with elegance, who passed from fifteen to twenty years out of the country where it is spoken. Thus, no instance exists of a person's writing two languages perfectly."+ General Perrone, Minister of War and President of the Council in the kingdom of Sardinia, in 1848, was in the habit of addressing in French the Chamber of Deputies of that country, because, having been for twenty years in the French service, he had, by his own acknowledgment, lost that familiarity with his native idiom (the Italian) which was desirable for treating the great questions then in debate before that assembly.‡ "On my return from England," says Voltaire, "where I had passed nearly two years in constant study of the English language, I found myself embarrassed, when I wished to compose a French tragedy. I had almost accustomed myself to think in English; I felt that the terms of my own language no longer presented themselves to my imagination with the same abundance as before: it was like a stream whose source had been turned off, it cost me time and trouble to make it flow again in its former channel."§ Castell, the erudite author of the "Lexicon Heptaglotton," so completely devoted himself to the Oriental languages that he forgot the orthography of his own.

These are striking illustrations of the fact that perfect knowledge of two languages is almost unattainable, and that the practice of writing a foreign idiom, if persevered in for any length of time, must injure the style of the writer in his native tongue.

It is not rare to see among the members of the old English universities, men deeply versed in ancient languages, who are

*Vita di Vittorio Alfieri da Asti scritta da esso.

† Letter to J. Banister, jun., 1848.

Journal des Débats, Oct. 26, 1848.

& Discours sur la Tragédie à Milord Bolingbroke.

Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century.-Percy Anecdotes.

but inferior orators and writers in their own. This inferiority is even so remarkable as to have drawn on one of the universities of the British Empire the cognomen of the Silent Sister. However, all of them may, in this respect, be said to differ only in degree; for the practical English scholars sprung from their most distinguished ranks, are not, either in eminence, or number, proportionate to the Greek and Latin scholars who adorn them and sustain their credit.

At the present day, those who write in a dead language have little chance of being read and less of gaining celebrity by their classical labours. The Latin compositions of Milton, Addison, and Cowley have added little to their fame; the Latin poems of Petrarch are now scarcely known, although he esteemed them above his Italian sonnets and canzones. If Dante had, as he at first intended, written his "Divine Comedy" in Latin, Italy would not boast of him at this day; and his name would have been long since buried in oblivion. The same fate would have befallen Ariosto's poem, if, following Bembo's advice, he had written it in Latin. Who now reads Sannazzaro, Vida, Politian, Bembo, Muretus, the Scotch Buchanan, and other modern Latin authors, whose writings, however, have been acknowledged often to equal those of the ancients in correctness and elegance? The genius of the great writers of a nation is a positive element of its power and greatness; but those who write in a dead language, whatever be the excellence of their performances, add nothing to the glory of their country.

The little leisure that people, in general, have for literary pursuits, would be better employed in endeavouring to advance their knowledge of the native language, and, especially in carrying the two arts of speaking and writing it to their uttermost, than in aiming at excellence in the same acquirements in another language. So difficult is an approach to perfection in these arts, that there is no man who has at his command all the resources of his own idiom, whose style, if minutely examined, would not exhibit flaws. Quintilian* does not find in Cicero the perfect orator; and Cicero† declares that Demosthenes does not fully satisfy him. Far from being complete masters of the vernacular tongue, we are all rather mastered by it, we are carried along in the current of our thoughts by our peculiar stock of words, and the peculiar style to which we have been accustomed; we cannot, in all circumstances, make the language bend to the

* Instit. Orat., Liv. XII. Ch. I.

† De Oratore.

current of our thoughts and feelings. The great aim of literary education ought then to be, as already stated, the perfect mastery of oral and written expression in the vernacular :—a long period of life devoted to this double object would barely suffice for its accomplishment.

BOOK XII.

CONCLUSION.

"We do amiss to spend seven or eight years in scraping together so much miserable Latin and Greek as may be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one year.-MILTON.*

"Not the man who is most curious in dictionaries and grammars, but he who hears, and speaks, and reads, and writes, most largely, will, in a given time, know the language best."-J. S. BLACKIE. †

CHAPTER I.

TIME REQUIRED FOR LEARNING A LANGUAGE.

SECT. I.-OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF A LIVING LANGUAGE, AND TIME REQUIRED FOR IT.

It is often asked, "In what time can a foreign language be learned?" To this question no definite answer can be given. The more or less attention, energy, and assiduity of the learner, his understanding and power of memory, his age, previous knowledge, habits of study, the assistance he receives from a teacher, the time he devotes daily to the study, and many other circumstances have all necessarily great influence in the result.

It is obvious that a person, for example, who studies six hours a day, is likely, every thing else being equal, to advance six times faster than one who reads but one hour. If a diligent learner wishes merely to understand the language as he reads or hears it, he may fully accomplish this object in ten or twelve

*On Education, to Sam Hartlib.

On the Studying and Teaching of Languages.