Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/272

 250 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. lishment of this school has been the gradual diffusion among cultivated people of a more cor- rect notion of the Greek language, and of the appreciation of the fact that it is not a dead, but a living language. As the humanists, toward the end of the Middle Ages, brought about a revival of Greek learning in the schools, so may it be that a second Renaissance may receive its quickening impulse in America, and that we may be at the beginning of a brilliant period of study of the Greek language, the results of which can but be most favorable to the advancement of true cul- ture among us. When we consider the absurdity of the school pronunciation of the Greek, we must regret that a clumsy joke, perpetrated upon Erasmus, of Rotterdam — a joke which certainly does not be- come science on account of its venerable age — is still taken seriously by many. I said elsewhere : " In order to command a language, it is above all necessary to know how the people speak. The every-day language must be familiar to us." " Whoever knows the conversational language of a nation has the key to the understanding of its writings like the people themselves.**