Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/65

 three others, I was indubitably at the top of the school, I never read any Horace. The strict attention paid to the rudiments of the English tongue, in a school apparently classical, might to some appear excessive; and I must own that, having been taught under Mrs. Jackson to spell quite as correctly as I spell now, I was not a little surprised when I was requested to learn a column of three syllables in an English spelling-book. Indeed, I was dissatisfied with the proceeding, and had the audacity to ask Dr. Saunders whether we were not going to do any Latin that afternoon. He was openly displeased with the question, and told me that if I liked it I might pursue my Latin at once, instead of getting money by sticking to the spelling-book. The appeal to the pocket implied that, if we had gone through our three syllables in a satisfactory manner, we might each have received a penny.

The employment of pence as stimulants to the acquisition of a mastery over the difficulties of the Latin accidence was remarkable. Dr. Saunders would frequently burst into the school-room, arresting attention by smartly striking his desk with his cane, and cheerfully crying out, —

"Boys, boys, hear! Of a most blue pig in a most green field! The first who will turn that into Latin shall receive a penny!"

Responsive shouts were heard on all sides, and the first shouter, if correct, duly received his penny, which was euphemistically called "merit money."

I have here to explain that, in spite of its spasmodic manifestations, the genial offer of merit money was part of a system. As quarter-day approached, Trowel, a very big boy, appointed to the office by the doctor, would walk round the schoolroom, armed with a pencil and a slip of paper, and would ask the pupils questions as to the extra items to be inserted in the bill; how many books they had had, and so on. Among the questions was one relating to the probable amount of merit money. The boy, who had received his penny at very irregular intervals, had not the slightest notion on the subject; but the ever-ready Trowel would assist his memory by saying: "Well, half-a-crown won't be too much, will it?" The boy thought not; and Trowel pursued his quest elsewhere, some times eliciting five shillings as the possible figure. Certain I am that the aggregate number of pence, received by any one boy during any one quarter, never approached half-a-crown.

When I say that we seemingly did learn Greek under the auspices of Dr. Saunders, some readers may be of opinion that I contradict myself. But the opinion will cease when they learn what an utter sham our Greek was. A Scotch element, from some unknown reason or other, prevailed in the school. We had Dalzel's Greek and Ruddiman's Latin grammar, while our contemporaries looked up to Eton — all bad enough, when compared with the elementary books which, in obedience to a German impulse, are constantly published now. We had, also, Dalzel's "Analecta Minora" made up of presumably easy Greek excerpts; but the crack book was a Glasgow edition of Anacreon.

I suppose this book is still in vogue on the other side of the Tweed; for whenever I have referred to it in the course of conversation with north-country friends, I have invariably found that they recognized the article. It was a very thin volume, clad in that irrepressible sheepskin which was once regarded as the proper clothing for spelling-books and "Tutors' Assistants," and at the bottom of each page was a literal prose translation of the Greek above. Now, only imagine two years of Greek study culminating with Anacreon! There is no need to enquire here how far the pretty poems, attributed to the old debauchee of Teos, are spurious; but any one who knows anything about the matter knows that, if there is one author least fitted among others to familiarize a student with the peculiarities of the Greek language, that one is Anacreon.

But with our Latin, of course, we did something. Did we? As far as I myself am concerned, I can safely report that, if the Greek I learned was little, the Latin was still less. I had learned no Greek at Mrs. Jackson's, and I will do Dr. Saunders the justice to say that under him I did learn the alphabet; but as for Latin, all I could do was to keep up the amount I had brought with me from the preparatory establishment. In cultivating the language of Cicero — to whom, be it remarked, not the slightest allusion was ever made — we were bound tight to that eminent classic Eutropius, with occasional deviations into the second book of Virgil's Æneid, in which latter region we were most liberally assisted.

All respect to Eutropius! Within the last few years he has shot up into something like celebrity as the historian who, in the most lucid manner, recorded the foundation of the Dacian colony by Trajan, I to which the Roumanians trace their 