The Confessions of Saint Augustine (Outler)/Book I/Chapter XIII


 * He used to hate the Greek grammar and language; but delighted in his Latin, and the empty tales of the poets.

But why did I so much hate the Greek, which as a little boy I used to study? not even yet is it quite clear to me. For the Latin I loved; not what my first masters, but what the so-called grammarians taught me. For those first lessons, reading, writing, and arithmetic, I used to find no less burdensome and tasklike than all my Greek. And yet whence was this too, but from the sin and vanity of this life, because "I was but flesh, and a wind that passeth away and cometh not again"? (Ps. lxxviii. 39). For those first lessons were in fact better, because more certain; by them I obtained, and still retain, the power of reading what I find written, and myself writing what I will; whereas in the others, I was compelled to learn the wanderings of some Æneas or other, forgetful of my own and to weep for dead Dido, because she killed herself for love; the while, with dry eyes, I, most miserable, endured myself dying among these things, far from Thee, O God my life.

For what could be more miserable than a miserable being, who commiserates not himself, weeping the death of Dido which came of her love to Æneas, but weeping not his own death which came of want of love to Thee, O God, Thou light of my heart, Thou bread of my inmost soul, Thou power who makest fertile my mind, and the thought of my bosom? I loved Thee not, I committed fornication against Thee, and all around me thus fornicating there echoed "Well done! well done!" "for the friendship of this world is fornication against Thee" (S. James iv. 4), and "Well done! well done!" is repeated till one is ashamed to be thus a man. And all this I wept not, but I wept for Dido slain, and "seeking by the sword a wound extreme," myself seeking the while the extremest and lowest of Thy creatures, having forsaken Thee, earth passing into the earth; and if forbid to read all this, I would grieve that I might not read what grieved me. Madness like this is reckoned a more honourable and a richer learning than that by which I learned to read and write.

But now, my God, cry Thou aloud in my soul; and let Thy truth tell me, "Not so, not so. Far better was that earlier lore." For, lo, I would far more readily forget the wanderings of Æneas and all the rest than how to read and write. But over the thresholds of the Grammar Schools veils are hung; but indicate not so much the dignity of secrecy as the cloak of errors. Let not those, whom I no longer fear, cry out against me, while I confess to Thee, my God, whatever my soul will, and acquiesce in the condemnation of my evil ways, that I may love Thy good ways. Let not either buyers or sellers of grammar cry out against me. For if I put the question to them whether it be true that Æneas came on a time to Carthage, as the Poet tells, the less learned will reply that they know not, the more learned that he never did. But if I were to ask with what letters the name " Æneas" is written, all who have learnt this will answer me aright, according to the use and wont, by which men have established those signs among themselves. If, again, I should ask, which might be forgotten with less detriment to the concerns of life, reading and writing or these poetic fictions, who does not foresee, what all must answer who have not wholly forgotten themselves? I sinned, then, when as a boy I preferred those empty to those more profitable studies, or rather hated the one and loved the other. "One and one, two;"two and two, four;" this was to me a hateful singsong: "the wooden horse filled with armed men," and "the burning of Troy," and "Creusa's shade" were the vain spectacle most charming to me.