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hold to the side of art as well.
Grant that it is the worthy mission of the current British literature to render style clear, simple, and convincing, it may yet be the mission of Americans to take that style and make it beautiful.
And in this view we need, above all things else, to retain in our American universities all that looks toward literature, whether based upon the study of the modern, or, still better, of the ancient tongues.
I do not mean to advocate mere pedantries, such as the Latin programmes on Commencement day, or the Latin triennial Catalogues; but I mean such actual delights in the study of language as my old text-book gave.
It seems almost needless to say that the best training for one who is to create beauty must be to accustom him to the study of that which is beautiful; his taste once formed, let him originate what he can. If this can be done by modern models as well as by ancient, let it be done; it is the literary culture, as such, that we need.
Keats, who said of himself, “I dote on fine phrases like a lover,” was as truly engaged in literary training as if he had been making Latin verses at Oxford; very likely more so; but, at any rate, it was not science that he studied.
It is for literature, after all, that I plead; not for this or that body of literature.
Welcoming science, I only deprecate the exclusive adoption of the scientific style.
There prevailed for a long time, in America, a certain superstition about collegiate education.
So far as it was superstitious, the impression was foolish, no doubt; but beneath its folly the tradition of pure literature was kept alive.
It appears from President Dwight's “Travels;” that, until about the year 1800, our oldest college prescribed Latin verse-making as a condition of entrance.
He also
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