Monday, April 16, 2007
Pedantry
Excerpts from William Hazlitt, On Pedantry:
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He who is not in some measure a pedant, though he may be a wise, cannot be a very happy man.
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Learning and pedantry were formerly synonymous; and it were well when they were so. Can there be a higher satisfaction than for a man to understand Greek, and to believe that there is nothing else worth understanding?
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It may be considered as a sign of the decay of piety and learning in modern times, that our divines no longer introduce texts of the original Scriptures into their sermons. The very sound of the original Greek or Hebrew would impress the hearer with a more lively faith in the sacred writers than any translation, however literal or correct.
