Laudator Temporis Acti

J.B. Bury (1861-1927), "Compulsory Greek," Fortnightly Review 50 (1891) 811-821 (at 818):

The genius of a nation's language walks hand-in-hand with the genius of her literature. And this is what some of the barbarians find it so hard to understand. They cannot see the true position of the study of Greek grammar. They can only regard it as a lowly handmaid to the study of Greek literature. But language is no handmaid. The language and the literature are fellows, and their relation is rather one of reciprocity. Knowledge of the language enables us to read the literature, and the literature teaches us the genius of the language. They are interdependent, but each claims to be studied for itself, as well as for its fellow. The distinction of οὐ and μή, the'syntax of final clauses, "the doctrine of the enclitic De," which Browning's grammarian had mastered, are matters which a University must consider as important for their own sake—part of the useless knowledge which forms its special province. To get a glimpse of the genius of the Greek language is necessary in a liberal education, as well as to get a glimpse of the genius of the Greek literature. The two things are wedded together, but each is an end in itself. And this is likewise true of Latin and other literary languages. The sense and the expression must not be divorced. The precept, "Never mind the thought, but take care of the words," would be irrational; the opposite precept, "Never mind the words, but take care of the thought," is illiterate.

These sayings may seem hard to the barbarians. But the guardians of the Universities are false to their charge, and unfit to be guardians, if they are afraid or ashamed to profess the true character of sound liberal education over which it is theirs to watch; if they shrink from the responsibilities of the heritage of Humanism which it is their privilege to transmit. Any compromise on this question is treachery. Any attempt to conciliate the enemy by alleging that Greek, after all, may have uses is disloyalty to the ideal of a liberal education.