J.P. Postgate (1853-1926),
Dead Language and Dead Languages, with Special Reference to Latin. An Inaugural Lecture Delivered Before the University of Liverpool ... on Friday, December 10, 1909 (London: John Murray, 1910), pp. 12-13 (endnote omitted):
But first we must lay down some
principles. And this to begin with: that a knowledge
of some foreign language, ancient or modern, is the
bare irreducible minimum for anyone who desires to
be educated in any true sense of the term, and that
for him who would have a liberal education two are
required. Such a one would own the treasure which
Ennius, the father of Roman poetry, described when
he said, with a grip upon reality not always observable
in modern professors of education, that he had three
souls, because he could speak Latin, Greek, and Oscan.
Id., pp. 14-15:
Is there anyone who, if he could, would
not wish to read Dante in the original? Well, if he
knows Latin, he need only acquaint himself with the
not very numerous changes which Latin has undergone in Italy since the Roman age, and I will promise him that he shall be able to read the third canto of the
'Inferno' in a day. I will promise it, I say, for I did
it in half a day myself.
Id., p. 25:
Such literature surely is not dead; it is for all times
surely real and alive. Because it deals, not with what
is transitory, superficial, or material, but with what is
permanent, essential, and spiritual; because it deals
with that universal humanity which neither custom,
fashion, nor soi-disant progress can ever change, the
same on the Tiber as on the Thames, the same
whether those who the moment embody it are carried
in litters, or are conveyed in taxicabs or, it may be,
on aeroplanes. Should we not say that our Scottish
friends showed their insight into the truth of things
when they named professorships of Latin professorships of 'Humanity'?