Excerpt from The Worth of Ancient Literature to the Modern World Two other arguments have weighed with persons more re ec tive than those whose-mental attitude I have been describing; and their force must be admitted. Languages - not merely the ancient languages, but languages in general - have too often been badly taught, and the learning of them has therefore been found repulsive by many pupils. The results have accordingly been disappointing, and out of proportion to the time and labour spent. Comparatively few of those who have given from six to eight years of their boyhood mainly to the study of Greek and Latin retain a knowledge of either language sufficient to afford either use or pleasure to them through the rest of life. Of the Whole number of those who yearly graduate at Oxford or at Cambridge, I doubt if at thirty years of age 15 per cent. Could read at sight an easy piece of Latin, or 5 per cent. An easy piece of Greek. As this seems an obvious sort of test of the effect of the teaching, people come to the conclusion that the time spent on Greek and Latin was wasted. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."

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