Note 24 — Chapter IV · EDUCATIONAL.

It is a notorious fact that very few graduates, when they leave college, are able to read Latin from an author they have not specially studied, with ease or pleasure. For this melancholy fact there are several reasons. The range of reading is miserably meagre. Only a few authors are read, and almost every sentence of these is cumbered with such an amount of annotation as to render progress and literary appreciation alike painful. Composition in Latin absorbs far too much time: the first duty of the teacher ought to be to turn out pupils who can read Latin with fluency. No amount of grammatical detail or laborious composition, as at present practised, will ever make up for the lack of wide reading. Professor Phillimore's recent suggestion that the less-known authors should be read more than they are, is wise and opportune. The authors he mentions would furnish a welcome relief from the unspeakable dreariness of over-annotated texts.