ONLY AN INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE OF CLASSICAL SARY FOR THE INTERPRETATION OF EVEN THESE IN MEMORIAM Leo: A Yellow Cat "If, to your twilight land of dream,— Drifting with all your shadow host.- That wakes a sense of springing flowers, "Atlantic Monthly," January, 1913. ARCADES AMBO "See yon glad lover piping there To Amaryllis sweet? He hears the hum of golden bees Soft murmuring in the blossoming trees; He hears the tinkling of the bells Where feed his flocks in grassy dells; From out his lithe throat, glad and strong, He breathes a lover's joyous song, And pours it at her feet. Mark you this lover, thin and white, He sees a narrow, paven street He hears the shrill, metallic roar That shakes the trembling wall and floor. She toils beside him. He lifts high His passionate heart, with voiceless cry, Arcadians both-young Corydon At dalliance in the grassy grove, -Helen Coale Crew, "The Outlook," January 27, 1912. This is your "blind spot" as regards the appreciation of English poetry if you do not understand the literature and mythology of Greece and Rome; that is, the black represents the amount which has no meaning for you. This is perhaps the reason why you do not "like" poetry. NOTE. The size of this "blind spot" is, of course, arbitrary. 22 EXAMPLES OF REFERENCES TO MYTHOLOGY IN ENGLISH PROSE: "This is a Janus-faced fact.”—“Atlantic Monthly." "Certainly in this Exhibition . . . . there is nothing that should send the critic, Cassandra-like, out to shout perdition from the housetops."-"Architectural Record," March 1913, p. 230. "Mrs. Keith continued in the rôle of Ganymede until the ruby liquid was in the glasses."-Editorial, the "Chicago Tribune." "Had some Rhadamanthine arbiter of his destiny compelled him to choose. .”—William Locke, "Glory of Clementina." "Gentlemen, Mr. Montague Skinner, the Fifth Avenue Narcissus, one of the leaders of Metropolitan fashions."-Owen Johnson, "The Tennessee Shad." "He suddenly conceived the idea of single handed matching his wits against the Hydra despotism."-Owen Johnson, "The Eternal Boy." "When I awoke, I saw Mulvaney-leaning on his rifle at picket, lonely as Prometheus."-Rudyard Kipling, "The Courting of Dinah Shadd." "He seemed to see her like a lonely rock-bound Andromeda with the devouring monster Society careering up to make a mouthful of her."-Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country, "Scribner's Magazine," January, 1913. "That the elective system was a great advance on the educational Procustes-bed system which preceded it, I do not for a moment deny."-Charles Francis Adams, "Some Modern College Tendencies," p. 117. "The publication of this book exposed the Achilles heel of the South."-A. M. Simons, "Social Forces in American History." YOTE. As a proof that classical allusions are not confined to the English classics alone, collect the many references to be found in newspapers, novels, and current magazines. ISN'T IT ALTOGETHER LIKELY THAT IF YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND THE LATIN AND GREEK REFER- A glance at this letter of Charles Lamb's shows you how necessary a knowledge of Latin is if you really want to understand it: "I express myself muddily, capite dolente. I have a dulling cold. My theory is to enjoy life, but my practice is against it. I grow ominously tired of official confinement. Thirty years have I served the Philistines, and my neck is not subdued to the yoke. You don't know how wearisome it is to breathe the air of four pent walls without relief, day after day, all the golden hours of the day between ten and four, without ease or interposition. Taedet me harum quotidianarum formarum, these pestilential clerk-faces always in one's dish. Oh for a few years between the grave and the desk!-they are the same, save that at the latter you are the outside machine. . . . . I dare not whisper to myself a pension on this side of absolute incapacitation and infirmity, till years have sucked me dry;Otium cum indignitate. I had thought in a green old age (Oh green thought!) to have retired to Ponder's End (emblematic name, how beautiful!), in the Ware Road, there to have made up my accounts with Heaven and the company, toddling about between it and Cheshunt; anon stretching, on some fine Izaak Walton morning, to Hoddesdon or Amwell, careless as a beggar; but walking, walking ever till I fairly walked myself off my legs, dying walking! The hope is gone. I sit like Philomel all day (but not singing), with my breast against this thorn of a desk, with the only hope that some pulmonary affliction may relieve me."-Letter to William Wordsworth. 23 NOTE.-Mount passages from the prose of Milton, Burke, Carlyle, Macaulay, Goldsmith, Addison, Disraeli, etc., with classical references underlined. THE KNOWLEDGE OF MYTHOLOGY GAINED THROUGH 24 LATIN SOURCES IS MORE INTIMATE AND MORE The original sources often contain many personal touches, omitted in the ordinary textbook of mythology, which add very greatly to the interest of the story. For example, by comparing the accounts of "Atalanta's Race" as given in Ovid and Gayley's "Classic Myths," or the story of the Trojan Horse, as given in Virgil and Gayley, it will be seen not only that much has been omitted in the latter but that these very passages are the ones that contribute most to the vividness and charm of the story. I (Ovid's description of the Race of Atalanta placed beside that given in Gayley's "Myths," with the parts of the story found in the Latin and omitted in the English underlined in red, and the passages of the Latin that are more vividly related than they are in the English, underlined in green.) II (Virgil's description of the Trojan Horse, and side by side with this, with corresponding passages opposite, the account as given in Gayley, showing how much of the story is left out in the English rendition, and how much less vividly the details that are not omitted are related.) In answer to this question put to him by a student, "Do you feel that the study of Ovid and Virgil should form a background for a high-school student's study of such a book on Mythology as your 'Classic Myths'?" Mr. Charles Mills Gayley, author of Gayley's "Classic Myths," writes as follows: "It is a thousand times better for a student to read the Virgil and the Ovid in the original with my 'Classic Myths' than to read the 'Classic Myths' without a first-hand knowledge of the original."-Letter to student, February 12, 1913. NOTE. Substitute Ovid's "Atalanta's Race," or "Pyramus and Thisbe" for a part of the work in the Cicero year in order to allow the student to realize the above statement from his own experience. In connection with the latter, read Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" to show that the enjoyment of the "Pyramus and Thisbe" incident is keener than it would have been without the Latin original. |