The Criterion: A Quarterly Review, 2 (Oct 1923) 104-05
Latin and Greek are to be reinstated in public instruction in France; and already there are not wanting interpreters to tell us that this is no doubt excellent for the French. 2 But in England, we are told and shall be told, such a step would be a step backward, an artificial restriction and a barrier to liberal Progress. And the difference is explained. The French are “Latins”; the English are Saxons, or – not to put too fine a point upon it – Teutons. Such a theory is only one of the many absurd conclusions to which popular ethnology and popular philology may lead us, but it happens to be one of the most noxious of these absurdities. Because most of the radical grunts of the French language came north from the Mediterranean, and ours came west from Scythia, or thereabouts, 3 the French must base their culture on Latin and Greek, and we must not. But what have the French in common with Greece (except a port on the middle sea) that we have not? and is the French spirit really more akin to that of Rome than ours?
The fact is, of course, that allEuropean civilisations are equally dependent upon Greece and Rome – so far as they are civilisations at all. If we were indeed beyond the sphere of influence of Greece and Rome, and could produce a civilisation independent of them, well and good; we have no prejudice against non-European civilisations. But it would be as ridiculous for us to deny our ancestry as for India and China to reject their ancient literature, con Virgil, and compose Horatian odes. And it is as ludicrous to approve Latin for the Frenchman and belittle it for the Englishman as to approve Sanskrit for the Bengali and condemn it for the Marathi. 4
Those who diminish Latin and Greek fail to comprehend what goes to make a civilisation. Three or four great novelists do not make a literature, though War and Peaceis a very great novel indeed. 5 If everything derived from Rome were withdrawn – everything we have from Norman-French society, from the Church, from Humanism, from every channel direct and indirect, what would be left? A few Teutonic roots and husks. England is a “Latin” country, and we ought not to have to go to France for our Latinity, any more than we ought to be obliged to go there for our cooking. But two hundred years ago the Englishcuisine, like Englishmusic, was not to be despised.
t. s. e.
