dixit of the Classics has the combined influence of tyranny and superstition: and the great majority of those who have studied them, are actually overawed by their authority, and unwilling to question either their excellence or their value. I desire no better beacon, to warn me against the evil of studying, in order to imitate the classics, than the character of Latin Literature, and of all that mass among the moderns, which well deserves the praise bestowed by the great Condé on the Abbé d'Aubignac, after reading his Tragedy, Zenobia, composed so faithfully according to the rules of Aristotle:-"Je sais bon gré à l'Abbé d'Aubignac, d'avoir si bien suivi les regles d'Aristote, mais je ne pardonne point aux regles d'Aristote, d'avoir fait faire à l'Abbé d'Aubignac une si méchante tragedie." NOTE L. p. 141. My instructor often insisted on this, that every boy ought to 'commit the fourth Book of the Eneid to memory. Fortunately, I never took his advice. I would certainly rather know by heart, Campbell's lovely and spotless poem, Gertrude of Wyoming, than the fourth Book of the Eneid; just as I would rather treasure up in my memory, Paradise Lost, than the Epic triumvirate of Antiquity, the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer, and the Odyssey-Iliad of Virgil. The fourth Book of the Eneid, so far as it attempts to paint the passion of forbidden love in a female, is a failure; more especially if we have a due regard to the rank and character of Dido. The tale of Rimini, by Leigh Hunt, as a picture of the developement and catastrophe of forbidden love, is altogether superior to this Tenth Legion of Virgil's Epic, in nature and power, in delicacy and pathos. The Shipwreck of the Ariel, in Cooper's Pilot, far excels the storm in the first Book of the Æneid: and the Episode of Nisus and Euryalus bears no comparison, for truth and tenderness, with that of Angelica and Medoro, or the death of Zerbino, in the Orlando Furioso. For myself, (saving his indecencies and improprieties,) I would rather be the author of that wild and romantic Crusade, by the Cœur de Lion of Italian bards, to the Holy Land of Heroic Poetry, than to have written the Æneid, after the Composite Order of Epic Architecture. With the exception I have just mentioned, I would rather be such a poet as "Il Divino Ariosto," the Knight Errant of Epic poetry, than to be a worker in Mosaic like Virgil. I hardly know whether most to admire the preposterous judgment of Vida, in recommending to the princes of France such a model as Eneas, mean, treacherous, and hard-hearted, or his extravagant adulation of Virgil, in the following lines of his Art of Poetry. "Te sine nil nobis pulchrum. Omnes ora Latini I can never hold such language of any Classic, much less of such a copyist as Virgil has been shown to be, in the work (I think) of Fulvius Ursinus. 14* NOTE M. p. 141. This is my deliberate opinion. I would prefer that every educated man in our country should be familiar with sacred, rather than with classical Literature; and that our colleges should produce such sacred scholars as Lowth and Herder, than fifty such classical editors, as Kuster, Heyne, Gronovius, Wyttenbach. I would rather an American should have written Villers on the Reformation, Ferguson on Civil Society, or Alison on Taste, than to have published a better edition of any dozen classics, than even Germany can boast. Considering the classics, as of very little substantial value to a people, possessing such a body of Literature as the English language contains, and believing, that as much has been done by editors of the classics, as the subject admits, and far more than they ever deserved, I have no desire to see my country enter on the race of rivalry in classic editorship. The scholars of Europe have done quite enough for us and themselves too: and it is certainly wiser to use their labors, so far as we need them, than to incur the prodigious waste of time and talent that must be spent in forming a corps of classic editors. Besides, the experience of Europe shows us that a man need not be an editor of classics, in order to make the most profound or elegant use of them. I believe it would be a matter of no very material consequence, if new editions of the classics should never again be published. I have no doubt, that the cultivation neither of sacred nor of classical Literature, requires them. But it may be asked-can that flourish, without this? In its highest state of excellence it cannot; but for the purposes of the great mass of educated men, they may be sufficiently instructed in the former, without any knowledge of Latin and Greek. The professor, and the accomplished scholar, and the distinguished divine ought to excel in both. But these are as one to hundreds. I would therefore prefer that my country should abound in learned and elegant editors of the sacred, rather than of the profane classics: and that our educated men, should be familiar with sacred, rather than with classical Literature. 1 LETTER OF THOMAS S. GRIMKE ON THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE, TO THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED BY THE LITERARY CONVENTION, HELD AT NEW YORK, OCTOBER 20, 1830. LETTER, &c. MY DEAR SIR, Charleston, 4th December, 1830. n A variety of circumstances, the enumeration of which would be neither useful nor agreeable, have prevented an earlier attention to your letter dated the 23d of October, but post marked the 9th ultimo. Your favor requests my views on a topic proposed in the late convention at New York, and referred to yourself, the Rev. Tho. H. Gallaudet and Professor Robinson. The subject for examination is stated in the following words: "The propriety of studying the Bible as a Classic, in the Institutions of a Christian Country." I shall endeavor to meet your wishes, as far as I am able, and proceed accordingly to offer my sentiments, under the following heads: 1. The fact of the exclusion of the Bible as an indispensable text book of all education-and the reasons. 2. The obligation to incorporate the Bible as a text book of duty and usefulness with the whole course of education, in every School, Academy and College. 3. The advantages of this plan. 4. The objections considered and answered. 5. The obligation of making Sacred Literature a regular branch of Study, in all our Seminaries for the Instruction of youth. 6. The advantages of such a plan. 7. The objections considered and answered. 8. The best means of effecting these two objects. First.-How astonishing is the fact, that in the 19th century, and in a Christian Country, that Country, the noblest fruit of the Reformation, the peculiar offspring of the Bible, and emphatically the land of useful, plain, popular institutions, this subject should be gravely debated, the propriety of studying the Bible, as a classic, in the Institutions of a Christian Country. Not less astonishing is the fact, that this question should be discussed, at such an æra and in such a land, not by the Atheist and the Deist, not by the ignorant and unpolished, but by the Christian, and the Minister, and |