THE PUBLIC SCHOOL CURRICULUM 31

when we are commemorating the 300th anniversary of
the author whose immortal works were written under all
the disadvantages of the possession of small Latin and
less Greek. Perhaps it is unfair to adduce as an example
so transcendent a genius as Shakespeare. He, one feels,
even with a complete classical education, would still
have succeeded in bewitching the world with his wonderful
 imaginings, and in inspiring his characters with the
attributes and sentiments which his puny fellow mortals
have marvelled at for 300 years, and will doubtless
continue to admire as long as the world continues to
exist. Nevertheless, if Shakespeare had gone through a
course of Eton and Oxford, the language his ideas are
clothed in would certainly be different, and 1 imagine
that there is not even the most classical of our opponents
but is thankful that he escaped.
“1 am content, however, to leave Shakespeare on his
pinnacle—unattained and unattainable —and to recall
the name of one, John Bunyan. Has anyone amongst
the polished eighteenth-century essayists written in a
purer style than the bravely obstinate tinker’s son of
Elstow, whose literary studies were mainly confined to
the Bible?
“Or to take an instance from our own times, was
there ever a finer speaker than John Bright, ‘the great
Tribune,” whose utterances, couched in simple, vigorous
English, passed, if you will excuse the Teutonic pun,
like the Herzian waves, straight from his own heart to
that of his audience ?
“ And is there not another great writer and speaker,
of whom we are, many of us, proud to have been the disciples;
 who without the advantages of a classical upbringing
 was pre-eminent amongst nineteenth-century
authors for his faultless diction and for the direct and
terse enunciation of his thoughts? Needless to say I refer
 to Thomas Henry Huxley.”