Even the petty eminence of a village schoolmaster proves to be too giddy a pinnacle for many. Such an one thinks it necessary to support his position--which owing to the Greek love of education is more highly respected perhaps than in other countries--by a pretence of universal knowledge and a pedantry as lamentable as it is ludicrous. I remember a gentleman who boasted the title of Professor of Ancient History in the _gymnasium_ or secondary school of a certain town, who called to me one day as I was passing a _café_ where he and some of his friends were sitting, and said that they were having a pleasant little discussion about the first Triumvirate, and had recalled the names of Cicero and Caesar, but could not at the moment remember the third party. Could I help them? I hesitated a moment, and then resolved to risk it and suggest, what was at least alliterative if not accurate, the name of Cato. ‘Of course,’ he answered, ‘how these things do slip one’s memory sometimes!’ Yet this Professor posed as an authority on many subjects outside his own province of learning, and frequently when I met him would insist on talking dog-Latin with an Italian pronunciation, a medium in which I found it difficult to converse.
In this readiness to discourse on any and every subject and to display attainments in and out of season, he and the class of which he is typical are the living images of the less respectable of the ancient Sophists. And in pedantry of language too they fairly rival their famous prototypes. The movement in favour of an artificial revival of ancient Greek has already been of long duration, and has had a detrimental effect upon the modern language. The vulgar tongue has a melodious charm, while many classical words, in the modern pronunciation, are extremely harsh and uncouth. The object of the movement is to secure an uniform ‘pure’ speech, as they call it, approximate to that of Plato or of Xenophon; and the method adopted is to mix up Homeric and other words of antiquarian celebrity with literal renderings of modern French idioms, inserting datives, infinitives, and other obsolete forms at discretion. To aid in this movement is the task and the delight of the schoolmasters: and such is their devotion to this linguistic sophistry, that they are not dismayed even by the ambiguity arising from the use of ancient forms indistinguishable in modern speech. The two old words ἡμέτερος and ὑμέτερος have now no difference in sound: yet the schoolmaster uses them and inculcates the use of them, with the lamentable result that the children are not taught to distinguish _meum_ and _tuum_ even in speech.