Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| He Delighted in Latin Studies and the Empty Fables of the Poets, But Hated the Elements of Literature and the Greek Language.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XIII.—He Delighted in
Latin Studies and the Empty Fables of the Poets, But Hated the
Elements of Literature and the Greek Language.
20. But what was the cause of my dislike of
Greek literature, which I studied from my boyhood, I cannot even
now understand. For the Latin I loved exceedingly—not what our
first masters, but what the grammarians teach; for those primary
lessons of reading, writing, and ciphering, I considered no less of
a burden and a punishment than Greek. Yet whence was this unless
from the sin and vanity of this life? for I was “but flesh, a
wind that passeth away and cometh not again.”166
For those primary lessons were
better, assuredly, because more certain; seeing that by their
agency I acquired, and still retain, the power of reading what I
find written, and writing myself what I will; whilst in the others
I was compelled to learn about the wanderings of a certain Æneas,
oblivious of my own, and to weep for Biab dead, because she slew
herself for love; while at the same time I brooked with dry eyes my
wretched self dying far from Thee, in the midst of those things, O
God, my life.
21. For what can be more wretched than the
wretch who pities not himself shedding tears over the death of Dido
for love of Æneas, but shedding no tears over his own death in not
loving Thee, O God, light of my heart, and bread of the inner mouth
of my soul, and the power that weddest my mind with my innermost
thoughts? I did not love Thee, and committed fornication against
Thee; and those around me thus sinning cried, “Well done! Well
done!” For the friendship of this world is fornication against
Thee;167
and “Well
done! Well done!” is cried until one feels ashamed not to be such
a man. And for this I shed no tears, though I wept for Dido, who
sought death at the sword’s point,168
myself the while seeking the lowest
of Thy creatures—having forsaken Thee—earth tending to the
earth; and if forbidden to read these things, how grieved would I
feel that I was not permitted to read what grieved me. This sort of
madness is considered a more honourable and more fruitful learning
than that by which I learned to read and write.
22. But now, O my God, cry unto my soul; and
let Thy Truth say unto me, “It is not so; it is not so; better
much was that first teaching.” For behold, I would rather forget
the wanderings of Æneas, and all such things, than how to write
and read. But it is true that over the entrance of the grammar
school there hangs a vail;169
| 169 “The ‘vail’ was an emblem of honour, used in
places of worship, and subsequently in courts of law, emperors’
palaces, and even private house. See Du Fresne and Hoffman sub
v. That between the vestibule, or proscholium, and the school
itself, besides being a mark of dignity, may, as St. Augustin
perhaps implies, have been intended to denote the hidden mysteries
taught therein, and that the mass of mankind were not fit hearers
of truth.”—E. B. P. | but this is not so much a sign of
the majesty of the mystery, as of a covering for error. Let not
them exclaim against me of whom I am no longer in fear, whilst I
confess to Thee, my God, that which my soul desires, and acquiesce
in reprehending my evil ways, that I may love Thy good ways.
Neither let those cry out against me who buy or sell
grammar-learning. For if I ask them whether it be true, as the poet
says, that Æneas once came to Carthage, the unlearned will reply
that they do not know, the learned will deny it to be true. But if
I ask with what letters the name Æneas is written, all who have
learnt this will answer truly, in accordance with the conventional
understanding men have arrived at as to these signs. Again, if I
should ask which, if forgotten, would cause the greatest
inconvenience in our life, reading and writing, or these poetical
fictions, who does not see what every one would answer who had not
entirely forgotten himself? I erred, then, when as a boy I
preferred those vain studies to those more profitable ones, or
rather loved the one and hated the other. “One and one are two,
two and two are four,” this was then in truth a hateful song to
me; while the wooden horse full of armed men, and the burning of
Troy, and the “spectral image” of Creusa170
were a most pleasant spectacle of
vanity.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
