The Intellectual Life Part 5

The variety of modern education encourages a scattered dilettantism. It is only in professional life that the energies of young men are powerfully concentrated. There is a steadying effect in thorough professional training which school education does not supply. Our boys receive praise and prizes for doing many things most imperfectly, and it is not their fault if they remain ignorant of what perfection really is, and of the immensity of the labor which it costs. I think that you would do well, perhaps, without discouraging your son too much by chillingly accurate estimates of the value of what he has done, to make him on all proper occasions feel and see the difference between half-knowledge and thorough mastery. It would be a good thing for a youth to be made clearly aware how enormous a price of labor Nature has set upon high accomplishment in everything that is really worthy of his pursuit. It is this persuasion, which men usually arrive at only in their maturity, that operates as the most effectual tranquillizer of frivolous activities.

LETTER VI.

TO THE PRINc.i.p.aL OF A FRENCH COLLEGE.

The Author's dread of protection in intellectual pursuits--Example from the Fine Arts--Prize poems--Governmental encouragement of learning--The bad effects of it--Pet pursuits--Objection to the interference of Ministers--A project for separate examinations.

What I am going to say will seem very strange to you, and is not unlikely to arouse as much professional animosity as you are capable of feeling against an old friend. You who are a dignitary of the University, and have earned your various t.i.tles in a fair field, as a soldier wins his epaulettes before the enemy, are not the likeliest person to hear with patience the unauthorized theories of an innovator.

Take them, then, as mere speculations, if you will--not altogether unworthy of consideration, for they are suggested by a sincere anxiety for the best interests of learning, and yet not very dangerous to vested interests of any kind, since they can have little influence on the practice or opinion of the world.

I feel a great dread of what may be called _protection_ in intellectual pursuits. It seems to me that when the Government of a country applies an artificial stimulus to certain branches of study for their encouragement by the offer of rewards in honor or in money beyond the rewards inherent in the studies themselves, or coming naturally from their usefulness to mankind, there is a great danger that men may give a disproportionate attention to those favored branches of study. Let me take an example from the practice of the Fine Arts. A Government, by medals and crosses, or by money, can easily create and foster a school of painting which is entirely out of relation to the century in which it exists, and quite incapable of working harmoniously with the contemporary national life. This has actually been done to a considerable extent in various countries, especially in France and in Bavaria. A sort of cla.s.sicism which had scarcely any foundation in sincerity of feeling was kept up artificially by a system of encouragement which offered inducements outside the genuine ambition of an artist. The true enthusiasm which is the life of art impels the artist to express his own feeling for the delight of others. The offer of a medal or a pension induces him to make the sort of picture which is likely to satisfy the authorities. He first ascertains what is according to the rule, and then follows it as nearly as he is able. He works in a temper of simple conformity, remote indeed from the pa.s.sionate enthusiasm of creation. It is so with prize poems. We all know the sort of poetry which is composed in order to gain prizes. The anxiety of the versifier is to be safe: he tries to compose what will escape censure; he dreads the originality that may give offence. But all powerful pictures and poems have been wrought in the energy of individual feeling, not in conformity to a pattern.

Now, suppose that, instead of encouraging poetry or painting, a Government resolves to encourage learning. It will patronize certain pursuits to the neglect of others, or it will encourage certain pursuits more liberally than others. The subjects of such a Government will not follow learning exclusively for its delightfulness or its utility; another consideration will affect their choice. They will inquire which pursuits are rewarded by prizes in honor or money, and they will be strongly tempted to select them. Therefore, unless the Government has exercised extraordinary wisdom, men will learn what they do not really care for and may never practically want, merely in order to win some academical grade. So soon as this object has been attained, they will immediately abandon the studies by which they attained it.

Can it be said that in these cases the purposes of the Government were fulfilled? Clearly not, if it desired to form a permanent taste for learning. But it may have done worse than fail in this merely negative way; it may have diverted its youth from pursuits to which Nature called them, and in which they might have effectually aided the advancement and the prosperity of the State.

Let us suppose that a Government were to have a pet study, and offer great artificial inducements for success in it. Suppose that the pet study were entomology. All the most promising youth of the country would spend ten years in emulating Messrs. Kirby and Spence, and take their degrees as entomological bachelors. But might it not easily happen that to a majority of the young gentlemen this pursuit would have acted positively as a hindrance by keeping them from other pursuits more likely to help them in their professions? It would not only cost a great deal of valuable time, it would absorb a quant.i.ty of youthful energy which the country can ill afford to lose. The Government would probably affirm that entomology, if not always practically useful in itself, was an invaluable intellectual training; but what if this training used up the early vigor which might be needed for other pursuits, and of which every human being has only a limited supply? We should be told, no doubt, that this powerful encouragement was necessary to the advancement of science, and it is true that under such a system the rudiments of entomology would be more generally known. But the vulgarization of rudiments is not the advancement of knowledge. Entomology has gone quite as far in discovery, though pursued simply for its own sake, as it would have gone if it had been made necessary to a bachelor's degree.

You will ask whether I would go so far as to abolish degrees of all kinds, Certainly not; that is not my project. But I believe that no Government is competent to make a selection amongst intellectual pursuits and say, "This or that pursuit shall be encouraged by university degrees, whilst other pursuits of intellectual men shall have no encouragement whatever." I may mention by name your present autocrat of Public Instruction, Jules Simon. He is a literary man of some eminence; he has written several interesting books, and on the whole he is probably more competent to deal with these questions than many of his predecessors. But however capable a man may be, he is sure to be bia.s.sed by the feeling common to all intellectual men which attributes a peculiar importance to their own pursuits. I do not like to see any Minister, or any Cabinet of Ministers, settling what all the young men of a country are to learn under penalty of exclusion from all the liberal professions.

What I should think more reasonable would be some such arrangement as the following. There might be a board of thoroughly competent examiners for each branch of study separately, authorized to confer certificates of competence. When a man believed himself to have mastered a branch of study, he would go and try to get a certificate for that. The various studies would then be followed according to the public sense of their importance, and would fall quite naturally into the rank which they ought to occupy at any given period of the national history. These separate examinations should be severe enough to ensure a serviceable degree of proficiency. n.o.body should be allowed to teach anything who had not got a certificate for the particular thing he intended to profess. In the confusion of your present system, not only do you fail to insure the thoroughness of pupils, but the teachers themselves are too frequently incompetent in some speciality which accidentally fails to their share. I think that a Greek master ought to be a complete h.e.l.lenist, but surely it is not necessary that he should be half a mathematician.

To sum up. It seems to me that a Government has no business to favor some intellectual pursuits more than others, but that it ought to recognize competent attainment in every one of them by a sort of diploma or certificate, leaving the relative rank of different pursuits to be settled by public opinion. And as to the educators themselves, I think that when a man has proved his competence in one thing, he ought to be allowed to teach that one thing in the University without being required to pa.s.s an examination in any other thing.

LETTER VII.

TO THE PRINc.i.p.aL OF A FRENCH COLLEGE.

Loss of time to acquire an ancient language too imperfectly for it to be useful--Dr. Arnold--Mature life leaves little time for culture--Modern indifference to ancient thinking--Larger experience of the moderns--The moderns older than the ancients--The Author's regret that Latin has ceased to be a living language--The shortest way to learn to read a language--The recent interest in modern languages--A French student of Hebrew.

I was happy to learn your opinion of the reform so recently introduced by the Minister of Public Instruction, and the more so that I was glad to find the views of so inexperienced a person as myself confirmed by your wider knowledge. You went even farther than M. Jules Simon, for you openly expressed a desire for the complete withdrawal of Greek from the ordinary school curriculum. Not that you undervalue Greek,--no one of your scholarship would be likely to undervalue a great literature,--but you thought it a loss of time to acquire a language so imperfectly that the literature still remained practically closed whilst thousands of valuable hours had been wasted on the details of grammar. The truth is, that although the principle of beginning many things in school education with the idea that the pupil will in maturer life pursue them to fuller accomplishment may in some instances be justified by the prolonged studies of men who have a natural taste for erudition, it is idle to shut one's eyes to the fact that most men have no inclination for school-work after they have left school, and if they had the inclination they have not the time. Our own Dr. Arnold, the model English schoolmaster, said, "It is so hard to begin anything in after-life, and so comparatively easy to continue what has been begun, that I think we are bound to break ground, as it were, into several of the mines of knowledge with our pupils; that the first difficulties may be overcome by them whilst there is yet a power from without to aid their own faltering resolution, and that so they may be enabled, if they will, to go on with the study hereafter." The principle here expressed is no doubt one of the important principles of all early education, and yet I think that it cannot be safely followed without taking account of human nature, such as it is. Everything hangs on that little parenthesis "if they will." And if they will _not_, how then? The time spent in breaking the ground has been wasted, except so far as the exercise of breaking the ground may have been useful in mental gymnastics.

Mature life brings so many professional or social duties that it leaves scant time for culture; and those who care for culture most earnestly and sincerely, are the very persons who will economize time to the utmost. Now, to read a language that has been very imperfectly mastered is felt to be a bad economy of time. Suppose the case of a man occupied in business who has studied Greek rather a.s.siduously in youth and yet not enough to read it with facility. Suppose that this man wants to get at the mind of Plato. He can read the original, but he reads it so slowly that it would cost him more hours than he can spare, and this is why he has recourse to a translation. In this case there is no indifference to Greek culture; on the contrary, the reader desires to a.s.similate what he can of it, but the very earnestness of his wish to have free access to ancient thought makes him prefer it in modern language.

This is the most favorable instance that can be imagined, except, of course, those exceedingly rare cases where a man has leisure enough, and enthusiasm enough, to become a h.e.l.lenist. The great majority of our contemporaries do not care for ancient thought at all, it is so remote from them, it belongs to conditions of civilization so different from their own, it is enc.u.mbered with so many lengthy discussions of questions which have been settled by the subsequent experience of the world, that the modern mind prefers to occupy itself with its own anxieties and its own speculations. It is a great error to suppose that indifference to ancient thinking is peculiar to the spirit of Philistinism; for the most cultivated contemporary intellects seek light from each other rather than from the ancients. One of the most distinguished of modern thinkers, a scholar of the rarest cla.s.sical attainments, said to me in reference to some scheme of mine for renewing my cla.s.sical studies, that they would be of no more use to me than numismatics. It is this feeling, the feeling that Greek speculation is of less consequence to the modern world than German and French speculation, which causes so many of us, rightly or wrongly, to regard it as a palaeontological curiosity, interesting for those who are curious as to the past of the human mind, but not likely to be influential upon its future.

This estimate of ancient thinking is not often expressed quite so openly as I have just expressed it, and yet it is very generally prevalent even amongst the most thoughtful people, especially if modern science has had any conspicuous influence in the formation of their minds. Tho truth is, as Sydney Smith observed many years ago, that there is a confusion of language in the use of the word "ancient." We say "the ancients," as if they were older and more experienced men than we are, whereas the age and experience are entirely on our side. They were the clever children, "and we only are the white-bearded, silver-headed ancients, who have treasured up, and are prepared to profit by, all the experience which human life can supply." The sense of our larger experience, as it grows in us and becomes more distinctly conscious, produces a corresponding decline in our feelings of reverence for cla.s.sic times. The past has bequeathed to us its results, and we have incorporated them into our own edifice, but we have used them rather as materials than as models.

In your practical desire to retain in education only what is likely to be used, you are willing to preserve Latin. M. Jules Simon says that Latin ought to be studied only to be read. On this point permit me to offer an observation. The one thing I regret about Latin is that we have ceased to speak it. The natural method, and by far the most rapid and sure method of learning a language, is to begin by acquiring words in order to use them to ask for what we want; after that we acquire other words for narration and the expression of our sentiments. By far the shortest way to learn to read a language is to begin by speaking it. The colloquial tongue is the basis of the literary tongue. This is so true that with all the pains and trouble you give to the Latin education of your pupils, you cannot teach them as much Latin, for reading only, in the course of ten years, as a living foreigner will give them of his own language in ten months. I seriously believe that if your object is to make boys read Latin easily, you begin at the wrong end. It is deplorable that the learned should ever have allowed Latin to become a dead language, since in permitting this they have enormously increased the difficulty of acquiring it, even for the purposes of scholarship.

No foreigner who knows the French people will disapprove of the novel desire to know the modern languages, which has been one of the most unexpected consequences of the war. Their extreme ignorance of the literature of other nations has been the cause of enormous evils.

Notwithstanding her central position, France has been a very isolated country intellectually, much more isolated than England, more isolated even than Transylvania, where foreign literatures are familiar to the cultivated cla.s.ses. This isolation has produced very lamentable effects, not only on the national culture but most especially on the national character. No modern nation, however important, can safely remain in ignorance of its contemporaries. The Frenchman was like a gentleman shut up within his own park-wall, having no intercourse with his neighbors, and reading nothing but the history of his own ancestors--for the Romans were your ancestors, intellectually. It is only by the study of living languages, and their continual use, that we can learn our true place in the world. A Frenchman was studying Hebrew; I ventured to suggest that German might possibly be more useful. To this he answered, _that there was no literature in German_. "_Vous avez Goethe, vous avez Schiller, et vous avez Lessing, mais en dehors de ces trois noms il n'y a rien._"

This meant simply that my student of Hebrew measured German literature by his own knowledge of it. Three names had reached him, only names, and only three of them. As to the men who were unknown to him he had decided that they did not exist. Certainly if there are many Frenchmen in this condition, it is time that they learned a little German.

LETTER VIII.

TO A STUDENT OF MODERN LANGUAGES.

Standard of attainment in living languages higher than in ancient ones--Difficulty of maintaining high pretensions--Prevalent illusion about the facility of modern languages--Easy to speak them badly--Some propositions based upon experience--Expectations and disappointments.

Had your main purpose in the education of yourself (I do not say self-education, for you wisely accept all help from others) been the attainment of cla.s.sical scholarship, I might have observed that as the received standard in that kind of learning is not a very elevated one, you might reasonably hope to reach it with a certain calculable quant.i.ty of effort. The cla.s.sical student has only to contend against other students who are and have been situated very much as he is situated himself. They have learned Latin and Greek from grammars and dictionaries as he is learning them, and the only natural advantages which any of his predecessors may have possessed are superiorities of memory which may be compensated by his greater perseverance, or superiorities of sympathy to which he may "level up" by that acquired and artificial interest which comes from protracted application. But the student of modern languages has to contend against advantages of situation, as the gardeners of an inhospitable climate contend against the natural sunshine of the south. How easy it is to have a fruitful date-tree in Arabia, how difficult in England! How easy for the Florentine to speak Italian, how difficult for us! The modern linguist can never fence himself behind that stately unquestionableness which shields the cla.s.sical scholar. His knowledge may at any time be put to the severest of all tests, to a test incomparably more severe than the strictest university examination. The first _native_ that he meets is his examiner, the first foreign city is his Oxford. And this is probably one reason why accomplishment in modern languages has been rather a matter of utility than of dignity, for it is difficult to keep up great pretensions in the face of a mult.i.tude of critics. What would the most learned-looking gown avail, if a malicious foreigner were laughing at us?

But there is a deep satisfaction in the severity of the test. An honest and courageous student likes to be clearly aware of the exact value of his acquisitions. He takes his French to Paris and has it tested there as we take our plate to the silversmith, and after that he knows, or may know, quite accurately what it is worth. He has not the dignity of scholarship, he is not held to be a learned man, but he has acquired something which may be of daily use to him in society, or in commerce, or in literature; and there are thousands of educated natives who can accurately estimate his attainment and help him to a higher perfection.

All this is deeply satisfying to a lover of intellectual realities. The modern linguist is always on firm ground, and in broad daylight. He may impede his own progress by the illusions of solitary self-conceit, but the atmosphere outside is not favorable to such illusions. It is well for him that the temptations to charlatanism are so few, that the risks of exposure are so frequent.

Still there _are_ illusions, and the commonest of them is that a modern language may be very easily mastered. There is a popular idea that French is easy, that Italian is easy, that German is more difficult, yet by no means insuperably difficult. It is believed that when an Englishman has spent all the best years of his youth in attempting to learn Latin and Greek, he may acquire one or two modern languages with little effort during a brief residence on the Continent. It is certainly true that we may learn any number of foreign languages so as to speak them badly, but it surely cannot be easy to speak them well. It may be inferred that this is not easy because the accomplishment is so rare.

The inducements are common, the accomplishment is rare. Thousands of English people have very strong reasons for learning French, thousands of French people could improve their position by learning English; but rare indeed are the men and women who know both languages thoroughly.

The following propositions, based on much observation of a kind wholly unprejudiced and tested by a not inconsiderable experience will be found, I believe, una.s.sailable.

1. _Whenever a foreign language is perfectly acquired there are peculiar family conditions. The person has either married a person of the other nation, or is of mixed blood._

2. _When a foreign language has been acquired (there are instances of this) in quite absolute perfection, there is almost always some loss in the native tongue. Either the native tongue is not spoken correctly, or it is not spoken with perfect ease._

3. _A man sometimes speaks two languages correctly, his father's and his mother's, or his own and his wife's, but never three._

4. _Children can speak several languages exactly like natives, but in succession, never simultaneously. They forget the first in acquiring the second, and so on._

5. _A language cannot be learned by an adult without five years'

residence in the country where it is spoken, and without habits of close observation a residence of twenty years is insufficient._

This is not encouraging, but it is the truth. Happily, a knowledge which falls far short of mastery may be of much practical use in the common affairs of life, and may even afford some initiation into foreign literatures. I do not argue that because perfection is denied of us by the circ.u.mstances of our lives or the necessities of our organization we are therefore to abandon the study to every language but the mother tongue. It may be of use to us to know several languages imperfectly, if only we confess the hopelessness of absolute attainment. That which is truly, and deeply, and seriously an injury to our intellectual life, is the foolishness of the too common vanity which first deludes itself with childish expectations and then tortures itself with late regret for failure which might have been easily foreseen.

LETTER IX.

TO A STUDENT OF MODERN LANGUAGES.

Cases known to the Author--Opinion of an English linguist--Family conditions--An Englishman who lived forty years in France--Influence of children--An Italian in France--Displacement of one language by another. English lady married to a Frenchman--An Italian in Garibaldi's army--Corruption of languages by the uneducated when they learn more than one--Neapolitan servant of an English gentleman--A Scotch servant-woman--The author's eldest boy--Subst.i.tution of one language for another--In mature life we lose facility--The resisting power of adults--Seen in international marriages--Case of a retired English officer--Two Germans in France--Germans in London--The innocence of the ear--Imperfect attainment of little intellectual use--Too many languages attempted in education--Polyglot waiters--Indirect benefits.

My five propositions about learning modern languages appear from your answer to have rather surprised you, and you ask for some instances in ill.u.s.tration. I am aware that my last letter was dogmatic, so let me begin by begging your pardon for its dogmatism. The present communication may steer clear of that rock of offence, for it shall confine itself to an account of cases that I have known.

One of the most accomplished of English linguists remarked to me that after much observation of the labors of others, and a fair estimate of his own, he had come to the rather discouraging conclusion that it was not possible to learn a foreign language. He did not take account of the one exceptional cla.s.s of cases where the family conditions make the use of two languages habitual. The most favorable family conditions are not in themselves sufficient to _ensure_ the acquisition of a language, but wherever an instance of perfect acquisition is to be found, these family conditions are always found along with it. My friend W., an English artist living in Paris, speaks French with quite absolute accuracy as to grammar and choice of expression, and with accuracy of p.r.o.nunciation so nearly absolute that the best French ears can detect nothing wrong but the p.r.o.nunciation of the letter "_r_." He has lived in France for the s.p.a.ce of forty years, but it may be doubted whether in forty years he could have mastered the language as he has done if he had not married a native. French has been his home language for 30 years and more, and the perfect ease and naturalness of his diction are due to the powerful home influences, especially to the influence of children. A child is born that speaks the foreign tongue from the first inarticulate beginnings It makes its own child language, and the father as he hears it is born over again in the foreign land by tender paternal sympathy. Gradually the sweet child-talk gives place to the perfect tongue and the father follows it by insensible gradations, himself the most docile of pupils, led onward rather than instructed by the winning and playful little master, incomparably the best of masters. The process here is nature's own inimitable process. Every new child that is born to a man so situated carries him through a repet.i.tion of that marvellous course of teaching. The language _grows_ in his brain from the first rudiments--the real natural rudiments, not the hard rudiments of the grammarian--just as plants grow naturally from their seeds. It has not been built by human processes of piecing together, but has developed itself like a living creature. This way of learning a language possesses over the dictionary process exactly the kind of superiority which a living man, developed naturally from the foetus, possesses over the elastic anatomical man-model of the ingenious doctor Auzoux. The doctor's models are remarkably perfect in construction, they have all the organs, but they have not life.

When, however, this natural process of growth is allowed to go forward without watchful care, it is likely to displace the mother tongue. It is sometimes affirmed that the impressions of childhood are never effaced, that the mother tongue is _never_ forgotten. It may be that it is never wholly forgotten, except in the case of young children, but it may become so imperfect as to be practically of little use. I knew an Italian who came to France as a young man and learned his profession there. He was afterwards naturalized, married a French lady, had several children, pursued a very successful career in Paris, and became ultimately French Amba.s.sador at the court of Victor Emmanuel. His French was so perfect that it was quite impossible for any one to detect the usual Italian accents. I used to count him as a remarkable and almost solitary instance of a man speaking two languages in their perfection, but I learned since then that his French had displaced his Italian, and so completely that he was quite unable to speak Italian correctly, and made use of French invariably when in Italy. The risk of this displacement is always greatest in cases where the native tongue is not kept up by means of literature. Byron and Sh.e.l.ley, or our contemporary Charles Lever, would run little risk of losing English by continental residence, but people not accustomed to reading and writing often forget the mother tongue in a few years, even when the foreign one which has displaced it is still in a state of imperfection. Madame L. is an English lady who married a Frenchman; neither her husband nor her children speak English, and as her relatives live in one of our most distant colonies, she has been separated from them for many years.

Isolated thus from English society, living in a part of France rarely visited by her countrymen, never reading English, and writing it little and at long intervals, she speaks it now with much difficulty and diffidence. Her French is not grammatical, though she has lived for many years with people who speak grammatically; but then her French is fluent and alive, truly her own living language now, whilst English is, if not wholly forgotten, dead almost as our Latin is dead. She and I always speak French together when we meet, because it is easier for her than English, and a more natural expression. I have known some other cases of displacement of the native tongue, and have lately had the opportunity of watching a case of such displacement during its progress. A sergeant in the Italian army deserted to join Garibaldi in the campaign of 1870.

On the conclusion of peace it was impossible for him to return to Italy, so he settled in France and married there. I found some work for him, and for some months saw him frequently. Up to the date of his marriage he spoke no language but Italian, which he could read and write correctly, but after his marriage the process of displacement of the native tongue began immediately by the corruption of it. He did not keep his Italian safely by itself, putting the French in a place of its own as he gradually acquired it, but he mixed the two inextricably together.

Imagine the case of a man who, having a bottle half full of wine, gets some beer given him and pours it immediately into the wine-bottle. The beer will never be pure beer, but it will effectually spoil the wine.

This process is not so much one of displacement as of corruption, it takes place readily in uncultivated minds, with feeble separating powers. Another example of this was a Neapolitan servant of an English gentleman, who mixed his Italian twice, first with French and afterwards with English, producing a compound intelligible to n.o.body but himself, if indeed he himself understood it. At the time I knew him, the man had no means of communication with his species. When his master told him to do anything, he made a guess at what was likely to be for the moment his master's most probable want, and sometimes. .h.i.t the mark, but more generally missed it. The man's name was Alberino, and I remember on one occasion profiting by a mistaken guess of his. After a visit to Alberino's master, my servant brought forth a magnificent basket of trout, which surprised me, as nothing had been said about them. However, we ate them, and only discovered afterwards that the present was due to an illusion of Alberino's. His master had never told him to give me the trout, but he had interpreted some other order in that sense. When you asked him for mustard, he would first touch the salt, and then the pepper, etc., looking at you inquiringly till you nodded a.s.sent. Any attempt at conversation with Alberino was sure to lead to a perfect comedy of misunderstandings. He never had the remotest idea of what his interlocutor was talking about; but he pretended to catch your meaning, and answered at haphazard. He had a habit of talking aloud to himself, "but in a tongue no man could understand."

It is a law that cultivated people can keep languages apart, and in their purity, better than persons who have not habits of intellectual a.n.a.lysis. When I lived in Scotland three languages were spoken in my house all day long, and a housemaid came to us from the Lowlands who spoke nothing but Lowland Scotch. She used to ask what was the French for this thing or that, and then what was the Gaelic for it. Having been answered, she invariably asked the farther question which of the three words, French, Gaelic, or English, _was the right word_. She remained, to the last, entirely incapable of conceiving how all the three could be right. Had she learned another language, it must have been by subst.i.tution for her own. This is exactly the natural process which takes place in the brains of children who are transferred from one country to another. My eldest boy spoke English in childhood as well as any other English child of his age. He was taken to the south of France, and in three months he replaced his English with Provencal, which he learned from the servants about him. There were two ladies in the house who spoke English well, and did all in their power, in compliance with my urgent entreaties, to preserve the boy's native language; but the subst.i.tution took place too rapidly, and was beyond control. He began by an unwillingness to use English words whenever he could use Provencal instead, and in a remarkably short time this unwillingness was succeeded by inability. The native language was as completely taken out of his brain as a violin is taken out of its case: nothing remained, _nothing_, not one word, not any echo of an accent. And as a violinist may put a new instrument into the case from which he has removed the old one, so the new language occupied the whole s.p.a.ce which had been occupied by English. When I saw the child again, there was no means of communication between us.

After that, he was removed to the north of France, and the same process began again. As Provencal had pushed out English, so French began to push out Provencal. The process was wonderfully rapid. The child heard people speak French, and he began to speak French like them without any formal teaching. He spoke the language as he breathed the air. In a few weeks he did not retain the least remnant of his Provencal; it was gone after his English into the limbo of the utterly forgotten.

Novelists have occasionally made use of cases similar to this, but they speak of the forgotten language as being forgotten in the manner that Scott forgot the ma.n.u.script of "Waverley," which he found afterwards in the drawers of an old writing-desk when he was seeking for fishing-tackle. They a.s.sume (conveniently for the purposes of their art) that the first language we learn is never really lost, but may be as it were under certain circ.u.mstances _mislaid_, to be found again at some future period. Now, although something of this kind may be possible when the first language has been spoken in rather advanced boyhood, I am convinced that in childhood a considerable number of languages might succeed each other without leaving any trace whatever. I might have remarked that in addition to English, Provencal, and French, my boy had understood Gaelic in his infancy, at least to some extent, though he did not speak it. The languages in his case succeeded each other without any cost of effort, and without any appreciable effect on health. The p.r.o.nunciation of each language was quite faultless so far as foreign accent went; the child had the defects of children, but of children born in the different countries where he lived.