Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve

 Classicist and Secessionist

Darrell Sutton, on Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve

The critical study of classical texts in America does not have a long history. Its development is traceable to two or three individuals whose names are of varying degrees of importance. The foundations for such study, however, were first laid in preparatory schools and colleges, and anyone curious enough to search through the histories of colleges in America before and after the Revolutionary War will find that the charters of most of them were theologically orientated. The initial core of their curricula centred on the study of biblical and classical literatures, ancient Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Headmasters and professors of seminaries held that the mastery of ancient languages was essential for the preparation of the upper classes of the citizenry. Eventually, the mounting influence of German scientific research could not be resisted, as distinguished theologians and other academics appropriated German methods.

Classical studies in eighteenth century Great Britain were of a different kind. Culture controlled the limits of instruction. The era was one of versification and translation. The technique of rendering Greek and Latin words into English poetry and prose, and vice versa, was a manifestation of suitable classical training, and the basis of preferment for respectable men of letters.[i] Little modification to this practice occurred in the earlier periods of the nineteenth century when Cambridge and Oxford dominated. Change was slow in coming. In an introductory lecture, a distinguished Victorian literary critic, elected in 1885 to the Professorship of Poetry in the University of Oxford, endorsed the use of classical texts for appreciating the English classics:

“The thorough study of English literature, as such, — literature, I mean, as an art, indeed the finest of the fine arts, — is hopeless unless based on an equally thorough study of the literatures of Greece and Rome. When so based, adequate study will not be found exacting either of time or of labor. To know Shakespeare and Milton is the pleasant and crowning consummation of knowing Homer and Aeschylus, Catullus and Virgil; and upon no other terms can we obtain it.” F.T. Palgrave, ‘Province and Study of Poetry’.

Continue reading →