Alan Breck says. Then we began to read Homer; and from the very
first words, in which the Muse is asked to sing the wrath of
Achilles, Peleus' son, my mind was altered, and I was the devoted
friend of Greek. Here was something worth reading about; here one
knew where one was; here was the music of words, here were poetry,
pleasure, and life. We fortunately had a teacher (Dr. Hodson) who
was not wildly enthusiastic about grammar. He would set us long
pieces of the Iliad or Odyssey to learn, and, when the day's task
was done, would make us read on, adventuring ourselves in "the
unseen," and construing as gallantly as we might, without grammar or
dictionary. On the following day we surveyed more carefully the
ground we had pioneered or skirmished over, and then advanced again.
Thus, to change the metaphor, we took Homer in large draughts, not
in sips: in sips no epic can be enjoyed. We now revelled in Homer
like Keats in Spenser, like young horses let loose in a pasture.
The result was not the making of many accurate scholars, though a
few were made; others got nothing better than enjoyment in their
work, and the firm belief, opposed to that of most schoolboys, that
the ancients did not write nonsense. To love Homer, as Steele said
about loving a fair lady of quality, "is a liberal education."

Judging from this example, I venture very humbly to think that any
one who, even at the age of Cato, wants to learn Greek, should begin
where Greek literature, where all profane literature begins--with
Homer himself. It was thus, not with grammars in vacuo, that the
great scholars of the Renaissance began. It was thus that Ascham
and Rabelais began, by jumping into Greek and splashing about till
they learned to swim. First, of course, a person must learn the
Greek characters. Then his or her tutor may make him read a dozen
lines of Homer, marking the cadence, the surge and thunder of the