children in the Fourth Standard learn. The Judgment Scene in the
_Merchant of Venice_ affords me a good example of what I mean.... The
children in the Fourth Standard begin at the beginning and stop at the
end of a hundred lines. Now the children in the Fourth Standard are
often a majority of the children learning poetry, and this is all their
poetry for the year. But within these hundred lines the real interest of
the situation is not reached; neither do they contain any poetry of
signal beauty and effectiveness. How little, therefore, has the
poetry-exercise been made to do for these children, many of whom will
leave school at once, and learn no more poetry!" He greatly favoured all
such exercises as tend to make the mind "creative," and give it "a
native play of its own, as against such exercises as learning strings of
promontories, battles, and minerals." As to the number of subjects
taught, he was in favour of few rather than many. He dreaded for the
children the strain of having to receive a large number of "knowledges"
(as he oddly called them), and "store them up to be reproduced in an
examination." But in spite of this well-founded dread of an undue
multiplication of subjects, he wished to make Latin compulsory in the
upper standards of elementary schools, and he wished to see it taught
through the Vulgate. Perhaps in this particular he showed an effect of
his father's influence; for the late Dean of Westminster[19] used to
imitate the enormous emphasis with which Dr. Arnold replied to some one
who had depreciated the language of the Vulgate as "Dog Latin"--"_Dog
Latin_, indeed! I call it _Lion Latin_!"

Be that as it may, Matthew Arnold thus gave his judgment on the possible
uses of the Vulgate in elementary schools--

"Latin is the foundation of so much in the written and spoken language
of modern Europe, that it is the best language to take as a second