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The universities of the present time consequently give no heed to almost extinct educational predilections like these, and found their philological chairs for the training of new and exclusive generations of philologists, who on their part give similar philological preparation in the public schools a vicious circle which is useful neither to philologists nor to public schools, but which above all accuses the university for the third time of not being what it so pompously proclaims itself to be a training ground for culture.
Now while this large number of manuscripts and various readings have given the philologists of the New Testament greater difficulties than the classical philologist encounters, still on the other hand the New Testament has the advantage over all classical texts, in that some of its manuscripts are much older than those of the majority of classical writers.
But a good many 'spelling-pronunciations' have found their way into general educated use, and others which are now condemned as vulgar or affected will probably at some future time be universally adopted. I do not share the sentimental regret with which some philologists regard this tendency of the language.
Add to this, that the time spent in things so little agreeable, might be employed in acquiring others much more useful. I should have been a better philosopher, more master of the Greek, better acquainted with the manners of the Ancients, with the Poets, and Philologists, if I had practiced less as an Advocate." Ibid.
And, in truth, if one turn to the latest periodicals, one will find German philologists and grammarians already giving expression to the view that our classics can no longer serve us as examples of style, owing to the fact that they constantly use words, modes of speech, and syntactic arrangements which are fast dropping out of currency.
Among the Greek manuscripts the Fathers of the Church far outnumbered the rest; yet in the list of the classics we find all the works of Sophocles, all of Pindar, and all of Menander. The last codex must have quickly disappeared from Urbino, else the philologists would have soon edited it.
Everyone knows that the Arabic abounds in d's, and perhaps the philologists are right in calling it the most ancient of languages, since the a is the most natural and easy to pronounce of all the letters.
Philologists may take their time over the decipherment of the texts inscribed on the reliefs, but the great people of prey who, for at least four centuries, pillaged all Asia without themselves becoming softened by the possession of so much accumulated wealth, live, henceforward, in the long series of pictures recovered for the world by Layard and Botta.
Or it may be closer to the truth to recognize in the Zendic and Achsemenian forms of speech, not so much two contemporary idioms, as two stages of one and the same language, which seems to be at present the opinion of the best comparative philologists.
It is a most interesting process, as described by the philologists, which has enabled them, by tracing the history of words through their various modifications in different living languages, to see how the lines of growth converge as they are followed back to the simple Aryan roots.
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