Philology by Turner James

Author:Turner, James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2014-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

Classical Erudition in the United Kingdom

Broadly speaking, one can say that classical scholars in Britain and Ireland clung longer to purely textual philology. Many resisted archaeology, even epigraphy and numismatics. Quite a few acted as if they needed little historical context to make the meaning of texts clear and shrugged off theoretical or technical erudition. Most held out against separating classical studies from general culture. Broadly speaking, one can say all this; on the ground the situation grew confused.

Scotland stood out because its universities traditionally rejected Oxbridge models. A translation of Aeschylus in 1850 won John Stuart Blackie the Edinburgh Greek professorship in 1852. He held it until 1882, publishing a translation of the Iliad, with commentary, in 1866 before getting distracted by other hobbies. As a young man, he had studied in Göttingen with K. O. Müller and in Berlin with Boeckh; he developed an interest in archaeology as well as texts and adopted a historical approach to the study of antiquity. He sent his own students off for summer study of Greek in German universities. He sneered at the “absurdities” of the “Porsonian school.” But Blackie had pursued theology in Germany more vigorously than classical philology. He trained as a lawyer, published a translation of part 1 of Goethe’s Faust, taught Latin at Aberdeen before moving to Greek at Edinburgh. Neither persistent researcher nor proficient teacher, he yet became the best-known Scottish classicist of his generation. Blackie lectured with bubbling fervor and took an unconventionally broad view of classical studies—beyond even whose faraway fences he routinely wandered. His many works included a life of Burns; The Wisdom of Goethe; Christianity and the Ideal of Humanity; and political tracts flavored by Scottish nationalism. He spent years plumping for a Celtic chair at Edinburgh. Whatever Blackie was, he was no close textual scholar in the Oxbridge line. Indeed, one of his “rambling” philological papers left his successor in the Greek chair, Samuel Butcher, hopeless of “following the movements of a genius so erratic.” “An accomplished and amiable man, blessed with a fortunate want of sensitiveness” (Caroline Jebb’s view), Blackie was more sage than savant.29

More thorough scholars were pushing the boundaries of ‘classics’ beyond explicating ancient texts. Rev. Charles MacDouall began his university career as professor of Hebrew at Edinburgh in 1847—then immediately got expelled for deserting the Church of Scotland. In 1849 the new Queen’s College in Belfast hired him as its first Latin professor. A year later, when the chair of Greek opened, he hopped to it. MacDouall discharged his duties conscientiously; but his real interest lay in neither Hebrew, Latin, nor Greek, but in all of them and more. He certainly stood far from a ‘discipline’ of classics—or any modern discipline. ‘Comparative philologist’ may best describe him, but any single label falsely pins him down. The range of his personal library stuns: grammars and texts in Chinese, Turkish, Burmese, Telegu, Tamil, Persian, Armenian, Avestan, Mongolian, Japanese, Tibetan, and many other tongues, including early forms of several European languages.

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