acquisition of a foreign tongue. As to getting anything out of it in
the way of ideas, and especially of poetical ones, that is almost never
attained. There are, indeed, many who have a special facility for
languages, but in their case (with a few exceptions) one may say
without uncharity that the acquisition of ideas is not their object,
though if they did acquire them they would probably be new ones. The
majority of us, however, have much difficulty in surmounting the
obstacle of an alien tongue; and when we have done so we are naturally
inclined to overrate the advantages thus attained. Everyone knows the
poor creature who quotes French on all occasions with a certain stress
on the accent, designed to arouse a doubt in his hearers as to whether
he was not actually born in Paris. _He_, of course, is a low specimen
of the class in question, but almost all of us derive a certain
intellectual gratification from the mastery of another language, and as
we gradually attain to it, whenever we find a meaning we are apt to
mistake it for a beauty.[1] Nay, I am convinced that many admire this
or that (even) British poet from the fact that here and there his
meaning has gleamed upon them with all the charm that accompanies
unexpectedness.

[1] Since the above was written, my attention has been called to
the following remark of De Quincey: 'As must ever be the case with
readers not sufficiently masters of a language to bring the true
pretensions of a work to any test of feeling, they are for ever
mistaking for some pleasure conferred by the writer, what is, in
fact, the pleasure naturally attached to the sense of a difficulty
overcome.'

Since classical learning is compulsory with us, this bastard admiration
is much more often excited with respect to the Greek and Latin poets.