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- The Confessions of S. Augustine. 15
condemnation of my evil ways, that I may love Thy good ways. Let not either buyers or sellers of grammar cry out against me. For if I put the question to them whether it be true that Æneas came on a time to Carthage, as the Poet tells, the less learned will reply that they know not, the more learned that he never did. But if I were to ask with what letters the name “Æneas” is written, all who have learnt this will answer me aright, according to the use and wont, by which men have established those signs among themselves. If, again, I should ask, which might be forgotten with least detriment to the concerns of life, reading and writing or these poetic fictions, who does not foresee, what all must answer who have not wholly forgotten themselves? I sinned, then, when as a boy I preferred those empty to those more profitable studies, or rather hated the one and loved the other. “One and one, two;” “two and two, four;” this was to me a hateful singsong: “the wooden horse filled with armed men,” and “the burning of Troy,” and “Creusa’s shade” were the vain spectacle most charming to me.
## CHAPTER XIV.
*Why he disliked Greek, and easily learned Latin.*
WHY then did I hate the Greek language in which like songs are sung. For Homer also was skilful in weaving the like fables, and is most sweetly-vain, yet was he bitter to my boyish taste. And so I suppose would Virgil be to Grecian children, when forced to learn him as I was the other. Difficulty, in truth, the difficulty of learning a foreign tongue, sprinkled, as it were, with gall all the sweetness of Grecian fables. For I knew none of the words, and to make me know them, I was urged vehemently with cruel threats and punishments. Time was also (as an infant) I knew no Latin; but this I learned without fear or torture, by mere observation, amid the caresses of my nurses, the jests of smiling friends, and the delights of those that played with me. This I learned without any burden of punishment to urge me on, for my heart urged me to give birth to its conceptions, which I could only do by learning words not of teachers, but of talkers; in whose ears also I gave birth
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