Of all the qualities
incident to human nature, the most universally attractive is simplicity,
the most disgusting is affectation. Now what idea has a child of the
passions of a hero, and the distresses of royalty? But he is taught the
most vehement utterance, and a thousand constrained cadences, without
its being possible that he should see in them, either reasonableness or
propriety.
I would not have a child required to commit any thing to memory more
than is absolutely necessary. If, however, he be a youth of spirit, he
will probably learn some things in this manner, and the sooner because
it is not expected of him. It will be of use for him to repeat these
with a grave and distinct voice, accommodated to those cadences, which
the commas, the periods, and the notes of interrogation, marked in his
author, may require, but without the smallest instruction to humour the
gay, or to sadden the plaintive.
Another article, that makes a conspicuous figure in the education of our
youth, is composition. Before they are acquainted with the true
difference between verse and prose, before they are prepared to decide
upon the poetical merit of Lily and Virgil, they are called upon to
write Latin verse themselves. In the same manner some of their first
prose compositions are in a dead language.
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