England, in Question and Answer. If your lordship recollects, the year
1746 began in the very height of the celebrated rebellion. The ministers
of the sovereign at this time, were, that mixed and plausible character,
Mr. Pelham, and that immortalized booby, the duke of Newcastle. These
gentlemen possessed their full proportion of that passion, so
universally incident to the human frame, the love of power. They had
formed such a connection with the monied interest of the kingdom, that
no administration could go on without them. Conscious to this
circumstance, they had no toleration for a rival, they could "bear no
brother near the throne." From this sentiment, they had driven that most
able minister I have mentioned, from the cabinet of his sovereign, in no
very justifiable manner, about twelve months before. The same jealousy
kept alive their suspicions: they knew the partiality of their master:
they imagined their antagonist still lurked behind the curtain. The
distresses of the kingdom were to them the ladder of ambition. This was
the language they held to their sovereign: "The enemy is already
advanced into the heart of your majesty's dominions. We know that you
cannot do without us. You must therefore listen with patience to what we
shall dictate. Drive from your presence for ever the wisest and the
ablest of all your counsellors. This is the only condition, upon which
we will continue to serve you in this perilous moment." Majesty, as it
was but natural, was disgusted with this language. The Pelhams resigned.
Lord Granville accepted the seals. And he held them I believe for
something more than a fortnight.
My lord, I will tell you, what were the Pelhams, and what was the true
character of lord Granville. Whatever may be said, and much I think may
justly be said, in favour of the former, they were not men of genius.
Capable of conducting, and willing upon the whole to conduct with
loyalty and propriety the affairs of their country, while they kept
within the beaten channel, they were not born to grapple with arduous
situations. They had not that commanding spirit of adventure, which
leads a man into the path of supererogation and voluntary service: they
had not that firm and collected fortitude which induces a man to look
danger in the face, to encounter it in all its force, and to drive it
from all its retrenchments. They were particularly attached to the
patronage, which is usually annexed to their high situations. They did
not come into power by the voice of the people. They were not summoned
to assume the administration by a vote of the house of commons. They
were introduced into the cabinet by an inglorious and guilty compromise
of sir Robert Walpole; a compromise, that shunned the light; a
compromise, that reflected indelible disgrace upon every individual
concerned in it. We will suppose them ever so much in the right in the
instance before us. For certainly, the same responsibility, that ought
to remove a minister from the helm, when he is become obnoxious to his
countrymen, equally makes it improper, that he should be originally
appointed by the fancy or capricious partiality of the sovereign. But
were they over so much in the right, it will yet remain true, that they
took a poor and ungenerous advantage of the personal distresses of their
master, which men of a large heart, and of sterling genius, could never
have persuaded themselves to take.
Such were the ministers, whom it appears that king George the second
would have had no objection to strip of their employments. I will tell
you who it was, that he was willing to have substituted in their place.
It was a man of infinite genius. His taste was a standard to those, who
were most attached to the fine arts, and most uninterruptedly conversant
with them. His eloquence was splendid, animated, and engaging. Of all
the statesmen then existing in Europe, he was perhaps the individual,
who best understood the interests and the politics of all her courts.
But your lordship may probably find it somewhat more intelligible, if I
take the other side of the picture, and tell you what he was not. He was
not a man of fawning and servility. He did not rest his ambitious
pretensions upon any habitual adroitness, upon the arts of wheedling,
and the tones of insinuation. He rested them upon the most solid
talents, and the most brilliant accomplishments. He did not creep into
the closet of his sovereign uncalled, and endeavour to make himself of
consequence by assiduities and officiousness. He pleaded for years, in a
manly and ingenuous manner, the cause of the people in parliament. It
was by a popularity, great, and almost without exception, that he was
introduced into power. When defeated by the undermining and contemptible
art of his rivals; when convinced that it was impossible for him, to
employ his abilities with success in the service of his country, he
retired. And it was only by the personal intreaties of his sovereign,
and to assist him in that arduous and difficult situation, in which
those who ought to have served, deserted him, that he once again
accepted of office. He accepted it, for the temporary benefit of his
country, and till those persons, who only could come into administration
with efficiency and advantage, should again resume their places. He made
way for them without a struggle. He did not pretend to set practical
impotence, though accompanied with abilities incomparably the superior,
against that influence and connexion by which they were supported. Of
consequence, my lord, his memory will always be respected and cherished
by the bulk of mankind.
I do not mean to propose him to your lordship for a model. I never
imagined that your talents qualified you for the most distant
resemblance of him; and I wished to convince you how inferior they were.
Beside, my lord, he did not act upon the Machiavelian plan. His system
was that of integrity, frankness, and confidence. He desired to meet his
enemies; and the more extensive the ground upon which he could meet
them, the better. I was never idle enough to think of such a line of
conduct for your lordship. Go on then in those crooked paths, and that
invisible direction, for which nature has so eminently fitted you.
Intrench yourself behind the letter of the law. Avoid, carefully avoid,
the possibility of any sinister evidence. And having uniformly taken
these precautions, defy all the malice of your enemies. They may
threaten, but they shall never hurt you. They may make you tremble and
shrink with fancied terrors, but they shall never be able to man so much
as a straw against you. Immortality, my lord, is suspended over your
head. Do not shudder at the sound. It shall not be an immortality of
infamy. It shall only be an immortality of contempt.
THE END.
AN ACCOUNT OF THE SEMINARY
That will be opened
On MONDAY the Fourth Day of AUGUST,
At EPSOM in SURREY,
For the INSTRUCTION of
TWELVE PUPILS
IN
The GREEK, LATIN, FRENCH, and ENGLISH Languages.
M.DCC.LXXXIII.
AN
ACCOUNT
OF THE
SEMINARY, &C.
The two principal objects of human power are government and education.
They have accordingly engrossed a very large share in the disquisitions
of the speculative in all ages. The subject of the former indeed is man,
already endowed with his greatest force of body, and arrived at the
exercise of his intellectual powers: the subject of the latter is man,
as yet shut up in the feebleness of childhood, and the imbecility of
inexperience. Civil society is great and unlimited in its extent; the
time has been, when the whole known world was in a manner united in one
community: but the sphere of education has always been limited. It is
for nations to produce the events, that enchant the imagination, and
ennoble the page of history: infancy must always pass away in the
unimportance of mirth, and the privacy of retreat. That government
however is a theme so much superior to education, is not perhaps so
evident, as we may at first imagine.
It is indeed wider in its extent, but it is infinitely less absolute in
its power. The state of society is incontestibly artificial; the power
of one man over another must be always derived from convention, or from
conquest; by nature we are equal. The necessary consequence is, that
government must always depend upon the opinion of the governed. Let the
most oppressed people under heaven once change their mode of thinking,
and they are free. But the inequality of parents and children is the law
of our nature, eternal and uncontrolable.--Government is very limited in
its power of making men either virtuous or happy; it is only in the
infancy of society that it can do any thing considerable; in its
maturity it can only direct a few of our outward actions. But our moral
dispositions and character depend very much, perhaps entirely, upon
education.--Children indeed are weak and imbecil; but it is the
imbecility of spring, and not that of autumn; the imbecility that verges
towards power, and not that is already exhausted with performance. To
behold heroism in its infancy, and immortality in the bud, must be a
most attractive object. To mould those pliant dispositions, upon which
the happiness of multitudes may one day depend, must be infinitely
important.
Proportionable to what we have stated to be the importance of the
subject, is the attention that has been afforded it in the republic of
letters. The brightest wits, and the profoundest philosophers have
emulated each other in their endeavours to elucidate so valuable a
theme. In vain have pedants urged the stamp of antiquity, and the
approbation of custom; there is scarcely the scheme so visionary, the
execution of which has not at some time or other been attempted. Of the
writers upon this interesting subject, he perhaps that has produced the
most valuable treatise is Rousseau. If men of equal abilities have
explored this ample field, I know of none, however, who have so
thoroughly investigated the first principles of the science, or who have
treated it so much at large. If he have indulged to a thousand agreeable
visions, and wandered in the pursuit of many a specious paradox, he has
however richly repaid us for this defect, by the profoundest researches,
and the most solid discoveries.
I have borrowed so many of my ideas from this admirable writer, that I
thought it necessary to make this acknowledgement in the outset. The
learned reader will readily perceive, that if I have not scrupled to
profit from his discoveries, at least I have freely and largely
dissented from him, where he appeared to me to wander from the path of
truth. For my own part, I am persuaded that it can only be by striking
off something of inflexibility from his system, and something of
pedantry from the common one, that we can expect to furnish a medium,
equally congenial to the elegance of civilization, and the manliness of
virtue.
In pursuance of these principles it shall be my first business to
enquire, whether or not the languages ought to make any part of a
perfect system of education; and if they ought, at what time they should
be commenced. The study of them does indeed still retain its ground in
our public schools and universities. But it has received a rude shock
from some writers of the present age; nor has any attack been more
formidable, than that of the author of Emile. Let us endeavour to
examine the question, neither with the cold prejudice of antiquity on
the one hand; nor on the other, with the too eager thirst of novelty,
and unbounded admiration of the geniuses, by whom it has been attacked.
When we look back to the venerable ancients, we behold a class of
writers, if not of a much higher rank, at least of a very different
character, from the moderns. One natural advantage they indisputably
possessed. The field of nature was all their own. It had not yet been
blasted by any vulgar breath, or touched with a sacrilegious hand. Its
fairest flowers had not been culled, and its choicest sweets rifled
before them. As they were not encumbered and hedged in with the
multitude of their predecessors, they did not servilely borrow their
knowledge from books; they read it in the page of the universe. They
studied nature in all her romantic scenes, and all her secret haunts.
They studied men in the various ranks of society, and in different
nations of the world. I might add to this several other advantages. Of
these the noble freedom of mind that was characteristic of the
republicans of Greece and Rome, and that has scarcely any parallel among
ourselves, would not be the least.
Agreeably to these advantages, they almost every where, particularly
among the Greeks, bear upon them the stamp of originality. All copies
are feeble and unmarked. They sacrifice the plainness of nature to the
gaudiness of ornament, and the tinsel of wit. But the ancients are full
of a noble and affecting simplicity. By one touch of nature and
observation they paint a scene more truly, than their successors are
able to do in whole wire-drawn pages. In description they are
unequalled. Their eloquence is fervent, manly and sonorous. Their
thoughts are just, natural, independent and profound. The pathos of
Virgil, and the sublimity of Homer, have never been surpassed. And as
their knowledge was not acquired in learned indolence, they knew how to
join the severest application with the brightest genius. Accordingly in
their style they have united simplicity, eloquence and harmony, in a
manner of which the moderns have seldom had even an idea. The
correctness of a Caesar, and the sonorous period of a Cicero; the
majesty of a Virgil, and the politeness of a Horace, are such as no
living language can express.
It is the remark of a certain old-fashioned writer, "The form of the
world passeth away." A century or two ago the greatest wits were known
to have pathetically lamented, that the writers, of whose merits I have
been speaking, were handed down to us in so mutilated a condition. Now
it seems very probable, that, if their works were totally annihilated,
it would scarcely call forth a sigh from the refined geniuses of the
present age. It is certainly very possible to carry the passion for
antiquity to a ridiculous extreme. No man can reasonably deny, that it
is by us only that the true system of the universe has been ascertained,
and that we have made very valuable improvements upon many of the arts.
No man can question that some of our English poets have equalled the
ancients in sublimity, and that, to say the least, our neighbours, the
French, have emulated the elegance of their composition in a manner,
that is very far indeed from contempt. From these concessions however we
are by no means authorised to infer their inutility.
But I shall be told that in the first revival of letters the study of
the ancient languages might indeed be very proper; but since that time
we have had so many excellent truncations of every thing they contain,
that to waste the time, and exhaust the activity of our youth in the
learning of Latin and Greek, is to very little purpose indeed.
Translation! what a strange word! To me I confess it appears the most
unaccountable invention, that ever entered into the mind of man. To
distil the glowing conceptions, and to travesty the beautiful language
of the ancients, through the medium of a language estranged to all its
peculiarities and all its elegancies. The best thoughts and expressions
of an author, those that distinguish one writer from another, are
precisely those that are least capable of being translated. And who are
the men we are to employ in this promising business? Original genius
disdains the unmeaning drudgery. A mind that has one feature resembling
the ancients, will scarcely stoop to be their translator. The persons
then, to whom the performance must be committed, are persons of cool
elegance. Endowed with a little barren taste, they must be inanimate
enough to tread with laborious imbecility in the footsteps of another.
They must be eternally incapable of imbibing the spirit, and glowing
with the fire of their original. But we shall seldom come off so well as
this. The generality of translators are either on the one hand mere
pedants and dealers in words, who, understanding the grammatical
construction of a period, never gave themselves the trouble to enquire,
whether it conveyed either sentiment or instruction; or on the other
hand mere writers for hire, the retainers of a bookseller, men who
translate Homer from the French, and Horace out of Creech.
Let it not be said that I am now talking at random. Let us descend to
examples. We need not be afraid of instancing in the most favourable. I
believe it is generally allowed that Mr. Pope's Iliad is the very best
version that was ever made out of one language into another. It must be
confessed to exhibit very many poetical beauties. As a trial of skill,
as an instance of what can be effected upon so forlorn a hope, it must
ever be admired. But were I to search for a true idea of the style and
composition of Homer, I think I should rather recur to the verbal
translation in the margin of the original, than to the version of Pope.
Homer is the simplest and most unaffected of poets. Of all the writers
of elegance and taste that ever existed, his translator is the most
ornamented. We acknowledge Homer by his loose and flowing robe, that
does not constrain a muscle of his frame. But Pope presents himself in
the close and ungraceful habit of modern times;
"Glittering with gems, and stiff with woven gold."
No, let us for once conduct ourselves with honesty and generosity. If we
will not study the ancients in their own nervous and manly page, let us
close their volumes for ever. I had rather, says the amiable philosopher
of Chaeronea, it should be said of me, that there never was such a man
as Plutarch, than that Plutarch was ill-natured, arbitrary, and
tyrannical. And were I the bard of Venusia, sure I am, I had rather be
entirely forgotten, than not be known for the polite, the spirited, and
the elegant writer I really was.
To converse with the accomplished, is the obvious method by which to
become accomplished ourselves. This general observation is equally
applicable to the study of polite writers of our own and of other
countries. But there are some reasons, upon account of which we may
expect to derive a more perceptible advantage from the ancients. They
carried the art of composition to greater heights than any of the
moderns. Their writers were almost universally of a higher rank in
society, than ours. There did not then exist the temptation of gain to
spur men on to the profession of an author. An industrious modern will
produce twenty volumes, in the time that Socrates employed to polish one
oration.
Another argument flows from the simple circumstance of their writing in
a different language. Of all the requisites to the attainment either of
a style of our own, or a discernment in that of others, the first is
grammar. Without this, our ideas must be always vague and desultory.
Respecting the delicacies of composition, we may guess, but we can never
decide and demonstrate. Now, of the minutiae of grammar, scarcely any
man ever attained a just knowledge, who was acquainted with only one
language. And if the study of others be the surest, I will venture also
to pronounce it the easiest method for acquiring a mastery in philology.
From what has been said, I shall consider this conclusion as
sufficiently established, that the languages ought at some time to be
learned by him who would form to himself a perfect character. I proceed
to my second enquiry, at what time the study of them should be
commenced? And here I think this to be the best general answer: at the
age of ten years.
In favour of so early a period one reason may be derived from what I
have just been mentioning. The knowledge of more languages than one, is
almost an indispensible prerequisite to the just understanding either of
the subject of grammar in particular, or of that of style in general.
Now if the cultivation of elegance and propriety be at all important, it
cannot be entered upon too soon, provided the ideas are already
competent to the capacity of the pupil. The Roman Cornelia, who never
suffered a provincial accent, or a grammatical barbarism in the hearing
of her children, has always been cited with commendation; and the
subsequent rhetorical excellence of the Gracchi has been in a great
degree ascribed to it. Fluency, purity and ease are to be acquired by
insensible degrees: and against habits of this kind I apprehend there
can be no objection.
Another argument of still greater importance is, that the knowledge of
languages has scarcely ever been mastered, but by those, the
commencement of whose acquaintance with them was early. To be acquainted
with any science slightly and superficially, can in my opinion be
productive of little advantage. But such an acquaintance with languages
must be very useless indeed. What benefit can it be expected that we
should derive from an author, whom we cannot peruse with facility and
pleasure? The study of such an author will demand a particular strength
of resolution, and aptitude of humour. He can scarcely become the
favourite companion of our retirement, and the never-failing solace of
our cares. Something of slow and saturnine must be the necessary
accompaniment of that disposition, that can conquer the difficulties of
such a pursuit. And accordingly we find that the classics and the school
are generally quitted together, even by persons of taste, who have not
acquired a competent mastery of them in their course of education. Very
few indeed have been those, who, estranged to the languages till the age
of manhood, have after that period obtained such a familiarity with
them, as could ever be productive of any considerable advantage.
Brutes and savages are totally unacquainted with lassitude and spleen,
the lust of variety, and the impatience of curiosity. In a state of
society our ideas habitually succeed in a certain proportion, and an
employment that retards their progress, speedily becomes disagreeable
and tedious. But children, not having yet felt this effect of
civilization, are not susceptible to this cause of disgust. They are
endowed with a pliableness and versatility of mind, that with a little
attention and management may easily be turned to any pursuit. Their
understandings not yet preoccupied, they have a singular facility of
apprehending, and strength of retention. It is certain this pliableness
and facility are very liable to abuse. It is not easy to believe, that
they were given to learn words without meaning; terms of art, not
understood by the pupil; the systems of theologians, and the jargon of
metaphysics. But then neither were they given without a capacity of
being turned to advantage. And it should seem that it could not be a
very fallacious antidote to abuse, to confine our instructions to such
kinds of knowledge, as are of the highest importance, and are seldom
learned with success, and even scarcely attainable, at any other period.
Let it be observed that I have not fixed upon the age of ten years at
random. It is the observation of Rousseau; Both children and men are
essentially feeble. Children, because however few be their wants, they
are unable to supply them. Men, in a state of society, because whatever
be their absolute strength, the play of the imagination renders their
desires yet greater. There is an intermediate period, in which our
powers having made some progress, and the artificial and imaginary wants
being unknown, we are relatively strong. And this he represents as the
principal period of instruction. This remark is indeed still more
striking, when applied to a pupil, the progress of whose imagination is
sedulously retarded. But it is not destitute either of truth or utility
in the most general application we can possibly give it. Let it be
observed, that Rousseau fixes the commencement of this period at twelve
years. I would choose to take it at ten.
However we may find it convenient to distribute the productions of
nature into classes, and her operations into epochas, yet let it be
remembered, that her progress is silent and imperceptible. Between a
perfect animal and vegetable, the distinction is of the highest order.
Between distant periods we may remark the most important differences.
But the gradations of nature are uninterrupted. Of her chain every link
is compleat. As therefore I shall find in commencing at ten years, that
my time will be barely sufficient for the purposes to which I would
appropriate it, I consider this circumstance as sufficient to determine
my election. A youth of ten years is omnipotent, if we contrast him with
a youth of eight.