LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN WHOSE
EDUCATION HAS BEEN NEGLECTED.

DEAR SIR,-I send you a bantering" Epistle to an Old Gentleman whose Education is supposed to have been neglected." "Of course, it was suggested by some letters of your admirable Opium-Eater, the discontinuance of which has caused so much regret to myself in common with most of your readers. You will do me injustice by supposing that, in the remotest degree, it was my intention to ridicule those papers, The fact is, the most serious things may give rise to an innocent burlesque; and, the more serious they are, the fitter they become for that purpose. It is not to be supposed that Charles Cotton did not entertain a very high regard for Virgil, notwithstanding he travestied that poet. Your self can testify the deep respect I have always held for the profound learning and penetrating genius of our friend. Nothing upon earth would give me greater pleasure than to find that he has not lost sight of his entertaining and instructive purpose.

I am, dear sir, yours and his sincerely,tai "

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ELIA, M

DEAR SIR, The question which you have done

MY DEAR

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me the honour to propose to me, through the medium of our common friend, Mr. Grierson, I shall endeavour to answer with as much exactness as a limited observation and experience can warrant.

You ask, or rather Mr. Grierson, in his own interesting. language, asks for you,-"Whether a person at the age of sixty-three, with no more proficiency than a tolerable. knowledge of most of the characters of the English alphabet at first sight amounts to, by dint of persevering application and good masters, a docile and ingenuous disposition, on the part of the pupil always presupposed,-may, hope. to arrive, within a presumable number of years, at that degree of attainments which shall entitle the possessor to. the character, which you are on so many accounts justly desirous of acquiring, of a learned man.”

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This is fairly and candidly stated, only I could wish that on one point you had been a little more explicit. L the mean time, I will take it for granted, that by a

"knowledge of the alphabetic characters" you confine your meaning to the single powers only, as you are silent on the subject of the diphthongs and harder combinations.

Why, truly, sir, when I consider the vast circle of sciences, it is not here worth while to trouble you with the distinction between learning and science, which a man must be understood to have made the tour of in these days, before the world will be willing to concede to him the title which you aspire to, I am almost disposed to reply to your inquiry by a direct answer in the negative.

However, where all cannot be compassed, a great deal that is truly valuable may be accomplished. I am unwilling to throw out any remarks that should have a tendency to damp a hopeful genius; but I must not, in fairness, conceal I from you that you have much to do. The consciousness of difficulty is sometimes a spur to exertion. Rome→→ or rather, my dear sir, to borrow an illustration from a place as yet more familiar to you, Rumford-Rumford was not built in a day.

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Your mind as yet, give me leave to tell you, is in the state of a sheet of white paper. We must not blot or blur it over too hastily. Or, to use an opposite simile, it is like a piece of parchment all bescrawled and bescribbled over with characters of no sense or import, which we must carefully erase and remove before we can make way for the authentic characters or impresses which are to be substituted in their stead by the corrective hand of science.

Your mind, my dear sir, again, resembles that same parchment, which we will suppose a little hardened by time and disuse. We may apply the characters; but are we sure that the ink will sink?

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You are in the condition of a traveller that h has all his journey to begin. And, again, you are worse off than the traveller which I have supposed; for you have already lost your way.

You have much to learn, which you have never been taught; and more, I fear, to unlearn, which you have been taught erroneously. You have hitherto, I dare say, ima

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gined that the sun moves round the earth. When you shall have mastered the true solar system, you will have quite a different theory upon that point, I assure you. I mention but this instance. Your own experience, as knowledge advances, will furnish you with many parallels.

I can scarcely approve of the intention, which Mr. Grierson informs me you have contemplated, of entering yourself at a common seminary, and working your way up from the lower to the higher forms with the children. I see more to admire in the modesty than in the expediency of such a resolution. I own I cannot reconcile myself to the spectacle of a gentleman at your time of life, seated, as must be your case at first, below a tyro of four or five; for at that early age the rudiments of education usually commence in this country. I doubt whether more might not be lost in the point of fitness than would be gained in the advantages which you propose to yourself by this scheme.

You say you stand in need of emulation; that this incitement is nowhere to be had but at a public school; that you should be more sensible of your progress by comparing it with the daily progress of those around you. But have you considered the nature of emulation, and how it is sustained at these tender years which you would have to come in competition with? I am afraid you are dreaming of academic prizes and distinctions. Alas! in the university for which you are preparing, the highest medal would be a silver penny; and you must graduate in nuts and oranges.

I know that Peter, the Great Czar or Emperor- of Muscovy, submitted himself to the discipline of a dockyard. at Deptford, that he might learn, and convey to his countrymen, the noble art of ship-building. You are old enough to remember him, or at least the talk about him. I call to mind also other great princes, who, to instruct themselves in the theory and practice of war, and set an example of subordination to their subjects, have condescended to enrol themselves as private soldiers; and, passing through the successive ranks of corporal, quartermaster, and the rest, have served their way up to the station at which most

princes are willing enough to set out,-of general and commander-in-chief over their own forces. But-besides that there is oftentimes great sham and pretence in their show of mock humility-the competition which they stooped to was with their coevals, however inferior to them in birth. Between ages so very disparate as those which you contemplate, I fear there can no salutary emulation subsist.

Again in the other alternative, could you submit to the ordinary reproofs and discipline of a day-school? Could you bear to be corrected for your faults? Or how would it look to see you put to stand, as must be the case sometimes, in a corner?

I am afraid the idea of a public school in your circumstances must be given up.

But is it impossible, my dear sir, to find some person of your own age,-if of the other sex, the more agreeable, perhaps, whose information, like your own, has rather lagged behind his years, who should be willing to set out from the same point with yourself; to undergo the same tasks?-thus at once inciting and sweetening each other's labours in a sort of friendly rivalry. Such a one, I think, it would not be difficult to find in some of the western parts of this island,-about Dartmoor, for instance.

Or what if, from your own estate,—that estate, which, unexpectedly acquired so late in life, has inspired into you this generous thirst after knowledge,—you were to select some elderly peasant, that might best be spared from the land, to come and begin his education with you, that you might till, as it were, your minds together, one whose heavier progress might invite, without a fear of discouraging, your emulation? We might then see-starting from an equal post-the difference of the clownish and the gentle blood.

A private education, then, or such a one as I have been describing, being determined on, we must in the next place look out for a preceptor; for it will be some time before either of you, left to yourselves, will be able to assist the other to any great purpose in his studies.

And now, my dear sir, if, in describing such a tutor as I have imagined for you, I use a style a little above the familiar one in which I have hitherto chosen to address you, the nature of the subject must be my apology. Diffit cile est de scientiis inscienter loqui; which is as much as to say, that, in treating of scientific matters, it is difficult to avoid the use of scientific terms." But I shall endeavourto be as plain as possible. I am not going to present (you with the ideal of a pedagogue as it may exist in my fancy, or has possibly been realized in the persons of Buchananh and Busby. Something less than perfection will serve our turn. The scheme which I propose in this first, or introductory letter has reference to the first four or five years of your education only; and in enumerating, the qualificationsɗ of him that should undertake the direction of your studies, I shall rather point out the minimum, or least, that I shall require of him, than trouble you in the search of attain! ments neither common nor necessary to our immediate purpose. „esquict „ed-,sh pyvil „edrid svitoegen He should be a man of deep and extensive knowledge.) So much at least is indispensable. Something older than yourself, I could wish him, because years add reverence.

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To his age and great learning, he should be blessed withi a temper and a patience willing to accommodate itself to the imperfections of the slowest and meanest capacities. Such a one, in former days, Mr. Hartlib appears to have been; and such, in our days, I take Mr. Grierson to bei but our friend, you know, unhappily, has other, engage-o ments. I do not demand a consummate grammarian; butsi he must be a thorough master of vernacular orthography, w with an insight into the accentualities and punctualities. of modern Saxon, or English. He must be competently instructed (or how shall he instruct you?) in the tetra-L logy, or four first rules, upon which not only arithmetic,10 but geometry, and the pure mathematics themselves, are d grounded. I do not require that he should have measured the globe with Cook or Ortelius; but it is desirable that he should have a general knowledge (I do not mean a very nice or pedantic one) of the great division of the