cies by an honeft and ufeful employ

ment.

It is told, that in the art of education he performed wonders; and a formidable lift is given of the authors, Greek and Latin, that were read in Alderfgate-street, by youth between ten

years of

and fifteen or fixteen age. Thofe who tell or receive these ftories, fhould confider that nobody can be taught fafter than he can learn. The fpeed of the best horseman muft be limited by the power of his horfe. Every man, that has ever undertaken to inftruct others, can tell what flow advances he has been able to make, and how much patience it requires to recall vagrant inattention, to ftimulate fluggish indifference,

ference, and to rectify abfurd mifap

prehenfion.

The purpofe of Milton, as it seems, was to teach fomething more folid than the common literature of fchools, by reading those authors that treat of phyfical fubjects; fuch as the Georgick, and aftronomical treatifes of the ancients. This was a fcheme of improvement which feems to have bufied many literary projectors of that age. Cowley, who had more means than Milton of knowing what was wanting to the embellishments of life, formed the fame plan of education in his imaginary College.

But the truth is, that the knowledge of external nature, and of the sciences

which that knowledge requires or includes, is not the great or the frequent

bufinefs of the human mind.

Whether

we provide for action or converfation, whether we wish to be useful or pleafing, the first requifite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the hiftory of mankind, and with thofe examples which may be faid to embody truth, and prove by events the reasonablenefs of opinions. Prudence and juftice are virtues, and excellencies, of all times, and of all places; we are perpetually moralifts, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is neceffary; our fpeculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leifure.

leifure. Phyfical knowledge is of fuch rare emergence, that one man may know another half his life without being able to eftimate his fkill in hydrostaticks or aftronomy; but his moral and prudential character immediately appears.

Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence, moft principles of moral truth, and moft materials for converfation; and thefe purposes are beft ferved by poets, orators, and historians.

Let me not be cenfured for this digreffion as pedantick or paradoxical; for if I have Milton against me, I have Socrates on my fide. It was his labour to turn philofophy from the ftudy of nature to speculations upon life, but the

innovators whom I oppofe are turning off attention from life to nature. They seem to think, that we are placed here to watch the growth of plants, or the motions of the ftars. Socrates was rather of opinion, that what we had to learn was, how to do good, and avoid evil.

Ὅτι τοι ἐν μεγάροισι κακόν ἀγαθό)]ε τέτυκται.

Of inftitutions we may judge by their effects. From this wonder-working academy, I do not know that there ever proceeded any man very eminent for knowledge: its only genuine product, I believe, is a small History of Poetry, written in Latin by his nephew, of which perhaps none of my readers has ever heard.

That