These Antitheses (which I have here set down) are perhaps of no great value; but as I had long ago prepared and collected them, I was loth to let the fruit of my youthful industry perish the rather because (if they be carefully examined) they are seeds only, not flowers. In one respect indeed they savour altogether of youth, there being plenty of them in the moral and demonstrative kind, but in the deliberative and judicial very few.

The third Collection, which belongs to the Promptuary, or Preparatory Store, and is likewise deficient, is that of what I call Lesser Forms. I mean those parts of speech which answer to the vestibules, back doors, ante-chambers, withdrawingchambers, passages, &c., of a house; and may serve indiscriminately for all subjects. Such are prefaces, conclusions, digressions, transitions, intimations of what is coming, excusations, and a number of the kind. For as in buildings it is a great matter both for pleasure and use that the fronts, doors, windows, approaches, passages, and the like be conveniently arranged, so also in a speech these accessory and interstitial passages (if they be handsomely and skilfully fashioned and placed) add a great deal both of ornament and effect to the entire structure. Of these Forms I will subjoin one or two examples, without dwelling longer upon them. For though they be matters of no small use, yet as I have nothing of my own to add in this part, but merely transcribe the naked forms out of Demosthenes or Cicero or some other chosen author, they are not of that importance that I should spend time upon them.

Examples of Lesser Forms.

A CONCLUSION IN A DELIBERATIVE.

So may we redeem the fault passed and at the same time prevent the inconveniences to come.

COROLLARY OF AN ACCURATE DISTRIBUTION.

That all may know that I have no wish either to evade anything by silence or to obscure it by speech.'

'Cic. Pro Cluent. c. i.

A TRANSITION WITH A HINT.

Let us pass these things, and yet not without marking and turning back to look at them as we go by.1

A FORM TO PREOCCUPY THE MIND AGAINST AN OPINION

PREVIOUSLY FORMED.

I will make you understand in all this business how much is truth, how much error, and how much envy.2

These few may be enough by way of examples; and with these I conclude the Appendices to Rhetoric, which belong to the Promptuary.

CHAP. IV.

Two General Appendices of the Art of Transmission; Critical and Pedagogical.

THERE remain two appendices touching the transmission of knowledge in general; the one Critical, the other Pedagogical. For as the principal part of transmission of knowledge consists in the writing of books, so the relative part thereof turns on the reading of books. Now reading is either directed by teachers, or attained by each man's own endeavours; and to this these two knowledges which I have mentioned appertain.

To the Critical part belongs, first, the true correction and amended edition of approved authors; whereby both themselves receive justice and their students light. Yet in this the rash diligence of some has done no little harm. For many critics, when they meet a passage which they do not understand, immediately suppose that there is a fault in the copy. As in that passage of Tacitus, where he relates that when a certain colony asserted before the senate the right of asylum, their arguments were not very favourably listened to by the emperor and the senate; whereupon the ambassadors, fearing for the success of their cause, gave a good sum of money to Titus Vinius to support them-by which means they prevailed. "Then " (says Tacitus) "the dignity and antiquity of the colony had

1 Cic. Pro Sext. c. 5.

2 Cic. Pro Cluent. c. 4.

its weight;" meaning that the arguments which appeared light before gained fresh weight by the money. But a critic, and he not one of the worst, here erased the word tum, and substituted tantum. And this bad habit of critics has brought it to pass that (as some one has wisely remarked) "the most corrected copies are often the least correct." Moreover, to speak truly, unless critics be learned in the sciences which the books they edit treat of, their diligence is not without its danger.

Secondly, there belongs to the Critical part the interpretation and explication of authors,-commentaries, scholia, annotations, collections of beauties, and the like. In labours of this kind however some of the critics have been visited with that very bad disease, of leaping over many of the obscurer places, while they linger and expatiate to tediousness on those which are clear enough; as if the object were not so much to illustrate the author as to display on every possible opportunity the extensive learning and various reading of the critic himself. It were especially to be desired (though this is a matter which belongs rather to the art of transmission in the main, than to the appendices thereof) that every writer who handles arguments of the obscurer and more important kind, should himself subjoin his own explanations; that so the text may not be interrupted by digressions and expositions, and the notes may not be at variance with the writer's meaning. Something of the kind I suspect in Theon's Commentary on Euclid.

There belongs thirdly to the Critical part (and from this indeed it derives its name) the insertion of some brief judgment concerning the authors edited, and comparison of them with other writers on the same subjects; that students may by such censure be both advised what books to read and better prepared when they come to read them. This last office is indeed, so to speak, the critic's chair; which has certainly in our age been ennobled by some great men,-men in my judgment above the stature of critics.

As for the Pedagogical part, the shortest rule would be, "Consult the schools of the Jesuits;" for nothing better has been put in practice. Nevertheless I will as usual give a few

! Cf. Tacitus, Hist. i. 66. The case is incorrectly stated. See Mr. Ellis's note, vol. i. p. 708.-J. S.

hints, gleaning an ear here and there. I am clearly in favour of a collegiate education for boys and young men; not in private houses, nor merely under schoolmasters. For in colleges there is a greater emulation of the youths amongst themselves; there is also the sight and countenance of grave men, which tends to modesty, and forms their young minds from the very first after that model; and in short there are very many advantages in a collegiate education. For the order and manner of teaching, I would say first of all,-avoid abridgments and a certain precocity of learning, which makes the mind over bold, and causes great proficiency rather in show than in fact. Also let some encouragement be given to the free exercise of the pupils' minds and tastes; I mean, if any of them, besides performing the prescribed exercises, shall steal time withal for other pursuits to which he is more inclined, let him not be checked. Observe moreover (what perhaps has not hitherto been remarked) that there are two ways of training and exercising and preparing the mind, which proceed in opposite directions. The one begins with the easier tasks, and so leads on gradually to the more difficult; the other begins by enforcing and pressing the more difficult, that when they are mastered the easier ones may be performed with pleasure. For it is one method to begin swimming with bladders, which keep you up; and another to begin dancing with heavy shoes, which weigh you down. Nor is it easy to tell how much a judicious intermixture of these methods helps to advance the faculties of the mind and body. Again, the application and choice of studies according to the nature of the mind to be taught, is a matter of wonderful use and judgment; the due and careful observation whereof is due from the masters to the parents, that they may be able to advise them as to the course of life they should choose for their sons. And herein it should be carefully observed, that as a man will advance far fastest in those pursuits to which he is naturally inclined, so with respect to those for which he is by defect of nature most unsuited there are found in studies properly chosen a cure and remedy for his defects. For example, if one be bird-witted, that is easily distracted and unable to keep his attention as long as he should, Mathematics provides a remedy; for in them if the mind be caught away but a moment, the demonstration has to be commenced anew. Exercises, again, it is