A Reply to the Calumnies of the Edinburgh Review Against Oxford: Containing an Account of Studies Pursued in that University

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author, 1810 - 187 pages
 

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Page 161 - But here the main skill and groundwork will be to temper them such lectures and explanations upon every opportunity as may lead and draw them in willing obedience, inflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God and famous to all ages.
Page 126 - And that which casts our proficiency therein so much behind is our time lost partly in too oft idle vacancies given both to schools and universities — partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, and orations which are the acts of ripest judgment and the final work of a head filled by long reading and observing with elegant maxims and copious invention.
Page 112 - Without teaching him the peculiar business of any one office or calling, it enables him to act his part in each of them with better grace and more elevated carriage ; and, if happily planned and conducted, is a main ingredient in that complete and generous education which fits a man ' to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war.
Page 106 - ... or mathematics, or be a master in history or chronology? though something of each of these is to be taught him ; but it is only to open the door, that he may look in, and as it were begin an acquaintance, but not to dwell there...
Page 112 - ... or less infected. The knowledge, too, which is thus acquired, expands and enlarges the mind, excites its faculties, and calls those limbs and muscles into freer exercise, which, by too constant use in one direction, not only acquire an illiberal air, but are apt also to lose somewhat of their native play and energy.
Page 105 - The great work of a governor is to fashion the carriage, and form the mind; to settle in his pupil good habits, and the principles of virtue and wisdom; to give him, by little and little, a view of mankind; and work him into a love and imitation of what is excellent and praiseworthy; and, in the prosecution of it, to give him vigour, activity, and industry.
Page 106 - It is the last indeed on which the world are most eager to inform themselves ; but the persons who instruct them, however they may deserve the thanks and esteem of those whom they benefit, do no service to mankind. There are but so many good places in the theatre of life ; and he who puts us in the way of procuring one of them, does to us indeed a great favour, but none to the whole assembly.
Page 121 - Englishman, addicted to the pursuit of knowledge, draws — his beau ideal, of human nature — his top and consummation of man's powers — is a knowledge of the Greek language. His object is not to reason, to imagine, or to invent ; but to conjugate, decline, and derive. The situations of imaginary glory which he draws for himself, are the detection of an anapaest in the wrong place, or the restoration of a dative case which Cranzius had passed over, and the never-dying Ernesti failed to observe.
Page 164 - He would augur nothing from it but impiety to God and treason to kings. And yet who vilifies both more than the holy poltroon who carefully averts from them the searching eye of reason, and who knows no better method of teaching the highest duties than by extirpating the finest qualities and habits of the mind?
Page 126 - I have much more to say, and of more weight, against their making verses of any sort : for, if he has no genius to poetry, it is the most unreasonable thing in the world to torment a child, and waste his time about that which can never succeed ; and if he have a poetic vein, it is to me the strangest thing in the world, that the father should desire or suffer it to be cherished or improved. Methinks the parents should labour to have it stifled and suppressed as much as may be...

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