CHAPTER VII, 55 some of the special emphasis of speech, and the Peculiar idiom[ of the tongue. He should be taught also the special beauties and ornaments of the language : and this may be done partly by the help of authors who have collected such idioms, and cast them into an easy method, and partly by the judicious remarks which his instructor may make upon the authors which he reads, where- soever such peculiarities of speech or special elegancies occur. X. Though the labour of learning all the lessons by heart, that are borrowed from poetical authors which they construe, is an unjust and unnecessary imposition upon the learner, yet he must take the pains to commit to memory the most necessary, if not all the common rules of grammar, with an example or two under each of them : and some of the select and most useful periods or sentences in the Latin or Greek author which he reads, may be learnt by heart, together with some of the choicer lessons out of their poets ; and sometimes whole episodes out of heroic poems, &c. as well as whole odes among the lyrics may deserve this honour. XI. Let this be always carefully observed, that " the learners perfectly understand the sense as well as the language of all those rules, lessons, or paragraphs which they attempt to-commit to memory." Let the teacher possess them of their true mean- ing, and then the labour will become easy and pleasant; whereas to impose on a child to get by heart " a long scroll of unknown phrases or words, without any ideas under them," is a piece of useless tyranny, a cruel imposition, and a practice fitter for a jackdaw or a parrot than for any thing that wears the shape of a man. XII. And here, I think, I have a fair occasion given me to consider that question whichhasbeen often debated inconversation, viz. as Whether the teaching of a school full of boys to learn Latin by the Heathen poets," as Ovid in his Epistles, and the silly fables of his Metamorphoses ; Horace, Juvenal, and Mar- tial in their impure odes, satires, and epigrams, &c. is so proper and agreeable a practice in a Christian country. XIII. (I.) " I grant the language and style of those men who wrote in their own native tongue, most be more pure and perfect" in some nice elegancies and peculiarities, than modern writers of other nations who have imitated them ; and it is owned also, that the beauties of their poesy may much excel : but in either of these things, boys cannot be supposed to be much im- proved or injured by one or the other. XIV. (2.) It shall be confest too, that " modern poets in every living language, have brought into their works so many words, epithets, phrases, and metaphors," from the heathen fables and stories of their gods and heroes, that in order to under- stand these modern writers, it is necessary to know a little of
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