turbulent year of the Revolution. Perhaps if I had carried back the memoirs of the Dove family, I might have followed his example in choosing the up-hill way, and have proceeded from son to father in the ascending line. But having resolved (whether judiciously or not) not to go farther back in these family records than the year of our Lord 1723, being the year of the Doctor's birth, I shall continue in the usual course, and pursue his history ab incunabulis down to that important evening on which we find him now reaching out his hand to take that cup of tea which Mrs. Dove has just creamed and sugared for him. After all the beaten way is usually the best, and always the safest. "He ought to be well mounted," says Aaron Hill, "who is for leaping the hedges of custom." For myself I am not so adventurous a horseman as to take the hazards of a steeple chace.

Proceeding, therefore, after the model of a Tyburn biography, which being an ancient as well as popular form is likely to be the best, we come after birth and parentage to education. "That the world from Babel was scattered into divers tongues, we need not other proof," says a grave and good author," than as Diogenes proved that there is motion, by walking; so we may see the confusion of languages by our confused speaking. Once all the earth was of one tongue, one speech and one consent; for they all spake in the holy tongue wherein the world was created in the beginning. But pro peccato dissentionis humanæ (as saith | St. Austin,) for the sin of men disagreeing, not only different dispositions but also different languages came into the world. -They came to Babel with a disagreeing agreement; and they came away punished with a speechless speech. They disagree among themselves, while every one strives for dominion. They agree against God in their Nagnavad lan Liguda,—we will make ourselves a rendezvous for idolatry. But they come away speaking to each other, but not understood of each other; and so speak to no more purpose than if they spake not at all. This punishment of theirs at Babel

-

is like Adam's corruption, hereditary to us; for we never come under the rod at the Grammar School, but we smart for our ancestor's rebellion at Babel."

66

Light lie the earth upon the bones of Richard Guy, the Schoolmaster of Ingleton! He never consumed birch enough in his vocation to have made a besom; and his ferule was never applied unless when some moral offence called for a chastisement that would be felt. There is a closer connection between good-nature and good sense than is commonly supposed. A sour ill-tempered pedagogue would have driven Daniel through the briars and brambles of the Grammar and foundered him in its sloughs; Guy led him gently along the green-sward. He felt that childhood should not be made altogether a season of painful acquisition, and that the fruits of the sacrifices then made are uncertain as to the account to which they may be turned, and are also liable to the contingencies of life at least, if not otherwise jeopardized. Puisque le jour peut lui manquer, laissons le un peu jouir de l'Aurore!" The precept which warmth of imagination inspired in Jean Jacques was impressed upon Guy's practice by gentleness of heart. He never crammed the memory of his pupil with such horrific terms as Prothesis, Aphæresis, Epenthesis, Syncope, Paragoge, and Apocope; never questioned him concerning Appositio, Evocatio, Syllepsis, Prolepsis, Zeugma, Synthesis, Antiptosis, and Synecdoche; never attempted to deter him (as Lily says boys are above all things to be deterred) from those faults which Lily also says, seem almost natural to the English,—the heinous faults of Iotacism, Lambdacism, (which Alcibiades affected,)—Ischnotesism, Trauli’sm and Plateasm. But having grounded him well in the nouns and verbs, and made him understand the concords, he then followed in part the excellent advice of Lily thus given in his address to the Reader :

"When these concords be well known unto them (an easy and pleasant pain, if the foregrounds be well and thoroughly beaten in) let them not continue in learning of the

rules orderly, as they lie in their Syntax, but rather learn some pretty book wherein is contained not only the eloquence of the

CHAPTER XIII. P. I.

honesty and godliness; and thereof take some little sentence as it lieth, and learn to make the same first out of English into Latin, not seeing the book, or construing it thereupon. And if there fall any necessary rule of the Syntax to be known, then to learn it, as the occasion of the sentence giveth cause that day; which sentence once made well, and as nigh as may be with the words of the book, then to take the book and construe it; and so shall he be less troubled with the parsing of it, and easiliest carry his lesson in mind."

Guy followed this advice in part; and in part he deviated from it, upon Lily's own authority, as "judging that the most suffi cient way which he saw to be the readiest mean;" while, therefore, he exercised his pupil in writing Latin pursuant to this plan, he carried him on faster in construing, and promoted the boy's progress by gratifying his desire of getting forward. When he had done with Cordery, Erasmus was taken up, -for some of Erasmus's colloquies were in those days used as a school book, and the most attractive one that could be put into a boy's hands. After he had got through this, the aid of an English version was laid aside. And here Guy departed from the ordinary course, not upon any notion that he could improve upon it, but merely because he happened to possess an old book composed for the use of Schools, which was easy enough to suit young Daniel's progress in the language, and might therefore save the cost of purchasing Justin or Phædrus or Cornelius Nepos, or Eutropius,-to one or other of which he would otherwise have been introduced.

I AM sometimes inclined to think that pigs are brought up upon a wiser system, than boys at a grammar school. The Pig is allowed to feed upon any kind of offal, however coarse, on which he can thrive, till the time approaches when pig is to commence pork, or take a degree as bacon; and then he is fed daintily. Now it has sometimes appeared to me that in like manner, boys might acquire their first knowledge of Latin from authors very inferior to those which are now used in all schools; provided the matter was unexceptionable and the Latinity good; and that they should not be introduced to the standard works of antiquity till they are of an age in some degree to appreciate what they read.

Understand me, Reader, as speaking doubtfully, and that too upon a matter of little moment; for the scholar will return in riper years to those authors which are worthy of being studied, and as for the blockhead-it signifies nothing whether the book which he consumes by thumbing it in the middle and dog-earing it at the corners be worthy or not of a better use. Yet if the dead have any cognizance of posthumous fame, one would think it must abate somewhat of the pleasure with which Virgil and Ovid regard their earthly immortality, when they see to what base purposes their productions are applied. That their verses should be administered to boys in regular doses, as lessons or impositions, and some dim conception of their meaning whipt into the tail when it has failed to penetrate the head, cannot be just the sort of homage to their genius which they anticipated or desired.

D

Not from any reasonings or refinements of this kind, but from the mere accident of possessing the book, Guy put into his pupil's hands the Dialogues of Johannes Ravisius Textor. Jean Tixier, Seigneur de Ravisy, in the Nivernois, who thus latinised his name, is a person whose works, according to Baillet's severe censure, were buried in the dust of a few petty colleges and unfrequented shops, more than a century ago. He was, however, in his day a person of no mean station in the world of letters, having been Rector of the University of Paris, at the commencement of the sixteenth century; and few indeed are the writers whose books have been so much used; for perhaps no other author ever contributed so largely to the manufacture of exercises whether in prose or verse, and of sermons also. Textor may be considered as the first compiler of the Gradus ad Parnassum; and that collection of Apophthegms was originally formed by him, which Conrade Lycosthenes enlarged and re-arranged; which the Jesuits adopted after expurgating it; and which, during many generations, served as one of the standard common-place books for commonplace divines in this country as well as on the continent.

But though Textor was continually working in classical literature with a patience and perseverance which nothing but the delight he experienced in such occupations could have sustained, he was without a particle of classical taste. His taste was that of the age wherein he flourished, and these his Dialogues are Moralities in Latin verse. The designs and thoughts which would have accorded with their language, had they been written either in old French or old English, appear, when presented in Latinity, which is always that of a scholar, and largely interwoven with scraps from familiar classics, as strange as Harlequin and Pantaloon would do in heroic costume.

Earth opens the first of these curious compositions with a bitter complaint for the misfortunes which it is her lot to witness. Age (Etas) overhears the lamentation and

inquires the cause; and after a dialogue in which the author makes the most liberal use of his own common-places, it appears that the perishable nature of all sublunary things is the cause of this mourning. Etas endeavours to persuade Terra that her grief is altogether unreasonable by such brief and cogent observations as Fata jubent, Fata volunt, Ita Diis placitum. Earth asks the name of her philosophic consoler, but upon discovering it, calls her falsa virago, and meretrix, and abuses her as being the very author of all the evils that distress her. However tas succeeds in talking Terra into better humour, advises her to exhort man that he should not set his heart upon perishable things, and takes her leave as Homo enters. After a recognition between mother and son, Terra proceeds to warn Homo against all the ordinary pursuits of this world. To convince him of the vanity of glory she calls up in succession the ghosts of Hector, Achilles, Alexander, and Samson, who tell their tales and admonish him that valour and renown afford no protection against Death. To exemplify the vanity of beauty Helen, Lais, Thisbe and Lucretia are summoned, relate in like manner their respective fortunes, and remind him that pulvis et umbra sumus. Virgil preaches to him upon the emptiness of literary fame. Xerxes tells him that there is no avail in power, Nero that there is none in tyranny, Sardanapalus that there is none in voluptuousness. But the application which Homo makes of all this, is the very reverse to what his mother intended: he infers that seeing he must die at last, live how he will, the best thing he can do is to make a merry life of it, so away he goes to dance and revel and enjoy himself: and Terra concludes with the mournful observation that men will still pursue their bane, unmindful of their latter end.

Another of these Moralities begins with three Worldlings (Tres Mundani) ringing changes upon the pleasures of profligacy, in Textor's peculiar manner, each in regular succession saying something to the same purport in different words. As thus

SECUNDUS MUNDANUS.

Quidnam prodesset lachrymis consumere vitam? TERTIUS MUNDANUS.

Quidnam prodesset tantis incumbere curis ?

Upon which an unpleasant personage who has just appeared to interrupt their trialogue observes,

Si breve tempus abit, si vita caduca recedit,
Si cadit hora, dies abeunt, perit omne, venit Mors,
Quidnam lethijeræ Mortis meminisse nocebit?

It is Mors herself who asks the question. The three Worldlings, however, behave as resolutely as Don Juan in the old drama; they tell Death that they are young, and rich, and active, and vigorous, and set all admonition at defiance. Death, or rather Mrs. Death, (for Mors, being feminine, is called lana, and meretrix, and virago,) takes all this patiently, and letting them go off in a dance, calls up Human Nature, who has been asleep meantime, and asks her how she can sleep in peace while her sons are leading a life of dissipation and debauchery? Nature very coolly replies by demanding why they should not? and Death answers, because they must go to the infernal regions for so doing. Upon this Nature, who appears to be liberally inclined, asks if it is credible that any should be obliged to go there? and Death, to convince her, calls up a soul from bale to give an account of his own sufferings. A dreadful account this Damnatus gives; and when Nature, shocked at what she hears, inquires if he is the only one who is tormented in Orcus, Damnatus assures her that hardly one in a thousand goes to Heaven, but that his fellow-sufferers are in number numberless; and he specifies among them Kings and Popes, and Senators, and severe Schoolmasters, -a class of men whom Textor seems to have held in great

as if like poor

and proper abhorrence Thomas Tusser he had suffered under their inhuman discipline.

Horrified at this, Nature asks advice of Mors, and Mors advises her to send a Son of Thunder round the world, who should reprove the nations for their sins, and sow the seeds of virtue by his preaching. Peregrinus goes upon this mission and returns to give an account of it. Nothing can be worse than the report. As for the Kings of the Earth, it would be dangerous, he says, to say what they were doing. The Popes suffered the ship of Peter to go wherever the winds carried it. Senators were won by intercession or corrupted by gold. Doctors spread their nets in the temples for prey, and Lawyers were dumb unless their tongues were loosened by money.-Had he seen the Italians? Italy was full of dissensions, ripe for war, and defiled by its own infamous vice. The Spaniards?-They were suckled by Pride. The English? –

Gens tacitis prægnans arcanis, ardua tentans,
Edita tartarcis mihi creditur esse tenebris.

In short the Missionary concludes that he has found every where an abundant crop of vices, and that all his endeavours to produce amendment have been like ploughing the sea shore. Again afflicted Nature asks advice of Mors, and Mors recommends that she should call up Justice and send her abroad with her scourge to repress the wicked. But Justice is found to be so fast asleep that no calling can awaken her. Mors then advises her to summon Veritas ; alas! unhappy Veritas enters complaining of pains from head to foot and in all the intermediate parts, within and without; she is dying and entreats that Nature will call some one to confess her. But who shall be applied to?-Kings? They will not come.

Nobles? Veritas is a hateful personage to them. - Bishops, or mitred Abbots? They have no regard for Truth. - Some Saint from the desert? Nature knows not where to find one! Poor Veritas therefore dies "unhouseled, disappointed, unanealed;" and forthwith three Demons enter rejoicing that Human Nature is left with none to help her,