works, such as I shall hereafter mention, should, even
now, be written in Latin, not only without incurring
the imputation of pedantry, but with the praise of
prudence.
The best judges have allowed, that an imitation of
the fine writers of antiquity contributes greatly, in
every country, to excellence in vernacular compo-
sition. Taste is improved by it; and taste, once
well regulated, will extend its influence to every part
of a student's productions. He who can write well
in Latin, will be able, by transferring his attention to
the best models of his own country, to select and
imitate their beauties, and to write equally well in
his native language. He who writes a language not
natural to him, must write with great attention and
care, to write it well ; and thus he gains a habit of
correctness, which will not fail to operate upon
him whenever he sits down to compose in any lan-
guage.
But it must be allowed, that the principal cause
of writing in Latin, the unfitness of modern lan-
guages for elegant composition, no longer exists, A
general ardour for improvements of language has
pervaded Europe. The love of reading has demanded
books without number, in tlie respective dialects of
VOL. III. c
li WrNTER KVENINGS : 91-.
llie several nations of Europe; and vernacular writers,
eaiulous of excellence, have laboured with unwearied
diligence, both in the selection and structure of their
own language.
But though the necessity of writing in Latin is
hajjpily removed, yet the expediency of it, in several
cases, remains to this period unaltered, because it is
founded in reason.
All new philosophical and theological opinions,
which, though they have the appearance of probabi-
lity, are yet far from being indubitably established,
might, with great propriety, be published in Latin,
and locked up from those injudicious and half-learned
persons, who may pervert them to their own essen-
tial injury.
Controversies in divinity often divulge doctrines
and doubts,' which the unbelieving and the malignant
eagerly embrace, and zealousl}' disseminate. When
they appear in English, the lowest of the people
acquaint themselves with them imperfectly, either
in the books themselves, or in the extracts which the
press liberally multiplies in a free country. As
these persons are not duly prepared by education,
or previous reading, it is probable that they will
misunderstand them, and ignorantly fall into all the
errors of infidelity. Ijut if they were retained among
the learned by a language known only to the learned,
such parts of them alone might be communicated to
the public as were likely to be beneficial. The old
distinction of' esoteric and exoteric doctrines was
founded in sound policy.
Medical books and cases might, with great pro-
priety, be written in Latin, both that the informa-
tion they convey might be immediately diffused over
foreign nations, and also, that invalids of little
learning and judgement might not be templed to
94-. OR, LUCUBRATIONS. 15
tamper with their constitutions, and to imagine
themselves afflicted with every disease whose causes
and symptoms they read and adopt, in their hours
of morbid dejection. Some inconvenience might,
indeed, arise from the ignorance of the inferior
practitioners in medicine ; but this would, in time,
operate in causing more care to be taken in their
classical education.
All communications to the public, which concern
foreign nations as much as the native country of the
author, and which are of so delicate a kind as to en-
danger the happiness of the illiterate or injudicious
reader, might, without the imputation of pedantry,
or labour ill bestowed, be presented to the world in
the universal language of the learned.
But, I am aware that those who pretend to pecu-
liar liberality, will be ready to object to my doctrine
as favouring of papal tyranny, and as having a ten-
dency to retain the vulgar in an ignorance which
may facilitate the deception of them, for mercenary
and political purposes. I have no such design ; but
mean to prevent the errors of those who are not
qualified to judge of many important points for
themselves ; but who are tempted to read, and to
form opinions from books obtruded on their no-
tice, and inviting their attention, by the circumstance
of appearing in their native language. There is
certainly a sort and degree of ignorance, which con-
duces to happiness ; and a knowledge so imperfect,
yet so bold, as to increase misery, by increasing error
and temerity.
But though I tliink that many scientific, philo-
sophical, and theological, and medical treatises
might, witli great propriety, appear among us in
Latin ; yet, I know that there is little probability
of their being often produced in any other than
c2
16 AvijjTEii evenings: 94.
the mother tongue. There is a confirmed neglect
of Latin composition in botli readers and writers ;
and the venders of books will be naturally disin-
clined to encourage the production of commodi-
ties which can find but a partial and confined ac-
ceptance.
95. or, lucubrations. 17
Evening XCV.
On aspiring at the Character of Learning xnithout any
just Pretensions to it.
All kinds of deceit and aflPectation deserve to be de-
tected and exposed to censure, if it were only that
truth may not be overborne and discouraged by their
prevalence. It is certainly injurious to society, that
a composition should be sold for diamonds, and the
counterfeit of Birmingham pass in currency for the
coin of the Mint in the Tower.
Among a variety of arts practised by many of the
vain and superficial in the present age, who make it
their first object to be admired by the company
into which they happen to fall, is that of endeavour-
ing to shine as men of skill and science, as well as in
the art of pleasing, and of a taste in books as well as
in buckles. Unfortunately, their attention to trifles
in their youth has prevented them from acquiring a
store of real learning, and they are therefore obliged
to have recourse to hooks and baits in fishing for lite-
rary praise.
They take as much care as they can to give the
conversation a literary ton, only when they are sure
the company makes no pretensions to excellence in
literature. If there be a scholar among them, they
are shy of it, and introduce subjects connected with
the gay world, and slily throw contempt on learning
as pedantry.
I have sometimes been diverted with hearing one
of these gentlemen harangue in a semicircle of ladies
and beaus on the character of the classics, talk of the
beauty of the oriental languages (in which he com-
c 3
18 WINTER EVENIKGS : 95.
prehcnded the Greek and Roman), and admire the
original Latin of Homer, and the fine Greek of Vir-
gil, — though, as I had been credibly informed, he
never could proceed at the grammar-school beyond
Cordery's Colloquies, with Clarke's translation, and
had been removed thence to a shop, where he had
served behind a counter seven years without looking
into any other book than Kent's Directory. But he
had come to a fortune lately, and having been already
a beau, had been led, by making out as well as he
could the meaning of Chesterfield's Letters, to aspire
at pleasing in all companies, and to affect the cha-
racter o^ all-accomplished. From reading the pam-
phlets and papers of the day, he had picked up a few
phrases, which he hardly understood, on most sub-
jects ; and, 1 assure you, was considered by the party
in which he displayed his talents, not only as a very
agreeable man, but also as a very good scholar, hap-
pily uniting in himself, to the confusion of pedants,
solid sense with graceful accomplishments. He was
a great quoter of verses ; not that his stock was very
large. I believe he might have learned by heart a
hundred lines in all, from various poets, on various
subjects; and by well timing his quotations, he passed
for a man not only of singular taste in poetry, but of a
prodigious memory.
This artifice of quoting is often practised by those
who, without being coxcombs, like the above-men-
tioned gentleman, in dress and the graces, wish to ob-
tain an esteem and reputation as men of letters, to which
they possess no just claim. 1 know a man who has
read a little, but is by no means distinguished for his
learning or genius, and who having committed about
forty lines of Homer to his memory, when a school-
boy, contrives to introduce a few sounding verses
in ail strange company, with such address as to put
95. on, LUCUBRATIONS. 19
himself off for a wonderful classic j whereas, in truth,
he now uever reads any thing but Hoyle, the Court
Calendar, and the newspapers.
Quoters are indeed very numerous, and I must
acknowledge that they are often very entertaining ;
but they must not, however, steal away the palm of
learning by legerdemain, or a dcccptio vims, which
too often succeeds with common company. It is
very easy for any man, who does not employ his
studious hours in a better way, to commit to me-
mory, like a schoolboy's task, a number of beautiful
passages, in prose and verse, on subjects likely to
occur in the course of various conversations. And
though I give the quoters the praise of pleasant com-
panions, provided they are not too prolix, yet they
should not be suffered to impose on mankind so
much, as to assume a superiority over real scholars,
who have been treasuring up original ideas, while the
quoters have been imitating parrots, or professed
spouters, in committing words only to memory pur-
posely for the sake of ostentation.
There are many who assume the office and autho-
rity of critics in all literature, who have no pretension
to judgement beyond the cut of a coat, the neatness
of a shoe, the style of hair-dressing, a minuet, or
the dress of an actor or actress on the stage. They
have caught a kind of technical phraseology from pe-
riodical and newspaper criticisms, and they utter
their opinions like oracles, in the little audience
which has learned to look up to them as to dictators.
A new book is for the most part severely bandied by
them, especially if it happens to take with the pub-
lic, and is really a good one. It argues a wonderful
perspicacity in them to be able to find out defects in
works which the million are fools enough to buy and
admire. They do not, indeed, make a point of
20 WINTER evenings: 95.
reading the books they condemn or praise. They
are furnished with vague terms of general praise and
censure, and can give laws to their subjects, like
the tyrant who said " My will stands for my rea-
son.
The using of long words, derived from the Greek
or Latin, commonly called hard words, has long
been an artifice of those who wished for the praise of
learning and knowledge without giving themselves
the trouble to acquire them. Apothecaries are often
ridiculed for their use of medical terms, which they
often misunderstand and misapply ; but when they
use them among the illiterate to raise opinion, their
ampullce et sesquipedalia verba * may have a good
effect ; for whatever contributes to increase confi-
dence in the medical practitioner, contributes, at the
same time, to the cure of many distempers. By the
way, I must repeatedly inculcate, how desirable it
is that apothecaries, to whom the first application is
made in the greatest distresses of human nature, had
a more liberal education than can fall to the lot of
those who, at the age of fourteen, or earlier, are
bound to a long state of mechanical servitude.
Freethinkers, libertines, infidels, prating disputants
in divinity and morality, with little learning and no
principle, are very apt to add an authority to their
conversation, by using expressions which they do not
understand, and citing books which they never read,
or totally misunderstood. Their affectation deserves
not only ridicule, but all the severity of satire, all
the insult of contempt. They produce false or mis-
taken authorities as genuine, which mislead hearers,
who might be proof against the nonsense of their so-
phistry, if it were unembellished by the pomp of uii-
Horace.
05. OR, LUCUBRATIONS. 21
intelligible words, and unsupported by the appearance
of a solid and profound erudition.
With respect to the mere pretender to learning,
who attempts not to corrupt or mislead his simple
admirers, though his affectation is ridiculous, yet it
is certainly less culpable in conversation than scandal
or indecency. One may freely pardon one vvho, in
order to appear a man of science and philosophy,
reads on the temporary topic previously to his en-
tering into company ; as 1 remember a gentleman
â– who always made it his practice, on the appearance
of an eclipse, a comet, or the rumour of an earth-
quake, to retail an article from Chambers's Dictio-
nary on the subject, in all the various companies into
which he fell, so as to raiae a very exalted opinion
of his learning, and an idea that he was as well ac-
quainted with all parts of science as with these,
though in fact he understood nothing perfectly but
the first four rules of arithmetic.
The evil of this affectation is, that it is a deceit,
and no deceit should be in general tolerated in con-
versation, because it diminishes the confidence of
society ; that it often overbears the modest scholar,
for ignorance is bold and vehement ; and that it dif-
fuses error, by asserting things without knowledge,
and without examination, as truths confirmed and in-
disputable.
I do not condemn the principle which stimulates
men to wish for the esteem which is due to science ;
it is often a laudable, and always an innocent prin-
ciple ; but I wish it to operate in another manner,
in exciting a degree of industry which may enable
men to acquire that knowledge of which they soli-
citously seek the appearance. The trouble often
taken to support the false glitter, might obtain a con-
siderable portion of the solid gold ; and would pro-
c 5
22 WINTER EVENINGS : 95.
bably improve the mind in the research, so as to be
superior to all the little arts of empty ostentation ;
arts which fail of their design, and cause a contempt
of those who might pass unobserved, or even be
honourably tioticed, if they were contented with their
own plumes. Nobody ridiculed the poor daw, till
he attempted to deck himself in the feathers of the
peacock.
96. on, LUCUBRATIONS. S3
Evening XCVI.
On the boasted Superiority of ancient to modern
Eloquence.
It is impossible to read the accounts of ancient ora-
tors, without being struck with the strong expres-
sions with which their eloquence is characterized.
It is frequently compared to thunder and lightning,
to a storm, a tempest, and a torrent, forcing all be-
fore it with irresistible impetuosity.
Now some of the most celebrated orations, of
which so much is said, have fortunately descended
to modern limes in a state of perfect integrity. Yet
let them be read, or pronounced from memory, by
the most accomplished speakers of modern times,
and, I believe, no such violent effects will be expe-
rienced, as can justify the strong expressions in
which they have been commended. They will, in-
deed, be approved and admired ; but approbation is
a cold sentiment, and even admiration itself is far re-
moved from the enthusiastical ecstasy in which the
rhetoricians praise the ancient orators.
The subjects of the ancient orations, it may be
said, are now no longer interesting, and the lan-
guage neither so well pronounced, nor so perfectly
understood, as by those to whom it was the mother
tongue. This consideration will certainly account,
in some degree, though, I think, not entirely, for
the indifference with which passages are received,
which are said to have set whole nations in a flame,
and to have produced revolutions of empire.
But I am of opinion that the principal reason
•why orations had more effect in ancient times than
Si WINTER EVENINGS : 96.
in the present, is, that, the art of multiplying hooks
being unknown, men could not gratify their curiosity,
or inform their understandings, on the subject of
politics, but by the oral communications of some di-
stinguished statesman or eloquent demagogue.
It was scarcely possible, wlien books were so
scarce as they must have been before the invention
of printing, that the multitude could be able to im-
prove their minds, and to derive information, from
reading. When they wished to gratify their thirst
for knowledge, they could not, like the modern in-
habitants of a great city, run to a coffee-house, or
send for a pamph'et, and read the speeches of great
men in their closets, but were obliged to crowd the
forum, or public place of assembly. There they list-
ened to the orator as to an oracle. A moderate
degree of excellence would delight them ; because it
conveyed those ideas, or that information, which
they in vain sought from any other source; but
when to information was added the charm of real
elegance, and the force and fire of true genius, they
were then at last ravished and enraptured.
In a country where books were extremely un-
common among the vulgar, and yet, at the same
time, where the great had easy access to them, and
by their examples and improvements had diffused a
taste for literary exertions, and particularly for elo-
quence, the effect of oratory on the common people
must have been great, for this among other reasons :
their feelings were not worn and jaded by an exces-
sive application, as is too much the case in modern
times, when men are so much in the habit of reading
all kinds of books addressed to all the passions and
powers of the mind, that at last they cease, from
mere satiety, to be affected with any extraordinary
emotions, even where the excellence of a speech
96. OR, LUCUBRATIONS. 25
might otherwise justly excite them. They acquire
so general a knowledge, that few things retain the
grace of novelty. But in an assembly of the com-
mon people at Athens and Rome, almost every thing
which came from the mouth of the orators was new
to the ears of the people, affected them with the
liveliest impressions, and raised their astonishment,
while it inflamed their passions, and gratified their
curiosity.
The common people in England, who have not
anticipated the subjects on which an orator is to
speak, by their own reflections, and by reading, are
much more affected, and more violently moved, with
what they hear, than the delicate, the refined, the
enlightened student. They remember a speech
longer, and entertain a much higher opinion of the
speaker. But the majority of a Roman and Grecian
audience, in an assembly of the people at large,
consisted of those who were totally unacquainted
with books, and whose minds were so open and dis-
engaged, as to afford ample scope for the whole force
of art and genius combined in the subtle and accom-
plished orator.
Whether the old Romans and Athenians liad
tempers more susceptible than the moderns, may
admit of doubt. It appears to me rather unphilo-
sophical, to attribute so much influence as to sup-
pose intellectual perfection to depend entirely upon
it ; or, at least, to imagine that the same influence
which the climate of Greece and Rome possessed in
ages of antiquity, should not operate at present ;
which, I believe, it does not, as the modern Greeks
and Romans by no means prove, by their public ex-
ertions, any just claim to mental superiority over
the present inhabitants of France, England, and
Scotland, the barbarians ot antiquity.
VOL. III. D
yo WINTER evenings: 96.
There have been those who have predicted, that
the time will yet come, when some modern genius,
furnished by nature with every gift, and by art vvith
every improvement, will arise and astonish the world
with the effects of an eloquence similar in kind, aud
superior in degree, to all the celebrated oratory of
Greece and Rome. None can confidently divine
how far Iiuman excellence may advance ; but whe-
ther eloquence, oral eloquence, is so beneficial in
modern times, as it was in ancient, I will not de-
termine, I think its necessity is greatly lessened
since the invention of printing. For what can the
most excellent oral eloquence effect in comparison
with the productions of the press ? Oral eloquence
is naturally circumscribed within the compass of a
human voice, which can reach only to few ears com-
pared with the rest of mankind ; who, if they could
all be supposed present in one place, would not be
able to imbibe the sound emitted by the loudest or-
gans of utterance. But oral eloquence is not only
confined to the limits of the voice ; but, for the most
part, to a room, a hall, a court, or a senate-house.
If its effects were not confined in extent, they are, of
necessity, limited, as far as they depend on actual
delivery, within the bounds of a very short duration.
A few hours of vehement exertion will fatigue the
most powerful speaker, and silence him b}"^ the infir-
mity of his body, even though the powers and re-
sources of his mind should continue unexhausted.
Oral eloquence, as displayed in public harangues,
is, therefore, of much less value to tlie public than
the eloquence of written composition. It serves in-
deed many temporary and valuable purposes, pro-
motes private interest, raises friends, fortune, cha-
racters, and is therefore greatly to be esteemed, and
studiously cultivated : but, after all, it is not, since
96. OR, HiCLBRATION*. 27
books have abounded, indispensably essential to the
welfare of society, nor absolutely necessary to
the improvement of human nature. These grand
purposes may be more effectually and more exten-
sively accomplished by the able writer.
It is certain, that an eloquence, which, like that
of the ancients, is said to astonish like thunder, and
carry all before it, like lightning, and a torrent,
may be used in effecting bad purposes as well as
good, in hurting as well as in serving society ; and,
therefore, its value must depend upon the honesty
and good principles of those who possess it in per-
fection. In the possession of bad men, it is always
to be suspected. In the possession of good men, it
cannot do so much good as a written discourse, sent
into the wide world by the operation of that provi-
dential discovery, the typographical art, the most
important in effect which the world ever received.
There is however no danger lest oral eloquence
should want cultivation. It is necessary at the bar,
and the senate ; and, by serving temporary and poli-
tical purposes, contributes more than any thing else
to gratify the importunate cravings of ambition.
By the term oral eloquence, 1 for the most part
mean in this paper, public harangues in the senate,
in the council, in the fields, and in the tribunal ; I do
not comprehend under it the eloquence of conversa-
tion, which is always of high value ; and deserves to
be cultivated with assiduity by all who wish to taste
some of the highest and purest pleasures of their ex-
istence.
28 WINTER evenings: 97.
^ Evening XCVII, .
On the Manners prevalent at some public Schools.
SIR,
I AM aware that tlie dispute concerning the prefe-
rence of private schools to public, or of public to pri-
vatc, is as trite as the common observations on the
weather. I mean not to trouble you with compari-
sons, but to acquaint you with my own case, and
leave you to form your own opinion.
I am confident that I derived some of the greatest
vices and misfortunes of my life from a fashionable
school. I was placed there when I was but an in-
fant, and lived as a fag, under a state of oppression
from my school-fellows unknown to any slave in the
Plantations. Many hardships I suffered by day ; but
I would have borne them without complaint, if I had
been permitted to repose at night, and enjoy those
sweet slumbers which my fatigue and my age invited :
but several nights in a week I was disturbed, at va-
rious hours, from the mere wantonness of cruelty,
thrust out of bed, and, in the coldest weather, strip-
ped of the clothes. My health and my growth, I
have no doubt, were injured by the ill usage I suf-
fered, and the constant fear in which I spent my in-
fant days. I was beaten by the senior boys without
the least reason, and often robbed of the little solace
I had sought, by expending my pocket allowance
with the old apple woman. It would be tedious to
enumerate the various hardships I underwent before
1 was twelve years old. Let it be sufficient to say,
that in the age of innocence, I suffered in mind and
97. OR, LUCUBRATIONS. . 2^.