The most effectual methods to discourage in young people the taste for frivolous ingenuity, will be, never to admire these "laborious nothings," to compare them with useful and elegant inventions, and to show that vain curiosities can be but the wonder and amusement of a moment. Children who begin with trifling inventions, may be led from these to general principles; and with their knowledge, their ambition will necessarily increase. It cannot be expected that the most enlarged plan of education could early give an intimate acquaintance with all the sciences; but with their leading principles, their general history, their present state, and their immediate desiderata,[58] young people may, and ought to be, made acquainted. Their own industry will afterwards collect more precise information, and they will never waste their time in vain studies and fruitless inventions. Even if the cultivation of the memory were our grand object, this plan of education will succeed. When the Abbé de Longuerue, whose prodigious memory we have formerly mentioned, was asked by the Marquis d'Argenson, how he managed to arrange and retain in his head every thing that entered it, and to recollect every thing when wanted? The Abbé answered:
"Sir, the elements of every science must be learned whilst we are very young; the first principles of every language; the a b c, as I may say, of every kind of knowledge: this is not difficult in youth, especially as it is not necessary to penetrate far; simple notions are sufficient; when once these are acquired, every thing we read afterwards, finds its proper place."
[39] V. Plutarch. Quintilian.
[40] Berington's History of the Lives of Abeillard and Heloisa, page 173.
[41] Eloge de M. L'Abbé d'Alary.
[42] Marquis d'Argenson's Essays, page 385.
[43] D'Alembert's Eloge de M. d'Alary.
[44] Curiosities of Literature, vol. ii. page 145.
[45] Priestley on Electricity, page 317.
[46] Fuller, author of the Worthies of England. See Curiosities of Literature, vol. i.