Never overpraise clever boys, or they will never do another stroke of work. Never snub the dull ones; you don't know that it is not out of modesty that they will not shine over their schoolfellows.
Never ask young English public schoolboys any questions on history that may be suggested to you by the proper names you will come across in the text. Their knowledge of history [ [10] ] does not go much beyond the certainty that Shakespeare was not a great Roman warrior, although his connection with Julius Cæsar, Antony, and Coriolanus keep a good many still undecided as to the times he lived in.
Ask them under whose reign Ben Jonson flourished, and you will be presented by them with a general survey of English history from the Norman Conquest to the reign of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria. A good many will also take the opportunity of making a show of their knowledge of literary history (the temptation is irresistible), and add that he was a great man who wrote a good dictionary, and was once kept waiting for a long time in Lord Chesterfield's antechamber, "which he did not like." Boys are generally good at historical anecdotes, a remnant of their early training.
We once had to put into French the following sentence:
"Frederick the Great of Prussia had the portrait of the young Emperor in every room of his Sans-Souci Palace, and being asked the reason why he thus honored the portrait of his greatest enemy, answered that the Emperor was a busy, enterprising young monarch, and that he found it necessary always to have an eye upon him."
I asked the class who this Emperor was that Frederick the Great seemed to fear so much, and I obtained many answers, including Alexander the Great and most well-known imperial rulers down to Napoleon the First; but not one named Joseph II. of Austria.
Another time we were translating a piece of Massillon, taken from his celebrated Petit Carême.
When we came to the following passage, in his sermon on Flattery: "The Lord," once said the holy King, "shall cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things," I asked the boys, who, by-the-bye, were referred in the notes to Psalm xii. 3, who was this holy King mentioned by Massillon?
The first answer was "Charles I." The second was "Saint Louis," and I should not probably have received the proper answer if I had not expressed my astonishment at finding that nobody in the class seemed to know who wrote the Psalms.