Some strange devise, I know, each youthful wight
Would here expect, or lofty brave assay:
But I'll the simple truth in simple wise convey.
HENRY MORE.
Now comes the question of a youth after my own heart, so quick in his conclusions that his leap seems rather to keep pace with his look than to follow it. He will begin to-morrow, and only asks my advice upon the method of proceeding.
Take the Grammar of any modern language, and read the dialogues in it, till you are acquainted with the common connecting words, and know the principal parts of speech by sight. Then look at the declensions and the verbs—you will already have learnt something of their inflections, and may now commit them to memory, or write them down. Read those lessons, which you ought to read daily—in a bible of this language, having the English bible open beside it. Your daily task will soon be either to learn the vocabulary, or to write exercises, or simply to read, according to the use which you mean to make of your new acquirement. You must learn memoriter, and exercise yourself in writing if you wish to educate your ear and your tongue for foreign service; but all that is necessary for your own instruction and delight at home may be acquired by the eye alone.
Qui mihi Discipulus es—cupis atque doceri,
try this method for ten minutes a day, perseveringly, and you will soon be surprised at your own progress.
Quod tibi deest, à te ipso mutuare,—
it is Cato's advice.
Ten minutes you can bestow upon a modern language, however closely you may be engaged in pursuits of immediate necessity; even tho' you should be in a public office from which Joseph Hume, or some of his worthy compeers, has moved for voluminous returns. (Never work at extra hours upon such returns, unless extra pay is allowed for the additional labor and confinement to the desk, as in justice it ought to be. But if you are required to do so by the superiors who ought to protect you from such injustice, send petition after petition to Parliament, praying that when the abolition or mitigation of slavery shall be taken into consideration, your case may be considered also.)
Any man who will, may command ten minutes. Exercet philosophia regnum suum, says Seneca; dat tempus, non accipit. Non est res subcisiva, ordinaria est, domina est; adest, et jubet. Ten minutes the Under Graduate who reads this may bestow upon German even though he should be in training for the University races. Ten minutes he can bestow upon German, which I recommend because it is a master-key for many doors both of language and of knowledge. His mind will be refreshed even by this brief change of scene and atmosphere. In a few weeks (I repeat) he will wonder at his own progress: and in a few years, if he is good for anything—if the seed has not been sown upon a stony place, nor among thorns, he will bless me his unknown benefactor, for showing him by what small savings of time, a man may become rich in mind. “And so I end my counsel, beseeching thee to begin to follow it.”1