"But after all, I found our case required something more than these doctors had directed, and the principal defect of our English discipline to lie in the initiatory part, which, although it needs the greatest care and skill, is usually left to the conduct of those blind guides, viz., Chance and Ignorance.
"I shall trouble you with but a single instance, pursuant to what your sagacious friend has said, that he could furnish you with a catalogue of English books, that would cost you a hundred pounds at first hand, wherein you could not find ten lines together of common grammar; which is a necessary consequence of our mismanagement in that province.
"For can anything be more absurd than our way of proceeding in this part of literature? To push tender wits into the intricate mazes of grammar, and a Latin grammar? To learn an unknown art by an unknown tongue? To carry them a dark roundabout way to let them in at a back-door? Whereas by teaching them first the grammar of their mother-tongue (so easy to be learned), their advance to the grammars of Latin and Greek would be gradual and easy; but our precipitate way of hurrying them over such a gulf, before we have built them a bridge to it, is a shock to their weak understandings, which they seldom, or very late, recover. In the meantime we wrong nature, and slander infants, who want neither capacity nor will to learn, till we put them upon service beyond their strength, and then indeed we baulk them.
"The liberal arts and sciences are all beautiful as the Graces, nor has Grammar (the severe mother of all) so frightful a face of her own; it is the vizard put upon it that scares children. She is made to speak hard words that to them sound like conjuring. Let her talk intelligibly, and they will listen to her.
"In this, I think, as on other accounts, we show ourselves true Britons, always overlooking our natural advantages. It has been the practice of wisest nations to learn their own language by stated rules, to avoid the confusion that would follow from leaving it to vulgar use. Our English tongue, says a learned man, is the most determinate in its construction, and reducible to the fewest rules: whatever language has less grammar in it, is not intelligible; and whatever has more, all that it has more is superfluous; for which reasons he would have it made the foundation of learning Latin, and all other languages.
"To speak and write without absurdity the language of one's country, is commendable in persons of all stations, and to some indispensably necessary; and to this purpose, I would recommend above all things the having a grammar of our mother-tongue first taught in our schools, which would facilitate our youths learning their Latin and Greek grammars, with spare time for arithmetic, astronomy, cosmography, history, &c., that would make them pass the spring of their life with profit and pleasure, that is now miserably spent in grammatical perplexities.
"But here, methinks, I see the reader smile, and ready to ask me (as the lawyer did sexton Diego on his bequeathing rich legacies to the poor of the parish,[132] Where are these mighty sums to be raised?), Where is there such a grammar to be had? I will not answer, as he did, Even where your Worship pleases. No, it is our good fortune to have such a grammar, with notes, now in the press, and to be published next term.
"I hear it is a chargeable work, and wish the publisher to have customers of all that have need of such a book; yet fancy that he cannot be much a sufferer, if it is only bought by all that have more need for it than they think they have.
"A certain author brought a poem to Mr. Cowley, for his perusal and judgment of the performance, which he demanded at the next visit with a poetaster's assurance; and Mr. Cowley, with his usual modesty, desired that he would be pleased to look a little to the grammar of it. 'To the grammar of it! What do you mean, sir? Would you send me to school again?' 'Why, Mr. H——, would it do you any harm?'
"This put me on considering how this voyage of literature may be made with more safety and profit, expedition and delight; and at last, for completing so good a service, to request your directions in so deplorable a case; hoping that, as you have had compassion on our overgrown coxcombs in concerns of less consequence, you will exert your charity towards innocents, and vouchsafe to be guardian to the children and youth of Great Britain in this important affair of education, wherein mistakes and wrong measures have so often occasioned their aversion to books, that had otherwise proved the chief ornament and pleasure of their life. I am with sincerest respect,