[36] 'Premial marks:' this designation is vicious in point of logic: how is it thus distinguished from the less valuable?
[37] 'Our punishments,' &c. This is inaccurate: by p. 83 'disability to fill certain offices' is one of the punishments.
[38] 'Habits!' habits of what?
[39] 'Performers!' Musical performers, we presume.
[40] Indeed an Etonian must in consistency condemn either the Latin or the Greek grammar of Eton. For, where is the Greek 'Propria quæ maribus'—'Quæ genus'—and 'As in præsenti'? Either the Greek grammar is defective, or the Latin redundant. We are surprised that it has never struck the patrons of these three beautiful Idylls, that all the anomalies of the Greek language are left to be collected from practice.
[41] On this point there is however an exception made, which amuses us not a little. 'In a few instances,' says the Experimentalist, 'it has been found or supposed necessary to resent insolence by a blow: but this may be rather called an assertion of private right, than an official punishment. In these cases a single blow has almost always been found sufficient, even the rarity of the infliction rendering severity unnecessary.' He insists therefore that this punishment (which, we cannot but think, might have been commuted for a long imprisonment) shall not be called a punishment, nor entered on the public records as such: in which case however it becomes a private 'turn-up,' as the boxers call it, between the boy and his tutor.
[42] The details of the system in regard to the penal and premial counters may be found from pp. 23 to 29. We have no room to extract them: one remark only we must make—that we do not see how it is possible to ascribe any peculiar and incommunicable privileges to the premial as opposed to the penal counters, when it appears that they may be exchanged for each other 'at an established rate.'
[43] This was written for The Edinburgh Literary Gazette, of which sixty-one numbers appear to have been issued in 1829-30. The paper is now so scarce, that the American publishers of De Quincey's works photographed their 'copy' from that contained in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. There is a file in the British Museum. I have not been able to authenticate any other contribution from the pen of De Quincey. This letter deserves attention in various ways, but particularly for the passage on Elleray—Christopher North's home on the banks of Windermere. Mrs. Gordon in the life of her Father, Professor Wilson, remarks:—'For a description of this beautiful spot I gladly avail myself of the striking picture by Mr. De Quincey.'—H.
[44] The usual colloquial corruption of Magdalen in Ox. is Maudlin; but amongst the very lie dupeuple, it is called Mallens.
[45] I coin this word parvanimity as an adequate antithesis to magnanimity; for the word pusillanimity has received from usage such a confined determination to one single idea, viz. the defect of spirit and courage, that it is wholly unfitted to tie the antipode to the complex idea of magnanimity.