With lessons theoretical and exercises practical.
Music he learned—the old and sweet, the up-to-date and hideous;
He painted like Apelles and he modeled like a Phidias;
In language he was polyglot, in rhetoric Johnsonian,
In eloquence Websterian, in diction Ciceronian.
At last, with learning that would set an ordinary head agog,
His education far outshone his most proficient pedagog;
And so he entered life, with all his lore to lift the lid for him—
And what do you imagine that his erudition did for him?
Alas! I fear the truth will shock you, rather than amuse you all—