No More Learning

XXXV. In opposition to this system of education, what is our modern
practice? Our young men are led [a] to academical prolusions in the
school of vain professors, who call themselves rhetoricians; a race of
impostors, who made their first appearance at Rome, not long before
the days of Cicero. That they were unwelcome visitors, is evident from
the circumstance of their being silenced by the two censors [b],
Crassus and Domitius. They were ordered, says Cicero, to shut up their
school of impudence. Those scenes, however, are open at present, and
there our young students listen to mountebank oratory. I am at a loss
how to determine which is most fatal to all true genius, the place
itself, the company that frequent it, or the plan of study universally
adopted. Can the place impress the mind with awe and respect, where
none are ever seen but the raw, the unskilful, and the ignorant? In
such an assembly what advantage can arise? Boys harangue before boys,
and young men exhibit before their fellows. The speaker is pleased
with his declamation, and the hearer with his judgement. The very
subjects on which they display their talents, tend to no useful
purpose. They are of two sorts, persuasive or controversial. The
first, supposed to be of the lighter kind, are usually assigned to the
youngest scholars: the last are reserved for students of longer
practice and riper judgement. But, gracious powers!
what are the
compositions produced on these occasions?

The subject is remote from truth, and even probability, unlike any
thing that ever happened in human life: and no wonder if the
superstructure perfectly agrees with the foundation. It is to these
scenic exercises that we owe a number of frivolous topics, such as the
reward due to the slayer of a tyrant; the election to be made by [c]
violated virgins; the rites and ceremonies proper to be used during a
raging pestilence; the loose behaviour of married women; with other
fictitious subjects, hackneyed in the schools, and seldom or never
heard of in our courts of justice. These imaginary questions are
treated with gaudy flourishes, and all the tumor of unnatural
language. But after all this mighty parade, call these striplings from
their schools of rhetoric, into the presence of the judges, and to the
real business of the bar [d]:


1. What figure will they make before that solemn judicature? Trained
up in chimerical exercises, strangers to the municipal laws,
unacquainted with the principles of natural justice and the rights of
nations, they will bring with them that false taste which they have
been for years acquiring, but nothing worthy of the public ear,
nothing useful to their clients. They have succeeded in nothing but
the art of making themselves ridiculous. The peculiar quality of the
teacher [a], whatever it be, is sure to transfuse itself into the
performance of the pupil. Is the master haughty, fierce, and arrogant;
the scholar swells with confidence; his eye threatens prodigious
things, and his harangue is an ostentatious display of the
common-places of school oratory, dressed up with dazzling splendour,
and thundered forth with emphasis. On the other hand, does the master
value himself for the delicacy of his taste, for the foppery of
glittering conceits and tinsel ornament; the youth who has been
educated under him, sets out with the same artificial prettiness, the
same foppery of style and manner. A simper plays on his countenance;
his elocution is soft and delicate; his action pathetic; his sentences
entangled in a maze of sweet perplexity; he plays off the whole of his
theatrical skill, and hopes to elevate and surprise.


2. This love of finery, this ambition to shine and glitter, has
destroyed all true eloquence. Oratory is not the child of hireling
teachers; it springs from another source, from a love of liberty, from
a mind replete with moral science, and a thorough knowledge of the
laws; from a due respect for the best examples, from profound
meditation [a], and a style formed by constant practice. While these
were thought essential requisites, eloquence flourished.