How little what is commonly called education can do after all towards the formation of a good style, and what a delightful volume might not be entitled “Half Hours with the Worst Authors.”  Why, the finest word I know of in the English language was coined, not by my poor old grandfather, whose education had left little to desire, nor by any of the admirable scholars whom he in his turn educated, but by an old matron who presided over one of the halls, or houses of his school.  This good lady, whose name by the way was Bromfield, had a fine high temper of her own, or thought it politic to affect one.  One night when the boys were particularly noisy she burst like a hurricane into the hall, collared a youngster, and told him he was the “rampingest-scampingest-rackety-tackety-tow-row-roaringest boy in the whole school.”  Would Mrs. Newton have been able to set the aunt and the dog before us so vividly if she had been more highly educated?  Would Mrs. Bromfield have been able to forge and hurl her thunderbolt of a word if she had been taught how to do so, or indeed been at much pains to create it at all?  It came.  It was her [Greek].  She did not probably know that she had done what the greatest scholar would have had to rack his brains over for many an hour before he could even approach.  Tradition says that having brought down her boy she looked round the hall in triumph, and then after a moment’s lull said, “Young gentlemen, prayers are excused,” and left them.

I have sometimes thought that, after all, the main use of a classical education consists in the check it gives to originality, and the way in which it prevents an inconvenient number of people from using their own eyes.  That we will not be at the trouble of looking at things for ourselves if we can get anyone to tell us what we ought to see goes without saying, and it is the business of schools and universities to assist us in this respect.  The theory of evolution teaches that any power not worked at pretty high pressure will deteriorate:  originality and freedom from affectation are all very well in their way, but we can easily have too much of them, and it is better that none should be either original or free from cant but those who insist on being so, no matter what hindrances obstruct, nor what incentives are offered them to see things through the regulation medium.  To insist on seeing things for oneself is to be an [Greek], or in plain English, an idiot; nor do I see any safer check against general vigour and clearness of thought, with consequent terseness of expression, than that provided by the curricula of our universities and schools of public instruction.  If a young man, in spite of every effort to fit him with blinkers, will insist on getting rid of them, he must do so at his own risk.  He will not be long in finding out his mistake.  Our public schools and universities play the beneficent part in our social scheme that cattle do in forests:  they browse the seedlings down and prevent the growth