about the same time with Corusodes; he had the reputation of an arch lad at school, and was unfortunately possessed with a talent for poetry; on which account he received many chiding letters from his father, and grave advice from his tutor. He did not neglect his college learning, but his chief study was the authors of antiquity, with a perfect knowledge in the Greek and Roman tongues. He could never procure himself to be chosen fellow; for it was objected against him, that he had written verses, and particularly some, wherein he glanced at a certain reverend doctor famous for dulness; that he had been seen bowing to ladies, as he met them in the street; and it was proved, that once he had been. found dancing in a private family, with half a dozen of both sexes.

He was the younger son to a gentleman of good birth, but small estate; and his father dying, he was driven to London to seek his fortune: he got into orders, and became reader in a parish church at twenty pounds a year, was carried by an Oxford friend to Will's coffeehouse, frequented in those days by men of wit, where in some time he had the bad luck to be distinguished. His scanty salary compelled him to run deep in debt for a new gown and cassock, and now and then forced him to write some paper of wit or humour, or preach a sermon for ten shillings, to supply his necessities. He was a thousand times recommended by his poetical friends to great persons, as a young man of excellent parts, who deserved encouragement, and received a thousand promises; but his modesty, and a generous spirit, which disdained the slavery of continual application and attendance, always disappointed him,

making

making room for vigilant dunces, who were sure to be never out of sight.

He had an excellent faculty in preaching, if he were not sometimes a little too refined, and apt to trust too much to his own way of thinking and reasoning.

When, upon the vacancy of preferment, he was hardly drawn to attend upon some promising lord, he received the usual answer, that he came too late, for it had been given to another the very day before. And he had only this comfort left, that every body said, it was a thousand pities something could not be done for poor Mr. Eugenio.

The remainder of his story will be dispatched in a few words: wearied with weak hopes, and weaker pursuits, he accepted a curacy in Derbyshire of thirty pounds a year, and when he was five and forty, had the great felicity to be preferred by a friend of his father's to a vicarage worth annually sixty pounds, in the most desert parts of Lincolnshire; where, his spirit quite sunk with those reflections that solitude and disappointments bring, he married a farmer's widow, and is still alive utterly undistinguished and forgotten; only some of the neighbours have accidentally heard, that he had been a notable man in his youth.

AN

AN

ESSAY

ON

MODERN EDUCATION,

FROM frequently reflecting upon the course and method of educating youth, in this and a neighbouring kingdom, with the general success and consequence thereof, I am come to this determination; that education is always the worse, in propor→ tion to the wealth and grandeur of the parents; nor do I doubt in the least, that if the whole world were now under the dominion of one monarch (provided I might be allowed to choose where he should fix the seat of his empire) the only son and heir of that monarch, would be the worst educated mortal, that ever was born since the creation; and I doubt the same proportion will hold through all degrees and titles, from an emperor downward to the common gentry.

I do not say, that this has been always the case; for in better times it was directly otherwise, and a scholar may fill half his Greek and Roman shelves with authors of the noblest birth, as well as highest virtue nor do I tax all nations at present with this defect, for I know there are some to be excepted, and particularly Scotland, under all the disad

vantages

vantages of its climate and soil, if that happiness be not rather owing even to those very disadvantages. What is then to be done, if this reflection must fix on two countries, which will be most ready to take offence, and which, of all others, it will be least prudent or safe to offend?

But there is one circumstance yet more dangerous and lamentable: for if, according to the postu latum already laid down, the higher quality any youth is of, he is in greater likelihood to be worse educated; it behoves me to dread, and keep far from the verge of scandalum magnatum.

Retracting therefore that hazardous postulatum, I shall venture no farther at present than to say, that perhaps some additional care in educating the sons of nobility, and principal gentry, might not be ill employed. If this be not delivered with softness enough, I must for the future be silent..

In the mean time, let me ask only two questions, which relate to England. I ask first, how it comes about, that for above sixty years past the chief conduct of affairs has been generally placed in the hands of new men, with very few exceptions? The noblest blood of England having been shed in the grand rebellion, many great families became extinct, or were supported only by minors: when the king was restored, very few of those lords remained, who began, or at least had improved their education under the reigns of king James, or king Charles I, of which lords the two principal were the marquis of Ormond, and the earl of Southampton. The minors had, during the rebellion and usurpation, either received too much tincture of bad principles from those fa

natick

natick times, or coming to age at the restoration, fell into the vices of that dissolute reign.

I date from this era the corrupt method of education among us, and in consequence thereof, the necessity the crown lay under of introducing new men into the chief conduct of publick affairs, or to the office of what we now call prime ministers; men of art, knowledge, application, and insinuation, merely for want of a supply among the nobility. They were generally (though not always) of good birth; sometimes younger brothers, at other times such, who although inheriting good estates, yet happened to be well educated, and provided with learning. Such, under that king, were Hyde, Bridgman, Clifford, Osborn, Godolphin, Ashley Cooper: few or none under the short reign of king James II: under king William, Somers, Montague, Churchill, Vernon, Boyle, and many others: under the queen, Harley, St. John, Harcourt, Trevor who indeed were persons of the best private families, but unadorned with titles. So in the following reign, Mr. Robert Walpole was for many years prime minister, in which post he still happily continues: his brother Horace is ambassador extraordinary to France. Mr. Addison and Mr. Craggs, without the least alliance to support them, have been secretaries of state.

If the facts have been thus for above sixty years past, (whereof I could with a little farther recollection produce many more instances) I would ask again, how it has happened, that in a nation plentifully abounding with nobility, so great share in the most competent parts of publick management, has been for so long a period chiefly entrusted to commoners;

unless