“Till you can find a school wherein it is possible for the master to look after the manners of his scholars, and can show as great effects of his care of forming their minds to virtue, and their carriage to good breeding, as of forming their tongues to the learned languages, you must confess that you have a strange value for words, to hazard your sons’ innocence and virtue for a little Greek and Latin.” And again: “I know not why anyone should waste his time and beat his head about the Latin grammar, who does not intend to be a critic, or make speeches, and write despatches in it. If his use of it be only to understand some books writ in it without a critical knowledge of the tongue itself, reading alone will attain his end, without charging his mind with the multiplied rules and intricacies of grammar.”… “If there may be any reasons against children’s making Latin themes at school, I have much more to say and of more weight against their making verses--verses of any sort. For if he has no genius to poetry, ’tis the most unreasonable thing in the world to torment a child and waste his time about that which can never succeed: and if he have a poetic vein--methinks the parents should labor to have it stifled: for if he proves a successful rhymer, and get once the reputation of a wit, I desire it may be considered what company and places he is likely to spend his time in--nay, and his estate too.” By which I am more than ever convinced that Locke did not sup often with Dryden at “Will’s,” and that you will find no pleasant verselets--look as hard as you may--on a single page of his discourse on the _Human Understanding_.