The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I
General
The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I
Literature -- Collections
Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable
or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of
that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and
refluxes of man's thoughts from within; all these things, with a solid
and treatable smoothness, to paint out and describe; teaching over the
whole book of sanctity and virtue, through all the instances of
example, with such delight to those, especially of soft and delicious
temper, who will not so much as look upon Truth herself, unless they
see her elegantly drest, that whereas the paths of honesty and good
life appear now rugged and difficult, tho they be indeed easy and
pleasant, they would then appear to all men both easy and pleasant,
tho they were rugged and difficult indeed.
II
A COMPLETE EDUCATION DEFINED[79]
And seeing every nation affords not experience and tradition enough
for all kind of learning, therefore we are chiefly taught the
languages of those people who have at any time been most industrious
after wisdom; so that language is but the instrument conveying to us
things useful to be known. And tho a linguist should pride himself to
have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have
not studied the solid things in them, as well as the words and
lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man, as any
yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect only. Hence
appear the many mistakes which have made learning generally so
unpleasing and so unsuccessful: first, we do amiss to spend seven or
eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin and
Greek, as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one
year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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