natural sweetener of our bitter life, in the judgment of every man who is not too much soured. Now, what quality of learning is there, deserving of any praise, that does not fall within this elementary course, or is not furthered by it, whether it be connected with the higher professions, or occupations of lower rank, or the necessary trades of common life? Study of Languages. Inasmuch as Grammar is used partly as a help to foreign languages, it furthers us very much in that way, because all our learning being got from foreign countries, as registered in their tongues, if we lack the knowledge of the one, we lack the hope of the other. When learning and knowledge came first to light, those men who were the authors of them uttered their minds in the same speech that they used when they bred the things. And as they needed no foreign tongue for matter that was bred at home, so they had no use of any Grammar but that by which they endeavoured to refine their natural speech at home. But when their devices, first set out in their own tongues, were afterwards sought for by foreign students to increase their learning and to enrich their country with foreign wares, the foreign students were then driven to seek the assistance of Grammar of the second kind, because they could not understand the things which were written in a foreign tongue, without the knowledge of the tongue itself. In the primitive Grammar children being trained as I now require, went straightway from the elementary to the substance of learning, and to the mathematical sciences, which are so termed, because indeed the whole scholars’ learning consisted in them, as in the first degree of right study. For whatever goes before them in right order is nothing but mere elementary study, and whatever goes before them in wrong order, as it is distorted in nature, it works no great wonder. But in the second use of Grammar, we are forced of necessity, after the elementary subjects, however hurried and simple they may be, to deal with the tongues ere we pass to the substance of learning; and this help from the tongues, though it is most necessary, as our study is now arranged, yet hinders us in time, which is a thing of great price,--nay, it hinders us in knowledge, a thing of greater price. For in lingering over language we are removed and kept back one degree further from sound knowledge, and this hindrance comes in our best learning time, while we are under masters and readers, of whom we may learn far better than of ourselves, if as much regard be had to their choice, as I have elsewhere recommended. Follow Nature.