At this and the like rate my self once declaim'd, when one Agamemnon made up to us, and looking sharply on him, whom the mob with such diligence observ'd, he would not suffer me to declaim longer in the portico, than he had sweated in the school; "But, young man," said he, "because your discourse is beyond the common apprehension, and, which is not often seen, that you are a lover of understanding, I won't deceive you: The masters of these schools are not to blame, who think it necessary to be mad with mad men: For unless they teach what their scholars approve, they might, as Cicero says, keep school to themselves: like flattering smell-feasts, who when they come to great men's tables study nothing more than what they think may be most agreeable to the company (as well knowing they shall never obtain what they would, unless they first spread a net for their bars) so a master of eloquence, unless fisherman like, he bait his hook with what he knows the fish will bite at, may wait long enough on the rock without hopes of catching any thing. "Where lies the fault then? Parents ought to be sharply reprehended, who will not have their children come on by any strict method; but in this, as in all things, are so fond of making a noise in the world; and in such haste to compass their wishes, that they hurry them in publick e'er they have digested what they have read, and put children e'er they are well past their sucking-bottle, upon the good grace of speaking, than which even themselves confess, nothing is greater: Whereas if they would suffer them to come up by degrees, that their studies might be temper'd with grave lectures; their affections fashion'd by the dictates of wisdom; that they might work themselves into a mastery of words; and for a long time hear, what they're inclined to imitate, nothing that pleas'd children, wou'd be admir'd by them. But now boys trifle in the schools, young men are laugh'd at in publick, and, which is worse than both, what every one foolishly takes up in his youth, no one will confess in his age. But that I may not be thought to condemn Lucilius, as written in haste, I also will give you my thoughts in verse.