O F

EDUCATION.

то

MR. SAMUEL HARTLIB.

I

Mr. HARTLIB,

AM long fince perfuaded, that to fay, or do ought worth memory and imitation, no purpose or respect fhould fooner move us, than fimply the love of God, and of mankind. Nevertheless to write now the reforming of education, though it be one of the greatest and noblest designs that can be thought on, and for the want whereof this nation perishes, I had not yet at this time been induced, but by your earnest intreaties and ferious conjurements; as having my mind for the present half diverted in the pursuance of fome other affertions, the knowledge and the use of which cannot but be a great furtherance both to the enlargement of truth, and honest living, with much more peace. Nor fhould the laws of any private friendship have pre-vailed with me to divide thus, or tranfpofe my former thoughts, but that I fee those aims, thofe actions which

have

have won you with me the efteem of a person sent hither by fome good providence from a far country, to be the occafion and the incitement of great good to this ifland. And, as I hear, you have obtained the fame repute with men of most approved wisdom, and some of highest authority among us. Not to mention the learned correspondence which you hold in foreign parts, and the extraordinary pains and diligence which you have used in this matter both here, and beyond the feas; either by the definite will of God fo ruling, or the peculiar fway of nature, which alfo is God's working. Neither can I think that, fo reputed, and fo valued as you are, you would, to the forfeit of your own difcerning ability, impofe upon me an unfit and over-ponderous argument, but that the fatisfaction which you profefs to have received from thofe incidental difcourfes which we have wandered into, hath preft and almost constrained you into a persuasion that what you require from me in this point, I neither ought, nor can in confcience defer beyond this time both of fo much need at once, and so much opportunity to try what God hath determined. I will not refift therefore, whatever it is, either of divine or human obligement, that you lay upon me; but will forthwith fet down in writing, as you request me, that voluntary idea which hath long in filence prefented itself to me, of a better education, in extent and comprehenfion far more large, and yet of time far fhorter, and of attainment far more certain, than hath been yet in practice. Brief I fhall endeavour to be; for that which I have

to

to fay, affuredly this nation hath extreme need fhould be done fooner than spoken. To tell you therefore what I have benefited herein among old renowned authors, I fhall fpare; and to fearch what many modern Januas and Didactics, more than ever I fhall read, have projected, my inclination leads me not. But if you can accept of these few obfervations which have flowered off, and are, as it were, the burnishing of many ftudious and contemplative years, altogether spent in the search of religious and civil knowledge, and such as pleased you so well in the relating, I here give you them to dispose of.

The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents, by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by poffeffing our fouls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection. But because our understanding cannot in this body found itself but on fenfible things, nor arrive fo clearly to the knowledge of God and things invifible, as by orderly conning over the visible and inferior creature, the fame method is necessarily to be followed in all discreet teaching. And seeing every nation affords not experience and tradition enough for all kinds 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 inftrument conveying to us things ufeful to be known. And VOL. XII.

X

though

though a linguift fhould pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he had not studied the folid things in them as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing fo much to be esteemed a learned man, as any yeoman or tradefman competently wife in his mother dialect only. Hence appear the many mistakes which have made learning generally fo unpleafing and fo unfuccefsful; firft we do amifs to fpend feven or eight years merely in fcraping together fo much miferable Latin and Greek, as might be learnt otherwise eafily and delightfully in one year. And that which cafts our proficiency therein fo much behind, is our time loft partly in too oft idle vacancies given both to fchools and univerfities, partly in a prepofterous exaction, forcing the empty wits of children to compofe themes, verfes, and orations, which are the acts of ripest judgment, and the final work of a head filled, by long reading and obferving, with elegant maxims, and copious invention. Thefe are not matters to be wrung from poor ftriplings, like blood out of the ncfe, or the plucking of untimely fruit: befides the ill habit which they get of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek Idiom, with their untutored Anglicisms, odious to be read, yet not to be avoided without a well-continued and judicious converfing among pure authors digefted, which they fcarce tale; whereas, if after fome preparatory grounds of fpeech by their certain forms got into memory, they were led to the praxis thereof in fome chofen fhort book leffoned throughly to them, they

might then forthwith proceed to learn the fubftance of good things, and arts in due order, which would bring the whole language quickly into their power. This I take to be the most rational and most profitable way of learning languages, and whereby we may best hope to give account to God of our youth spent herein. And for the ufual method of teaching arts, I deem it to be an old error of univerfities not yet well recovered from the fcholaftic groffness of barbarous ages, that inftead of beginning with arts most easy, (and thofe be fuch as are moft obvious to the fenfe,) they present their young unmatriculated novices at first coming with the intellective abstractions of logic and metaphyfics; fo that they having but newly left thofe grammatic flats and fhallows where they fuck unreasonably, to learn a few words with lamentable conftruction, and now on the fudden tranfported under another climate to be toft and turmoiled with their unballafled wits in fathomlefs and unquiet deeps of controverfy, do for the most part grow into hatred and contempt of learning, mocked and deluded all this while with ragged notions and babblements, while they expected worthy and delightful knowledge; till poverty or youthful years call them importunately their several ways, and haften them with the sway of friends, either to an ambitious or mercenary, or ignorantly zealous divinity: fome allured to the trade of law, grounding their purposes not on the prudent and heavenly contemplation of juftice and equity, which was never taught them, but on the promising and

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pleafing