Et, neglecta, aeque pueris senibusque nocebit."

By this method of instruction, my young pupil will be much more and
better employed than his fellows of the college are. But as the
steps we take in walking to and fro in a gallery, though three times
as many, do not tire a man so much as those we employ in a formal
journey, so our lesson, as it were accidentally occurring, without any
set obligation of time or place, and falling naturally into every
action, will insensibly insinuate itself. By which means our very
exercises and recreations, running, wrestling, music, dancing,
hunting, riding, and fencing, will prove to be a good part of our
study. I would have his outward fashion and mien, and the
disposition of his limbs, formed at the same time with his mind.
'Tis not a soul, 'tis not a body that we are training up, but a man,
and we ought not to divide him. And, as Plato says, we are not to
fashion one without the other, but make them draw together like two
horses harnessed to a coach. By which saying of his, does he not
seem to allow more time for, and to take more care of, exercises for
the body, and to hold that the mind, in a good proportion, does her
business at the same time too?

    As to the rest, this method of education ought to be carried on
with a severe sweetness, quite contrary to the practice of our
pedants, who, instead of tempting and alluring children to letters
by apt and gentle ways, do in truth present nothing before them but
rods and ferules, horror and cruelty. Away with this violence! away
with this compulsion! than which, I certainly believe nothing more
dulls and degenerates a well-descended nature. If you would have him
apprehend shame and chastisement, do not harden him to them: inure him
to heat and cold, to wind and sun, and to dangers that he ought to
despise; wean him from all effeminacy and delicacy in clothes and
lodging, eating and drinking; accustom him to everything, that he
may not be a Sir Paris, a carpet-knight, but a sinewy, hardy, and
vigorous young man. I have ever from a child to the age wherein I
now am, been of this opinion, and am still constant to it. But among
other things, the strict government of most of our colleges has
evermore displeased me; peradventure, they might have erred less
perniciously on the indulgent side. 'Tis a real house of correction of
imprisoned youth. They are made debauched, by being punished before
they are so. Do but come in when they are about their lesson, and
you shall hear nothing but the outcries of boys under execution,
with the thundering noise of their pedagogues drunk with fury. A
very pretty way this, to tempt these tender and timorous souls to love
their book, with a furious countenance, and a rod in hand! A cursed
and pernicious way of proceeding! Besides what Quintilian has very
well observed, that this imperious authority is often attended by very
dangerous consequences, and particularly our way of chastising. How
much more decent would it be to see their classes strewed with green
leaves and fine flowers, than with the bloody stumps of birch and
willows? Were it left to my ordering, I should paint the school with
the pictures of joy and gladness; Flora and the Graces, as the
philosopher Speusippus did his. Where their profit is, let them
there have their pleasure too. Such viands as are proper and wholesome
for children, should be sweetened with sugar, and such as are
dangerous to them, embittered with gall. 'Tis marvelous to see how
solicitous Plato is in his Laws concerning the gayety and diversion of
the youth of his city, and how much and often he enlarges upon their
races, sports, songs, leaps, and dances: of which, he says, that
antiquity has given the ordering and patronage particularly to the
gods themselves, to Apollo, Minerva, and the Muses. He insists long
upon, and is very particular in giving innumerable precepts for
exercises; but as to the lettered sciences, says very little, and only
seems particularly to recommend poetry upon the account of music.

    All singularity in our manners and conditions is to be avoided
as inconsistent with civil society. Who would not be astonished at
so strange a constitution as that of Demophoon, steward to Alexander
the Great, who sweated in the shade, and shivered in the sun? I have
seen those who have run from the smell of a mellow apple with
greater precipitation than from a harquebus shot, others afraid of a
mouse; others vomit at the sight of cream; others ready to swoon at
the making of a feather bed; Germanicus could neither endure the sight
nor the crowing of a cock. I will not deny, but that there may,
peradventure, be some occult cause and natural aversion in these
cases; but, in my opinion, a man might conquer it, if he took it in
time. Precept has in this wrought so effectually upon me, though not
without some pains on my part, I confess, that beer excepted, my
appetite accommodates itself indifferently to all sorts of diet.

    Young bodies are supple; one should, therefore, in that age bend
and ply them to all fashions and customs: and provided a man can
contain the appetite and the will within their due limits, let a young
man, in God's name, be rendered fit for all nations and all companies,
even to debauchery and excess, if need be; that is, where he shall
do it out of complacency to the customs of the place. Let him be
able to do everything, but love to do nothing but what is good. The
philosophers themselves do not justify Callisthenes for forfeiting the
favor of his master Alexander the Great, by refusing to pledge him a
cup of wine. Let him laugh, play, wench, with his prince; nay, I would
have him, even in his debauches, too hard for the rest of the company,
and to excel his companions in ability and vigor, and that he may
not give over doing it, either through defect of power or knowledge
how to do it, but for want of will. "Multum interest, utrum peccare
ali quis nolit, an nesciat." I thought I passed a compliment upon a
lord, as free from those excesses as any man in France, by asking
him before a great deal of very good company, how many times in his
life he had been drunk in Germany, in the time of his being there
about his majesty's affairs; which he also took as it was intended,
and made answer. "Three times;" and withal, told us the whole story of