Their opinion has weight, because they had means of knowing the opposite
opinion. We look that a great man should be a good reader, or in
proportion to the spontaneous power should be the assimilating power.
Good criticism is very rare, and always precious. I am always happy to
meet persons who perceive the transcendent superiority of Shakspeare
over all other writers. I like people who like Plato. Because this love
does not consist with self-conceit.
But books are good only as far as a boy is ready for them. He sometimes
gets ready very slowly. You send your child to the schoolmaster; but
'tis the schoolboys who educate him. You send him to the Latin
class; but much of his tuition comes on his way to school, from the
shop-windows. You like the strict rules and the long terms; and he finds
his best leading in a by-way of his own, and refuses any companions but
of his choosing. He hates the grammar and _Gradus_, and loves guns,
fishing-rods, horses, and boats. Well, the boy is right; and you are not
fit to direct his bringing-up, if your theory leaves out his gymnastic
training. Archery, cricket, gun and fishing-rod, horse and boat, are all
educators, liberalizers; and so are dancing, dress, and the street-talk;
and--provided only the boy has resources, and is of a noble and
ingenuous strain--these will not serve him less than the books. He
learns chess, whist, dancing, and theatricals. The father observes that
another boy has learned algebra and geometry in the same time.
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