Volume Ii Part 68 (1/2)

If the present Age is more laudable than those which have gone before it in any single Particular, it is in that generous Care which several well-disposed Persons have taken in the Education of poor Children; and as in these Charity-Schools there is no Place left for the over-weening Fondness of a Parent, the Directors of them would make them beneficial to the Publick, if they considered the Precept which I have been thus long inculcating. They might easily, by well examining the Parts of those under their Inspection, make a just Distribution of them into proper Cla.s.ses and Divisions, and allot to them this or that particular Study, as their Genius qualifies them for Professions, Trades, Handicrafts, or Service by Sea or Land.

How is this kind of Regulation wanting in the three great Professions!

Dr. South complaining of Persons who took upon them Holy Orders, tho altogether unqualified for the Sacred Function, says somewhere, that many a Man runs his Head against a Pulpit, who might have done his Country excellent Service at a Plough-tail.

In like manner many a Lawyer, who makes but an indifferent Figure at the Bar, might have made a very elegant Waterman, and have s.h.i.+ned at the Temple Stairs, tho he can get no Business in the House.

I have known a Corn-cutter, who with a right Education would have been an excellent Physician.

To descend lower, are not our Streets filled with sagacious Draymen, and Politicians in Liveries? We have several Taylors of six Foot high, and meet with many a broad pair of Shoulders that are thrown away upon a Barber, when perhaps at the same time we see a pigmy Porter reeling under a Burthen, who might have managed a Needle with much Dexterity, or have snapped his Fingers with great Ease to himself, and Advantage to the Publick.

The Spartans, tho they acted with the Spirit which I am here speaking of, carried it much farther than what I propose: Among them it was not lawful for the Father himself to bring up his Children after his own Fancy. As soon as they were seven Years old they were all listed in several Companies, and disciplined by the Publick. The old Men were Spectators of their Performances, who often raised Quarrels among them, and set them at Strife with one another, that by those early Discoveries they might see how their several Talents lay, and without any regard to their Quality, dispose of them accordingly for the Service of the Commonwealth. By this Means Sparta soon became the Mistress of Greece, and famous through the whole World for her Civil and Military Discipline.

If you think this Letter deserves a place among your Speculations, I may perhaps trouble you with some other Thoughts on the same Subject.

I am, &c.

X.

[Footnote 1: Juan Huarte was born in French Navarre, and obtained much credit in the sixteenth century for the book here cited. It was translated into Latin and French. The best edition is of Cologne, 1610.]

[Footnote 2: Christopher Clavius, a native of Bamberg, died in 1612, aged 75, at Rome, whither he had been sent by the Jesuits, and where he was regarded as the Euclid of his age. It was Clavius whom Pope Gregory XIII. employed in 1581 to effect the reform in the Roman Calendar promulgated in 1582, when the 5th of October became throughout Catholic countries the 15th of the New Style, an improvement that was not admitted into Protestant England until 1752. Clavius wrote an Arithmetic and Commentaries on Euclid, and justified his reform of the Calendar against the criticism of Scaliger.]

No. 308. Friday, February 22, 1712. Steele.

Jam proterva Fronte petet Lalage maritum.

Hor.

Mr. SPECTATOR,

I give you this Trouble in order to propose my self to you as an a.s.sistant in the weighty Cares which you have thought fit to undergo for the publick Good. I am a very great Lover of Women, that is to say honestly, and as it is natural to study what one likes, I have industriously applied my self to understand them. The present Circ.u.mstance relating to them, is, that I think there wants under you, as SPECTATOR, a Person to be distinguished and vested in the Power and Quality of a Censor on Marriages. I lodge at the Temple, and know, by seeing Women come hither, and afterwards observing them conducted by their Council to Judges Chambers, that there is a Custom in Case of making Conveyance of a Wife's Estate, that she is carried to a Judges Apartment and left alone with him, to be examined in private whether she has not been frightened or sweetned by her Spouse into the Act she is going to do, or whether it is of her own free Will. Now if this be a Method founded upon Reason and Equity, why should there not be also a proper Officer for examining such as are entring into the State of Matrimony, whether they are forced by Parents on one Side, or moved by Interest only on the other, to come together, and bring forth such awkward Heirs as are the Product of half Love and constrained Compliances? There is no Body, though I say it my self, would be fitter for this Office than I am: For I am an ugly Fellow of great Wit and Sagacity. My Father was an hail Country-Squire, my Mother a witty Beauty of no Fortune: The Match was made by Consent of my Mothers Parents against her own: and I am the Child of a Rape on the Wedding-Night; so that I am as healthy and as homely as my Father, but as sprightly and agreeable as my Mother. It would be of great Ease to you if you would use me under you, that Matches might be better regulated for the future, and we might have no more Children of Squabbles. I shall not reveal all my Pretensions till I receive your Answer; and am, Sir, Your most humble Servant, Mules Palfrey.

Mr. Spectator,