learnt by heart that most atrocious
monument of absurdity, the Westminster Grammar? Have I been whipt for
the substantives? whipt for the verbs? and whipt for and with the
interjections? Have I picked the sense slowly, and word by word, out
of Hederich? and shall my son be exempt from all this misery?... Ay,
ay, it's all mighty well; but I went through this myself, and I am
determined my children shall do the same."

Another grotesque abuse with regard to which Sydney Smith was a reformer
fifty years before his time was compulsory versification.--

"There are few boys who remain to the age of eighteen or nineteen at a
Public School without making above ten thousand Latin verses--a
greater number than is contained in the _Aeneid_; and, after he
has made this quantity of verses in a dead language, unless the poet
should happen to be a very weak man indeed, he never makes another as
long as he lives."[4]

"The English clergy, in whose hands education entirely rests, bring up
the first young men of the country as if they were all to keep
grammar-schools in little country-towns; and a nobleman, upon whose
knowledge and liberality the honour and welfare of his country may
depend, is diligently worried, for half his life, with the small
pedantry of longs and shorts."

The same process is applied at the other end of the social scale. The
baker's son, young Crumpet, is sent to a grammar-school, "takes to his
books, spends the best years of his life, as all eminent Englishmen do, in
making Latin verses, learns that the _Crum_ in Crumpet is long and the
_pet_ short, goes to the University, gets a prize for an essay on the
Dispersion of the Jews, takes Orders, becomes a Bishop's chaplain, has a
young nobleman for his pupil, publishes a useless classic and a Serious
Call to the Unconverted, and then goes through the Elysian transitions of
Prebendary, Dean, Prelate, and the long train of purple, profit, and
power."

In this vivacious passage, Sydney Smith caricatures his own career; which,
though it neither began in a baker's shop nor ended in an episcopal palace,
followed pretty closely the line of development here indicated. At
Winchester he "took to his books" with such goodwill that, in spite of all
hindrances, he became an excellent scholar, and laid the strong foundations
for a wide and generous culture. His family indeed propagated some pleasing
tradi