lassics until their maturity. I certainly do
not speak on this point from any pique or aversion towards the place
of my education. I was not a slow or an idle boy; and I believe no
one could be more attached to Harrow than I have always been, and
with reason: a part of the time passed there was the happiest of my
life; and my preceptor, the Rev. Dr Joseph Drury, was the best and
worthiest friend I ever possessed; whose warnings I have remembered
but too well, though too late, when I have erred; and whose counsels
I have but followed when I have done well and wisely. If ever this
imperfect record of my feelings towards him should reach his eyes,
let it remind him of one who never thinks of him but with gratitude
and veneration; of one who would more gladly boast of having been his
pupil if, by more closely following his injunctions, he could reflect
any honour upon his instructor."

Lord Byron, however, is not singular in his opinion of the inutility
of premature classical studies; and notwithstanding the able manner
in which the late Dean Vincent defended public education, we have
some notion that his reasoning upon this point will not be deemed
conclusive. Milton, says Dr Vincent, complained of the years that
were wasted in teaching the dead languages. Cowley also complained
that classical education taught words only and not things; and
Addison deemed it an inexpiable error, that boys with genius or
without were all to be bred poets indiscriminately. As far, then, as
respects the education of a poet, we should think that the names of
Milton, Cowley, Addison, and Byron would go well to settle the
question; especially when it is recollected how little Shakspeare was
indebted to the study of the classics, and that Burns knew nothing of
them at all. I do not, however, adopt the opinion as correct;
neither do I think that Dean Vincent took a right view of the
subject; for, as discipline, the study of the classics may be highly
useful, at the same time, the mere hammering of Greek and Latin into
English cannot be very conducive to the refinement of taste or the
exaltation of sentiment. Nor is there either common sense or correct
logic in the following observations made on the passage and note,
quoted by the anonymous author of Childe Harold's Monitor.

"This doctrine of antipathies, contracted by the impatience of youth
against the noblest authors of antiquity, from the circumstance of
having been made the vehicle