Laudator Temporis Acti

Excerpts from Samuel Parr's letter to Charles Berry (December 19, 1819), in The Works of Samuel Parr, LL.D. Prebendary of St. Pauls, Curate of Hatton, &c. With Memoirs of His Life and Writings, and a Selection from his Correspondence, by John Johnstone, M.D., Vol. VIII (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1828), pp. 481-486:

I shall give you some advice upon the questions you propose to me about the instruction of your children. I tell you explicitly that, in your present way of reading, nubes et inania captas. But I will endeavour to put you and your boys in a strait path, and upon strong ground. But I must plainly premise that you are not to turn to the right or to the left; that you are not to raise petty or puerile cavils; you are to admit what I state, and to execute what, for your sake, I recommend....If they are reading Greek prose, take four or five lines, and bid them explain the accentuation of every word, in every line. If they are reading Greek verse, bid them account for the quantity of every word in four or five lines, and fail not to call forth the very words of the rule. Mind this injunction, for it has an importance quite invisible to the teachers of your academies. Now you must pursue the business thus....You will teach yourself while you are teaching them. Away with your coxcomical prattle, and your sectarian impatience about Greek choruses...

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Moreover, to increase the stock of phraseology, let them read a good deal of Lucian, and make them consult their Vigerus. You may then go on to Demosthenes in Mounteney's edition of the four speeches, and then to Allen's edition of the twelve speeches, and then to the speeches de Corona, and de Falsa Legatione. And I must now suppose your boys to be far advanced; and while they are reading Demosthenes, let them read no other author, and be sure to let them go over every speech of Demosthenes twice. You may then read the Cyropaedia, and the Anabasis of Xenophon, and read them in Hutchinson's edition, with Vigerus at your elbow. You may then proceed to the Dialogues of Plato, edited by Forster and Etwall, then resume Xenophon, and then read Plato's Dialogues the second time. After these things your boys will find easy work in Lysias and Isocrates; but reserve them, I beseech you, and when you have finished them with the knowledge I have pointed out, they may proceed, if they please, to Herodotus and Thucydides. But do not meddle with them for many years. I shall now give you my opinion about Latin. Don't meddle with Sallust yet, nor with Livy. Read the select Orations of Cicero in the common Delphin edition, and his book de Senectute and de Amicitia; then read Cornelius Nepos; then read, and carefully read, Caesar; then exercise your boys well in some Conciones et Orationes from Sallust, Tacitus, Livy, &c. &c. &c. and then they will be strong enough, without your aid, to read the Histories of Tacitus, Livy, &c...

Now I must tell you how to instruct your boys in writing Latin. Do not vex them with original composition, nor papers in the Spectator. No, no...

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I can forgive your heresy and your schism. But I think that you ought to be tormented in tortures seven years, if you do not follow my advice explicitly, explicitly, explicitly. I am looking to use, not to display, and I speak with the authority which experience justifies me in assuming.

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Mr. Berry, I have shunned mystery, refinement, and ostentation quite as carefully as they ought to be shunned in theology. Away with the trumpery gaudy stuff which has crept into your mind about choruses, &c. Leave these things to professed critics. Make your boys substantially good scholars, and don't take for guides Reviews, &c.

I have only to speak upon one more subject, and I speak feelingly. If you wish your boys to be good theologians, make them good biblical grammarians....My view is to make them good scholars, and I am sure that I have recommended nothing but what is substantially useful. As I seldom see you, I have written also very earnestly....Parson Berry, make your boys good grammarians.