418 Recollections, from Ike Portfolio of [AriiiL, 



conversational acuteness, would form a most valuable memoir. His 

 remark on Bentley's prodigality of knowledge, is like Caesar's remark on 

 the glory of Hannibal. " When I was seventeen years of age, I thought 

 I knew every thing : when I was twenty-four, and read Bentley, I 

 found I knew nothing." 



His remark on Gibbon's style, contains the essence of all the criticism 

 that can be written on the subject. " Gibbon is too uniform ; he writes 

 in the same flowery and pompous style upon all topics. He is like 

 a fashionable auctioneer, who has as much to say on a ribbon as on a 

 Raphael." 



. The maxims of solitary students are seldom good for any thing, 

 except perhaps to shew into what absurdities men will plunge headlong, 

 when they have no better guide than their own wisdom. The only valuable 

 maxims, are those which experience of the world, forces on men of the 

 world. Sir Joshua Reynolds continually deprecated Imitation, as the 

 ruin of rising ability, as an impediment which if talent raises for itself, at 

 once and for ever limits its progress. " Then we have a host of 

 players of the Garrick school," said he, " and not one of them can ever 

 rise to eminence, because they are of the Garrick school. If one man 

 always walks behind another, how can he ever equal him, still more get 

 before him." 



The waste of time in learning the classics at the public schools 

 of England has been justly reprobated ; and the question, what 

 use do ninety in a hundred ever make of their classical knowledge in 

 public or general life, can be answered only by the words No use what- 

 ever. Yet some of our abler public speakers have given an elegance to 

 debate by happy quotation. Chatham's famous quotation on the proposals 

 for peace between England and America will long be commemorated. 



" At tu prior tu parce, genus qui duels Olympo." 



Pitt's quotations were generally from Virgil, and chosen with peculiar 

 taste. In the debates on the French war, Fox inquiring haughtily 

 whether the Cabinet made the restoration of the Royal Family an object 

 of the war, Pitt rising, with great dignity declared, that speaking as a 

 private person, their restoration was deeply in his wishes, and that its 

 accomplishment would be considered by him, as among the most distin- 

 guished triumphs of his life ; finely concluding, amid the plaudits of 

 the House, with the words of the Trojan hero 



" Me, si fata meis paterentur ducere vitam 

 Auspiciis, et sponte mea componere curas ; 

 Urbem Trojanam primum, dulcesque meorum 

 Reliquias colerem ; Priami tecta alta manerent, 

 Et recidiva manu posuissem Pergama victis." 



It may sometimes teach a man wisdom, to see how egregiously able 

 men have sometimes erred through mere prejudice. The knowledge of 

 this teaches us to distrust the dogmas of any man, and listen only to 

 his reasons. In particular, politicians even of the highest general saga- 

 city, are continually liable to be misled, and misled upon the plainest 

 topics which touch upon their passions. An oppositionist naturally 

 talks himself into a persuasion of national ruin. Home Tooke was a 



