omer, but to five hundred more of a worse
nature; as always damned to thirst and hunger, to be choked with dust
in their unswept schools (schools, shall I term them, or rather
elaboratories, nay, bridewells, and houses of correction?), to wear out
themselves in fret and drudgery; to be deafened with the noise of gaping
boys; and in short, to be stifled with heat and stench; and yet they
cheerfully dispense with all these inconveniences, and, by the help of
a fond conceit, think themselves as happy as any men living: taking a
great pride and delight in frowning and looking big upon the trembling
urchins, in boxing, slashing, striking with the ferula, and in the
exercise of all their other methods of tyranny; while thus lording it
over a parcel of young, weak chits, they imitate the Cuman ass, and
think themselves as stately as a lion, that domineers over all the
inferior herd. Elevated with this conceit, they can hold filth and
nastiness to be an ornament; can reconcile their nose to the most
intolerable smells; and finally, think their wretched slavery the most
arbitrary kingdom, which they would not exchange for the jurisdiction
of the most sovereign potentate: and they are yet more happy by a
strong persuasion of their own parts and abilities; for thus when their
employment is only to rehearse silly stories, and poetical fictions,
they will yet think themselves wiser than the best experienced
philosopher; nay, they have an art of making ordinary people, such as
their school boys' fond parents, to think them as considerable as their
own pride has made them. Add hereunto this other sort of ravishing
pleasure: when any of them has found out who was the mother of Anchises,
or has lighted upon some old unusual word, such as _bubsequa, bovinator,
manticulator_, or other like obsolete cramp terms; or can, after a great
deal of poring, spell out the inscription of some battered monument;
Lord! what joy, what triumph, what congratulating their success, as if
they had conquered Africa, or taken Babylon the Great! When they recite
some of their frothy, bombast verses, if any happen to admire them, they
are presendy flushed with the least hint of commendation, and devoudy
thank Pythagoras for his grateful hypothesis, whereby they are now
become actuated with a descent of Virgil's poetic soul. Nor is any
divertisement more pleasant, than when they meet to flatter and curry
one another; yet they are so critical, that if any one hap t