y, because he is all the time _driving at
practice_. Hear how he opens his second Discourse (his first to the
Students). After congratulating the prize-winners of 1769, he desires 'to
lead them into such a course of study as may render their future progress
answerable to their past improvement'; and the great man goes on:--

I flatter myself that from the long experience I have had, and the
necessary assiduity with which I have pursued these studies in which
like you I have been engaged, I shall be acquitted of vanity in
offering some hints to your consideration. They are indeed in a
great degree founded upon my own mistakes in the same pursuit....

Mark the noble modesty of that! To resume--

In speaking to you of the Theory of the Art, I shall only consider
it as it has relation to the method of your studies.

And then he proceeds to preach the Old Masters.--But how?--why?--to what
end? Does he recite lists of names, dates, with formulae concerning
styles? He does nothing of the sort. Does he recommend his old masters
for copying, then?--for mere imitation? Not a bit of it!--he comes down
like a hammer on copying. Then for what, in fine, will he have them
studied? Listen:--

The more extensive your acquaintance is with the works of those who
have excelled, the more extensive will be your powers of invention.

Yes, of _invention_, your power to make something new:

--and what may appear still more like a paradox, _the more original
will be your conceptions_.

There spake Sir Joshua Reynolds: and I call that the voice of a true
Elder Brother. He, standing face to face with the young, thought of the
old masters mainly as spiritual begetters of practice. And will anyone in
this room tell me that what Reynolds said of painting is not to-day, for
us, applicable to writing?

We accept it of Greek and Latin. An old Sixth Form master once said to
me, 'You may give up Latin Verse for this term, if you will: but I warn
you, no one can be a real scholar who does not constantly practise
verse.' He was mistaken, belike. I hold, for my part, that in our Public
Schools, we give up a quite disproportionate amount of time to
'composition' (of Latin Prose especially) and starve the boys' reading
thereby. But at any rate we do give up a large share of the time to it.
Then if we insist on this way with the tongues of Homer and Virgil, why
do we avoid it with the tongue of S