which he condemned as a great error
in the education of youth. Sir William Petre maintained the contrary;
severe in his own temper, he pleaded warmly in defence of hard flogging.
Dr. Wootton, in softer tones, sided with the secretary. Sir John Mason,
adopting no side, bantered both. Mr. Haddon seconded the hard-hearted
Sir William Petre, and adduced, as an evidence, that the best
schoolmaster then in England was the hardest flogger. Then was it that
Roger Ascham indignantly exclaimed, that if such a master had an able
scholar it was owing to the boy's genius, and not the preceptor's rod.
Secretary Cecil and others were pleased with Ascham's notions. Sir
Richard Sackville was silent, but when Ascham after dinner went to the
queen to read one of the orations of Demosthenes, he took him aside, and
frankly told him that, though he had taken no part in the debate, he
would not have been absent from that conversation for a great deal; that
he knew to his cost the truth that Ascham had supported; for it was the
perpetual flogging of such a schoolmaster that had given him an
unconquerable aversion to study. And as he wished to remedy this defect
in his own children, he earnestly exhorted Ascham to write his
observations on so interesting a topic. Such was the circumstance which
produced the admirable treatise of Roger Ascham.

INEQUALITIES OF GENIUS.

Singular inequalities are observable in the labours of genius; and
particularly in those which admit great enthusiasm, as in poetry, in
painting, and in music. Faultless mediocrity industry can preserve in
one continued degree; but excellence, the daring and the happy, can only
be attained, by human faculties, by starts.

Our poets who possess the greatest genius, with perhaps the least
industry, have at the same time the most splendid and the worst passages
of poetry. Shakspeare and Dryden are at once the greatest and the least
of our poets. With some, their great fault consists in having none.

Carraccio sarcastically said of Tintoret--_Ho veduto il Tintoretto hora
eguale a Titiano, hora minore del Tintoretto_--"I have seen Tintoret now
equal to Titian, and now less than Tintoret."

Trublet justly observes--The more there are _beauties_ and _great
beauties_ in a work, I am the less surprised to find _faults_ and _great
faults_. When you say of a work that it has many faults, that decides
nothing: and I do not know by this, whether it is execrable or
excellent. You t