e urge not
against the Eton grammar in particular: on the contrary, as grammars
go, we admire the Eton grammar;[40] and love it with a filial
partiality from early associations (always excepting, however, the
three lead-mines of the Eton grammar, '_Propria quae maribus_,' &c. of
which it is not extravagant to say, that the author, though possibly a
good sort of a man in his way, has undoubtedly caused more human
suffering than Nero, Robespierre, or any other enemy of the human
race). Our opposition is to the general principle, which lies at the
root of such treatises as the three we have been considering: it will
be observed that, making a proper allowance for the smallness of the
print, these three bodies of absurd anticipations of exceptions, are
collectively about equal in quantity, and virtually for the effort to
the memory far more than equal, to the whole body of the rules
contained in the Accidence and the Syntax: _i. e._ that which exits on
account of many thousand cases is put on the same level of value and
burthen to the memory, as that which exists on account of itself
alone. Here lies the original sin of grammars, the mortal taint on
which they all demand regeneration: whosoever would show himself a
great artist in the profound but as yet infant art of teaching, should
regard all arbitrary taxes upon the memory with the same superstition
that a wise lawgiver should regard the punishment of death: the
lawgiver, who sets out with little knowledge (and therefore little
veneration) of human nature, is perpetually invoking the thunders of
the law to compensate the internal weakness of his own laws: and the
same spirit of levity disposes inefficient teachers to put in motion
the weightiest machinery of the mind for the most trifling purposes:
but we are convinced that this law should be engraven on the title
page of all elementary books--that the memory is degraded, if it be
called in to deliver any individual fact, or any number of individual
facts, or for any less purpose than that of delivering a comprehensive
law, by means of which the understanding is to _produce_ the
individual cases of knowledge wanted. Wherever exceptions or insulated
cases are noticed, except in notes, which are not designed to be
committed to memory, this rule is violated; and the Scotch expression
for particularising, viz. _condescending upon_, becomes applicable in
a literal sense: when the Eton grammar, _e. g._ notices _Deus_ as
devia