eof I conceive to be
these: First, young scholars make this calling their refuge; yea,
perchance, before they have taken any degree in the university,
commence schoolmasters in the country, as if nothing else were
required to set up this profession but only a rod and a ferula.
Secondly, others who are able, use it only as a passage to better
preferment, to patch the rents in their present fortune, till they can
provide a new one, and betake themselves to some more gainful calling.
Thirdly, they are disheartened from doing their best with the
miserable reward which in some places they receive, being masters to
their children and slaves to their parents. Fourthly, being grown
rich, they grow negligent, and scorn to touch the school but by the
proxy of the usher. But see how well our schoolmaster behaves himself.

His genius inclines him with delight to his profession. Some men had
as well be schoolboys as schoolmasters, to be tied to the school, as
Cooper's Dictionary and Scapula's Lexicon are chained to the desk
therein; and though great scholars, and skilful in other arts, are
bunglers in this. But God, of His goodness, hath fitted several men
for several callings, that the necessity of Church and State, in all
conditions, may be provided for. So that he who beholds the fabric
thereof, may say, God hewed out the stone, and appointed it to lie in
this very place, for it would fit none other so well, and here it doth
most excellent. And thus God mouldeth some for a schoolmaster's life,
undertaking it with desire and delight, and discharging it with
dexterity and happy success.

He studieth his scholars' natures as carefully as they their books;
and ranks their dispositions into several forms. And though it may
seem difficult for him in a great school to descend to all
particulars, yet experienced schoolmasters may quickly make a grammar
of boys' natures, and reduce them all--saving some few exceptions--to
these general rules:

1. Those that are ingenious and industrious. The conjunction of two
such planets in a youth presage much good unto him. To such a lad a
frown may be a whipping, and a whipping a death; yea, where their
master whips them once, shame whips them all the week after. Such
natures he useth with all gentleness.

2. Those that are ingenious and idle. These think with the hare in the
fable, that running with snails--so they count the rest of their
schoolfellows--they shall come soon enough to the post,