Lord Byron, however, is not singular in his opinion of the inutility
of premature classical studies; and notwithstanding the able manner
in which the late Dean Vincent defended public education, we have
some notion that his reasoning upon this point will not be deemed
conclusive. Milton, says Dr Vincent, complained of the years that
were wasted in teaching the dead languages. Cowley also complained
that classical education taught words only and not things; and
Addison deemed it an inexpiable error, that boys with genius or
without were all to be bred poets indiscriminately. As far, then, as
respects the education of a poet, we should think that the names of
Milton, Cowley, Addison, and Byron would go well to settle the
question; especially when it is recollected how little Shakspeare was
indebted to the study of the classics, and that Burns knew nothing of
them at all. I do not, however, adopt the opinion as correct;
neither do I think that Dean Vincent took a right view of the
subject; for, as discipline, the study of the classics may be highly
useful, at the same time, the mere hammering of Greek and Latin into
English cannot be very conducive to the refinement of taste or the
exaltation of sentiment. Nor is there either common sense or correct
logic in the following observations made on the passage and note,
quoted by the anonymous author of Childe Harold's Monitor.

"This doctrine of antipathies, contracted by the impatience of youth
against the noblest authors of antiquity, from the circumstance of
having been made the vehicle of early instruction, is a most
dangerous doctrine indeed; since it strikes at the root, not only of
all pure taste, but of all praiseworthy industry. It would, if acted
upon (as Harold by the mention of the Continental practice of using
inferior writers in the business of tuition would seem to recommend),
destroy the great source of the intellectual vigour of our