taught anything there, who would not have taken it very ill to be
suspected to speake or understand Latin."[268] This sort of aspersion
was continued by Dr Wallis, the Savilian Professor of Mathematics at
Oxford in 1700, who was roused to a fine pitch of indignation by
Maidwell's efforts to start an academy in London:[269]

"Of teachers in the academie, scarce any of a higher character than a
valet-de-chambre. And, if such an one, who (for instance) hath waited on
his master in one or two campagnes, and is able perhaps to copy the
draught of a fortification from another paper; this is called
mathematicks; and, beyond this (if so much) you are not to expect."

A certain Mr P. Chester finishes the English condemnation of a school,
such as Benjamin's, by declaring that its pretensions to fit men for
life was "like the shearing of Hoggs, much Noyse and little Wooll,
nothing considerable taught that I know, butt only to fitt a man to be a
French chevalier, that is in plain English a Trooper."[270]

These comments are what one expects from Oxford, to be sure, but even M.
Jusserand acknowledges that the academies were not centres of
intellectual light, and quotes to prove it certain questions asked of a
pupil put into the Bastille, at the demand of his father:

"Was it not true that the Sieur Varin, his father, seeing that he had no
inclination to study, had put him into the Académie Royale to there
learn all sorts of exercises, and had there supported him with much
expense?

"He admitted that his father, while his mother was living, had put him
into the Académie Royale and had given him for that the necessary means,