another half his life without being able to estimate his skill in
hydrostatics or astronomy; but his moral and prudential character
immediately appears.

Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that supply most
axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most
materials for conversation; and these purposes are best served by
poets, orators, and historians.

Let me not be censured for this digression as pedantic or
paradoxical; for, if I have Milton against me, I have Socrates on my
side. It was his labour to turn philosophy from the study of Nature
to speculations upon life; but the innovators whom I oppose are
turning off attention from life to nature. They seem to think that
we are placed here to watch the growth of plants, or the motions of
the stars. Socrates was rather of opinion that what we had to learn
was how to do good and avoid evil.


[Greek text]


Of institutions we may judge by their effects. From this wonder-
working academy I do not know that there ever proceeded any man very
eminent for knowledge: its only genuine product, I believe, is a
small History of Poetry, written in Latin by his nephew Philips, of
which perhaps none of my readers has ever heard.

That in his school, as in everything else which he undertook, he
laboured with great diligence, there is no reason for doubting. One