friend Clytus through with a spear, this tried, and serviceable old
friend was banished by public edict in saecula saeculorum. I have
sometimes ventured to think, that a list of this kind, or an index
expurgatorius of certain well-known and ever-returning phrases, both
introductory, and transitional, including a large assortment of modest
egoisms, and flattering illeisms, and the like, might be hung up in
our Law-courts, and both Houses of Parliament, with great advantage to
the public, as an important saving of national time, an incalculable
relief to his Majesty's ministers, but above all, as insuring the
thanks of country attornies, and their clients, who have private bills
to carry through the House.

Be this as it may, there was one custom of our master's, which I
cannot pass over in silence, because I think it imitable and worthy of
imitation. He would often permit our exercises, under some pretext of
want of time, to accumulate, till each lad had four or five to be
looked over. Then placing the whole number abreast on his desk, he
would ask the writer, why this or that sentence might not have found
as appropriate a place under this or that other thesis: and if no
satisfying answer could be returned, and two faults of the same kind
were found in one exercise, the irrevocable verdict followed, the
exercise was torn up, and another on the same subject to be produced,
in addition to the tasks of the day. The reader will, I trust, excuse
this tribute of recollection to a man, whose severities, even now, not
seldom furnish the dreams, by which the blind fancy would fain
interpret to the mind the painful sensations of distempered sleep; but
neither lessen nor dim the deep sense of my moral and intellectual
obligations. He sent us to the University excellent Latin and Greek
scholars, and tolerable Hebraists. Yet our classical knowledge was the
least of the good gifts, which we derived from his zealous and