Page:An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe.djvu/37

 vations of others, are soon forgotten, those, made by ourselves, are permanent and useful. But, it seems, understandings of every size were to be mechanically instructed in poetry. If the reader was too dull to relish the beauties of Virgil, the comment of Servius was ready to brighten his imagination; if Terence could not raise him to a smile, Evantius was at hand, with a long-winded scholium to encrease his titillation. Such rules are calculated to make blockheads talk, but all the lemmata of the Lyceum are unable to give him feeling.

logical disputations seemed even to be the apotheosis of folly. In these the opponent had a right to affirm, whatever absurdity he thought proper. The defendant, though he saw the falshood almost by intuition, was not allowed to use his