Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/145

 Rh in pathetic perplexity whether a verb always agreed with an ancient Briton, or three times four was Taurus a bull.

"When all can read, and books are plentiful, lectures are unnecessary," says Dr. Johnson, who hated "by-roads in education," and novel devices—or devices which were novel a hundred and thirty years ago—for softening and abridging hard study. He hated also to be asked the kind of questions which we are now so fond of answering in the columns of our journals and magazines. What should a child learn first? How should a boy be taught? What course of study would he recommend an intelligent youth to pursue? "Let him take a course of chemistry, or a course of rope-dancing, or a course of anything to which he is inclined," was the great scholar's petulant reply to one of these repeated inquiries; and, though it sounds ill-natured, we have some human sympathy for the pardonable irritation which prompted it. Dr. Johnson, I am well aware, is not a popular authority to quote in behalf of any cause one wishes to advance; but his heterodoxy in the matter of lectures is supported openly by