Page:The Works of Samuel Johnson ... A journey to the Hebrides. The vision of Theodore, the hermit of Teneriffe. The fountains. Prayers and meditations. Sermons.v. 10-11. Parliamentary debates.pdf/400

 *ders a young man from receiving instruction, it will obstruct an older student in conveying it.

There is no employment in which men are more easily betrayed to indecency and impatience, than in that of teaching; in which they necessarily converse with those who are their inferiours in the relation by which they are connected, and whom it may be sometimes proper to treat with that dignity which too often swells into arrogance; and to restrain with such authority as not every man has learned to separate from tyranny. In this state of temporary honour, a proud man is too willing to exert his prerogative; and too ready to forget that he is dictating to those, who may one day dictate to him. He is inclined to wonder that what he comprehends himself is not equally clear to others; and often reproaches the intellects of his auditors, when he ought to blame the confusion of his own ideas, and the improprieties of his own language. He reiterates, therefore, his positions without elucidation, and enforces his assertions by his frown, when he finds arguments less easy to be supplied. Thus forgetting that he had to do with men, whose passions are perhaps equally turbulent with his own, he transfers by degrees to his instruction the prejudices which are first raised by his behaviour; and having forced upon his pupils an hatred of their teacher, he sees it quickly terminate in a contempt of the precept.

But instruction extends further than to seminaries of students, or the narrow auditories of sequestered literature. The end of learning is, to teach the publick, to superintend the conduct, watch over the morals, and regulate the opinions of parishes, dioceses, and provinces; to check vices in their first eruption, and suppress heresies in the whispers of their rise. And surely this awful, this arduous task, requires qualities, which a man "wise in his own conceit," cannot easily attain; that mildness of address, that patience of attention, that calmness of disputation, that selection of times, and places, and circumstances, which the vehemence of pride will not regard.