Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/240

230 ill stars have fatally perverted him to a love, and taste, and possession of literature, politeness, and good sense? Our thoroughsped republick of whigs, which contains the bulk of all hopers, pretenders, expecters, and professors, are beyond all doubt most highly useful to princes, to governors, to great ministers, and to their country; but at the same time, and by necessary consequence, the most disagreeable companions to all who have that unfortunate turn of mind peculiar to his excellency, and perhaps to five or six more in a nation.

I do not deny it possible, that an original or proselyte favourite of the times, might have been born to those useless talents, which in former ages qualified a man to be a poet or a philosopher. All I contend for is, that where the true genius of party once enters, it sweeps the house clean, and leaves room for many other spirits to take joint possession, until the last state of that man is exceedingly better than the first.

I allow it a great errour in his excellency, that he adheres so obstinately to his old unfashionable academick education; yet so perverse is human nature, that the usual remedies for this evil in others, have produced a contrary effect in him; to a degree, that I am credibly informed, he will, as I have already hinted, in the middle of a session, quote passages out of Plato and Pindar at his own table to some booklearned companion without blushing, even when persons of great stations are by.

I will venture one step farther; which is, freely to confess, that this mistaken method of educating youth in the knowledge of ancient learning and language, is too apt to spoil their politicks and ples;