Page:Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin (1793).djvu/311

301 THE FIFTH CLASS.

TO improve the youth in competition, they may now, beſides continuing to write letters, begin to write little eſſays in proſe, and ſometimes in verſe; not to make them poets, but for this reaſon, that nothing acquaints a lad ſo ſpeedily with variety of expreſſion, as the neceſſity of finding ſuch words and phraſes as will ſuit the meaſure, found and rhime of verſe, and at the ſame time well expreſs the ſentiment. Theſe eſſays ſhould all paſs under the maſter's eye, who will point out their faults, and put the writer on correcting them. Where the judgment is not ripe enough for forming new eſſays, let the ſentiments of a Spectator be given, and required to be clothed in the ſcholar's own words; or the circumſtances of ſome good ſtory; the ſcholar to find expreſſion. Let them be put ſometimes on abridging a paragraph of a diffuſe author: ſometimes on dilating or amplifying what is wrote more cloſely. And now let Dr. Johnſon's Noetica, or Firſt Principles of Human Knowledge, containing a logic, or art of reaſoning, &c. be read by the youth, and the difficulties that may occur to them be explained by the maſter. The reading of hiſtory, and the exerciſes of good reading and juſt ſpeaking, ſtill continued.