"
He desired that boys should obtain a quick and easy mastery over the
authors whom they had to read, and on this account he urged that they
should be taught by the use of literal and interlinear translations; but "a
literal translation, or any translation, of a school-book is a contraband
article in English schools, which a schoolmaster would instantly seize, as
a custom-house officer would seize a barrel of gin."
Grammar, gerund-grinding, the tyranny of the Lexicon and the Dictionary,
had got the schoolboys of England in their grasp, and the boy "was
suffocated with the nonsense of grammarians, overwhelmed with every species
of difficulty disproportionate to his age, and driven by despair to pegtop
or marbles"; while the British Parent stood and spoke thus with himself:--
"Have I read through Lilly? Have I learnt by heart that most atrocious
monument of absurdity, the Westminster Grammar? Have I been whipt for
the substantives? whipt for the verbs? and whipt for and with the
interjections? Have I picked the sense slowly, and word by word, out
of Hederich? and shall my son be exempt from all this misery?... Ay,
ay, it's all mighty well; but I went through this myself, and I am
determined my children shall do the same."
Another grotesque abuse with regard to which Sydney Smith was a reformer
fifty years before his time was compulsory versification.
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