ingest-scampingest-rackety-tackety-tow-row-roaringest boy in the
whole school." Would Mrs. Newton have been able to set the aunt and
the dog before us so vividly if she had been more highly educated?
Would Mrs. Bromfield have been able to forge and hurl her
thunderbolt of a word if she had been taught how to do so, or indeed
been at much pains to create it at all? It came. It was her [Greek
text]. She did not probably know that she had done what the
greatest scholar would have had to rack his brains over for many an
hour before he could even approach. Tradition says that having
brought down her boy she looked round the hall in triumph, and then
after a moment's lull said, "Young gentlemen, prayers are excused,"
and left them.

I have sometimes thought that, after all, the main use of a
classical education consists in the check it gives to originality,
and the way in which it prevents an inconvenient number of people
from using their own eyes. That we will not be at the trouble of
looking at things for ourselves if we can get any one to tell us
what we ought to see goes without saying, and it is the business of
schools and universities to assist us in this respect. The theory
of evolution teaches that any power not worked at pretty high
pressure will deteriorate: originality and freedom from affectation
are all very well in their way, but we can easily have too much of
them, and it is better that none should be either original or free
from cant but those who insist on being so, no matter what
hindrances obstruct, nor what incentives are offered them to see
things through the regulation medium.

To insist on seeing things for oneself is to be in [Greek text], or
in plain English, an idiot; nor do I see any safer check against