[Illustration: _Facilis ascensus Parnassi sed revocare gradum._
"It's very easy to be a Poet, but you must have recourse to your gradus."]
Baro dixit (Anglicè, quia, imagino, non noscit Latinum) ut "he never got any good from the Latin verses he was obliged to write when a boy, and if a boy is to be made a poet, he had better begin in his own language." Dixit quoque, "it may be knowledge to know the names of those who killed BECKET (_sic_), and the precise date, but it is not wisdom or useful." (Quare, viâ, "BECKET," et non "Sanctus TOMMIUS À BECKET, proprium nomen? Quid cheekum! Vel forte dicerem, quæ bucca! Vocabimusne Baronem BRAMWELL in futuro "BRAMWELL" simpliciter; vel, ut omittit "à," potius "BRAM'L"?)
Quoto has Philistinas deliverationes de "Tempora," et Editor "Temporum" propriissime scribit, "We should for our part (pro nostrâ portione) venture to doubt whether some of Lord BRAMWELL'S (peto veniam, BRAM'L'S) remarkable keenness of mind is not to be accounted for by the drilling which his Latin verses gave him--by the habit of twisting and turning (habitus contorquendi et vertendi) and adjusting thoughts and phrases which that old-fashioned exercise implies." Bene!
Sum ipse nunc Undergraduatus, et abandonavi Classicas linguas pro Scientiâ. Sed retineo meum Latinum--ut tu vides--et invenio id facile esse excellens in chemicis odoribus et in CICERONE simul.
Cogito ut Britannicus Publicus debet noscere _quam multum bonum_ Latini versus sunt ad pueros.
1. Imprimis, illi ducunt ad usum _Gradûs ad Parnassum_; et, interrogo, quis liber potest comparare cum eo vel in elegantiâ styli, vel in copiositate verborum, vel in vero genio auctoris? Sum inclinatus cogitare ut auctor erat, in realitate, BACONIUS ipse; et si ita, id est alium exemplum quomodo Latini versus auxiliant homines scandere ad nobilissimas positiones in Statu.
2. Secundo loco, docent fraternum amorem inter pueros; quia quum unus socius est stumpatus pro verbo, alius donat illi correctum tippum, sub rosâ.
3. Tertium quid (non _quid_ tobacconis!--Vide effectum, "habitûs contorquendi et vertendi"!)--Versus elevant mentem, et associant nos cum grandibus auctoribus præteriti, ut OVIDIO, TIBULLO, et CAREYO. Quomodo possum noscere, nisi per "Gradum," ut _Amor_ est "dulcis, blandus, jucundus, suavis," et eodem tempore "flagrans, acer, fervidus, indomitus, vigilans," etc.?