15.  To rouse this laudable spirit in the minds of our youth, and to satisfy its demands whenever it appears, ought to be the leading objects with those to whom is committed the important business of instruction.  A dull teacher, wasting time in a school-room with a parcel of stupid or indolent boys, knows nothing of the satisfaction either of doing his own duty, or of exciting others to the performance of theirs.  He settles down in a regular routine of humdrum exercises, dreading as an inconvenience even such change as proficiency in his pupils must bring on; and is well content to do little good for little money, in a profession which he honours with his services merely to escape starvation.  He has, however, one merit:  he pleases his patrons, and is perhaps the only man that can; for they must needs be of that class to whom moral restraint is tyranny, disobedience to teachers, as often right as wrong; and who, dreading the expense, even of a school-book, always judge those things to be cheapest, which cost the least and last the longest.  What such a man, or such a neighbourhood, may think of English grammar, I shall not stop to ask.

16.  To the following opinion from a writer of great merit, I am inclined to afford room here, because it deserves refutation, and, I am persuaded, is not so well founded as the generality of the doctrines with which it is presented to the public.  “Since human knowledge is so much more extensive than the opportunity of individuals for acquiring it, it becomes of the greatest importance so to economize the opportunity as to make it subservient to the acquisition of as large and as valuable a portion as we can.  It is not enough to show that a given branch of education is useful:  you must show that it is the most useful that can be selected.  Remembering this, I think it would be expedient to dispense with the formal study of English grammar,—­a proposition which I doubt not many a teacher will hear with wonder and disapprobation.  We learn the grammar in order that we may learn English; and we learn English whether we study grammars or not.  Especially we shall acquire a competent knowledge of our own language, if other departments of our education were improved.”

17.  “A boy learns more English grammar by joining in an hour’s conversation with educated people, than in poring for an hour over Murray or Horne Tooke.  If he is accustomed to such society and to the perusal of well-written books, he will learn English grammar, though he never sees a word about syntax; and if he is not accustomed to such society and such reading, the ‘grammar books’ at a boarding-school will not teach it.  Men learn their own language by habit, and not by rules:  and this is just what we might expect; for the grammar of a language is itself formed from the prevalent habits of speech and writing.  A compiler of grammar first observes these habits, and then makes his rules:  but if a person is himself familiar with the habits, why study the rules?  I say nothing of grammar as a general science; because, although the philosophy of language be a valuable branch of human knowledge, it were idle to expect that school-boys should understand it.  The objection is, to the system of attempting to teach children formally that which they will learn practically without teaching.”—­JONATHAN DYMOND:  Essays on Morality, p. 195.