“Where lies the fault then?  Parents ought to be sharply reprehended, who will not have their children come on by any strict method; but in this, as in all things, are so fond of making a noise in the world; and in such haste to compass their wishes, that they hurry them in publick e’er they have digested what they have read, and put children e’er they are well past their sucking-bottle, upon the good grace of speaking, than which even themselves confess, nothing is greater:  Whereas if they would suffer them to come up by degrees, that their studies might be temper’d with grave lectures; their affections fashion’d by the dictates of wisdom; that they might work themselves into a mastery of words; and for a long time hear, what they’re inclined to imitate, nothing that pleas’d children, wou’d be admir’d by them.  But now boys trifle in the schools, young men are laugh’d at in publick, and, which is worse than both, what every one foolishly takes up in his youth, no one will confess in his age.  But that I may not be thought to condemn Lucilius, as written in haste, I also will give you my thoughts in verse.

   “Who ere wou’d with ambitious just desire,
   To mastery in so fire an art aspire,
   Must all extreams first diligently shun,
   And in a settled course of vertue run. 
   Let him not fortune with stiff greatness climb,
   Nor, courtier-like, with cringes undermine: 
   Nor all the brother blockheads of the pot,
   Ever persuade him to become a sot;
   Nor flatter poets to acquire the fame
   Of, I protest, a pretty gentleman. 
   But whether in the war he wou’d be great,
   Or, in the gentler arts that rule a state;
   Or, else his amorous breast he wou’d improve
   Well to receive the youthful cares of love. 
   In his first years to poetry inclin’d,
   Let Homer’s spring bedew his fruitful mind;
   His manlier years to manlier studies brought,
   Philosophy must next imply his thought. 
   Then let his boundless soul new glories fire,
   And to the great Demosthenes aspire. 
   When round in throngs the list’ning people come,
   T’admire what sprung in Greece so slow at home
   Rais’d to this height, your leisure hours engage
   In something just and worthy of the stage;
   Your choice of words from Cicero derive,
   And in your poems you design shou’d live,
   The joys of feasts, and terrors of a war,
   More pleasing those, and these more frightful are,
   When told by you, than in their acting were: 
   And thus, enrich’d with such a golden store,
   You’re truly fit to be an orator.”