advances in a difficult art cannot be too easy and gradual.

The attentive teacher will observe, that every Theme, Subject, and Essay, has an instructive and moral tendency; and if he is at first displeased with the want of ease and elegance in the language and style, he will easily recollect that such a style would have been unsuitable to the capacities of young people just beginning to put their thoughts upon paper, and that the first aim of their teacher ought to be, to enable them to express some of the most obvious ideas in the most obvious words. The very elegant style of Mr. Addison would in this case be too delicate to meet their apprehension; his most ingenious turns of thought would be lost upon them and some of the finest passages in his Spectators might be read to them, without their being able to carry away with them a single idea.

The first object, therefore, in the following Work, was to convey clear and promi

nent ideas; to arrange these ideas in such a manner as to make one thought suggest another; to give as much imagery to the thought as possible, that a picture might remain in the mind of the pupil which would enable him to clothe it in words, when the more refined and sentimental part of the subject might escape him. In short, I thought it the business of the teacher, in this case, to embody thought and sentiment as much as possible, and, as Shakespeare finely says,

In the course of this Work I have derived so little assistance from other writers, that I might, perhaps, pass uncensured for plagiarism if I were to be silent on this head; but candour obliges me to confess some obligations to Knox's Essays, to Jones's Letters from a Tutor to his Pupil, to Letters from Honoria to Marianne, to Bright's Praxis, and perhaps to a few others

scarcely worth mentioning. But most of these I have been obliged to modify in such a manner as to make them more suitable for an exercise; but by far the greatest part, with all their faults, are my own; and it remains with the Publick to judge whether, upon the whole, I have added any thing to the stock of instruction, and have met the wants of parents and teachers in this very important part of education.

It is presumed, that by the time the pupil has written the Narratives, the Regular Subjects, and the Themes, he will be enabled to begin those which take a more excursive turn, and to give his mind a little scope, by producing something more like an essay. This is the order I had recommended in the first edition to be occasionally adopted, and have been induced, by a judicious observation in the Monthly Review, to prefer this arrangement in the

present edition, as most agreeable to the natural procedure of the mind.

to

It is hoped that the present Work will be found useful, not only to those who are under the care of a teacher, but to those who wish to improve themselves. To these it may be observed, that if they read over the Theme or Subject till they are fully possessed of the sense, and then lay it aside and write down from memory as much as they can recollect, they will, by looking at the Theme, see how far they have deviated from it, and what they ought correct. This is a practice recommended by Dr. Blair, who advises the pupil to read a passage in Addison, and endeavour to imitate it in the manner above no ticed. This, for pupils far advanced, is undoubtedly an excellent practice; but for the younger class of pupils, as we have before observed, Mr. Addison's language seems too elegant and (if I may use the expression) too untangible. A regular

chain of thinking, and a coarser and more. palpable choice of words, seems best calculated for the improvement of beginners in the art.

It need scarcely be observed, that it is of the utmost importance that pupils should not have this book in their posession. So difficult and irksome at first is the task of writing their thoughts, that young people will risk every thing to ease themselves of the burden. This book, therefore, should be carefully kept from them; as even one of them in a school, if the teacher's eye be not upon them while they write, will be sufficient to frustrate his expectations. The rules, therefore, may first be written out by the teacher, and then given to the pupil to copy, without permitting him to see the book; and even if the teacher were to copy out the Theme or Subject, and read it in manuscript to the pupil, it might probably have a good effect on his mind; as it might lead him to suppose there was