The Essays, vol 5 | Page 7

and are of a learned extraction (for
we yet have the writings of the ancient Counts of Foix, from whom my
lord, your husband, and yourself, are both of you descended, and
Monsieur de Candale, your uncle, every day obliges the world with
others, which will extend the knowledge of this quality in your family
for so many succeeding ages), I will, upon this occasion, presume to
acquaint your ladyship with one particular fancy of my own, contrary
to the common method, which is all I am able to contribute to your
service in this affair.
The charge of the tutor you shall provide for your son, upon the choice
of whom depends the whole success of his education, has several other
great and considerable parts and duties required in so important a trust,
besides that of which I am about to speak: these, however, I shall not

mention, as being unable to add anything of moment to the common
rules: and in this, wherein I take upon me to advise, he may follow it so
far only as it shall appear advisable.
For a, boy of quality then, who pretends to letters not upon the account
of profit (for so mean an object is unworthy of the grace and favour of
the Muses, and moreover, in it a man directs his service to and depends
upon others), nor so much for outward ornament, as for his own proper
and peculiar use, and to furnish and enrich himself within, having
rather a desire to come out an accomplished cavalier than a mere
scholar or learned man; for such a one, I say, I would, also, have his
friends solicitous to find him out a tutor, who has rather a well-made
than a well-filled head;--["'Tete bien faite', an expression created by
Montaigne, and which has remained a part of our
language."--Servan.]-- seeking, indeed, both the one and the other, but
rather of the two to prefer manners and judgment to mere learning, and
that this man should exercise his charge after a new method.
'Tis the custom of pedagogues to be eternally thundering in their pupil's
ears, as they were pouring into a funnel, whilst the business of the pupil
is only to repeat what the others have said: now I would have a tutor to
correct this error, and, that at the very first, he should according to the
capacity he has to deal with, put it to the test, permitting his pupil
himself to taste things, and of himself to discern and choose them,
sometimes opening the way to him, and sometimes leaving him to open
it for himself; that is, I would not have him alone to invent and speak,
but that he should also hear his pupil speak in turn. Socrates, and since
him Arcesilaus, made first their scholars speak, and then they spoke to
them--[Diogenes Laertius, iv. 36.]
"Obest plerumque iis, qui discere volunt, auctoritas eorum, qui docent."
["The authority of those who teach, is very often an impediment to
those who desire to learn."--Cicero, De Natura Deor., i. 5.]
It is good to make him, like a young horse, trot before him, that he may
judge of his going, and how much he is to abate of his own speed, to
accommodate himself to the vigour and capacity of the other. For want

of which due proportion we spoil all; which also to know how to adjust,
and to keep within an exact and due measure, is one of the hardest
things I know, and 'tis the effect of a high and well-tempered soul, to
know how to condescend to such puerile motions and to govern and
direct them. I walk firmer and more secure up hill than down.
Such as, according to our common way of teaching, undertake, with
one and the same lesson, and the same measure of direction, to instruct
several boys of differing and unequal capacities, are infinitely mistaken;
and 'tis no wonder, if in a whole multitude of scholars, there are not
found above two or three who bring away any good account of their
time and discipline. Let the master not only examine him about the
grammatical construction of the bare words of his lesson, but about the
sense and let him judge of the profit he has made, not by the testimony
of his memory, but by that of his life. Let him make him put what he
has learned into a hundred several forms, and accommodate it to so
many several subjects, to see if he yet rightly comprehends it, and has
made it his own, taking instruction of his progress by the pedagogic
institutions of Plato. 'Tis a sign of crudity and indigestion to disgorge
what we eat in the same condition it was swallowed; the stomach has