the trenches. We had above two hundred of our battalion killed and wounded. We lost ten serjeants, six are as followeth : Jennings, Castles, Roach, Sherring, Meyrick, and my son Smith. The rest are not your acquaintance. I have received a very bad shot in my head myself, but I am in hopes, and please God, I shall recover. I continue in the field, and lie at my colonel's quarters. Arthur is very well; but I can give you no account of Elms; he was in the hospital before I came into the field. I will not pretend to give you any account of the battle, knowing 10 you have a better in the prints. Pray, give my service to Mrs. Cook and her daughter, to Mr. Stoffet and his wife, and to Mr. Lyver and Thomas Hogsdon, and to Mr. Ragdell, and to all my friends and acquaintance in general who do ask after me. My love to Mrs. Stephenson. I am sorry for the sending such ill news. Her husband was gathering a little money together to send to his wife, and put it into my hands. I have seven shillings and three pence, which I shall take care to send her. Wishing your wife a safe delivery, and both of you all happiness, 'Your assured friend and comrade, 20 rest 'JOHN HALL. 'We had but an indifferent breakfast; but the mounseers never had such a dinner in all their lives. 'My kind love to my comrade Hinton, and Mrs. Morgan, and to John Brown and his wife. I sent two shillings, and Stephenson sixpence, to drink with you at Mr. Cook's; but I have heard nothing from him. It was by Mr. Edgar. ( Corporal Hartwell desires to be remembered to you, and desires you to enquire of Edgar, what is become of his wife 30 Pegg; and when you write, to send word in your letter what trade she drives. 'We have here very bad weather, which I doubt will be a hinderance to the siege"; but I am in hopes we shall be masters of the town in a little time, and then, I believe, we shall go to garrison.' I saw the critics prepared to nibble at my letter; therefore examined it myself, partly in their way, and partly my own. This is, said I, truly a letter, and an honest representation of that cheerful heart which accompanies the poor soldier in his warfare. Is not there in this all the topic of submitting to our destiny as well discussed as if a greater man had been placed, like Brutus, in his tent at midnight, reflecting on all the occurrences of past life, and saying fine things on Being itself? What serjeant Hall knows of the matter is, that he wishes there had not been so many killed; and he had himself a very bad shot in the head, and should recover if it pleased God. But be that as it will, he takes care, like a man of honour as he certainly is, to let the widow Stevenson know, that he has seven and o threepence for her, and that, if he lives, he is sure he shall go into garrison at last. I doubt not but all the good company at the Red-Lettice drank his health with as much real esteem as we do of any of our friends. All that I am concerned for is, that Mrs. Peggy Hartwell may be offended at showing this letter, because her conduct in Mr. Hartwell's absence is a little enquired into. But I could not sink that circumstance, because you critics would have lost one of the parts which I doubt not but you have much to say upon, whether the familiar way is well hit in this style or not? As for myself, I take a very particular satisfacotion in seeing any letter that is fit only for those to read who are concerned in it, but especially on such a subject. If we consider the heap of an army, utterly out of all prospect of rising and preferment, as they certainly are, and such great things executed by them, it is hard to account for the motive of their gallantry. But to me, who was a cadet at the battle of Coldstream in Scotland, when Monk charged at the head of the regiment, now called Coldstream, from the victory of that day; I remember it as well as if it were yesterday, I stood on the left of old West, who I believe is now at Chelsea; I say, to me, who know very well this part of mankind, I take the gallantry of private soldiers to proceed from the same, if not from a nobler impulse than that of gentlemen and officers. They have the same taste of being acceptable to their friends, and go through the difficulties of that profession by the same irresistible charm of fellowship, and the communication of joys and sorrows, which quickens the relish of pleasure, and abates the anguish of pain. Add to this, that they have the same regard to fame, though they do not expect so great a share as men above them hope for; but I will engage serjeant Hall - would die ten thousand deaths rather than a word should be spoken at the Red-Lettice, or any part of the Butcher-row, in prejudice to his courage or honesty. If you will have my opinion, then, of the serjeant's letter, I pronounce the style to be mixed, but truly epistolary ; the sentiment relating to his own wound is in the sublime; the postscript of Pegg Hartwell, in the gay; and the whole, the picture of the bravest sort of men, that is to say, a man of great courage and small hopes. Tatler, No. 87.] [October 29, 1709. No. 122. On Flogging at Schools. Genius, natale comes qui temperat astrum, Quodque caput.-HOR. Ep. ii. 2. 187. I am very much at a loss to express by any word that occurs to me in our language, that which is understood by indoles in 10 Latin. The natural disposition to any particular art, science, profession, or trade, is very much to be consulted in the care of youth, and studied by men for their own conduct when they form to themselves any scheme of life. It is wonderfully hard, indeed, for a man to judge of his own capacity impartially. That may look great to me which may appear little to another; and I may be carried by fondness towards myself so far, as to attempt things too high for my talents and accomplishments. But it is not, methinks, so very difficult a matter to make a judgment of the abilities of others, especially of those who are 20 in their infancy. My common-place book directs me on this occasion to mention the dawning of greatness in Alexander, who being asked in his youth to contend for a prize in the Olympic games, answered he would, if he had kings to run against him. Cassius, who was one of the conspirators against Cæsar, gave as great a proof of his temper, when in his childhood he struck a play-fellow, the Son of Sylla, for saying his father was master of the Roman people. Scipio is reported to have answered, when some flatterers at supper were asking him what the Romans should do for a general after his death, 'Take Marius.' Marius was then a very boy, and had given no instances of his valour; but it was visible to Scipio, from the manners of the youth, that he had a soul formed for the attempt and execution of great undertakings. I must confess I have very often, with much sorrow, bewailed the misfortune of the children of Great Britain, when I consider the ignorance and undiscerning of the generality of schoolmasters. The boasted liberty we talk of, is but a mean reward for the long servitude, the many heartaches and terrors, to which our childhood is exposed in going 10 through a grammar-school. Many of these stupid tyrants exercise their cruelty without any manner of distinction of the capacities of children, or the intention of parents in their behalf. There are many excellent tempers which are worthy to be nourished and cultivated with all possible diligence and care, that were never designed to be acquainted with Aristotle, Tully, or Virgil; and there are as many who have capacities for understanding every word those great persons have writ, and yet were not born to have any relish of their writings. For want of this common and obvious discerning in those who have 20 the care of youth, we have so many hundred unaccountable creatures every age whipped up into great scholars, that are for ever near a right understanding and will never arrive at it. These are the scandal of letters, and these are generally the men who are to teach others. The sense of shame and honour is enough to keep the world itself in order without corporal punishment, much more to train the minds of uncorrupted and innocent children. It happens, I doubt not, more than once in a year, that a lad is chastised for a blockhead, when it is good apprehension that makes him incapable of knowing what his 30 teacher means. A brisk imagination very often may suggest an error, which a lad could not have fallen into, if he had been as heavy in conjecturing as his master in explaining. But there is no mercy even towards a wrong interpretation of his meaning; the sufferings of the scholar's body are to rectify the mistakes of his mind. I am confident that no boy, who will not be allured to letters without blows, will ever be brought to any thing with them. A great or good mind must necessarily be the worse for such indignities; and it is a sad change, to lose of its virtue for the 40 improvement of its knowledge. No one who has gone through what they call a great school, but must remember to have seen children of excellent and ingenuous natures (as has afterwards appeared in their manhood): I say no man has passed through this way of education but must have seen an ingenuous creature, expiring with shame-with pale looks, beseeching sorrow, and silent tears, throw up its honest eyes, and kneel on its tender knees to an inexorable blockhead to be forgiven the false quantity of a word in making a Latin verse. The child is punished, and the next day he commits a like crime, and so a 10 third with the same consequence. I would fain ask any reasonable man, whether this lad, in the simplicity of his native innocence, full of shame, and capable of any impression from that grace of soul, was not fitter for any purpose in this life, than after that spark of virtue is extinguished in him, though he is able to write twenty verses in an evening? Seneca says, after his exalted way of talking, ‘As the immortal gods never learnt any virtue, though they are endued with all that is good; so there are some men who have so natural a propensity to what they should follow, that they learn 20 it almost as soon as they hear it.' Plants and vegetables are cultivated into the production of finer fruits than they would yield without that care; and yet we cannot entertain hopes of producing a tender conscious spirit into acts of virtue, without the same methods as are used to cut timber, or give new shape to a piece of stone. It is wholly to this dreadful practice, that we may attribute a certain hardiness and ferocity which some men, though liberally educated, carry about them in all their behaviour. To be bred like a gentleman, and punished like a malefactor, must, as we 30 see it does, produce that illiberal sauciness which we see sometimes in men of letters. The Spartan boy who suffered the fox (which he had stolen and hid under his coat) to eat into his bowels, I dare say had not half the wit or petulance which we learn at great schools among us; but the glorious sense of honour, or rather fear of shame, which he demonstrated in that action, was worth all the learning in the world without it. It is, methinks, a very melancholy consideration, that a little negligence can spoil us, but great industry is necessary 40 to improve us; the most excellent natures are soon depreciated, |