No More Learning

Let the student, in reading the poems of Virgil, be taught to
pay strict attention to the melodious numbers by which they
are adorned--let him mark the beautiful effect produced by
the frequent changing of the Csesural pause, and learn to con-
trast these changes with each other, and to note their respec-
tive degrees of harmony--let him, in perusing the lyric com-
positions of Horace, be made fully acquainted with the various
measures, which lend to them so powerful a charm, and the
peculiar sweetness and melody by which so many of these are
characterized--and when he shall have done this, he will have
made no mean progress in his acquaintance with the beauties
of ancient poetry; but let him not waste his           on such
an exercise as versification, which is in so great a degree purely
mechanical, and the most successful competitor in which, seems
after all, entitled to no higher praise than that of having shown
the greatest skill in arranging the " disjecta membra" of the
poets of antiquity.