this I say, that the making of themes, as is usual at schools, helps not one jot towards it: for do but consider what it is, in making a theme, that a young lad is employed about; it is to make a speech on some Latin saying; as Omnia vincit amor ; or Non licet in Bello bis peccare , etc. And here the poor lad, who wants knowledge of those things he is to speak of, which is to be had only from time and observation, must set his invention on the rack, to say something where he knows nothing; which is a sort of Egyptian tyranny, to bid them make bricks who have not yet any of the materials. And therefore it is usual in such cases for the poor children to go to those of higher forms with this petition, “Pray give me a little sense”; which, whether it be more reasonable or more ridiculous, it is not easy to determine. Before a man can be in any capacity to speak on any subject, ’tis necessary he be acquainted with it; or else it is as foolish to set him to discourse of it, as to set a blind man to talk of colours, or a deaf man of music. And would you not think him a little cracked, who would require another to make an argument on a moot point, who understands nothing of our laws? And what, I pray, do schoolboys understand concerning those matters which are used to be proposed to them in their themes as subjects to discourse on, to whet and exercise their fancies?
§172. In the next place, consider the language that their themes are made in: ’tis Latin, a language foreign in their country, and long since dead everywhere: a language which your son, ’tis a thousand to one, shall never have an occasion once to make a speech in as long as he lives after he comes to be a man; and a language wherein the manner of expressing one’s self is so far different from ours, that to be perfect in that would very little improve the purity and facility of his English style. Besides that, there is now so little room or use for set speeches in our own language in any part of our English business, that I can see no pretence for this sort of exercise in our schools, unless it can be supposed, that the making of set Latin speeches should be the way to teach men to speak well in English extempore. The way to that, I should think rather to be