it.⸺But, alack! all fields have not a river or a spring running besides them;—every child, Yorick , has not a parent to point it out.
⸺The whole entirely depends, added my father, in a low voice, upon the auxiliary verbs , Mr. Yorick .
Had Yorick trod upon Virgil’s snake, he could not have looked more surprised.—I am surprised too, cried my father, observing it,—and I reckon it as one of the greatest calamities which ever befell the republic of letters, That those who have been entrusted with the education of our children, and whose business it was to open their minds, and stock them early with ideas, in order to set the imagination loose upon them, have made so little use of the auxiliary verbs in doing it, as they have done⸺So that, except Raymond Lullius , and the elder Pelegrini , the last of which arrived to such perfection in the use of ’em, with his topics, that, in a few lessons, he could teach a young gentleman to discourse with plausibility upon any subject, pro and con, and to say and write all that could be spoken or written concerning it, without blotting a word, to the admiration of all who beheld him.—I should be glad, said Yorick , interrupting my father, to be made to comprehend this matter. You shall, said my father.
The highest stretch of improvement a single word is capable of, is a high metaphor,⸺for which, in my opinion, the idea is generally the worse, and not the better;⸺but be that as it may,—when the mind has done that with it—there is an end,—the mind and the idea are at rest,—until a second idea enters;⸺and so on.
Now the use of the Auxiliaries is, at once to set the soul a-going by herself upon the materials as they are brought her; and by the versability of this great engine, round which they are twisted, to open new tracts of enquiry, and make every idea engender millions.
You excite my curiosity greatly, said Yorick .