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the world, of which every day’s experience furnisheth
instances.”
Locke also had previously pronounced the opinion
that “ a great part of the learning then in fashion in
the schools might be left out from the education of a
gentleman without any great disparagement to himself,
or prejudice to his affairs.” “ School learning,” as Mr.
Quick has, no doubt justly, observed,1 “was in those
days even more estranged from the business of life than
it has been since.” Thus the protest of Defoe, who
looked on life from a practical point of view, seems
fully explained and justified.
At the same time Defoe also takes occasion to de-
nounce the practice of teaching in Latin, then general
at grammar schools and the Universities, observing
that if “ science and all the liberal arts ” were taught in
English, this would greatly help to soon do away with
the ignorance of the gentry (p. 208).
The work is written in the classic style which has so
often been praised in Defoe. His mastery of language
in this late work is still as complete and admirable as
ever ; the sentences flow in an uninterrupted stream,
and the author never seems to hesitate except, as indeed
often happens, to return to his proper subject after a
digression into which his flood of language has carried
him. The most obvious peculiarity of his diction is
the tendency to write over-long sentences, and to use
as many words as possible ; but this excessive copious-
ness of expression rarely or never destroys the lucidity, or
even the simplicity, of his language. He never indulges
1 Essays on Educational Reformers, 2nd edition, Cincinnati,
1888, p. 85.