25.1.08

WHEN HE'S RIGHT, HE'S RIGHT: John Locke, letter to Edward Clarke:

But the learning of Latin being nothing but the learning of words, a very unpleasant task both to young and old, join as much other real knowledge with it as you can...



...and sometimes he's not:

That [manual trade] of all others would please me best would be a painter, had it not one considerable argument against it, which is this, that ill painting is one of the worst things in the world; and to attain a tolerable degree of skill in it requires too much of a man's time. If he has a natural inclination to it, it will endanger a neglect of all other more useful studies, to give way to that which if he have no inclination to it, all the time, pains, and money shall be employed in it will be thrown away to no purpose. And therefore I think not of painting.


He says similar things about poetry, btw.

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