I think this province
requires great sobriety, temperance, tenderness, diligence, and
discretion; qualities hardly to be found united in persons that are to
be had for ordinary salaries, nor easily to be found any where."
If this, Sir, be the case, does not this excellent author recommend
a scheme that is rendered in a manner impracticable from this
difficulty?
As to these qualities being more rarely to be met with in persons that
are to be had for _ordinary salaries_, I cannot help being of opinion
(although, with Mr. Locke, I think no expence should be spared, if
that _would_ do) that there is as good a chance for finding a proper
person among the needy scholars (if not of a low and sordid turn of
mind) as among the more affluent: because the narrow circumstances of
the former (which probably became a spur to his own improvement) will,
it is likely, at first setting out in the world, make him be glad to
embrace such an offer in a family which has interest enough to prefer
him, and will quicken his diligence to make him _deserve_ preferment;
and if such an one wanted any of that requisite politeness, which some
would naturally expect from scholars of better fortune, might not that
be supplied to the youth by the conversation of parents, relations,
and visitors, in conjunction with those other helps which young men of
family and large expectations constantly have, and which few learned
tutors can give him?
I say not this to countenance the wretched niggardliness (which
this gentleman justly censures) of those who grudge a handsome
consideration to so necessary and painful a labour as that of a tutor,
which, where a deserving man can be met with, cannot be too genteelly
rewarded, nor himself too respectfully treated.
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