His scheme is further vitiated by a fault which we should not have looked for in him, indiscriminate reverence for the classical writers, extending to subjects in which they were but children compared with the moderns.

It moves something more than a smile to find ingenuous youth referred to Pliny and Solinus for instruction in physical science; and one wonders what the agricultural Hartlib thought of the proposed course of "Cato, Varro, and Columella," whose precepts are adapted for the climate of Italy.

Another error, obvious to any dunce, was concealed from Milton by his own intellectual greatness.

He legislates for a college of Miltons.
He never suspects that the course he is prescribing would be beyond the abilities of nine hundred and ninety-nine scholars in a thousand, and that the thousandth would die of it.

If a difficulty occurs he contemptuously puts it aside.