Thomas Beddoes to Maria Thompson, [?1803] (6)
Later years
Sacred to study, teach me to regret
Youth’s unforeseeing indolence, and hours
That cannot be recalled.
So, in some poem, says an old man to an enquiring youth. I do not however suspect my dear ——, that you labour under a want of foresight, or, notwithstanding what —— says, of industry. But it is very heartless to go on making acquisitions, that can answer only a future purpose, without encouragement or participation: and I do not know how you can escape indifference or despondency, except by resolutely fixing your imagination upon a period when you can turn to account whatever knowledge you now acquire: a period most likely, for you, at no desperate distance.
As to Botany, Martyn’s and Rousseau’s letters, or Botanical Dialogues, published by Johnson, will be introduction enough. But then Withering’s arrangement of British plants is quite necessary to make out particular plants. In botany I am much struck with Miss —— ’s industry, whom I have seen week after week, drawing every weed she could find. But this minute industry I cannot enter into. For not many pounds you can buy sufficiently good figures of all the British plants, so that all this labour seems to leave a person almost where they were before. It might make the hours pass less heavily in a prison, where all other occupations were forbidden; but I should think those who were free to chuse would resort to something else; and I have put ——, on learning Latin and Greek, which I dare say she will accomplish. And I confess where there is time, and a little assistance can be had, this is among the resources which I would recommend it to a young woman to provide for herself. It is not merely as objects of taste, that I think the writings of the ancients worth some study, but because the manner in which the poems of Homer and Virgil, &c. &c. have been connected of late years with the history of mankind, has opened an inexhaustible fund of the most entertaining sort of speculation. By connecting the manners of different uncultivated tribes with Homer’s heroes, the spirit of Homer has perhaps been better seized by some very recent critics, than by the Greeks themselves. The ease with which Greek may be learned by pursuing a plan different from schools, has been clearly proved by the L—’s; who, in three months, during which they have devoted a very small portion of the day to it, have become able to make out prose and verse with great ease.
In Arithmetic, you should have a book explaining the reason of the processes; which, if taught by dry rule, seem to me quite insipid, or even odious. But I believe there is no one, who perceives how the tedious counting of piece by piece has been gradually expedited, so that you can now do by a few strokes of a pen what would have taken hours, but is amused by this remarkable specimen of human ingenuity. Several books fully explain the rationale of arithmetical operations. The, best I know, is a little book of Condorcet’s, which I should think might be had under the title of Condorcet’s arithmetic, in French, from Deboffe or any French bookseller in London. I doubt not but it will occupy you agreeably. Let me know if you cannot get it.
I would tell you not to let these studies if you follow any of them, make you too grave: but I believe if they give you any sort of satisfaction, and are accompanied by the consciousness of time well employed, they must have a cheering effect.
Published: Stock, pp. 290–92