They handed
in written exercises in Latin and Greek which were examined
by the instructor and the faults corrected, and returned.
There were, during the last three years, declamations once
a month, where the boy recited some piece of prose or poetry
in the presence of the class, but got very little instruction
or criticism from the professor. Then, in the last three
years, English themes were required. The subjects were given
out by Professor Channing, himself a most accomplished and
admirable scholar in his line. He seemed to choose his subjects
with a view of taxing the ingenuity of the boy to find anything
to say about them instead of taking something which the boy
knew about and devoting himself to improve his English style
in expressing his thought. Channing was a good critic. His
published lectures on rhetoric and oratory, now almost wholly
forgotten, remind one of Matthew Arnold in their delicate
and discriminating touch. He had a face and figure something
like that of Punch in the frontispiece of that magazine. His
method was to take the themes which the boys handed in one
week, look them over himself, then, a week after, meet the
class, call the boys in succession to sit down in a chair
by the side of his table, read out passages from the theme,
and ridicule them before the others.
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