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What follows as part of the same note is a letter to a nobleman who had asked Jonson's advice as to the education of his sons, 'and especially to the advancement of their studies.' The kindly and practical wisdom of his counsel is 'not of an age, but for all time': indeed, it is in some points as far ahead of our own age as of the writer's. Though nature 'be proner in some children to some disciplines, yet are they naturally prompt to taste all by degrees, and with change. For change is a kind of refreshing in studies, and infuseth knowledge by way of recreation.' The old Westminster boy, who had paid such loyal homage of gratitude to the 'most reverend head' of his old master, is as emphatic in his preference of public to private education as in his insistence that scholars 'should not be affrighted or deterred in their entry, but drawn on with exercise and emulation.' His illustrious namesake of the succeeding century was hardly more emphatic in his advocacy of the opposite principle. That which Samuel Johnson and Charles Kingsley considered as 'doubtless the best of all punishments' is denounced by Ben Jonson as energetically as by Quintilian: but I trust he would not have preferred to it the execrable modern substitute of torture by