Abhor, contemn, despise these damned snares.
WILL SUM. Out upon it! who would be a scholar? not I, I promise you: my
mind always gave me this learning was such a filthy thing, which made me
hate it so as I did. When I should have been at school construing,
_Batte, mi fili, mi fili, mi Batte_, I was close under a hedge, or under
a barn-wall, playing at span-counter or jack-in-a-box. My master beat
me, my father beat me, my mother gave me bread and butter, yet all this
would not make me a squitter-book.[122] It was my destiny; I thank her
as a most courteous goddess, that she hath not cast me away upon
gibridge. O, in what a mighty vein am I now against horn-books! Here,
before all this company, I profess myself an open enemy to ink and
paper. I'll make it good upon the accidence, body [of me,] that in
speech is the devil's paternoster. Nouns and pronouns, I pronounce you
as traitors to boys' buttocks; syntaxis and prosodia, you are tormentors
of wit, and good for nothing, but to get a schoolmaster twopence a-week.
Hang, copies! Fly out, phrase-books! let pens be turn'd to pick-tooths!
Bowls, cards, and dice, you are the true liberal sciences! I'll ne'er be
a goosequill, gentlemen, while I live.
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