Gilbert Burnet
Gilbert Burnet
Gilbert Burnetwas a Scottish philosopher and historian, and Bishop of Salisbury. He was fluent in Dutch, French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Burnet was highly respected as a cleric, a preacher, and an academic, as well as a writer and historian. He was always closely associated with the Whig party, and was one of the few close friends in whom King William III confided...
error great latin learning tedious waste
. . . it a great error to waste young gentlemen's years so long in learning Latin by so tedious a grammar.
amusement return overcoming
...learning chiefly in mathematical sciences can so swallow up and fix one's thought, as to possess it entirely for some time; but when that amusement is over, nature will return, and be where it was, being rather diverted than overcome by such speculations.
strong kings powerful
One of the strangest catastrophes that is in any history. A great king, with strong armies and mighty fleets, a great treasure and powerful allies, fell all at once, and his whole strength, like a spider's web, was... irrecoverably broken at a touch.