The first serious disappointment which John Eliot, the Indian Apostle, experienced, was in his efforts for the instruction of the Indian youth in the classic languages; many of the ablest and most promising among them were set apart for this purpose; his ambition was to bring them up “with our English youth in university learning.” Where was the use of this? Eliot’s best purposes were prone to be carried to excess. He gave away a whole year’s salary, at a wretched cottage, while his wife was probably expecting it at home for household demands. He had learned his Indians to read and write; many could read English well; and now he wished to give them a polite education, that must have sat as gracefully on them as the full-sleeved gown and bands of the divine. Considerable sums were expended in their board and education: a substantial building of brick, which cost between three and four hundred pounds, was erected; it was large enough to accommodate twenty scholars. It must have been Spartan discipline to the heads as well as hearts of the poor Indians, to labour morn and night through the Greek and Roman authors, to try to discover and relish the beauties of style and the splendour of imagery. No doubt, their thoughts sometimes fled away to their deserts, where their fathers roved in dignity and freedom, and books never came. The design might be praiseworthy, but Providence did not smile upon it, most of these young men died when they had made great proficiency in their studies, as if the languages wore out their hearts; others abandoned their books, even when they were prepared to enter Harvard College, in the town of Cambridge; their patience was probably exhausted, and the boon of literary dignity could lure them no further. A few of these, passing from one extreme to the other, burst their bonds at once; and as if mind and body panted together to be free, hastened back to the wilderness again, into its wigwams and swamps; where neither Homer nor Ovid was like to follow them.

“These circumstances proved very discouraging to the godly in New England,” says a contemporary. “Some were so far affected by them, as to conceive that they were manifest tokens of the Divine disapprobation. Mr. Eliot, however, whose faith was more vigorous, considered them merely as trials, to which they ought to submit without reluctance.” In consequence of the death and failure of those who entered the aforesaid building, it was soon after chiefly occupied by the English. Only one of these Indian students appears to have obtained his degree at Harvard College; and at the conclusion of two Latin and Greek elegies, which he composed on the death of an eminent minister, subscribed himself “Cheesecaumuk, Senior Sophista.” What an incongruous blending of sounds!

Eliot at last saw his error, and, instead of the classics, applied with fresh ardour to his more useful translations, of which the circulation was so rapid, that he printed a fresh edition of the “Practice of Piety.” He also soon after established a lecture at Naticke, in which he explained the leading doctrines of theology and logic: here he was on safe ground, and his labours were eminently useful. During the summer months they assembled eagerly once a fortnight, and many of them gained much knowledge; yet he was far from being satisfied with his oral instructions, and he printed a thousand copies of a logic primer, and made little systems of all the liberal arts, for the use of the Indians. The same minds that had pined and sunk beneath the study of the classic tongues, embraced these things with ardour.