Institutio Oratoria

Such plumpness gives hope of strength; a child fully formed in every limb is likely to grow up a puny weakling. The young should be more daring and inventive and should rejoice in their inventions, even though correctness and severity are still to be acquired. Exuberance is easily remedied, but barrenness is incurable, be your efforts what they may.

To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination. I like to see the first fruits of the mind copious to excess and almost extravagant in their profusion. The years as they pass will skim off much of the froth, reason will file away many excrescences, and something too will be removed by what I may perhaps call the wear and tear of life, so long as there is sufficient material to admit of cutting and chiselling away. And there will be sufficient, if only we do not draw the plate too thin to begin with, so that it runs the risk of being broken if the graver cut too deep.

Those of my readers who know their Cicero will not be surprised

I would have the youthful mind run riot in the luxuriance of its growth