A true description of a number of tyrannical pedagogues

About this book

The 8-page pamphlet is bound in a modern hardcover binding with multiple blank pages added at end. The satirical poem is written to the "Sons of Harvard" with unflattering descriptions of Harvard tutors. The poem begins, "Begin, O Muse! and let your themes be these / Tutors forever should their pupils please." The four tutors are not identified by name, but a footnote in the poem indicates by first letter their names. The caustic descriptions begin for the tutors: "For if instead of freedom and of care, The Roman uses supercilious airs" to describe Andrew Eliot, "The stiff logician wipes his greasy face" for Stephen Scales, "The geographic tutor be a fool" for Timothy Hilliard, and "If too instead of an engaging bow, / A frown comes tumbling from the Grecian brow" for Joseph Willard. In the closing lines the poem refers to Harvard by name: "Such are the mushrooms of the present day, That hold o'er H*****d a despotick sway...I would advise the sons of H*****d then, / To let them know, that they are sons of men; / Not brutes, as they would to the world display..."