A Near Perfect Assignment

"The teacher chose a subject taken sometimes from religion, sometimes from moral subjects, or even from fables, and proposed it to his students.  He said, for instance: Midas obtained from the gods the grace that everything he touched would change into gold: amplify, Messieurs, the disadvantages of this mad demand.  Every young man could see them well as a whole, but each put in the degree of imagination with which he had been provided, and became accustomed to seeing an object from all possible angles.  All these amplifications being done and given to the teacher to read, he showed his disciples what grace and richness Ovid had treated that subject, and it was a new lesson."