Schools, School-Books and Schoolmasters Part 10

But even MILTON could not desist from entering into the compet.i.tion, and, two years after the appearance of _Paradise Lost_, when the writer was, of course, sufficiently well known both as a political controversialist and a poet, yet scarcely so famous as he became and remains, came out a little volume called _Accidence Commenc'd Grammar_, of which the main object was to reduce into an English digest the Latin _Accidence and Grammar_, by which the ill.u.s.trious writer declared and complained that ten years of an ordinary life were consumed.

But advocates of particular theories had a very slender chance of success, even where their promoters were persons so distinguished as Ben Jonson and Milton, unless they possessed some advent.i.tious interest or appealed to popular sentiment.

_A Little Book for Little Children_, by Thomas White, minister of the Gospel, had an astonis.h.i.+ng run, for instance; there were at least a dozen editions; but it was embellished with choice woodcuts of the Catnach school, and enlivened by a string of stories which, if they are not vapid and silly, are simply outrageous and revolting. The sole redeeming feature is, that among the alphabets occurs what is sometimes called "Tom Thumb's Alphabet,"--"A was an Archer, and shot at a Frog,"--which is not found in the earlier primers, so far as I know, and may have been specially written by White or for him.

But the numerous experimental essays of ambitious schoolmasters and other friends to the cause of learning which found their way into type at various times, were, as a rule, speedily consigned to oblivion; the production of a successful school-book was a task demanding a rare union of tact in structure with influence in initiative quarters; and Lily's Primer, itself based on the labours of his predecessors, was generally adopted by the endowed schools throughout England, Wales and Scotland at first, and indeed till somewhere in the early years of the eighteenth century, with some modifications of detail and spelling, but at last in the form of the Eton or the Westminster Grammar, which Carlisle reports in 1818 as in almost universal use in this country. The exceptions which he names were then very few, and we see that they were nearly always in favour of some text-book introduced by local agency.

This was the case at Reading, where it appears that the system of teaching was founded on those of Westminster, Eton, and Winchester. At Aylesbury, Owen's _Latin Grammar_ and the Eton Greek Grammar used to be employed. At Bodmin, Valpy's _Greek Grammar_, and at Faversham, Lily's _Latin Primer_, edited by Ward, were preferred. At some minor schools, where a boy was intended for any of the great foundations, special books were placed in his hands to facilitate preparation.

But the course of instruction at some of these inst.i.tutions, outside the elementary stage, was remarkably liberal and extensive, and enabled a boy of ability to ground himself, at all events, very fairly in the Greek and Roman cla.s.sics. This was, it must be borne in mind, however, the dawn of a new era--the first quarter of the nineteenth century.

A cla.s.s of men who influentially helped to carry on the succession of school-books and the slower process of amendment were the private tutors in n.o.ble or distinguished families, who, when their services were no longer required, if they did not obtain immediate preferment, received pupils or opened proprietary establishments. They were, for the most part, university graduates and persons of fair attainments, who were glad enough to introduce into print, with a double eye to their own scholars and the public, the system or theory with which they had started, and which in their hands underwent, perhaps, certain modifications.

Matthias Prideaux, of Exeter College, Oxford, and A. Lane, M.A., were at the outset of their careers retainers of this kind in the great Devons.h.i.+re family of Reynell. The former signalised himself by the _Introduction to History_, which, whatever our verdict upon it may be, was a highly successful venture, and, after serving its original purpose as a cla.s.s-book for his private pupils, the sons of Sir Thomas Reynell, was printed and held the market for many years. Lane, who was a man of ability and intelligence, makes his patron, Sir Richard Reynell, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, share with him the credit of his _Rational and Speedy Method of attaining to the Latin Tongue_, 1695, which he had been encouraged by Sir Richard to pursue with young Reynell, a boy of eight, and which formed, no doubt, the basis of his system when he embarked on tuition as a career. He presided at first over the free school at Leominster, but subsequently set up for himself at Mile End Green, where he would be at fuller liberty to follow his own bent.

Lane desires us to believe that the progress made by his young pupil, while he was under his charge, was little less than miraculous; but an earlier writer, Christopher Syms, in his _Introduction to the Art of Teaching the Latin Speech_, 1634, gives hope to the dullest boy that, by the use of his method, he may acquire it in four years.

From the sixteenth century downward, there seems to have been a succession of compet.i.tors to public favour and support in this, as in every other, department of activity; and among the whole crowd of aspirants there was not one who succeeded in discovering the true principles of the art till our own time.

IV. The absence of newspapers or other ready means of communication necessitated a resort to a system of advertising educational establishments through the medium of broadsides, in which were set forth the advantages of particular inst.i.tutions and the branches of knowledge in which instruction was to be had there. As early as 1562, Humphrey Baker, of London, published an arithmetical work ent.i.tled _The Wellspring of Sciences_, which was frequently reprinted both in his lifetime and after his decease; but he was a teacher of the art, as well as a writer upon it, and there is a printed sheet announcing his arrangements for receiving pupils, and giving lessons in that and various other subjects. For, as the terms of the doc.u.ment, herewith annexed, shew, Baker had in his employment other gentlemen, who a.s.sisted him in his scholastic labours:--

"Such as are desirous, eyther themselves to learne, or to have theyr children or servants instructed in any of these Arts and Faculties heere under named: It may please them to repayre unto the house of _Humfry Baker_, dwelling on the North side of the Royall Exchange, next adjoyning to the signe of the s.h.i.+ppe. Where they shall fynde the Professors of the said Artes, &c. Readie to doe their diligent endevours for a reasonable consideration. Also if any be minded to have their children boorded at the said house, for the speedier expedition of their learning, they shall be well and reasonably used, to theyr contentation.... The Arts and Faculties to be taught are these, ... G.o.d save the Queene."

The case of Baker merely stands alone because we do not happen to be in possession of any similar contemporary testimony. But schoolmasters who resided at their own private houses found it, of course, indispensable to adopt some method or other of making their professional whereabouts known, as we find Peter Bales, the Elizabethan calligraphist, and author of the _Writing School-master_, 1590, notifying, at the foot of the t.i.tle to his book, that it was to be sold at his house in the upper end of the Old Bailey, "where he teacheth the said Arts." Bales probably rented the house, and underlet such portions as he did not require; for at the end of Ripley's _Compound of Alchemy_, 1591, Rabbards, the translator, asks those who had any corrections to suggest in the text to send them to him at the house of Peter Bales.

Preceptors naturally congregated near the centre of mercantile life.

XI.

Proposed University of London in 1647--The _Museum Minervae_ at Bethnal Green--Its catholic character and liberal programme--Calligraphy--Shorthand--Bright's system patented in 1588--Education in the provinces--The old school at Manchester--Shakespear's _Sir Hugh Evans_ and _Holofernes_--William Hazlitt's account of his Shrops.h.i.+re school in 1788.

I. It is a fact, probably within the knowledge of very few, that two hundred years and more before the actual establishment of the University of London, a project for such an inst.i.tution was mooted by an anonymous pamphleteer, who may be considered as a kind of pioneer, preceding the Benthams and Broughams.

I hold in my hand _Motives Grounded upon the Word of G.o.d, and upon Honour, Profit, and Pleasure for the present Founding an University in the Metropolis, London_, 1647. It purports to be the work of "a true Lover of his Nation, and especially of the said City."

The lines and object in this piece are purely clerical. The author maintains the insufficiency of the two existing Universities and the College in Ireland to rear as many "sons of the Prophets"--an euphemism for parsons--to attend upon the spiritual needs of the English and the Londoners.

He puts down on paper statistics of the number of scholars at Oxford and Cambridge, and he argues that if the total were much larger--10,000 instead of 5900--there would be no means of raising the 20,000 preachers necessary in his view to carry on the business of religion. He pleads the fall of Episcopacy in support of his scheme, as "we cannot hope," he says, "that so many will apply their studies to Divinity, and therefore have the greater need to maintain the more poor scholars at our Universities," or, in other words, the absence of the prizes in the lottery had taken the best men out of the market. In fact, the writer himself does not shrink altogether from presenting the commercial side of the question, for he observes:--"Without injury unto any, an University in London would increase London's Trading, and inrich London, as the Scholars do Cambridge and Oxford, where how many poor people also are benefited by the Colleges, yea, the countries round about them."

So far, so good; but he, in the very next paragraph, strikes a chord which jars upon the ear. We see that he is a partisan of that theory which flourished here down to our own day, and which contributed so powerfully to r.e.t.a.r.d and cripple our scholastic and academical studies. Hear what he says: "If here in London there be a College, in which _nothing but Latin_ shall be spoken, and your children put into it, and from ten years old to twelve hear no other Language, in those two years they will be able to speak as good Latin as they do English, and as readily. The Roman children learned Latin as ours do English...;" and so he goes on as to Greek, Hebrew, Italian, French, and Spanish.

The sole point here, in our modern estimation, is the admission of the three living languages into the curriculum, in order to qualify the students in later life to make themselves understood abroad either as merchants or as diplomatists. But here he was before his time. Nothing of the kind was to be attempted in England for generations. For generations Englishmen were to be instructed only in the dead tongues, and were to have not an English, but a Latin Grammar put into their hands age after age.

He talks about the Roman youth learning Latin as we do English; but he failed, perhaps, to perceive that they did not learn British or Gaulish as we do Latin. His text is wealthy in Scriptural quotations and parallels; but whatever one may think of his notions regarding the details and advantages of such a plan, this unnamed "true Lover of his Nation" is ent.i.tled, at any rate, to the credit and distinction of having been apparently the first to suggest what we have now before us in the shape of an accomplished fact.

It is not too much to a.s.sert, probably, that if the appearance of this tract had been followed by the execution of the ideas enunciated in it, the force of opinion would by this time have spared very little of the work of the original promoters.

II. The _Musaeum Minervae_, inst.i.tuted by Sir Balthazar Gerbier d'Ouvilly at Bethnal Green in 1635, presents a thorough contrast to those philanthropic or eleemosynary inst.i.tutions of which I have lately spoken, inasmuch as it was a novel and costly apparatus of Continental origin, calculated only for the children of rich persons and for those who desired to complete themselves in various accomplishments. Lectures were delivered on several subjects, and printed afterwards for circulation; but the enterprise did not succeed, and the outbreak of the Civil War probably sealed its doom.

Yet as late as 1649 the management, or the founder himself, issued a prospectus of the different branches of learning and culture which were taught at this establishment. The language of this doc.u.ment, which is curious enough to append entire, portends the approaching collapse, and reads like a final appeal to public spirit and patronage:--

"To all Fathers of n.o.bLE FAMILIES and Lovers of VERTUE: Sir Balthazar Gerbier desires once more that the Publique may be pleased to take notice of his great labours and indeavours by the Erection of an Academy on Bednall Green without Aldgate. To teach _Hebrew_, _Greek_, _Latine_, _French_, _Italian_, _Spanish_, _High Dutch_, and _Low Dutch_, both Ancient and Modern _Histories_, joyntly with the Const.i.tutions and Governments of the most famous _Empires_ and _Dominions_ in the World, the true Naturall and Experimentall _Philosophy_, the _Mathematicks_, _Arithmetick_, and the keeping _Bookes of Accounts_ by _Creditor_ and _Debitor_. All excellent _Handwriting, Geometrie, Cosmography, Geography, Perspective, Architecture, Secret Motions of Scenes, Fortifications, the besieging & Defending of Places, Fire-Works, Marches of Armies, Ordering of Battailes, Fencing, Vaulting, Riding the Great Horse, Musick, Playing on all sorts of Instruments, Dancing, Drawing, Painting, Limning, and Carving, &c._"

It is at once apparent that the programme of the Bethnal Green Academy was too ambitious and expensive to suit moderate careers and limited resources. Perhaps if it had been so fortunate as to outlive the Restoration it might have proved a success, as the range was sufficiently capacious to accommodate those who contented themselves with ordinary school or college routine; those who preferred a study of the sciences and arts; and, again, such as desired a special professional training.

The establishment of the _Musaeum_ in 1635 had been inaugurated by a dramatic performance, which the Court honoured with its presence; and in the following year the _Const.i.tutions_, as they are called, were printed.

These give, but of course with more detail, the particulars which present themselves in the advertis.e.m.e.nt just noticed; and they also shew that there was a preparatory school attached to the _Musaeum_, from which the pupils might be drafted into the higher one.

The subjects taught exhibit a diversity of character and a width of sympathy which are powerfully at variance with the meagre programmes of the old-fas.h.i.+oned public foundations. They comprised Heraldry, Conveyancing, Common Law, Antiquities (including Numismatics), Agriculture, Arithmetic, Architecture, Fortification, Geography, Languages, and Elocution, with many more matters.

It is worth remarking that now for the first time the German tongue was included in the list of those which were recommended and set down for study, while the Dutch also occurs in the list. Elocution or "the art of well-speaking," as it is termed, was also a novel feature; and, in point of fact, Gerbier, who had travelled much abroad and observed the superior educational systems of foreign countries, sought to introduce here the same catholic and liberal spirit, instead of the imperfect and cramped course of studies with which Englishmen were forced to be contented, and which had scarcely emerged from mediaeval simplicity and crudity.

The _Musaeum Minervae_, of which a Shrops.h.i.+re gentleman, Sir Francis Kinaston, of Oteley, was the first Regent, collapsed about 1650; but its example and influence survived, and it was the forerunner of a broader and more enlightened educational policy and of the modern type of training colleges, into which even those ancient endowed schools which remain have been compelled by the force of public opinion, one by one, to resolve themselves.

These Academies present a very powerful contrast to the archaic school in the multiplicity of acquirements, and in the breadth or variety of culture which they afforded and encouraged. They betoken a development of social wants and refinements, and the force of influences received from surrounding countries. It was a supply which responded to a demand; and it helped to create or extend a field of literary industry in the form of technical publications dealing with the princ.i.p.al subjects, which the _Musaeum Minervae_ and other a.n.a.logous inst.i.tutions included in their scheme. To the treatises on Riding, Swimming, Drawing, Writing, and a few other arts were added Manuals for the use of those who studied, at the College or under private instructors, the sciences of Fencing, Vaulting, Small Sword Exercise, Fortification, and the accomplishments specified in the programme of the Minerva Museum. A constant succession of text-books for pupils in nearly all these branches of a polite education kept the makers and the vendors of them busy from the age of Elizabeth downward; and long lists might be furnished of contributions to every department, both by professional experts and by amateurs of practical experience.

Ladies, who desired to learn anything special in excess of the narrow educational routine then deemed sufficient for the call of their s.e.x, depended on private tutors, who usually waited upon them at their own homes. Thomas Greeting taught Mrs. Pepys the flageolet, for example, and the same lady had lessons in drawing from Alexander Browne, who made the diarist angry at first, because he was asked by Mrs. Pepys to stay dinner sometimes, and to sit at table with her husband.

The importance of calligraphy was recognised long before the date of any literary monuments of its development. The earliest professor of the art who appeared in print among us was a Frenchman, Jean de Beauchesne, who resided in Blackfriars, and published in 1570 his writing-book, in which he affords specimens of all the usual hands, English and French secretary, Italian, Chancery, and Court. Even the extant productions of this cla.s.s, including those of the immortal c.o.c.ker, would fill a considerable s.p.a.ce in a bookcase; and many belonged to the calling without the parade of authors.h.i.+p, while of such fugitive performances the remains are apt to be incomplete, and to present us with a list of names far from exhaustive.

In his "Pen's Triumph," 1660, c.o.c.ker, who is better remembered as an author on arithmetic, perhaps for no farther reason than the force of the adage, but who was also a lexicographer and a voluminous producer of writing-books, instructs his pupils and the public not merely in all the hands at that time employed for various objects, but how "to write with gold," which was, of course, no novelty, but had been more in vogue on the Continent than here.

Entire works were executed in autograph MS. by experts, both in England and abroad, for the purpose of presentation to n.o.ble or royal personages; and Ballard gives a copious account of a lady, named Esther Inglis, who, in the early portion of the seventeenth century, signalised her talent and ingenuity in this way. Her work was remarkable for the minuteness and exquisite delicacy of its characters; but nearly all the professional writing-masters introduced into their copybooks bold and intricate designs, and figures of animals, for the sake of rendering the volumes more attractive, and ill.u.s.trating the capabilities of the goose-quill.

Among our foremost literary celebrities, Shakespear wrote the Court hand, judging from his signature, and Bacon and Ben Jonson the Italian.

Charactery, or the art of shorthand, was introduced into the Nonconformist schools as a taught subject for the sake of enabling youths or others to take notes of sermons and lectures; and some of the discourses from the pulpit in the time of Elizabeth purport to have been printed from shorthand notes. Dr. Bright, who was the writer of a work on Melancholy long antecedent to Burton's, procured an exclusive right in 1588 to publish a system which he had invented for this purpose, and which we find described by him as "an art of short, swift, and secret writing." He set in motion an idea which met with such numerous imitators and improvers, that a catalogue of the publications on Tachygraphy down to the present date forms a volume of respectable dimensions. Bright was nearly a century before the more celebrated Rich, who flourished about the Restoration of the Stuarts, and whose cypher was adopted by Pepys in the composition of his diary.

III. The public schools were not the first in emulating and continuing the policy which Gerbier had laboured so hard and so long to establish. On a less expensive and ostentatious scale certain private academies adopted the idea of supplementing the subjects taught in the great foundations by some, at least, of the manly or elegant arts which had figured in the old Bethnal Green prospectus.

At the end of a Musical Entertainment, prepared in 1676 for recitation by some school-boys in the presence of certain persons of quality, the master favours us with some particulars of the subjects which pupils might take up in his establishment, and it is also inferable that the hours of study extended to at least five o'clock in the evening. He says in a kind of postscript to the printed tract:--

"The Arts and Sciences taught and practis'd in the Academy are these.

_All sorts of Instruments, Singing and Dancing.

French and Italian.

The Mathematicks.

Grammar, Writing and Arithmetick.

Painting and Drawing.

Fencing, Vaulting and Wrastling._"