The search would cost me small pains. But I press the matter no
further. It is enough that your Lordship sees I have my eye on some,
the most estimable, nay the most accomplished characters, that have
been formed among ourselves: and that even so envied a thing, as a fine
gentleman, has been fashioned on this side the water. But the rarity
of the production, you think, makes against me, and shews there is no
trusting to the stubborn soil and unfriendly climate of our country.
You conclude, upon the whole, for the expediency of foreign travel,
from the acknowledged defects of our authorized seats of learning;
which, according to your Lordship’s idea and representation of them,
are so degenerate and depraved, that nothing of worth and value can be
reasonably expected from that quarter.
This, after all, is your main reason for advising a foreign education.
Your spite is to our Universities; and, to bribe, or rather provoke me
into the same quarrel, your Lordship did not forget to remind me of the
little obligation, which I myself, who was trained in their discipline,
have had to them.
I could assent, perhaps, to some part of this charge. It is certain, at
least, that the prejudices, the bigotry, the false learning, and narrow
principles, which have prevailed too much, and still prevail, in
those famous seminaries, create an unfavourable opinion of them in the
minds of many liberal and discerning persons. Nay, I will not disown
to you, that I have at times been tempted myself to entertain, perhaps
to express, some resentment against them. But we are always severe,
generally unfair, judges in our own case. And, to say the truth, when
the matter comes to be considered impartially and coolly, their faults,
of whatever kind, will admit of much alleviation.
The UNIVERSITIES OF ENGLAND, your Lordship knows, had their rise in
the barbarous ages. The views of their institutors were, accordingly,
such as might be expected from men of their stamp, and in their
circumstances.
These seminaries were more immediately consecrated to the service of
the church; which is the less to be wondered at, as our statesmen,
you know, were, at that time, churchmen. Hence the plan of studies,
prescribed to the youth, would be such as was best adapted to the
occasions of that class of men, in whose instruction the public was
more directly interested.
Besides, the learning of that time was rude and barbarous; and, had
their views been more enlarged, the founders of our colleges had it
not in their power to provide for the encouragement of any other. The
supreme accomplishment even of our men of business was little more than
a readiness in the forms, and a dexterity in the quirks, of the canon
law: and the pride of the most profound scholars lay in applying the
subtleties of the Aristotelian philosophy to theologic and metaphysical
questions; whence too much stress was evidently laid on logical
exercises and scholastic disputations.
’Tis true, some few of our colleges were erected at a time, when
something more light and knowledge had broke in upon us; I mean, during
the progress of the _Reformation_. But the great object that filled all
men’s minds being the dispute with the see of _Rome_, the principal
circumstance that distinguishes these later foundations from the other
is, that their statutes provide more especially for the management of
that controversy. So that, even in these societies, the scholastic
disputative genius still prevailed, to the exclusion of that more
liberal plan of studies, which is fitted to all times, and would have
suited better to the general purpose of these established seats of
education.