to lie chiefly in what relates to _economy of time_, _rewards and
punishments_, the _motives to exertion_, and _voluntary labour_. For,
as to the _musical performances_ (which occur more than twenty times a
day), we see no practical use in them except that they regulate the
marching; and the marching it is said teaches to measure time: and
measuring time accurately contributes 'to the order and celerity with
which the various evolutions of the school are performed,' and also
the conquest of 'serious impediments of speech.' But the latter case
not occurring (we presume) very frequently, and marching accurately
not being wholly dependant on music,--it appears to us that a
practice, which tends to throw an air of fanciful trifling over the
excellent good sense of the system in other respects, would be better
omitted. _Division into classes_ again, though insisted on by the
Experimentalist (see pp. 290, 291) in a way which would lead us to
suppose it a novelty in his own neighbourhood, is next to universal in
England; and in all the great grammar schools has been established for
ages. All that distinguishes this arrangement in his use of it--is
this, that the classes are variable: that is, the school forms by
different combinations according to the subject of study; the boys,
who study Greek together, are not the same who study arithmetic
together. Dismissing therefore these two arrangements as either not
characteristic or not laudably characteristic, we shall make a brief
exposition of the others. 1. _Economy of Time_:--'We have been
startled at the reflection' (says the Experimentalist)--'that if, by a
faulty arrangement, one minute be lost to sixty of our boys, the
injury sustained would be equal to the waste of an hour by a single
individual.' Hence, as the Experimentalist justly argues, the use of
classes; by means of which ten minutes spent by the tutor in
explaining a difficult point to a class of ten boys become equal to
100 minutes distributed amongst them severally. Great improvement in
the economising of time was on this system derived from exacting 'an
almost superstitious punctuality' of the _monitor_, whose duty it is
to summon the school to all its changes of employment by ringing a
bell. It is worthy of notice, but to us not at all surprising,
that--'when the duty of the monitor was easy, and he had time for
play, the exact moment for ringing the bell was but seldom observed:
but when, as the system grew more complex, he was more constantly in
requisition, it was found that with increased labour came increased
perfection: and the same boy who had complained of the difficulty of
being punctual when he had to ring the bell only ten times in the day,
found his duty comparatively easy when his memory was taxed to a
four-fold amount. It is amusing to see what a living timepiece the
giddiest boy will become during his week of office. The succession of
monitors gradually infuses a habit, and somewhat of a love of
punctuality, into the body scholastic itself. The masters also cannot
think of being absent when the scholars are waiting for them: and thus
the nominal and the real hours of attendance become exactly the
same.'--2. _Motives to Exertion._ 'After furnishing the pupil with the
_opportunity_ of spending his time to the greatest advantage, our next
case was to examine how we had supplied him with _motives_' for so
spending it (p. 92). These are ranged under five heads,--'Love of
knowledge--love of employment--emulation--hope of reward--and fear of
punishment,'--and according to what the Experimentalist rightly thinks
'their order of excellence.' The three last, he alleges, are stimuli;
and of necessity lose their power by constant use. Love of employment,
though a more durable motive, leaves the pupil open to the attractions
of any other employment that may chance to offer itself in competition
with knowledge. Love of knowledge for its own sake therefore is the
mainspring relied on; insomuch that the Experimentalist gives it as
his opinion (p. 96) that 'if it were possible for the pupil to acquire
a love of knowledge, and that only during the time he remained at
school, he would have done more towards insuring a stock of knowledge
in maturer age than if he had been the recipient of as much learning
as ever was infused into the passive school-boy' by any means which
fell short of generating such a principle of exertion. We heartily
agree with him: and we are further of opinion that this love needs not
to be generated as an independent birth previously to our commencing
the labour of tuition, but that every system of tuition in proportion
as it approaches to a good one will inevitably involve the generation
of this love of knowledge concurrently with the generation of
knowledge itself. Most melancholy are the cases which have come under
our immediate notice of good faculties wholly lost to their possessor
and an incurable disgust for literature and knowledge founded to our
certain knowledge solely on the stupidity and false methods of the
teacher, who alike in what he knew or did _not_ know was incapable of
connecting one spark of pleasurable feeling with any science, by
leading his pupils' minds to re-act upon the knowledge he attempted to
convey. Being thus important, how shall a love of knowledge be
created? According to the Experimentalist, first of all (p. 97--to the
word 'zest' in p. 107) by combining the sense of obvious _utility_
with all the elementary exercises of the intellect:--secondly (from p.
108--to the word 'rock' in p. 114) by matching the difficulties of the
learner exactly with his capacity:--thirdly (from p. 114--to the word
'attention' in p. 117) by connecting with the learner's progress the
sense of continual success:--fourthly (from p. 117--to the word
'co-operation' in p. 121) by communicating clear, vivid and accurate
conceptions. The first means is illustrated by a reference to the art
of learning a language--to arithmetic--to surveying, and to the
writing of 'themes.' Can any boy, for instance, reconcile himself to
the loathsome effort of learning '_Propria quæ maribus_' by any [but]
the dimmest sense of its future utility? No, we answer with the
Experimentalist: and we go farther even than the Experimentalist is
disposed to do (p. 98); for we deny the existence of any future
utility. We, the reviewer of this book, at eight years of age, though
even then passionately fond of study and disdainful of childish
sports, passed some of the most wretched and ungenial days of our life
in 'learning by _heart_,' as it is called (oh! most ironical
misnomer!), _Propria quæ maribus_, '_Quæ genus_,' and '_As in
præsenti_,' a three-headed monster worse than Cerberus: we _did_ learn
them _ad unguem_; and to this hour their accursed barbarisms cling to
our memory as ineradicably as the golden lines of Æschylus or
Shakspeare. And what was our profit from all this loathsome labour,
and the loathsome heap of rubbish thus deposited in the memory?
Attend, if you please, good reader: the first professes to teach the
irregularities of nouns as to gender (_i. e._ which nouns having a
masculine termination are yet feminine, &c.), the second to teach the
irregularities of nouns as to number (_i. e._ which want the singular,
which the plural), the third to teach the irregularities of verbs (_i. e._
their deviations from the generic forms of the preterite and the
supine): this is what they _profess_ to teach. Suppose then their
professions realised, what is the result? Why that you have
laboriously anticipated a case of anomaly which, if it do actually
occur, could not possibly cost more trouble to explain at the time of
its occurrence than you are thus premising. This is as if a man should
sit down to cull all the difficult cases of action which could ever
occur to him in his relations of son, father, citizen, neighbour,
public functionary, &c. under the plea that he would thus have got
over the labour of discussion before the case itself arrived.
Supposing that this could be accomplished, what would it effect but to
cancel a benevolent arrangement of providence by which the
difficulties of life are distributed with tolerable equality
throughout its whole course, and obstinately to accumulate them all
upon a particular period. Sufficient for the day is its own evil:
dispatch your business as it arises, and every day clears itself: but
suffer a few months of unaudited accounts, or of unanswered letters,
to accumulate; and a mountain of arrears is before you which years
seem insufficient to get rid of. This sort of accumulation arises in
the shape of _arrears_: but any accumulation of trouble out of its
proper place,--_i. e._ of a distributed trouble into a state of
convergement,--no matter whether in the shape of needless anticipation
or needless procrastination, has equally the practical effect of
converting a light trouble (or none at all) into a heavy and hateful
one. The daily experience of books, actual intercourse with Latin
authors, is sufficient to teach all the irregularities of that
language: just as the daily experience of an English child leads him
without trouble into all the anomalies of his own language. And, to
return to the question which we put--'What was our profit from all
this loathsome labour?' In this way it was, viz. in the way of actual
experience that we, the reviewer of this book, did actually in the end
come to the knowledge of those irregularities which the three elegant
poems in question profess to communicate. Mark this, reader: the logic
of what we are saying--is first, that, if they _did_ teach what they
profess, they would attain that end by an artificial means far more
laborious than the natural means: and secondly, that in fact they do
_not_ attain their end. The reason of this--is partly the perplexed
and barbarous texture of the verse, which for metrical purposes, _i. e._
to keep the promise of metre to the mere technical scansion, is
obliged to abandon all those natural beauties of metre in the fluent
connection of the words, in the rhythmus, cadence, cæsura, &c. which
alone recommend metre as a better or more rememberable form for
conveying knowledge than prose: prose, if it has no music, at any rate
does not compel the most inartificial writer to dislocate, and distort
it into non-intelligibility. Another reason is, that '_As in
præsenti_' and its companions, are not so much adapted to the reading
as to the writing of Latin. For instance, I remember (we will suppose)
this sequence of '_tango tetigi_' from the '_As in P_.' Now, if I am
_reading_ Latin I meet either with the tense '_tango_,' or the tense
'_tetigi_.' In the former case, I have no difficulty; for there is as
yet no irregularity: and therefore it is impertinent to offer
assistance: in the latter case I _do_ find a difficulty, for,
according to the models of verbs which I have learned in my grammar,
there is no possible verb which could yield _tetigi_: for such a verb
as _tetigo_ even ought to yield _tetixi_: here therefore I should be
glad of some assistance; but just here it is that I obtain none: for,
because I remember '_tango tetigi_' in the direct order, it is quite
contrary to the laws of association which govern the memory in such a
case, to suppose that I remember the inverted order of _tetigi
tango_--any more than the forward repetition of the Lord's prayer
ensures its backward repetition. The practical applicability of '_As
in præsenti_' is therefore solely to the act of _writing_ Latin: for,
having occasion to translate the words 'I touched' I search for the
Latin equivalent to the English word _touch_--find that it is _tango_,
and then am reminded (whilst forming the preterite) that _tango_ makes
not _tanxi_ but '_tetigi_.' Such a use therefore I might by
possibility derive from my long labours: meantime even here the
service is in all probability doubly superfluous: for, by the time
that I am called on to write Latin at all, experience will have taught
me that _tango_ makes _tetigi_; or, supposing that I am required to
write Latin as one of the earliest means for gaining experience, even
in that case the very same dictionary which teaches me what is Latin
for '_touch_' teaches me what is the irregular preterite and supine of
_tango_. And thus the 'upshot' (to use a homely word) of the whole
business--is that an effort of memory, so great as to be capable
otherwise directed of mastering a science, and secondly (because
directed to an unnatural composition, viz. an arrangement of metre,
which is at once the rudest and the most elaborately artificial), so
disgusting as that no accession of knowledge could compensate the
injury thus done to the simplicity of the child's understanding, by
connecting pain and a sense of unintelligible mystery with his
earliest steps in knowledge,--all this hyperbolical apparatus and
machinery is worked for no one end or purpose that is not better
answered by a question to his tutor, by consulting his dictionary, or
by the _insensible_ progress of daily experience. Even this argument
derived from its utter uselessness does not however weigh so much with
us as the other argument derived from the want of common-sense,
involved in the wilful forestalling and artificial concentrating into
one long rosary of anomalies, what else the nature of the case has by
good luck dispersed over the whole territory of the Latin language. To
be consistent, a tutor should take the same proleptical course with
regard to the prosody of the Latin language: every Latin
hyperdissyllable is manifestly accentuated according to the following
law: if the penultimate be long, that syllable inevitably claims the
accent; if short, inevitably it rejects it--_i. e._ gives it to the
ante-penultimate. The determining syllable is therefore the
penultimate; and for the due reading of Latin the sole question is
about the quantity of the penultimate. According to the logic
therefore which could ever have introduced '_As in præsenti_,' the
tutor ought to make his pupils commit to memory every individual word
in which the quantity was not predetermined by a mechanical rule--(as
it is _e. g._ in the gen. plural _[=o]rum_, of the second declension,
the _[=e]runt_ of the third per. plurals of the preterite, &c., or the
cases where the vowel is long by position). But what man of sense
would forbear to cry out in such a case--'Leave the poor child to his
daily reading: practice, under correct tuition, will give him
insensibly and without effort all that you would thus endeavour to
communicate through a most Herculean exertion.' Whom has it cost any
trouble to learn the accentuation of his own language? How has he
learned _that_? Simply by copying others--and so much without effort,
that the effort (and a very great effort) would have been _not_ to
copy them. In that way let him learn the quantity of Latin and Greek
penultimates. That Edmund Burke could violate the quantity of the word
'Vectigal' was owing to his tutor's ignorance, who had allowed him so
to read it; that Lord North, and every other Etonian in the house,
knew better--was owing not to any disproportionate effort of memory
directed to that particular word, as though they had committed to
memory a rule enjoining them to place the accent on the penultimate of
the word vectigal: their knowledge no more rested on such an
anticipation by express rules of their own experience, than Burke's
ignorance of the quantity on the want of such anticipation; the
anticipation was needless--coming from a tutor who knew the quantity,
and impossible--coming from a tutor who knew it not. At this moment a
little boy (three years old) is standing by our table, and repeatedly
using the word _mans_ for _men_: his sister (five years old), at his
age, made the very same mistake: but she is now correcting her
brother's grammar, which just at this moment he is stoutly
defending--conceiving his dignity involved in the assertion of his own
impeccability. Now whence came the little girl's error and its
correction? Following blindly the general analogy of the language, she
formed her plural by adding an _s_ to the singular: afterwards
everybody about her became a daily monitor--a living _Propria quæ
maribus_, as she is in her turn to her brother, instructing her that
this particular word '_man_' swerved, as to this one particular point,
from the general analogy of the language. But the result is just as
inevitable from daily intercourse with Latin books, as to the parallel
anomalies in that language. In proportion as any case of anomaly could
escape the practical regulation of such an intercourse, just in that
proportion it must be a rare case, and less important to be known:
whatsoever the future experience will be most like to demand, the past
experience will be most likely to have furnished. All this we urge not
against the Eton grammar in particular: on the contrary, as grammars
go, we admire the Eton grammar;[40] and love it with a filial
partiality from early associations (always excepting, however, the
three lead-mines of the Eton grammar, '_Propria quæ maribus_,' &c. of
which it is not extravagant to say, that the author, though possibly a
good sort of a man in his way, has undoubtedly caused more human
suffering than Nero, Robespierre, or any other enemy of the human
race). Our opposition is to the general principle, which lies at the
root of such treatises as the three we have been considering: it will
be observed that, making a proper allowance for the smallness of the
print, these three bodies of absurd anticipations of exceptions, are
collectively about equal in quantity, and virtually for the effort to
the memory far more than equal, to the whole body of the rules
contained in the Accidence and the Syntax: _i. e._ that which exits on
account of many thousand cases is put on the same level of value and
burthen to the memory, as that which exists on account of itself
alone. Here lies the original sin of grammars, the mortal taint on
which they all demand regeneration: whosoever would show himself a
great artist in the profound but as yet infant art of teaching, should
regard all arbitrary taxes upon the memory with the same superstition
that a wise lawgiver should regard the punishment of death: the
lawgiver, who sets out with little knowledge (and therefore little
veneration) of human nature, is perpetually invoking the thunders of
the law to compensate the internal weakness of his own laws: and the
same spirit of levity disposes inefficient teachers to put in motion
the weightiest machinery of the mind for the most trifling purposes:
but we are convinced that this law should be engraven on the title
page of all elementary books--that the memory is degraded, if it be
called in to deliver any individual fact, or any number of individual
facts, or for any less purpose than that of delivering a comprehensive
law, by means of which the understanding is to _produce_ the
individual cases of knowledge wanted. Wherever exceptions or insulated
cases are noticed, except in notes, which are not designed to be
committed to memory, this rule is violated; and the Scotch expression
for particularising, viz. _condescending upon_, becomes applicable in
a literal sense: when the Eton grammar, _e. g._ notices _Deus_ as
deviating in the vocative case from the general law for that
declension, the memory is summoned to an unreasonable act of
condescension--viz. to load itself almost as heavily for one
particular word in one particular case, as it had done by the whole
type of that declension (_i. e._ the implicit law for all words
contained under it, which are possibly some thousands). But how then
would we have such exceptions learnt, if not by an act of the memory?
Precisely, we answer, as the meanings of all the words in the language
are learned: how are _they_ learned? They are known, and they are
remembered: but how? Not by any act or effort of the memory: they are
_deposited_ in the memory from daily intercourse with them: just as
the daily occurrences of our lives are recorded in our memories: not
through any exertion on our part, or in consequence of previous
determination on our parts that we will remember them: on the
contrary, we take no pains about them, and often would willingly
forget them: but they stay there in spite of us, and are pure
_depositions_, settlings, or sediments, with or without our
concurrence, from the stream of our daily experience.--Returning from
this long excursus on arbitrary taxations of the memory suggested to
us by the mention of '_Propria quæ maribus_,' which the
Experimentalist objects to as disgusting to children before they have
had experience of the cases in which it furnishes assistance (but
which we have objected to as in any case barren of all power to
assist), we resume the course of our analysis. We left the
Experimentalist insisting on the benefit of directing the studies of
children into such channels as that the practical _uses_ of their
labours may become apprehensible to themselves--as the first mode of
producing a love of knowledge. In some cases he admits that the pupil
must pass through 'dark defiles,' confiding blindly in his tutor's
'assurance that he will at last emerge into light:' but still contends
that in many cases it is possible, and where possible--right, that he
should 'catch a glimpse of the promised land.' Thus, for example, to
construe the language he is learning--is an act of 'some
respectability in his eyes' and its uses apparent: meantime the uses
of the grammar are not so apparent until experience has brought him
acquainted with the real cases to which it applies. On this
account,--without laying aside the grammar, let him be advanced to the
dignity of actual translation upon the very _minimum_ of grammatical
knowledge which will admit of it. Again, in arithmetic, it is the
received practice to commence with 'abstract numbers:' but, instead of
risking injury to the child's intellect and to his temper by thus
calling upon him to add together 'long rows of figures' to which no
meaning is attached, he is taught 'to calculate all the various little
problems which may be constructed respecting his tops and marbles,
their price, and their comparative value.' Here the Experimentalist
turns aside for about a page (from 'while,' p. 101--to 'practicable,'
p. 102) to 'acknowledge his obligations to what is called Mental
Arithmetic--that is, calculation without the employment of written
symbols.' Jedediah Buxton's preternatural powers in this way have been
long published to the world, and may now be found recorded in
Encyclopædias: the Experimentalist refers also to the more recent
cases of Porson and the American youth Zerah Colborn: amongst his own
pupils it appears (p. 54) that this exercise is practised in the
morning twilight, which for any other study would not furnish
sufficient light: he does not pretend to any very splendid marvels:
but the following facts, previously recited at pp. 16 and 17, he
thinks may astonish 'those who have not estimated the combined power
of youth, ardour, and practice.' The lower classes calculate, purely
by the mind without any help from pen or pencil, questions respecting
interest; determine whether a given year be bissextile or not, &c. &c.
The upper classes determine the age of the moon at any given time, the
day of the week which corresponds with any day of any month, and year,
and Easter Sunday for a given year. They will square any number not
exceeding a thousand, extract the square root of a number of not more
than five places, determine the space through which a body falls in a
given time, the circumference and areas of circles from their
diameters, and solve many problems in mensuration: they practise also
Mental Algebra, &c. In mental, no less than in written, Arithmetic,
'by assimilating the questions to those which actually occur in the
transactions of life,' the pupil is made sensible that he is rising
into the usefulness and respectability of real business. The imitative
principle of man is thus made to blend with the motive derived from
the sense of utility. The same blended feelings, combined with the
pleasurable influences of open air, are relied upon for creating the
love of knowledge in the practice of surveying. In this operation so
large an aggregate of subsidiary knowledge is demanded,--of
arithmetic, for instance--of mensuration--of trigonometry, together
with 'the manual facility of constructing maps and plans,' that a
sudden revelation is made to the pupils of the uses and
indispensableness of many previous studies which hitherto they had
imperfectly appreciated; they also 'exercise their discretion in
choosing points of observation; they learn expertness in the use, and
care in the preservation of instruments: and, above all,--from this
feeling that they are really _at work_, they acquire that sobriety and
steadiness of conduct in which the elder school-boy is so often
inferior to his less fortunate neighbour, who has been removed at an
early age to the accompting-house.'--The value of the sense of utility
the Experimentalist brings home forcibly to every reader's
recollections, by reminding him of the many cases in which a sudden
desire for self-education breaks out in a few months after the close
of an inefficient education: 'and what,' he asks, 'produces the
change? The experience, however short, of the utility of acquisitions,
which were perhaps lately despised.' Better then 'to spare the future
man many moments of painful retrospection,' by educing this sense of
utility, 'while the time and opportunity of improvement remain
unimpaired.' Finally, the sense of utility is connected with the
peculiar exercises in _composition_; 'a department of education which
we confess' (says the Experimentalist) 'has often caused us
considerable uneasiness;' an uneasiness which we, on our part, look
upon as groundless. For starting ourselves from the same point with
the Experimentalist and the authority he alleges--viz. that the
_matter_ of a good theme or essay altogether transcends the reflective
powers and the opportunities for observing of a raw school-boy,--we
yet come to a very different practical conclusion. The act of
composition cannot, it is true, create thoughts in a boy's head unless
they exist previously. On this consideration, let all questions of
general speculation be dismissed from school exercises: especially
questions of _moral_ speculation, which usually furnish the thesis of
a school-boy's essay: let us have no more themes on Justice--on
Ambition--on Benevolence--on the Love of Fame, &c.: for all theses
such as these, which treat moral qualities as pure abstractions, are
stripped of their _human_ interest: and few adults even could write
endurably upon such subjects in such a shape; though many might have
written very pleasingly and judiciously upon a moral _case_--_i. e._
on a moral question _in concreto_. Grant that a school-boy has no
independent thoughts of any value; yet every boy has thoughts
dependent upon what he has read--thoughts involved in it--thoughts
derived from it: but these he will (_cæteris paribus_) be more or less
able to express, as he has been more or less accustomed to express
them. The unevolved thoughts which pass through the youngest--the
rudest--the most inexperienced brain, are innumerable; not
detached--voluntary thoughts, but thoughts inherent in what is seen,
talked of, experienced, or read of. To evolve these, to make them
apprehensible by others, and often even to bring them within their own
consciousness, is very difficult to most people; and at times to all
people: and the power, by which this difficulty is conquered, admits
of endless culture: and, amongst the modes of culture, is that of
written composition. The true value of this exercise lies in the
necessity which it imposes of forming distinct ideas--of connecting
them--of disposing them into such an arrangement as that they can be
connected--of clothing them in words--and many more acts of the mind:
both analytic and synthetic. All that is necessary is--to determine
for the young composer his choice of matter: require him therefore to
narrate an interesting story which he has formerly read; to rehearse
the most interesting particulars of a day's excursion: in the case of
more advanced students, let them read one of the English state trials,
where the evidence is of a complex character (as the trials on Titus
Oates's plot), or a critical dissertation on some interesting
question, or anything in short which admits of analysis--of
abstraction--of expansion--or exhibition in an altered shape. Subjects
for all this are innumerable; and, according to the selection made,
more or less opportunity is given for collecting valuable knowledge:
but this purpose is collateral to the one we are speaking of: the
direct purpose is to exercise the mind in unravelling its own
thoughts, which else lie huddled and tangled together in a state unfit
for use, and but dimly developed to the possessor's own
consciousness.--The three other modes of producing a love of
knowledge, which the Experimentalist relies on, viz. the proportioning
the difficulties to the capacity of the learner, the pleasure of
success, and the communication of clear, vivid, and accurate
conceptions, are treated with good sense--but not with any great
originality: the last indeed (to speak scholastically) contains the
other three _eminenter_: for he, who has once arrived at clear
conceptions in relation to the various objects of his study, will not
fail to generate for himself the pleasure of success; and so of the
rest. But the power of communicating 'accurate conceptions' involves
so many other powers, that it is in strictness but another name for
the faculty of teaching in general. We fully agree with the
Experimentalist (at p. 118), that the tutor would do well 'to provide
himself with the various weights commonly spoken of, and the measures
of content and of length; to portion off upon his play-ground a
land-chain, a rood,' &c. to furnish 'maps' tracing 'the routes of
armies;' 'plates exhibiting the costumes' of different nations: and
more especially we agree with him (at p. 135) that in teaching the
classics the tutor should have at hand 'plates or drawings of ships,