My reading has been lamentably desultory and immethodical. Odd, out of
the way, old English plays, and treatises, have supplied me with most
of my notions, and ways of feeling. In every thing that relates to
_science_, I am a whole Encyclopædia behind the rest of the world.
I should have scarcely cut a figure among the franklins, or country
gentlemen, in king John's days. I know less geography than a
school-boy of six weeks' standing. To me a map of old Ortelius is as
authentic as Arrowsmith. I do not know whereabout Africa merges into
Asia; whether Ethiopia lie in one or other of those great divisions;
nor can form the remotest conjecture of the position of New South
Wales, or Van Diemen's Land. Yet do I hold a correspondence with a
very dear friend in the first-named of these two Terræ Incognitæ.
I have no astronomy. I do not know where to look for the Bear, or
Charles's Wain; the place of any star; or the name of any of them at
sight. I guess at Venus only by her brightness--and if the sun on
some portentous morn were to make his first appearance in the West, I
verily believe, that, while all the world were gasping in apprehension
about me, I alone should stand unterrified, from sheer incuriosity
and want of observation. Of history and chronology I possess some
vague points, such as one cannot help picking up in the course of
miscellaneous study; but I never deliberately sat down to a chronicle,
even of my own country. I have most dim apprehensions of the four
great monarchies; and sometimes the Assyrian, sometimes the Persian,
floats as _first_ in my fancy. I make the widest conjectures
concerning Egypt, and her shepherd kings. My friend _M._, with great
painstaking, got me to think I understood the first proposition in
Euclid, but gave me over in despair at the second. I am entirely
unacquainted with the modern languages; and, like a better man than
myself, have "small Latin and less Greek." I am a stranger to the
shapes and texture of the commonest trees, herbs, flowers--not from
the circumstance of my being town-born--for I should have brought the
same inobservant spirit into the world with me, had I first seen it
in "on Devon's leafy shores,"--and am no less at a loss among purely
town-objects, tools, engines, mechanic processes.--Not that I affect
ignorance--but my head has not many mansions, nor spacious; and I have
been obliged to fill it with such cabinet curiosities as it can hold
without aching. I sometimes wonder, how I have passed my probation
with so little discredit in the world, as I have done, upon so meagre
a stock. But the fact is, a man may do very well with a very little
knowledge, and scarce be found out, in mixed company; every body is so
much more ready to produce his own, than to call for a display of your
acquisitions. But in a _tête-à-tête_ there is no shuffling. The truth
will out. There is nothing which I dread so much, as the being left
alone for a quarter of an hour with a sensible, well-informed man,
that does not know me. I lately got into a dilemma of this sort.--
In one of my daily jaunts between Bishopsgate and Shacklewell, the
coach stopped to take up a staid-looking gentleman, about the wrong
side of thirty, who was giving his parting directions (while the
steps were adjusting), in a tone of mild authority, to a tall youth,
who seemed to be neither his clerk, his son, nor his servant, but
something partaking of all three. The youth was dismissed, and
we drove on. As we were the sole passengers, he naturally enough
addressed his conversation to me; and we discussed the merits of the
fare, the civility and punctuality of the driver; the circumstance of
an opposition coach having been lately set up, with the probabilities
of its success--to all which I was enabled to return pretty
satisfactory answers, having been drilled into this kind of etiquette
by some years' daily practice of riding to and fro in the stage
aforesaid--when he suddenly alarmed me by a startling question,
whether I had seen the show of prize cattle that morning in
Smithfield? Now as I had not seen it, and do not greatly care for
such sort of exhibitions, I was obliged to return a cold negative. He
seemed a little mortified, as well as astonished, at my declaration,
as (it appeared) he was just come fresh from the sight, and doubtless
had hoped to compare notes on the subject. However he assured me that
I had lost a fine treat, as it far exceeded the show of last year. We
were now approaching Norton Falgate, when the sight of some shop-goods
_ticketed_ freshened him up into a dissertation upon the cheapness of
cottons this spring. I was now a little in heart, as the nature of my
morning avocations had brought me into some sort of familiarity with
the raw material; and I was surprised to find how eloquent I was
becoming on the state of the India market--when, presently, he dashed
my incipient vanity to the earth at once, by inquiring whether I had
ever made any calculation as to the value of the rental of all the
retail shops in London. Had he asked of me, what song the Sirens sang,
or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, I
might, with Sir Thomas Browne, have hazarded a "wide solution."[1] My
companion saw my embarrassment, and, the almshouses beyond Shoreditch
just coming in view, with great good-nature and dexterity shifted
his conversation to the subject of public charities; which led to
the comparative merits of provision for the poor in past and present
times, with observations on the old monastic institutions, and
charitable orders;--but, finding me rather dimly impressed with
some glimmering notions from old poetic associations, than strongly
fortified with any speculations reducible to calculation on the
subject, he gave the matter up; and, the country beginning to open
more and more upon us, as we approached the turnpike at Kingsland (the
destined termination of his journey), he put a home thrust upon me, in
the most unfortunate position he could have chosen, by advancing some
queries relative to the North Pole Expedition. While I was muttering
out something about the Panorama of those strange regions (which I had
actually seen), by way of parrying the question, the coach stopping
relieved me from any further apprehensions. My companion getting out,
left me in the comfortable possession of my ignorance; and I heard
him, as he went off, putting questions to an outside passenger, who
had alighted with him, regarding an epidemic disorder, that had been
rife about Dalston; and which, my friend assured him, had gone through
five or six schools in that neighbourhood. The truth now flashed upon
me, that my companion was a schoolmaster; and that the youth, whom he
had parted from at our first acquaintance, must have been one of the
bigger boys, or the usher.--He was evidently a kind-hearted man, who
did not seem so much desirous of provoking discussion by the questions
which he put, as of obtaining information at any rate. It did not
appear that he took any interest, either, in such kind of inquiries,
for their own sake; but that he was in some way bound to seek for
knowledge. A greenish-coloured coat, which he had on, forbade me to
surmise that he was a clergyman. The adventure gave birth to some
reflections on the difference between persons of his profession in
past and present times.
Rest to the souls of those fine old Pedagogues; the breed, long
since extinct, of the Lilys, and the Linacres: who believing that
all learning was contained in the languages which they taught, and
despising every other acquirement as superficial and useless, came to
their task as to a sport! Passing from infancy to age, they dreamed
away all their days as in a grammar-school. Revolving in a perpetual
cycle of declensions, conjugations, syntaxes, and prosodies; renewing
constantly the occupations which had charmed their studious childhood;
rehearsing continually the part of the past; life must have slipped
from them at last like one day. They were always in their first
garden, reaping harvests of their golden time, among their _Flori_ and
their _Spici-legia_; in Arcadia still, but kings; the ferule of their
sway not much harsher, but of like dignity with that mild sceptre
attributed to king Basileus; the Greek and Latin, their stately Pamela
and their Philoclea; with the occasional duncery of some untoward
Tyro, serving for a refreshing interlude of a Mopsa, or a clown
Damætas!
With what a savour doth the Preface to Colet's, or (as it is sometimes
called) Paul's Accidence, set forth! "To exhort every man to the
learning of grammar, that intendeth to attain the understanding of
the tongues, wherein is contained a great treasury of wisdom and
knowledge, it would seem but vain and lost labour; for so much as it
is known, that nothing can surely be ended, whose beginning is either
feeble or faulty; and no building be perfect, whereas the foundation
and ground-work is ready to fall, and unable to uphold the burden of
the frame." How well doth this stately preamble (comparable to those
which Milton commendeth as "having been the usage to prefix to some
solemn law, then first promulgated by Solon, or Lycurgus") correspond
with and illustrate that pious zeal for conformity, expressed in a
succeeding clause, which would fence about grammar-rules with the
severity of faith-articles!--"as for the diversity of grammars, it
is well profitably taken away by the king majesties wisdom, who
foreseeing the inconvenience, and favourably providing the remedie,
caused one kind of grammar by sundry learned men to be diligently
drawn, and so to be set out, only everywhere to be taught for the use
of learners, and for the hurt in changing of schoolmaisters." What a
_gusto_ in that which follows: "wherein it is profitable that he can
orderly decline his noun, and his verb." _His_ noun!
The fine dream is fading away fast; and the least concern of a teacher
in the present day is to inculcate grammar-rules.
The modern schoolmaster is expected to know a little of every thing,
because his pupil is required not to be entirely ignorant of any
thing. He must be superficially, if I may so say, omniscient. He is to
know something of pneumatics; of chemistry; of whatever is curious,
or proper to excite the attention of the youthful mind; an insight
into mechanics is desirable, with a touch of statistics; the quality
of soils, &c. botany, the constitution of his country, _cum multis
aliis_. You may get a notion of some part of his expected duties by
consulting the famous Tractate on Education addressed to Mr. Hartlib.
All these things--these, or the desire of them--he is expected to
instil, not by set lessons from professors, which he may charge in the
bill, but at school-intervals, as he walks the streets, or saunters
through green fields (those natural instructors), with his pupils.
The least part of what is expected from him, is to be done in
school-hours. He must insinuate knowledge at the _mollia tempera
fandi_. He must seize every occasion--the season of the year--the time
of the day--a passing cloud--a rainbow--a wagon of hay--a regiment of
soldiers going by--to inculcate something useful. He can receive no
pleasure from a casual glimpse of Nature, but must catch at it as an
object of instruction. He must interpret beauty into the picturesque.
He cannot relish a beggar-man, or a gipsy, for thinking of the
suitable improvement. Nothing comes to him, not spoiled by the
sophisticating medium of moral uses. The Universe--that Great Book, as
it has been called--is to him indeed, to all intents and purposes, a
book, out of which he is doomed to read tedious homilies to distasting
schoolboys.--Vacations themselves are none to him, he is only rather
worse off than before; for commonly he has some intrusive upper-boy
fastened upon him at such times; some cadet of a great family; some
neglected lump of nobility, or gentry; that he must drag after him to
the play, to the Panorama, to Mr. Bartley's Orrery, to the Panopticon,
or into the country, to a friend's house, or to his favourite
watering-place. Wherever he goes, this uneasy shadow attends him. A
boy is at his board, and in his path, and in all his movements. He is
boy-rid, sick of perpetual boy.
Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but
they are unwholesome companions for grown people. The restraint is
felt no less on the one side, than on the other.--Even a child, that
"plaything for an hour," tires _always_. The noises of children,
playing their own fancies--as I now hearken to them by fits, sporting
on the green before my window, while I am engaged in these grave
speculations at my neat suburban retreat at Shacklewell--by distance
made more sweet--inexpressibly take from the labour of my task. It is
like writing to music. They seem to modulate my periods. They ought at
least to do so--for in the voice of that tender age there is a kind of
poetry, far unlike the harsh prose-accents of man's conversation.--I
should but spoil their sport, and diminish my own sympathy for them,
by mingling in their pastime.
I would not be domesticated all my days with a person of very
superior capacity to my own--not, if I know myself at all, from any
considerations of jealousy or self-comparison, for the occasional
communion with such minds has constituted the fortune and felicity of
my life--but the habit of too constant intercourse with spirits above
you, instead of raising you, keeps you down. Too frequent doses of
original thinking from others, restrain what lesser portion of that
faculty you may possess of your own. You get entangled in another
man's mind, even as you lose yourself in another man's grounds. You
are walking with a tall varlet, whose strides out-pace yours to
lassitude. The constant operation of such potent agency would reduce
me, I am convinced, to imbecility. You may derive thoughts from
others; your way of thinking, the mould in which your thoughts are
cast, must be your own. Intellect may be imparted, but not each man's
intellectual frame.--
As little as I should wish to be always thus dragged upwards, as
little (or rather still less) is it desirable to be stunted downwards
by your associates. The trumpet does not more stun you by its
loudness, than a whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility.
Why are we never quite at our ease in the presence of a
schoolmaster?--because we are conscious that he is not quite at his
ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place, in the society of his
equals. He comes like Gulliver from among his little people, and he
cannot fit the stature of his understanding to yours. He cannot meet
you on the square. He wants a point given him, like an indifferent
whist-player. He is so used to teaching, that he wants to be teaching
_you_. One of these professors, upon my complaining that these little
sketches of mine were any thing but methodical, and that I was unable
to make them otherwise, kindly offered to instruct me in the method by
which young gentlemen in _his_ seminary were taught to compose English
themes.--The jests of a schoolmaster are coarse, or thin. They do
not _tell_ out of school. He is under the restraint of a formal and
didactive hypocrisy in company, as a clergyman is under a moral one.
He can no more let his intellect loose in society, than the other
can his inclinations.--He is forlorn among his co-evals; his juniors
cannot be his friends.
"I take blame to myself," said a sensible man of this profession,
writing to a friend respecting a youth who had quitted his school
abruptly, "that your nephew was not more attached to me. But persons
in my situation are more to be pitied, than can well be imagined. We
are surrounded by young, and, consequently, ardently affectionate
hearts, but _we_ can never hope to share an atom of their affections.
The relation of master and scholar forbids this. _How pleasing this
must be to you, how I envy your feelings_, my friends will sometimes
say to me, when they see young men, whom I have educated, return after
some years absence from school, their eyes shining with pleasure,
while they shake hands with their old master, bringing a present of
game to me, or a toy to my wife, and thanking me in the warmest terms
for my care of their education. A holiday is begged for the boys;
the house is a scene of happiness; I, only, am sad at heart--This
fine-spirited and warm-hearted youth, who fancies he repays his master
with gratitude for the care of his boyish years--this young man--in
the eight long years I watched over him with a parent's anxiety, never
could repay me with one look of genuine feeling. He was proud, when
I praised; he was submissive, when I reproved him; but he did never
_love_ me--and what he now mistakes for gratitude and kindness for me,
is but the pleasant sensation, which all persons feel at revisiting
the scene of their boyish hopes and fears; and the seeing on equal
terms the man they were accustomed to look up to with reverence.
My wife too," this interesting correspondent goes on to say, "my
once darling Anna, is the wife of a schoolmaster.--When I married
her--knowing that the wife of a schoolmaster ought to be a busy
notable creature, and fearing that my gentle Anna would ill supply the
loss of my dear bustling mother, just then dead, who never sat still,
was in every part of the house in a moment, and whom I was obliged
sometimes to threaten to fasten down in a chair, to save her from
fatiguing herself to death--I expressed my fears, that I was bringing
her into a way of life unsuitable to her; and she, who loved me
tenderly, promised for my sake to exert herself to perform the duties
of her new situation. She promised, and she has kept her word. What
wonders will not woman's love perform?--My house is managed with a
propriety and decorum, unknown in other schools; my boys are well
fed, look healthy, and have every proper accommodation; and all this
performed with a careful economy, that never descends to meanness. But
I have lost my gentle, _helpless_ Anna!--When we sit down to enjoy an
hour of repose after the fatigue of the day, I am compelled to listen
to what have been her useful (and they are really useful) employments
through the day, and what she proposes for her to-morrow's task. Her
heart and her features are changed by the duties of her situation. To
the boys, she never appears other than the _master's wife_, and she
looks up to me as the _boys' master_; to whom all show of love and
affection would be highly improper, and unbecoming the dignity of her
situation and mine. Yet _this_ my gratitude forbids me to hint to
her. For my sake she submitted to be this altered creature, and can
I reproach her for it?"--For the communication of this letter, I am
indebted to my cousin Bridget.
[Footnote 1: Urn Burial.]