say that for some points of handling there is no language more
excellent than ours. For teaching memory work pleasantly, as in the
old leonine verses, which run in rhyme, it admits more dalliance
with words than any other tongue I know. In firmness of speech and
strong ending it is very forcible, because of the monosyllabic
words of which it so largely consists. For fine translation in
pithy terms I find it as quick as any foreign tongue, or quicker,
as it is wonderfully pliable and ready to express a pointed thought
in very few words. For apt expression of a good deal of matter in
not many words it will do as much in original utterance as in any
translation. This compact expression may sometimes seem hard, but
only where ignorance is harboured, or where indolence is an idol,
which will not be persuaded to crack the nut, though it covet the
kernel. I need give no example of these, as my own writing will
serve as a general pattern. No one can judge so well of these
points in our tongue as those who find matter flowing from their
pen which refuses to be expressed in any other form. For our tongue
has a special character as well as every other, and cannot be
surpassed for grace and pith.
In regard to the force of words, which was the third note of
alleged obscurity, there are to be considered _familiarity_ for
the general reader, _beauty_ for the learned, _effectiveness_ to
give pleasure, and _borrowing_ to extend our resources and admit
of ready expression. Therefore, if any reader find fault with a
word which does not suit his ear, let him mark the one he knows,
and learn to value the other, which is worth his knowing. Do we not
learn from words? No marvel if it is so, for a word is a metaphor,
a learned translation, something carried over from its original
sense to serve in some place where it is even more properly used,
and where it may be most significant, if it is properly understood.
Take pains to learn from it; you have there a means of gaining
knowledge. It is not commonly used as I am using it, but I trust
I am not abusing it, and it may be filling a more stately place
than any you have ever seen it in. Then mark that the place honours
the parson, and think well of good words, for though they may
be handled by ordinary, or even by foul lips, yet in a fairer
mouth, or under a finer pen, they may come to honour. It may be a
stranger, and yet no Turk, and though it were the word of an enemy,
yet a good thing is worth getting, even from a foe, as well by
the language of writers as by the spoil of soldiers. And when the
foreign word has yielded itself and been received into favour, it
is no longer foreign, though of foreign race, the property in it
having been altered. But he who will speak of words need not lack
them. However, in this place there is no further need of words,
to say either which are familiar, or beautiful, or effective, or
which are borrowed; nor is there need to say that in regard to any
ornament in words we give place to no other tongue.
As for my own words and the terms that I use, they are generally
English, and if any be an incorporated stranger, or translated, or
freshly-coined, I have shaped it to fit the place where I use it,
as far as my skill will permit. The example and precept of the best
judges warrant us in enfranchising foreign words, or translating
our own without too manifest insolence or wanton affectation, or
else inventing new ones where they are clearly serviceable, the
context explaining them sufficiently till frequent usage has made
them well known. Therefore, to say what I mean in plain terms,
he who is soundly learned will straightway recognise a scholar;
he who is well acquainted with a strong pen, whether in reading
authors or in actual use, will soon master a compact style; he who
has skill in language, whether old and scholarly or newly received
into favour, will not wonder at words whose origin he knows, nor
be surprised at a thought tersely expressed, in a way familiar to
him in other languages. Therefore, as I fear not the judgment of
the skilful, because courtesy goes with knowledge, so I value their
friendship, because their support gives me credit.
As for those who lack the skill to judge rightly, though they may
be sharp censors and ready to talk loudly, I must crave their
pardon if I do not bow to their censure, which I cannot accept
as a true judgment. Yet I am content to bear with such fellows,
and pardon them their errors in regard to myself, as I trust that
those who can judge will in their courtesy pardon me my own errors.
Those who cannot judge rightly for want of knowledge, but will not
betray their weakness by judging wrongly, if they desire to learn
in any case of doubt, have the learned to give them counsel. The
profit is theirs, if they are willing to take it, but if not, they
shall not deter me from writing, and I shall hope at length by
deserving well to win their favour, or at least their silence. In
conclusion as to the manner of writing and use of words in English,
this is my opinion, that he who will justify himself may find many
arguments, some closely related to the particular subject that may
be in question, others more general but likely to be serviceable,
and if in his practice he hath due regard to clear and appropriate
expression, then even though one or two things should seem strange
to those who judge, the writer is free from blame. As for invention
in matter and eloquence in style, the learned know well in what
writers they are to be found, and those who are not scholars must
learn to think of such things before they presume to judge, lest
by failing to measure the writer’s level, they should have no
just standard to apply. As for the matter itself which is to be
treated by any learned method, as I have already said, familiarity
will make it easy, though it seem hard, just as it will make the
manner of expression easy, though it seem strange, if the thing
really deserves to be studied, which will not appear until some
progress is made. And a little hardness, even in the most obscure
philosophical discussions, will never seem tedious to an enquiring
mind, such as he must have who either seeks to learn himself, or
desires to see his native tongue enriched and made the instrument
of all his knowledge, as well as of his ordinary needs.
But I have been too tedious, my good readers, yet perhaps not so,
since no haste is enjoined, and you may read at leisure. I have now
to request you, as I mentioned at first, to grant me your friendly
construction, and the favour due to a fellow-countryman. The
reverence towards learning which leads the good student to embrace
her in his youth, and advances him to honour by her preference in
later years, will plead for me with the learned in general, in my
endeavour to assert the rights of her by whose authority alone they
are themselves of any account. Among my fellow-teachers I may hope
that community of interest will help me more with the courteous
and learned than a foolish feeling of rivalry will harm me with
ignorant and spiteful detractors. Regard for my own profession, and
this hope of support from learned teachers, move me to lay stress
upon one special point, which in duty must affect them no less than
me, namely, the need for careful thought in improving our schools.
I say nothing here of the conscientious and religious motives that
influence us, nor of the need for personal maintenance that demands
our labour. But I would acknowledge the special munificence of our
princes and parliaments towards our whole order in our country’s
behalf, partly in suffering us to enjoy old immunities, partly in
granting us divers other exemptions from personal services and
ordinary payments to which our fellow-subjects are liable. These
favours deserve at our hands an honourable remembrance, and bind
us further to discharge the trust committed to us. I doubt not
that this feeling which moves me strongly, moves also many of my
profession, whose friendship I crave for favourable construction,
and whose conference I desire for help in experience, as I shall
be glad in the common cause either to persuade or be persuaded.
Of those that are not learned I beg friendship also, and chiefly
as a matter of right, because I labour for them, and my goodwill
deserves no unthankfulness. God bless us all to the advancement
of His glory, the honour of our country, the furtherance of good
learning, and the well-being of all ranks, prince and people
alike!
CRITICAL ESTIMATE.
CRITICAL ESTIMATE.
If the saying of Plato may be applied to another sphere, not very
far removed from civil government, we may believe that education
will never be rightly practised until either teachers become
philosophers, or philosophers become teachers. It is certainly
remarkable how seldom in the history of educational progress there
has arisen any writer whose authority was based alike on the
power of the abstract thinker to rise above the conditions of the
immediate present into the atmosphere of pure reason, and on the
instinct of the professional worker, whose conceptions of what is
possible have been chastened by direct experience of the actual.
Of the five classical English writers who have made any noteworthy
contribution to educational thought, all but one have failed to
gain a lasting influence, through the limitation in their outlook
caused by deficient practical knowledge. Ascham’s experience was
too exclusively academic and courtly to suggest much to him beyond
questions of method in the advanced teaching of Latin and Greek.
Milton’s vision, restricted by his short and partial attempt at
instructing a few selected boys, narrowed itself to one school
period of one rank of society of one sex, and his genius could not
save him from wild extravagance in his ideas of the acquirements
possible for the average scholar. The suggestions of Locke, while
in one aspect they were more comprehensive, are yet essentially
those of a theorist, who had never faced the difficulty that the
upbringing of a child by a private tutor is possible only to the
merest fraction of any population. Herbert Spencer, as the heir
of previous centuries, has naturally been able to command a wider
view, but even those who have gained most from his book, must
have felt that owing to his highly generalised mode of treatment
he has at many points failed to grapple with the problems that
chiefly beset the professional teacher. A little experience, like
a little knowledge, is a dangerous thing, and it may be that
those writers, all of whom claim to have made trial of the actual
work of education, would have been more convincing if they had
written from an avowedly detached standpoint. Richard Mulcaster
alone holds the vantage-ground of being at once a thinker and a
practical expert in matters of education. Nor does this mean only
that his right to speak with authority will for that reason be more
readily admitted; the evidence of his fuller equipment for the
task may be seen through the whole texture of his writings. He had
not Ascham’s ease in expression and charm of manner, nor Milton’s
commanding intellect and power of utterance, nor the fearlessness
and philosophic grasp of Locke, nor the encyclopædic knowledge and
acumen of Herbert Spencer, but he had beyond them all two essential
gifts that will in the end give him a unique place in the history
of our educational development--a clear insight into the realities
of human nature, and an enlightened perception of the conditions
that determine the culture of mind and soul.
To those who know little or nothing of Mulcaster such a claim
will seem extravagant, and it will naturally be doubted whether
any writer who deserves to be put upon so high a pedestal, could
possibly have remained so long in neglect. It may be rejoined that
in a subject like education many factors have a part in the making
of reputations. It is no mere coincidence that the authors named
above, whose views on education are so much more widely-known than
those of Mulcaster, all gained their chief fame in some other
sphere of thought; we read what they have to say on this subject
because it comes from writers who have caught the world’s ear in
some field of more general interest. This advantage is naturally
to be associated with gifts of expression such as Mulcaster
unfortunately possessed only in a very limited degree, though
his deficiency is due much more to the rudimentary condition of
English prose in general in the sixteenth century, than to any
lack of clear thinking on his own part. It is true, indeed, that
no fine sense of harmony in sound can be credited to a writer
who perpetrates such a sentence as--“I say no more, where it is
too much to say even so much in a sore of too much.” But even if
Mulcaster had spoken with the tongue of an angel, he would probably
have remained a voice crying in the wilderness, for the time was
not yet come. The ultimate value of Rousseau’s message to the world
in the realm of education was far less, but his unique powers of
persuasive eloquence, the fame he had achieved in other ways, and
the ripeness of the time, combined to give the later writer an
extraordinary influence. When Mulcaster’s judgments and suggestions
are studied from the vantage-ground of the present, and in a form
that divests them of adventitious difficulties of understanding,
they will be recognised as giving him a place of high importance,
not only in the chain of historical succession, but in the final
hierarchy of educational reformers.
It is necessary to take into account the state of opinion on
matters of learning and on the general conduct of life, in the
England of Queen Elizabeth’s day, before we can appreciate the
significance of our author’s thought. We must place ourselves in
the atmosphere of the Renascence and the Reformation, for although
these great movements, which represented the intellectual and moral
aspects in the awakening of modern Europe, had been some time in
progress, and had even given place to reaction in the countries
of their birth, their full influence did not reach our shores
till towards the close of the sixteenth century. The phase of
English national life represented by Mulcaster is that immediately
preceding the great expansion of conscious mental activity to
which voice was so memorably given by Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon,
and their contemporaries. The prestige of Elizabeth, depending as
it did so largely on the secure establishment of the Protestant
faith, had not yet reached the height it attained through the
final repulse of Spanish aggression, but yet the power of the
crown retained much of the absolute sway over individual freedom
that had been built up and impressed on the popular imagination
by the earlier Tudors. It was not a time either of revolt or of
reaction. The more galling forms of political and intellectual
despotism had already disappeared in the general overthrow of the
medieval _régime_, and it was a more pressing question how to
maintain existing charters of liberty than how to extend them. This
conservative temper is to be discerned in all the purely English
writers of the period, though in the northern part of Britain Knox
and his companions were troubling the waters of controversy in a
more strenuous fashion.
Apart from the influence of an atmosphere of general conformity
to established authority and prevailing sentiment, Mulcaster was
constitutionally cautious. He was no zealot, defiant of opposition,
and careless of the esteem in which he might be held. His respect
for tradition, and, it must be added, his sympathetic instincts,
disposed him always to seek grounds of agreement rather than of
difference, to support his suggestions by the weight of authority
and precedent, to carry his readers with him by winning their
consent unawares rather than by startling them into reluctant
acquiescence through the use of paradox and exaggeration. Yet
there was no timidity or half-heartedness in his temperament. He
was profoundly convinced of the justice of his criticisms and the
value of his proposals, and he was not backward in urging his
views, in season at least if not out of season, on all who shared
the responsibility of rejecting them or giving them effect. He has
been accused, indeed, of overweening self-conceit, and it is to be
feared that this is the only persistent impression of the man that
remains with a number of those who know little of him beyond his
name. He has been cited as a classical example of the folly into
which a misplaced vanity can lead one who enters with a light heart
into the region of prophecy, that “most gratuitous form of error,”
on the ground that he believed the highest possible perfection of
English prose to be represented by the style of his own writings.
This conception, however, is due to a misunderstanding which it
will be worth while to remove. The remark that is quoted against
him occurs in the Peroration of the _Elementary_, “I need no
example in any of these, whereof mine own penning is a general
pattern.” Taken apart from the context, as it usually is, such
a sentence sounds fatuous enough, being naturally understood to
mean that Mulcaster thought he had nothing to learn from any
other writers, and had himself devised a perfect model of English
composition. But anyone who will take the trouble to read the
whole passage (p. 201) will see at once that the statement really
means, “I need give no example of any of these [idiosyncrasies
of our language, especially compactness of expression], as they
are sufficiently illustrated in my own writing.” This is a very
different matter, and though Mulcaster had little sense of style,
and was curiously mistaken in his idea that English prose had
no greater heights to reach than the standard of his own time,
the error was due to defects of literary taste and judgment, not
of character or temper. When his writings are taken as a whole,
they offer ample evidence that he was singularly modest in his
pretensions, losing all self-consciousness in his enthusiasm for
the causes he had at heart.
This attitude may account for the disposition in some quarters to
deny Mulcaster any special originality in regard to his leading
principles. But in a subject like education, which concerns so many
departments of life and character, what is the precise meaning of
originality? As the essential traits of human nature have remained
unaltered in the last two or three thousand years, except for a
slow development along lines in continuity with the past, it is
vain to expect that the broader truths which underlie the arts of
social improvement will be subject to any radical change. In such
matters we must build on the wisdom of the ancients, and the only
possible originality consists in discerning the new applications
that are suited to the present time and place. It is safe to say
that there is hardly a single educational doctrine that has ever
won acceptance, the germs of which are not to be found in the
writings of Plato and Aristotle. Yet every age and every country
must work out its own salvation by choosing, combining, and
applying to its needs the general principles that have been laid
down by those that came before. Such eclecticism, if it cannot
strictly be called originality, is at least the highest wisdom,
and he who first proclaims the doctrine as true for his own time
and place deserves the credit of the pioneer. The discoveries of
the Greek philosophers in social politics, if discoveries they
could be called, had to be made over again for the modern world,
and it may even be said that they had to be made independently for
each separate country. In the sixteenth century there was less
uniformity in political and social conditions, and less mutual
influence among the different States of Europe than there is now.
Although the English nation under Elizabeth could not remain wholly
unaffected by the more drastic changes of opinion and sentiment
that marked the course of the reforming spirit in Germany and in
Scotland, it certainly demanded a rare sagacity and independence
of mind, if not absolute originality, to discern how far the new
outlook could be shared by those whose experience had been less
revolutionary. To understand the value of Mulcaster’s work it is of
less moment to ask what may have been his indebtedness to Plato or
Quintilian, or even to Luther and Knox, than to consider whether
he had been directly anticipated by any of his own countrymen, and
whether he himself anticipated, if he did not influence, later
English writers on education.
A right estimate of Mulcaster’s temperament, and of his relation
to the surrounding conditions of thought and feeling, is due not
only as a matter of personal justice, but as affording a key to
a proper estimate of his writings. For these have a significance
beyond that of most works of the kind, in forming a somewhat
unique record of historical facts for a bygone period. The attempt
to trace the lines of progress by comparing one phase of culture
with another, has hitherto had imperfect success in the sphere of
education, for, like the arts of music and acting, it works in a
perishable medium, and makes a direct impression only on a single
generation. Even indirect testimony has until recently been almost
entirely wanting. To hardly any writer of earlier times has it
occurred to make any report of the actual conduct of teaching as
it existed around him, for the benefit of future ages. Those who
were interested in the subject have been more concerned to offer
speculative suggestions of reform that have apparently little
organic relation to the conditions of their own community. It is
not so much to the formal treatises of Plato and Aristotle that
we must look for such knowledge as we can obtain of Athenian
education in the fourth century before Christ, as to the incidental
references of writers who had no thought of conveying any definite
or detailed information on the matter. We find the same dearth
of evidence when we try to ascertain the actual working of
educational methods and organisation in the most advanced countries
of Europe during the two or three centuries that succeeded the
Renascence. The contemporary writers on the subject are for
the most part idealists; and while we gladly acknowledge their
services in that capacity, we must regret that to the visionary
outlook of the reformer they did not add the careful observation
of the historian. If Mulcaster is a noteworthy exception to this
rule, it is not because of set purpose he undertook the task of
record and criticism. It was no part of his plan to offer any
narrative or statistical report; indeed he expressly refrains from
commenting on the current practice of teaching, and alludes to
it only incidentally. His intention, as with the great majority
of educational writers, was to suggest improvements, to propose
an ideal; but his responsible position as a headmaster gave him
an ever-present sense of what was practicable, and enabled him
to base his efforts on the firm ground of accomplished fact.
His proposals are so evidently related to the existing state of
affairs that they may almost be taken as affording an historical
record of contemporary practice. The common-sense criticisms of
a shrewd observer like Montaigne, and the dreams of an idealist
such as Rabelais, have their own value; but we shall listen even
more readily to the words of one who speaks out of the fulness of
immediate knowledge, yet with equal power to rouse our aspiration
and energy.