Undergraduates have a due self-respect, and a due respect for just
authority temperately exercised, because I have ever found it so, both
as Master of a College, and as Vice-Chancellor. One of the happiest
recollections of my life is that of a great occasion in my former
Vice-Chancellorship[7], when I had need to ask for great orderliness
and considerable self-denial on the part of the Undergraduates. This
demand they responded to with a dignified and sweet-tempered obedience
which endeared them to me then, as many good qualities which I have
seen in successive generations of students have endeared them to me
since. And I will not easily give up my trust that now, as then, the
better natures will control and refine the baser, and that it will be
no longer necessary to put any constraint upon the admission of
Undergraduates to the Galleries of the Senate-house.’
After the poll had been declared the Proctors brought him a list of the
rioters. He said, ‘The election is over, they will not do it again,’ and
threw the record into the fire. Not long afterwards he went, as was his
frequent custom, to a concert of the University Musical Society. The
undergraduates present rose and cheered him. Whewell was so much
affected, that he burst into tears, and sat for some time with his face
hidden in the folds of his gown.
Those who recollect Whewell, or even those who know him only by his
portraits, will smile incredulously at an assertion we are about to
make. But it is true, no matter how severely it may be criticised.
Whewell was, in reality, an extremely humble-minded man, diffident of
himself, and sure of his position only when he had the approval of his
conscience for what he was doing. Then he went forward, regardless of
what might bar his passage, and too often regardless also of those who
chanced to differ from him. The few who were admitted to the inner
circle of his friendship alone knew that he really was what his enemies
called him in sarcastic mockery, modest and retiring. If he appeared to
be, as one virulent pamphlet said he was, an ‘imperious bully[8],’ the
manner which justified such a designation was manner only, and due not
to arrogance but to nervousness. He disliked praise, even from his best
friends, if he thought that it was not exactly merited. For instance,
when Archdeacon Hare spoke enthusiastically of his condemnation of
‘Utilitarian Ethics’ in the _Sermons on the Foundation of Morals_, and
exclaimed: ‘May the mind which has compast the whole circle of physical
science find a lasting home, and erect a still nobler edifice, in this
higher region! May he be enabled to let his light shine before the
students of our University, that they may see the truth he utters[9],’
Whewell requested that the passage might be altered in a new edition. He
wrote (26 February, 1841):
‘You have mentioned me in a manner which I am obliged to say is so
extremely erroneous that it distresses me. The character which you have
given of me is as far as possible from that which I deserve. You know, I
think, that I am very ignorant in all the matters with which you are
best acquainted, and the case is much the same in all others. I was
always very ignorant, and am now more and more oppressed by the
consciousness of being so. To know much about many things is what I
never aspired at, and certainly have not succeeded in. If you had called
me a persevering framer of systems, or had said that in architecture, as
in some other matters, by trying to catch the principle of the system, I
had sometimes been able to judge right of details, I should have
recognised some likeness to myself; but what you have said only makes me
ashamed. You will perhaps laugh at my earnestness about this matter, for
I am in earnest; but consider how you would like praise which you felt
to be the opposite of what you were, and not even like what you had
tried to be[10].’
It would be unbecoming to intrude domestic matters into an essay like
the present, in which we have proposed to ourselves a different object;
but we cannot wholly omit to draw attention to the painful, but deeply
interesting, chapters in which Mrs Stair Douglas describes her uncle’s
grief at the loss of his first wife in 1855, and of his second wife in
1865. His strong nature had recovered after a time from the first of
these terrible shocks, under which he had wisely distracted his mind by
the composition of his essay on _The Plurality of Worlds_, and by again
accepting the Vice-Chancellorship. The second, however, fell upon him
with even greater severity. He was ten years older, and therefore less
able to bear up against it. Lady Affleck died a little before midnight
on Saturday, April 1, 1865; and her heart-broken husband, true to his
theory that the chapel service ought to be regarded as family prayers,
appeared in his place at the early service on Sunday morning, not
fearing to commit to the sympathies of his College ‘the saddest of all
sights, an old man’s bereavement, and a strong man’s tears[11].’ We can
still recall the look of intense sorrow on his face; a look which,
though he tried to rouse himself, and pursue his usual avocations, never
completely wore off. He survived her for rather less than a year, dying
on March 6, 1866, from injuries received from a fall from his horse on
February 24 previous. It was at first hoped that these, like those he
had received on many similar occasions, for he used to say that he had
measured the depth of every ditch in Cambridgeshire by falling into it,
were not serious; but the brain had sustained an injury, and he
gradually sank. His last thoughts were for the College. On the very last
morning he signified his wish that the windows of his bedroom might be
opened wide, that he might see the sun shine on the Great Court, and he
smiled as he was reminded that he used to say that the sky never looked
so blue as when framed by its walls and turrets. Among the numerous
tributes to his memory which then appeared, none we think are more
appropriate than the following lines, the authorship of which we believe
we are right in ascribing to the late Mr Tom Taylor[12]:
‘Gone from the rule that was questioned so rarely,
Gone from the seat where he laid down the law;
Gaunt, stern, and stalwart, with broad brow set squarely
O’er the fierce eye, and the granite-hewn jaw.
‘No more the Great Court shall see him dividing
Surpliced crowds thick round the low chapel door;
No more shall idlers shrink cowed from his chiding,
Senate-house cheers sound his honour no more.
‘Son of a hammer-man: right kin of Thor, he
Clove his way through, right onward, amain;
Ruled when he’d conquered, was proud of his glory,—
Sledge-hammer smiter, in body and brain.
‘Sizar and Master,—unhasting, unresting;
Each step a triumph, in fair combat won—
Rivals he faced like a strong swimmer breasting
Waves that, once grappled with, terrors have none.
‘Trinity marked him o’er-topping the crowd of
Heads and Professors, self-centred, alone:
Rude as his strength was, that strength she was proud of,
Body and mind, she knew all was her own.
‘“Science his strength, and Omniscience his weakness,”
So _they_ said of him, who envied his power;
Those whom he silenced with more might than meekness,
Carped at his back, in his face fain to cower.
‘Milder men’s graces _might_ in him be lacking,
Still he was honest, kind-hearted, and brave;
Never good cause looked in vain for his backing,
Fool he ne’er spared, but he never screened knave.
‘England should cherish all lives from beginning
Lowly as his to such honour that rise;
Lives, of fair running and straightforward winning,
Lives, that so winning, may boast of the prize.
‘They that in years past have chafed at his chiding,
They that in boyish mood strove ’gainst his sway,
Boys’ hot blood cooled, boys’ impatience subsiding,
Reverently think of “the Master” to-day.
‘Counting his courage, his manhood, his knowledge,
Counting the glory he won for us all,
Cambridge—not only his dearly loved College—
Mourns his seat empty in chapel and hall.
‘Lay him down here—in the dim ante-chapel,
Where NEWTON’S statue looms ghostly and white,
Broad brow set rigid in thought-mast’ring grapple,
Eyes that look upward for light—and more light.
‘So should he rest—not where daisies are growing:
NEWTON beside him, and over his head
Trinity’s full tide of life, ebbing, flowing,
Morning and evening, as he lies dead.
‘Sailors sleep best within boom of the billow,
Soldiers in sound of the shrill trumpet call:
So his own Chapel his death-sleep should pillow,
Loved in his life-time with love beyond all.’
We have not thought it necessary to go through the events of Whewell’s
Mastership in order, because progressive development of thought and
occupation had by that time ended, and his efforts were chiefly directed
towards establishing in the University the changes which his previous
studies had led him to regard as necessary, and which, from the
vantage-ground of that influential position, he was enabled to enforce.
In his own College, so far as its education was concerned, he had little
to do except to maintain the high standard which already existed. As
tutor he had been successful in increasing the importance of the paper
of questions in Philosophy in the Fellowship Examination; and
subsequently he had introduced his _Elements of Morality_, his preface
to Mackintosh’s _Ethical Philosophy_, and his edition of Butler’s _Three
Sermons_ into the examination at the end of the Michaelmas Term. None,
however, of those fundamental measures which have achieved for Trinity
College its present position of pre-eminence will in the future be
associated with his name, unless the abolition of the Westminster
Scholars be thought sufficiently important to be classed in this
category. On the contrary, it is remarkable what slight influence he
exerted on the College while Master. He saw but little of any of the
Fellows, and became intimate with none. In theory he was a despot, but
in practice he deferred to the College officers; and, with the exception
of certain domestic matters, such as granting leave to studious
undergraduates to live in College during the Long Vacation, and the
formation of a cricket-ground for the use of the College, to which he
and Lady Affleck both contributed largely, he originated nothing. As
regards the constitution of the College, he was strongly opposed to
change. The so-called Reform of the Statutes in 1842 amounted to nothing
more than the excision of certain obsolete usages, and the accommodation
in some few other points of the written law to the usual practice of the
College. The proposals for a more thorough reform brought forward by
certain of the Fellows in 1856, when called together in accordance with
the Act of Parliament passed in that year, met with his vehement
disapproval. It was a mental defect with him that he could never be
brought to see that others had as much right as himself to hold special
views. If he saw no defect in a statute or a practice, no one else had
any right to see one. Here is a specimen of the language he used
respecting the junior Fellows, all, it must be remembered, men of some
distinction, whom he himself had had a hand in electing:
‘It is a very sad evening of my College life, to have the College pulled
in pieces and ruined by a set of schoolboys. It is very nearly that kind
of work. The Act of Parliament gives all our Fellows equal weight for
certain purposes, and the younger part of them all vote the same way,
and against the Seniors. Several of these juveniles are really boys,
several others only Bachelors of Arts, so we have crazy work, as I think
it[13].’
As regards the University, as distinct from the College, he deserves
recognition as having effected important educational changes. These
range over the whole of his life, commencing with the novelties which he
introduced, in conjunction with Herschel, Peacock, and Babbage, into the
study of mathematics, so early as 1819. It was his constant endeavour,
whatever office he held—whether Moderator, Examiner, or College
lecturer—to keep the improvement and development of the Mathematical
Tripos constantly before the University. But, before we enumerate the
special improvements or developments with which he may be credited, let
us consider what was his leading idea. He held that every man who was
worth educating at all, had within him various faculties, such as the
mathematical, the philological, the critical, the poetical, and the
like; and that the truly liberal education was that which would develop
all of these, some more, some less, according to the individual nature.
A devotion to ‘favourite and selected pursuits’ was a proof, according
to him, of ‘effeminacy of mind.’ We are not sure that he would have been
prepared to introduce one or more classical papers into the Mathematical
Tripos, though he held that a mere mathematician was not an educated
man; but he was emphatic in wishing to preserve the provisions by which
classical men were obliged to pass certain mathematical examinations. He
did not want ‘_much_ mathematics’ from them, he said, writing to
Archdeacon Hare in 1842; ‘but a man who either cannot or will not
understand Euclid, is a man whom we lose nothing by not keeping among
us.’ He was no friend to examinations. He ‘repudiated emulation as the
sole spring of action in our education,’ but did not see his way to
reducing it. It was probably this feeling that made him object to
private tuition so strongly as he always did. In opposition to private
tutors, he wished to increase attendance at Professors’ lectures; and
succeeded in ‘connecting them with examinations,’ as he called it; in
other words, in making attendance at them compulsory for precisely those
men who were least capable of deriving benefit from the highest teaching
which the University can give, namely, the candidates for the Ordinary
Degree.
The first definite novelty in the way of public examinations which he
promoted was the examination in Divinity called, when first established,
the Voluntary Theological Examination. Whewell was a member of the
Syndicate which recommended it, in March, 1842; and subsequently, he
took a great interest in making it a success. As Vice-Chancellor, he
brought it under the direct notice of the Bishops. Subsequently, in
1845, he advocated, in his essay _Of a Liberal Education in General_,
the establishment of ‘a General Tripos including the Inductive Sciences,
or those which it was thought right by the University to group together
for such a purpose.’ The basis of University education was still to be
the Mathematical Tripos; but, after a student had been declared a Junior
Optime, he was free to choose his future career. He might become a
candidate either for the Classical Tripos, or for the suggested new
Tripos, or for any other Tripos that the University should subsequently
decide to establish. With these views it was natural that Whewell should
be in favour of the establishment of a Moral Sciences Tripos (to include
History and Law), and of a Natural Sciences Tripos; and in consequence
we find him not only a member of the Syndicate which suggested them, but
urging their acceptance upon the Senate (1848). Further, he offered two
prizes of £15 each, so long as he was Professor, to be given annually to
the two students who shewed the greatest proficiency in the former
examination. It is worth noticing that he did not insist upon a
candidate becoming a Junior Optime before presenting himself for either
of these new Triposes, but was satisfied with the Ordinary Degree. He
wished to encourage, by all reasonable facilities, the competition for
Honours in them; but when the Senate (in 1849) threw open the Classical
Tripos to those who had obtained a first class in the examination for
the Ordinary Degree, he deplored it as a retrograde step. Before many
years, however, had passed, he had modified his views to such an extent
that he could sign (in 1854) a Report which began by stating ‘that much
advantage would result from extending to other main departments of
study, generally comprehended under the name of Arts, the system which
is at present established in the University with regard to Candidates
for Honours in the Mathematical Tripos’; and proceeded to advocate the
establishment of a Theological Tripos, and the concession, with
reference to the Classical Tripos, the Moral Sciences Tripos, and the
Natural Sciences Tripos, that in and after 1857 students who obtained
Honours in them should be entitled to admission to the degree of
Bachelor of Arts. We may therefore claim Whewell as one of the founders
of the modern system of University education.
Whewell’s wish to develop Professorial tuition has been already alluded
to. It may be doubted if he would have been so earnest on the subject
had he foreseen the development of teaching by the University as opposed
to teaching by the colleges, which a large increase in the number of
Professors was certain to bring about. So far back as 1828, he had
brought before the University the want of proper lecture-rooms and
museums; and, as a matter of course, he promoted the erection of the
present museums in 1863. We are justified, therefore, in claiming for
him no inconsiderable share in that development of natural science which
is one of the glories of Cambridge; and when we see the crowds which
throng the classes of the scientific professors, lecturers, and
demonstrators, we often wish that he could have been spared a few years
longer to enter into the fruit of his labours.
As regards the constitution of the University he earnestly deprecated
the interference of a Commission. He held that ‘University reformers
should endeavour to reform by efforts within the body, and not by
calling in the stranger.’ He therefore worked very hard as a member of
what was called the ‘Statutes Revision Syndicate,’ first appointed in
1849, and continued in subsequent years. His views on these important
matters have been recorded by him in his work on a Liberal Education. It
is worth remarking that while he was in favour of so advanced a step as
making College funds available for University purposes, he strenuously
maintained the desirability of preserving that ancient body, the
_Caput_. One of the most vexatious provisions of its constitution was
that each member of it had an absolute veto on any grace to which he
might object. As the body was selected, the whole legislative power of
the University was practically vested in the Heads of Houses, who are
not usually the persons best qualified to understand the feeling of the
University. Dr Whewell has frequently recorded, in his correspondence,
his vexation when graces proposed by himself were rejected by this body;
and yet, though he knew how badly the constitution worked, his
attachment to existing forms was so great, that he could not be
persuaded to yield on any point except the mode of election.
We have spoken first of Whewell’s work in his College and University,
because it was to them that he dedicated his life. We must now say a
word or two on his literary and scientific attainments. He wrote an
excellent English style, which reflects the personality of the writer to
a more than usual extent. As might be expected from his studies and tone
of mind, he always wrote with clearness and good sense, though
occasionally his periods are rough and unpolished, defects due to his
habit of writing as fast as he could make the pen traverse the paper.
But, just as it was not natural to him to be grave for long together, we
find his most serious criticisms and pamphlets—nay, even his didactic
works—lightened by good-humoured banter and humorous illustrations. On
the other hand, when he was thoroughly serious and in earnest, his style
rose to a dignified eloquence which has rarely been equalled, and never
surpassed. For an illustration of our meaning we beg our readers to turn
to the final chapters of the _Plurality of Worlds_. He was always fond
of writing verse; and published more than one volume of poems and
translations, of which the latter are by far the most meritorious. Nor
must we forget his valiant efforts to get hexameters and elegiacs
recognized as English metres. Example being better than precept, he
began by printing a translation of Goethe’s _Hermann und Dorothea_, in
the metre of the original, which he at first circulated privately among
his friends; but subsequently he discussed the subject in several
papers, in which he laid down the rules which he thought were required
for successful composition of the metre. His main principle is to pay
attention to accent, not to quantity, and to use trochees where the
ancients would have used spondees; in other words, where according to
the classical hexameter we should have two strong syllables, we are to
have a strong syllable followed by a weak one. Here is a short specimen
from the _Isle of the Sirens_:
‘Over the broad-spread sea the thoughtful son of Ulysses
Steered his well-built bark. Full long had he sought for his father,
Till hope, lingering, fled; for the face of the water is trackless.
Then rose strong in his mind the thought of his home and his island;
And he desired to return; to behold his Ithacan people,
Listen their just complaints, restrain the fierce and the lawless.’
Mrs Stair Douglas has acted wisely in reprinting the elegiacs written
after the death of Mrs Whewell. We cannot believe that the metre will
ever be popular; but in the case of this particular poem eccentricities
of style will be forgiven for the sake of the dignified beauty of the
thoughts. With the exception of _In Memoriam_, we know of no finer
expression of Christian sorrow and Christian hope. We will quote a few
lines from the first division of the poem, in which the bereaved husband
describes the happiness which his wife had brought to him:
‘Blessed beyond all blessings that life can embrace in its circle,
Blessed the gift was when Providence gave thee to me:
Gave thee, gentle and kindly and wise, calm, clear-seeing, thoughtful,
Thee to me as I was, vehement, passionate, blind:
Gave me to see in thee, and wonder I never had seen it,
Wisdom that shines in the heart dearer than Intellect’s light;
Gave me to find in thee, when oppressed by loneliness’ burden,
Solace for each dull pain, calm from the strife of the storm.
For O, vainly till then had I sought for peace and contentment,
Ever pursued by desires, yearnings that could not be still’d;
Ever pursued by desires of a heart’s companionship, ever
Yearning for guidance and love such as I found them in thee.’