A HISTORY NOTICED WHICH IS WRITTEN BACKWARD. THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES
AN ESPECIAL EVIL FOR SCHOOLBOYS.
For never in the long and tedious tract
Of slavish grammar was I made to plod;
No tyranny of Rules my patience rackt;
I served no prenticehood to any Rod;
But in the freedom of the Practic way
Learnt to go right, even when I went astray.
DR. BEAUMONT.
It has been the general practice of historians, from the time of
Moses, to begin at the beginning of their subject: but as a river may
be traced either from its sources or its mouth, so it appears that a
history may be composed in the reversed order of its chronology; and a
French author of very considerable ability and great learning has
actually written a history of the Christian religion from his own
times upwards. It forms part of an elaborate and extensive work
entitled _Parallele des Religions_, which must have been better known
than it appears to be at present if it had not happened to be
published in Paris during the most turbulent year of the Revolution.
Perhaps if I had carried back the memoirs of the Dove family, I might
have followed his example in chusing the up-hill way, and have
proceeded from son to father in the ascending line. But having
resolved (whether judiciously or not) not to go farther back in these
family records than the year of our Lord 1723, being the year of the
Doctor's birth, I shall continue in the usual course, and pursue his
history _ab incunabulis_ down to that important evening on which we
find him now reaching out his hand to take that cup of tea which Mrs.
Dove has just creamed and sugared for him. After all the beaten way is
usually the best, and always the safest. “He ought to be well
mounted,” says Aaron Hill, “who is for leaping the hedges of custom.”
For myself I am not so adventurous a horseman as to take the hazards
of a steeple chace.
Proceeding therefore after the model of a Tyburn biography, which
being an ancient as well as popular form is likely to be the best,—we
come after birth and parentage to education. “That the world from
Babel was scattered into divers tongues, we need not other proof,”
says a grave and good author, “than as Diogenes proved that there is
motion,—by walking;—so we may see the confusion of languages by our
confused speaking. Once all the earth was of one tongue, one speech
and one consent; for they all spake in the holy tongue wherein the
world was created in the beginning. But _pro peccato dissentionis
humanæ_ (as saith St. Austin,)—for the sin of men disagreeing,—not
only different dispositions but also different languages came into the
world.—They came to Babel with a disagreeing agreement; and they came
away punished with a speechless speech. They disagree among
themselves, while every one strives for dominion. They agree against
God in their _Nagnavad lan Liguda_,—we will make ourselves a
rendezvous for idolatry. But they come away speaking to each other,
but not understood of each other; and so speak to no more purpose than
if they spake not at all. This punishment of theirs at Babel is like
Adam's corruption, hereditary to us; for we never come under the rod
at the Grammar School, but we smart for our ancestor's rebellion at
Babel.”
Light lie the earth upon the bones of Richard Guy, the Schoolmaster of
Ingleton! He never consumed birch enough in his vocation to have made
a besom; and his ferule was never applied unless when some moral
offence called for a chastisement that would be felt. There is a
closer connection between good-nature and good sense than is commonly
supposed. A sour ill-tempered pedagogue would have driven Daniel
through the briars and brambles of the Grammar and foundered him in
its sloughs; Guy led him gently along the green-sward. He felt that
childhood should not be made altogether a season of painful
acquisition, and that the fruits of the sacrifices then made are
uncertain as to the account to which they may be turned, and are also
liable to the contingencies of life at least, if not otherwise
jeopardized. “_Puisque le jour peut lui manquer, laissons le un peu
jouir de l'Aurore!_” The precepts which warmth of imagination inspired
in Jean Jacques was impressed upon Guy's practice by gentleness of
heart. He never crammed the memory of his pupil with such horrific
terms as Prothesis, Aphæresis, Epenthesis, Syncope, Paragoge, and
Apocope; never questioned him concerning Appositio, Evocatio,
Syllepsis, Prolepsis, Zeugma, Synthesis, Antiptosis, and Synecdoche;
never attempted to deter him (as Lily says boys are above all things
to be deterred) from those faults which Lily also says, seem almost
natural to the English,—the heinous faults of Iotacism, Lambdacism,
(which Alcibiades affected,)—Ischnotesism, Trauli'sm and Plateasm. But
having grounded him well in the nouns and verbs, and made him
understand the concords, he then followed in part the excellent advice
of Lily thus given in his address to the Reader:
“When these concords be well known unto them (an easy and pleasant
pain, if the foregrounds be well and thoroughly beaten in) let them
not continue in learning of the rules orderly, as they lie in their
Syntax, but rather learn some pretty book wherein is contained not
only the eloquence of the tongue, but also a good plain lesson of
honesty and godliness; and thereof take some little sentence as it
lieth, and learn to make the same first out of English into Latin, not
seeing the book, or construing it thereupon. And if there fall any
necessary rule of the Syntax to be known, then to learn it, as the
occasion of the sentence giveth cause that day; which sentence once
made well, and as nigh as may be with the words of the book, then to
take the book and construe it; and so shall he be less troubled with
the parsing of it, and easiliest carry his lesson in mind.”
Guy followed this advice in part; and in part he deviated from it,
upon Lily's own authority, as “judging that the most sufficient way
which he saw to be the readiest mean;” while therefore he exercised
his pupil in writing Latin pursuant to this plan, he carried him on
faster in construing, and promoted the boy's progress by gratifying
his desire of getting forward. When he had done with Cordery, Erasmus
was taken up,—for some of Erasmus's colloquies were in those days used
as a school book, and the most attractive one that could be put into a
boy's hands. After he had got through this, the aid of an English
version was laid aside. And here Guy departed from the ordinary
course, not upon any notion that he could improve upon it, but merely
because he happened to possess an old book composed for the use of
Schools, which was easy enough to suit young Daniel's progress in the
language, and might therefore save the cost of purchasing Justin or
Phædrus or Cornelius Nepos, or Eutropius,—to one or other of which he
would otherwise have been introduced.