churchyard, of my maternal grandfather appears in the light of my
proper and native home. It was there that I was allowed to spend
the greatest part of my time, in sickness or in health, during my
school vacations and my parents' residence in London, and finally
after my mother's death. Three months after that event, in the
spring of 1748, the commercial ruin of her father, Mr. James Porten,
was accomplished and declared. He suddenly absconded: but as his
effects were not sold, nor the house evacuated, till the Christmas
following, I enjoyed during the whole year the society of my aunt,
without much consciousness of her impending fate. I feel a
melancholy pleasure in repeating my obligations to that excellent
woman, Mrs. Catherine Porten, the true mother of my mind as well as
of my health. Her natural good sense was improved by the perusal of
the best books in the English language; and if her reason was
sometimes clouded by prejudice, her sentiments were never disguised
by hypocrisy or affectation. Her indulgent tenderness, the
frankness of her temper, and my innate rising curiosity, soon
removed all distance between us: like friends of an equal age, we
freely conversed on every topic, familiar or abstruse; and it was
her delight and reward to observe the first shoots of my young
ideas. Pain and languor were often soothed by the voice of
instruction and amusement; and to her kind lessons I ascribe my
early and invincible love of reading, which I would not exchange for
the treasures of India. I should perhaps be astonished, were it
possible to ascertain the date, at which a favourite tale was
engraved, by frequent repetition, in my memory: the Cavern of the
Winds; the Palace of Felicity; and the fatal moment, at the end of
three months or centuries, when Prince Adolphus is overtaken by
Time, who had worn out so many pair of wings in the pursuit. Before
I left Kingston school I was well acquainted with Pope's Homer and
the Arabian Nights Entertainments, two books which will always
please by the moving picture of human manners and specious miracles:
nor was I then capable of discerning that Pope's translation is a
portrait endowed with every merit, excepting that of likeness to the
original. The verses of Pope accustomed my ear to the sound of
poetic harmony: in the death of Hector, and the shipwreck of
Ulysses, I tasted the new emotions of terror and pity; and seriously
disputed with my aunt on the vices and virtues of the heroes of the
Trojan war. From Pope's Homer to Dryden's Virgil was an easy
transition; but I know not how, from some fault in the author, the
translator, or the reader, the pious Aeneas did not so forcibly
seize on my imagination; and I derived more pleasure from Ovid's
Metamorphoses, especially in the fall of Phaeton, and the speeches
of Ajax and Ulysses. My grand-father's flight unlocked the door of
a tolerable library; and I turned over many English pages of poetry
and romance, of history and travels. Where a title attracted my
eye, without fear or awe I snatched the volume from the shelf; and
Mrs. Porten, who indulged herself in moral and religious
speculations, was more prone to encourage than to check a curiosity
above the strength of a boy. This year (1748), the twelfth of my
age, I shall note as the most propitious to the growth of my
intellectual stature.
The relics of my grandfather's fortune afforded a bare annuity for
his own maintenance; and his daughter, my worthy aunt, who had
already passed her fortieth year, was left destitute. Her noble
spirit scorned a life of obligation and dependence; and after
revolving several schemes, she preferred the humble industry of
keeping a boarding-house for Westminster-school, where she
laboriously earned a competence for her old age. This singular
opportunity of blending the advantages of private and public
education decided my father. After the Christmas holidays in
January, 1749, I accompanied Mrs. Porten to her new house in
College-street; and was immediately entered in the school of which
Dr. John Nicoll was at that time head-master. At first I was alone:
but my aunt's resolution was praised; her character was esteemed;
her friends were numerous and active: in the course of some years
she became the mother of forty or fifty boys, for the most part of
family and fortune; and as her primitive habitation was too narrow,
she built and occupied a spacious mansion in Dean's Yard. I shall
always be ready to join in the common opinion that our public
schools, which have produced so many eminent characters, are the
best adapted to the genius and constitution of the English people.
A boy of spirit may acquire a previous and practical experience of
the world; and his playfellows may be the future friends of his
heart or his interest. In a free intercourse with his equals, the
habits of truth, fortitude, and prudence will insensibly be matured.
Birth and riches are measured by the standard of personal merit; and
the mimic scene of a rebellion has displayed, in their true colours,
the ministers and patriots of the rising generation. Our seminaries
of learning do not exactly correspond with the precept of a Spartan
king, "that the child should be instructed in the arts, which will
be useful to the man;" since a finished scholar may emerge from the
head of Westminster or Eton, in total ignorance of the business and
conversation of English gentlemen in the latter end of the
eighteenth century. But these schools may assume the merit of
teaching all that they pretend to teach, the Latin and Greek
languages: they deposit in the hands of a disciple the keys of two
valuable chests; nor can he complain, if they are afterwards lost or
neglected by his own fault. The necessity of leading in equal ranks
so many unequal powers of capacity and application, will prolong to
eight or ten years the juvenile studies, which might be despatched
in half that time by the skilful master of a single pupil. Yet even
the repetition of exercise and discipline contributes to fix in a
vacant mind the verbal science of grammar and prosody: and the
private or voluntary student, who possesses the sense and spirit of
the classics, may offend, by a false quantity, the scrupulous ear of
a well-flogged critic. For myself, I must be content with a very
small share of the civil and literary fruits of a public school. In
the space of two years (1749, 1750), interrupted by danger and
debility, I painfully climbed into the third form; and my riper age
was left to acquire the beauties of the Latin, and the rudiments of
the Greek tongue. Instead of audaciously mingling in the sports,
the quarrels, and the connections of our little world, I was still
cherished at home under the maternal wing of my aunt; and my removal
from Westminster long preceded the approach of manhood.
The violence and variety of my complaint, which had excused my
frequent absence from Westminster School, at length engaged Mrs.
Porten, with the advice of physicians, to conduct me to Bath: at the
end of the Michaelmas vacation (1750) she quitted me with
reluctance, and I remained several months under the care of a trusty
maid-servant. A strange nervous affection, which alternately
contracted my legs, and produced, without any visible symptoms, the
most excruciating pain, was ineffectually opposed by the various
methods of bathing and pumping. From Bath I was transported to
Winchester, to the house of a physician; and after the failure of
his medical skill, we had again recourse to the virtues of the Bath
waters. During the intervals of these fits, I moved with my father
to Beriton and Putney; and a short unsuccessful trial was attempted
to renew my attendance at Westminster School. But my infirmities
could not be reconciled with the hours and discipline of a public
seminary; and instead of a domestic tutor, who might have watched
the favourable moments, and gently advanced the progress of my
learning, my father was too easily content with such occasional
teachers as the different places of my residence could supply. I
was never forced, and seldom was I persuaded, to admit these
lessons: yet I read with a clergyman at Bath some odes of Horace,
and several episodes of Virgil, which gave me an imperfect and
transient enjoyment of the Latin poets. It might now be apprehended
that I should continue for life an illiterate cripple; but, as I
approached my sixteenth year, Nature displayed in my favour her
mysterious energies: my constitution was fortified and fixed; and my
disorders, instead of growing with my growth and strengthening with
my strength, most wonderfully vanished. I have never possessed or
abused the insolence of health: but since that time few persons have
been more exempt from real or imaginary ills; and, till I am
admonished by the gout, the reader will no more be troubled with the
history of my bodily complaints. My unexpected recovery again
encouraged the hope of my education; and I was placed at Esher, in
Surrey, in the house of the Reverend Mr. Philip Francis, in a
pleasant spot, which promised to unite the various benefits of air,
exercise, and study (Jan.,1752). The translator of Horace might
have taught me to relish the Latin poets, had not my friends
discovered in a few weeks, that he preferred the pleasures of
London, to the instruction of his pupils. My father's perplexity at
this time, rather than his prudence, was urged to embrace a singular
and desperate measure. Without preparation or delay he carried me
to Oxford; and I was matriculated in the university as a gentleman
commoner of Magdalen college, before I had accomplished the
fifteenth year of my age (April 3, 1752).
The curiosity, which had been implanted in my infant mind, was still
alive and active; but my reason was not sufficiently informed to
understand the value, or to lament the loss, of three precious years
from my entrance at Westminster to my admission at Oxford. Instead
of repining at my long and frequent confinement to the chamber or
the couch, I secretly rejoiced in those infirmities, which delivered
me from the exercises of the school, and the society of my equals.
As often as I was tolerably exempt from danger and pain, reading,
free desultory reading, was the employment and comfort of my
solitary hours. At Westminster, my aunt sought only to amuse and
indulge me; in my stations at Bath and Winchester, at Beriton and
Putney, a false compassion respected my sufferings; and I was
allowed, without controul or advice, to gratify the wanderings of an
unripe taste. My indiscriminate appetite subsided by degrees in the
historic line: and since philosophy has exploded all innate ideas
and natural propensities, I must ascribe this choice to the
assiduous perusal of the Universal History, as the octavo volumes
successively appeared. This unequal work, and a treatise of Hearne,
the Ductor historicus, referred and introduced me to the Greek and
Roman historians, to as many at least as were accessible to an
English reader. All that I could find were greedily devoured, from
Littlebury's lame Herodotus, and Spelman's valuable Xenophon, to the
pompous folios of Gordon's Tacitus, and a ragged Procopius of the
beginning of the last century. The cheap acquisition of so much
knowledge confirmed my dislike to the study of languages; and I
argued with Mrs. Porten, that, were I master of Greek and Latin, I
must interpret to myself in English the thoughts of the original,
and that such extemporary versions must be inferior to the elaborate
translations of professed scholars; a silly sophism, which could not
easily be confuted by a person ignorant of any other language than
her own. From the ancient I leaped to the modern world: many crude
lumps of Speed, Rapin, Mezeray, Davila, Machiavel, Father Paul,
Bower, &c., I devoured like so many novels; and I swallowed with the
same voracious appetite the descriptions of India and China, of
Mexico and Peru.
My first introduction to the historic scenes, which have since
engaged so many years of my life, must be ascribed to an accident.
In the summer of 1751, I accompanied my father on a visit to Mr.
Hoare's, in Wiltshire; but I was less delighted with the beauties of
Stourhead, than with discovering in the library a common book, the
Continuation of Echard's Roman History, which is indeed executed
with more skill and taste than the previous work. To me the reigns
of the successors of Constantine were absolutely new; and I was
immersed in the passage of the Goths over the Danube, when the
summons of the dinner-bell reluctantly dragged me from my
intellectual feast. This transient glance served rather to irritate
than to appease my curiosity; and as soon as I returned to Bath I
procured the second and third volumes of Howel's History of the
World, which exhibit the Byzantine period on a larger scale.
Mahomet and his Saracens soon fixed my attention; and some instinct
of criticism directed me to the genuine sources. Simon Ockley, an
original in every sense, first opened my eyes; and I was led from
one book to another, till I had ranged round the circle of Oriental
history. Before I was sixteen, I had exhausted all that could be
learned in English of the Arabs and Persians, the Tartars and Turks;
and the same ardour urged me to guess at the French of D'Herbelot,
and to construe the barbarous Latin of Pocock's Abulfaragius. Such
vague and multifarious reading could not teach me to think, to
write, or to act; and the only principle that darted a ray of light
into the indigested chaos, was an early and rational application to
the order of time and place. The maps of Cellarius and Wells
imprinted in my mind the picture of ancient geography: from
Stranchius I imbibed the elements of chronology: the Tables of
Helvicus and Anderson, the Annals of Usher and Prideaux,
distinguished the connection of events, and engraved the multitude
of names and dates in a clear and indelible series. But in the
discussion of the first ages I overleaped the bounds of modesty and
use. In my childish balance I presumed to weigh the systems of
Scaliger and Petavius, of Marsham and Newton, which I could seldom
study in the originals; and my sleep has been disturbed by the
difficulty of reconciling the Septuagint with the Hebrew
computation. I arrived at Oxford with a stock of erudition, that
might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance, of which a
school-boy would have been ashamed.
At the conclusion of this first period of my life, I am tempted to
enter a protest against the trite and lavish praise of the happiness
of our boyish years, which is echoed with so much affectation in the
world. That happiness I have never known, that time I have never
regretted; and were my poor aunt still alive, she would bear
testimony to the early and constant uniformity of my sentiments. It
will indeed be replied, that I am not a competent judge; that
pleasure is incompatible with pain; that joy is excluded from
sickness; and that the felicity of a schoolboy consists in the
perpetual motion of thoughtless and playful agility, in which I was
never qualified to excel. My name, it is most true, could never be
enrolled among the sprightly race, the idle progeny of Eton or
Westminster,
"Who foremost may delight to cleave,
With pliant arm, the glassy wave,
Or urge the flying ball."
The poet may gaily describe the short hours of recreation; but he
forgets the daily tedious labours of the school, which is approached
each morning with anxious and reluctant steps.
A traveller, who visits Oxford or Cambridge, is surprised and
edified by the apparent order and tranquillity that prevail in the
seats of the English muses. In the most celebrated universities of
Holland, Germany, and Italy, the students, who swarm from different
countries, are loosely dispersed in private lodgings at the houses
of the burghers: they dress according to their fancy and fortune;
and in the intemperate quarrels of youth and wine, their swords,
though less frequently than of old, are sometimes stained with each
other's blood. The use of arms is banished from our English
universities; the uniform habit of the academics, the square cap,
and black gown, is adapted to the civil and even clerical
profession; and from the doctor in divinity to the under-graduate,
the degrees of learning and age are externally distinguished.
Instead of being scattered in a town, the students of Oxford and
Cambridge are united in colleges; their maintenance is provided at
their own expense, or that of the founders; and the stated hours of
the hall and chapel represent the discipline of a regular, and, as
it were, a religious community. The eyes of the traveller are
attracted by the size or beauty of the public edifices; and the
principal colleges appear to be so many palaces, which a liberal
nation has erected and endowed for the habitation of science. My
own introduction to the university of Oxford forms a new aera in my
life; and at the distance of forty years I still remember my first
emotions of surprise and satisfaction. In my fifteenth year I felt
myself suddenly raised from a boy to a man: the persons, whom I
respected as my superiors in age and academical rank, entertained me
with every mark of attention and civility; and my vanity was
flattered by the velvet cap and silk gown, which distinguish a
gentleman commoner from a plebeian student. A decent allowance,
more money than a schoolboy had ever seen, was at my own disposal;
and I might command, among the tradesmen of Oxford, an indefinite
and dangerous latitude of credit. A key was delivered into my
hands, which gave me the free use of a numerous and learned library;
my apartment consisted of three elegant and well-furnished rooms in
the new building, a stately pile, of Magdalen College; and the
adjacent walks, had they been frequented by Plato's disciples, might
have been compared to the Attic shade on the banks of the Ilissus.
Such was the fair prospect of my entrance (April 3, 1752) into the
university of Oxford.
A venerable prelate, whose taste and erudition must reflect honour
on the society in which they were formed, has drawn a very
interesting picture of his academical life.--"I was educated (says
Bishop Lowth) in the UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. I enjoyed all the
advantages, both public and private, which that famous seat of
learning so largely affords. I spent many years in that illustrious
society, in a well-regulated course of useful discipline and
studies, and in the agreeable and improving commerce of gentlemen
and of scholars; in a society where emulation without envy, ambition
without jealousy, contention without animosity, incited industry,
and awakened genius; where a liberal pursuit of knowledge, and a
genuine freedom of thought, were raised, encouraged, and pushed
forward by example, by commendation, and by authority. I breathed
the same atmosphere that the HOOKERS, the CHILLINGWORTHS, and the
LOCKES had breathed before; whose benevolence and humanity were as
extensive as their vast genius and comprehensive knowledge; who
always treated their adversaries with civility and respect; who made
candour, moderation, and liberal judgment as much the rule and law
as the subject of their discourse. And do you reproach me with my
education in this place, and with my relation to this most
respectable body, which I shall always esteem my greatest advantage
and my highest honour?" I transcribe with pleasure this eloquent
passage, without examining what benefits or what rewards were
derived by Hooker, or Chillingworth, or Locke, from their academical
institution; without inquiring, whether in this angry controversy
the spirit of Lowth himself is purified from the intolerant zeal,
which Warburton had ascribed to the genius of the place. It may
indeed be observed, that the atmosphere of Oxford did not agree with
Mr. Locke's constitution; and that the philosopher justly despised
the academical bigots, who expelled his person and condemned his
principles. The expression of gratitude is a virtue and a pleasure:
a liberal mind will delight to cherish and celebrate the memory of
its parents; and the teachers of science are the parents of the
mind. I applaud the filial piety, which it is impossible for me to
imitate; since I must not confess an imaginary debt, to assume the
merit of a just or generous retribution. To the university of
Oxford I acknowledge no obligation; and she will as cheerfully
renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother.
I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College; they proved the
fourteen months the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life: the
reader will pronounce between the school and the scholar; but I
cannot affect to believe that Nature had disqualified me for all
literary pursuits. The specious and ready excuse of my tender age,
imperfect preparation, and hasty departure, may doubtless be
alleged; nor do I wish to defraud such excuses of their proper
weight. Yet in my sixteenth year I was not devoid of capacity or
application; even my childish reading had displayed an early though
blind propensity for books; and the shallow flood might have been
taught to flow in a deep channel and a clear stream. In the
discipline of a well-constituted academy, under the guidance of
skilful and vigilant professors, I should gradually have risen from
translations to originals, from the Latin to the Greek classics,
from dead languages to living science: my hours would have been
occupied by useful and agreeable studies, the wanderings of fancy
would have been restrained, and I should have escaped the
temptations of idleness, which finally precipitated my departure
from Oxford.
Perhaps in a separate annotation I may coolly examine the fabulous
and real antiquities of our sister universities, a question which
has kindled such fierce and foolish disputes among their fanatic
sons. In the meanwhile it will be acknowledged that these venerable
bodies are sufficiently old to partake of all the prejudices and
infirmities of age. The schools of Oxford and Cambridge were
founded in a dark age of false and barbarous science; and they are
still tainted with the vices of their origin. Their primitive
discipline was adapted to the education of priests and monks; and
the government still remains in the hands of the clergy, an order of
men whose manners are remote from the present world, and whose eyes
are dazzled by the light of philosophy. The legal incorporation of
these societies by the charters of popes and kings had given them a
monopoly of the public instruction; and the spirit of monopolists is
narrow, lazy, and oppressive; their work is more costly and less
productive than that of independent artists; and the new
improvements so eagerly grasped by the competition of freedom, are
admitted with slow and sullen reluctance in those proud
corporations, above the fear of a rival, and below the confession of
an error. We may scarcely hope that any reformation will be a
voluntary act; and so deeply are they rooted in law and prejudice,
that even the omnipotence of parliament would shrink from an inquiry
into the state and abuses of the two universities.
The use of academical degrees, as old as the thirteenth century, is
visibly borrowed from the mechanic corporations; in which an
apprentice, after serving his time, obtains a testimonial of his
skill, and a licence to practise his trade and mystery. It is not
my design to depreciate those honours, which could never gratify or
disappoint my ambition; and I should applaud the institution, if the
degrees of bachelor or licentiate were bestowed as the reward of
manly and successful study: if the name and rank of doctor or master
were strictly reserved for the professors of science, who have
approved their title to the public esteem.
In all the universities of Europe, excepting our own, the languages
and sciences are distributed among a numerous list of effective
professors: the students, according to their taste, their calling,
and their diligence, apply themselves to the proper masters; and in
the annual repetition of public and private lectures, these masters
are assiduously employed. Our curiosity may inquire what number of
professors has been instituted at Oxford? (for I shall now confine
myself to my own university;) by whom are they appointed, and what
may be the probable chances of merit or incapacity; how many are
stationed to the three faculties, and how many are left for the
liberal arts? what is the form, and what the substance, of their
lessons? But all these questions are silenced by one short and
singular answer, "That in the University of Oxford, the greater part
of the public professors have for these many years given up
altogether even the pretence of teaching." Incredible as the fact
may appear, I must rest my belief on the positive and impartial
evidence of a master of moral and political wisdom, who had himself
resided at Oxford. Dr. Adam Smith assigns as the cause of their
indolence, that, instead of being paid by voluntary contributions,
which would urge them to increase the number, and to deserve the
gratitude of their pupils, the Oxford professors are secure in the
enjoyment of a fixed stipend, without the necessity of labour, or
the apprehension of controul. It has indeed been observed, nor is
the observation absurd, that excepting in experimental sciences,
which demand a costly apparatus and a dexterous hand, the many
valuable treatises, that have been published on every subject of
learning, may now supersede the ancient mode of oral instruction.
Were this principle true in its utmost latitude, I should only infer
that the offices and salaries, which are become useless, ought
without delay to be abolished. But there still remains a material
difference between a book and a professor; the hour of the lecture
enforces attendance; attention is fixed by the presence, the voice,
and the occasional questions of the teacher; the most idle will
carry something away; and the more diligent will compare the
instructions, which they have heard in the school, with the volumes,
which they peruse in their chamber. The advice of a skilful
professor will adapt a course of reading to every mind and every
situation; his authority will discover, admonish, and at last
chastise the negligence of his disciples; and his vigilant inquiries
will ascertain the steps of their literary progress. Whatever
science he professes he may illustrate in a series of discourses,
composed in the leisure of his closet, pronounced on public
occasions, and finally delivered to the press. I observe with
pleasure, that in the university of Oxford Dr. Lowth, with equal
eloquence and erudition, has executed this task in his incomparable
Praelections on the Poetry of the Hebrews.