EDUCATIONAL THEORY-TEACHING.
Milton was back in England in August, 1639. He had been absent a year
and three months, during which space of time the aspect of public
affairs, which had been perplexed and gloomy when he left, had been
growing still more ominous of a coming storm. The issues of the
controversy were so pervasive, that it was almost impossible for any
educated man who understood them not to range himself on a side. Yet
Milton, though he had broken off his projected tour in consequence,
did not rush into the fray on his return. He resumed his retired and
studious life, "with no small delight, cheerfully leaving," as he
says, "the event of public affairs first to God, and then to those to
whom the people had committed that task."
He did not return to Horton, but took lodgings in London, in the house
of Russel a tailor, in St. Bride's churchyard, at the city end of
Fleet-street, on the site of what is now Farringdon-street. There is
no attempt on the part of Milton to take up a profession, not even for
the sake of appearances. The elder Milton was content to provide the
son, of whom he was proud, with the means of prosecuting his eccentric
scheme of life, to continue, namely, to prepare himself for some great
work, nature unknown.
For a young man of simple habits and studious life a little suffices.
The chief want is books, and of these, for Milton's style of reading,
select rather than copious, a large collection is superfluous. There
were in 1640 no public libraries in London, and a scholar had to find
his own store of books or to borrow from his friends. Milton never
can have possessed a large library. At Horton he may have used
Kederminster's bequest to Langley Church. Still, with his Italian
acquisitions, added to the books that he already possessed, he soon
found a lodging too narrow for his accommodation, and removed to a
house of his own, "a pretty garden-house, in Aldersgate, at the end of
an entry." Aldersgate was outside the city walls, on the verge of the
open country of Islington, and was a genteel though not a fashionable
quarter. There were few streets in London, says Phillips, more free
from noise.
He had taken in hand the education of his two nephews, John and Edward
Phillips, sons of his only sister Anne. Anne was a few years older
than her brother John. Her first husband, Edward Phillips, had died in
1631, and the widow had given her two sons a stepfather in one Thomas
Agar, who was in the Clerk of the Crown's office. Milton, on settling
in London in 1639, had at once taken his younger nephew John to live
with him. When, in 1640, he removed to Aldersgate, the elder, Edward,
also came under his roof.
If it was affection for his sister which first moved Milton to
undertake the tuition of her sons, he soon developed a taste for the
occupation. In 1643 he began to receive into his house other pupils,
but only, says Phillips (who is solicitous that his uncle should not
be thought to have kept a school), "the sons of some gentlemen that
were his intimate friends." He threw into his lessons the same energy
which he carried into everything else. In his eagerness to find a
place for everything that could be learnt, there could have been few
hours in the day which were not invaded by teaching. He had exchanged
the contemplative leisure of Horton for a busy life, in which no hour
but had its calls. Even on Sundays there were lessons in the Greek
Testament and dictations of a system of Divinity in Latin. His
pamphlets of this period betray, in their want of measure and
equilibrium, even in their heated style and passion-flushed language,
the life at high pressure which their author was leading.
We have no account of Milton's method of teaching from any competent
pupil. Edward Phillips was an amiable and upright man, who earned his
living respectably by tuition and the compilation of books. He held
his uncle's memory in great veneration. But when he comes to
describe the education he received at his uncle's hands, the only
characteristic on which he dwells is that of quantity. Phillips's
account is, however, supplemented for us by Milton's written theory.
His _Tractate of Education to Master Samuel Hartlib_ is probably known
even to those who have never looked at anything else of Milton's in
prose.
Of all the practical arts, that of education seems the most cumbrous
in its method, and to be productive of the smallest results with the
most lavish expenditure of means. Hence the subject of education is
one which is always luring on the innovator and the theorist.
Every one, as he grows up, becomes aware of time lost, and effort
misapplied, in his own case. It is not unnatural to desire to save our
children from a like waste of power. And in a time such as was that
of Milton's youth, when all traditions were being questioned, and all
institutions were to be remodelled, it was certain that the school
would be among the earliest objects to attract an experimental
reformer. Among the advanced minds of the time there had grown up a
deep dissatisfaction with the received methods of our schools, and
more especially of our universities. The great instaurator of all
knowledge, Bacon, in preaching the necessity of altering the whole
method of knowing, included as matter of course the method of teaching
to know.
The man who carried over the Baconian aspiration into education was
Comenius (d. 1670). A projector and enthusiast, Comenius desired, like
Bacon, an entirely new intellectual era. With Bacon's intellectual
ambition, but without Bacon's capacity, Comenius proposed to
revolutionise all knowledge, and to make complete wisdom accessible to
all, in a brief space of time, and with a minimum of labour. Language
only as an instrument, not as an end in itself; many living languages,
instead of the one dead language of the old school; a knowledge of
things, instead of words; the free use of our eyes and ears upon the
nature that surrounds us; intelligent apprehension, instead of loading
the memory--all these doctrines, afterwards inherited by the party
of rational reform, were first promulgated in Europe by the numerous
pamphlets--some ninety have been reckoned up--of this Teuto-Slav,
Comenius.
Comenius had as the champion of his views in England Samuel Hartlib,
a Dantziger by origin, settled in London since 1628. Hartlib had even
less of real science than Comenius, but he was equally possessed by
the Baconian ideal of a new heaven and a new earth of knowledge. Not
himself a discoverer in any branch, he was unceasingly occupied in
communicating the discoveries and inventions of others. He had an ear
for every novelty of whatever kind, interesting himself in social,
religious, philanthropic schemes, as well as in experiments in the
arts. A sanguine universality of benevolence pervaded that generation
of ardent souls, akin only in their common anticipation of an unknown
Utopia. A secret was within the reach of human ingenuity which would
make all mankind happy. But there were two directions more especially
in which Hartlib's zeal without knowledge abounded. These were a grand
scheme for the union of Protestant Christendom, and his propagand of
Comenius's school-reform.
For the first of these projects it was not likely that Hartlib would
gain a proselyte in Milton, who had at one-and-twenty judged Anglican
orders a servitude, and was already chafing against the restraints of
Presbytery. But on his other hobby, that of school-reform, Milton was
not only sympathetic, but when Hartlib came to talk with him, he
found that most or all of Comenius's ideas had already independently
presented themselves to the reflection or experience of the
Englishman. At Hartlib's request Milton consented to put down his
thoughts on paper, and even to print them in a quarto pamphlet of
eight pages, entitled, _Of Education: to Master Samuel Hartlib_.
This tract, often reproduced and regarded, along with one of Locke's,
as a substantial contribution to the subject, must often have
grievously disappointed those who have eagerly consulted it for
practical hints or guidance of any kind. Its interest is wholly
biographical. It cannot be regarded as a valuable contribution to
educational theory, but it is strongly marked with the Miltonic
individuality. We find in it the same lofty conception of the aim
which Milton carried into everything he attempted; the same disdain of
the beaten routine, and proud reliance upon his own resources. He had
given vent elsewhere to his discontent with the system of Cambridge,
"which, as in the time of her better health, and mine own younger
judgment, I never greatly admired, so now (1642) much less." In the
letter to Hartlib he denounces with equal fierceness the schools and
"the many mistakes which have made learning generally so unpleasing
and so unsuccessful." The alumni of the universities carry away with
them a hatred and contempt for learning, and sink into "ignorantly
zealous" clergymen, or mercenary lawyers, while the men of fortune
betake themselves to feasts and jollity. These last, Milton thinks,
are the best of the three classes.
All these moral shipwrecks are the consequence, according to Milton,
of bad education. It is in our power to avert them by a reform of
schools. But the measures of reform, when produced, are ludicrously
incommensurable with the evils to be remedied. I do not trouble the
reader with the proposals; they are a form of the well-known mistake
of regarding education as merely the communication of useful
knowledge. The doctrine as propounded in the _Tractate_ is complicated
by the further difficulty, that the knowledge is to be gathered out of
Greek and Latin books. This doctrine is advocated by Milton with the
ardour of his own lofty enthusiasm. In virtue of the grandeur of zeal
which inspires them, these pages, which are in substance nothing more
than the now familiar omniscient examiner's programme, retain a place
as one of our classics. The fine definition of education here given
has never been improved upon: "I call a complete and generous
education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and
magnanimously, all the offices, both private and public, of peace and
war." This is the true Milton. When he offers, in another page, as an
equivalent definition of the true end of learning, "to repair the ruin
of our first parents by regaining to know God aright," we have the
theological Milton, and what he took on from the current language of
his age.
Milton saw strongly, as many have done before and since, one weak
point in the practice of schools, namely, the small result of much
time. He fell into the natural error of the inexperienced teacher,
that of supposing that the remedy was the ingestion of much and
diversified intelligible matter. It requires much observation of
young minds to discover that the rapid inculcation of unassimilated
information stupefies the faculties instead of training them. Is it
fanciful to think that in Edward Phillips, who was always employing
his superficial pen upon topics with which he snatched a fugitive
acquaintance, we have a concrete example of the natural result of the
Miltonic system of instruction?