In spite of the ingenuity I expended, in order to imbibe as small a
quantity of Latin and Greek as was possible, and of the number of
persons, whom I have so frequently heard declaiming against the
exclusive attention paid to their attainment, and with whom, during my
pupillage, I entirely coincided, I cannot help smiling at the extent
to which I have since _ratted_ in this respect. Now that I am no
longer forced to profit by such studies, I have arrived at the
conviction of their necessity. If a knowledge of our own language be
desirable, they afford the only means of understanding the true import
of the words which constitute it; and when, at times, I have
sufficient diffidence to suspect my own capabilities of forming a
correct opinion in the matter, and examine into that of others, I have
to acknowledge, not only that the advocates of the dead languages are
the most competent judges, but that the persons who oppose them the
most strenuously, are invariably those who are the least conversant
with them; while the former, again, are rarely heard to regret the
time expended in their acquirements; while what superior though
uneducated man, but has deplored his ignorance of them, and his want
of opportunity to acquire them?
But I have, of late, arrived at such an extreme as to advocate the
study to the exclusion of all others, with the exception of modern
languages. My paradox is this, that which is downright indispensable
for everyday life, do not teach us; for then, in spite of ourselves,
we must, in these subjects, become our own instructors. If, in a few
years after we have left the school, we possess not a respectable
knowledge of such common, and easily acquired subjects, as arithmetic,
history, and geography, we alone are culpable; and the more the world
makes us sensible of our deficiency, the more we deserve it, and the
sooner we shall set about to apply the remedy. Teach us, then, in
boyhood, that which we will not, or in this case, perhaps, cannot
teach ourselves--a knowledge of the classics.
I sometimes suspect that many persons doubt of their importance, from
the fact of their being distinguished as the dead languages, while,
perhaps, they are exactly the only immortal ones--unchangeable
throughout all ages in their primitive purity. In an unwary, or
perhaps charitable moment, I am seized with enthusiastic admiration of
our forefathers' good taste in so justly appreciating the beauties of
ancient literature, though I now and then have a misgiving that it is
a relic of the cloister, which had no productions of its own to
compete with them, and its traditional authority has not yet become
extinct; not that the moderns have produced such works of genius as to
supersede them, for those of the imagination are not to be accumulated
to greater perfection, from age to age, like those of science. Indeed
the works of the ancients, relative to the latter, are now only useful
as instances of the progress of the human mind; nor could they be
otherwise, as science is more or less perfect in proportion to the
ages that have preceded; as it is the last man's knowledge, added to
that of all his predecessors, or, as Sir John Herschel far better
expresses it, it "is the knowledge of many, orderly and methodically
digested and arranged, so as to become attainable by one;" and thus a
respectable philosopher of the present day may possess more knowledge
than even such powerful and original minds as those of Confucius or
Zoroaster, Aristotle or Pythagoras: he is not like the goose I now see
wading through the mud, and that can't build its nest a jot better
than the sacred ones of the Capitol could.
With regard to works purely imaginative, perhaps the very converse of
this will be found to be the case. The bard of Chios is not
superseded by those of the Lakes, who, as far as all beauty imparted
by the force of originality is concerned, even labour under a
disadvantage, for every author is conscious that a strong memory is a
dangerous thing, and will interfere with his originality in spite of
himself.
If then the sublimest soarings of the human imagination conveyed to
our minds, and clothed in all the beauties of language, are desirable,
we shall seldom regret the hours we have expended over Homer or
Virgil, Demosthenes or Cicero.
But although this comparatively exclusive attachment to the classics
may be Eton's most prominent characteristic, I suspect it to be by no
means the most important or beneficial one.
The contrast and contact, resulting from the sheer multitude of
varying dispositions, refined by the gentlemanly tone of character
indigenous to the college, afford advantages superior to all the rest
put together.
There are three other prominent features in the economy of Eton, which
I have touched on in former pages, namely, those of fagging, flogging,
and attendance in church during the week days.
As regards the two former intellectual characteristics, I must admit
that I am unusually obtuse; for although boasting a long and intimate
acquaintance with both, I have never arrived at any certain conclusion
as to their good or ill effects, though I have little doubt but that
they contain a mixture of each, only I am uncertain which may
preponderate.
The former might be profitable, both to the fagger and the fagged, did
it not commence and finish at the wrong end; for could a boy be well
fagged from the age of fourteen to eighteen, he would probably be all
the better for it, but during this period he is unfortunately the
despot. Many persons conclude that the system acts beneficially on the
youthful members of the aristocracy; but I think the same end might be
attained, and more respectably, by the mere jostling amid the crowd,
without proceeding to the extremity of subjecting a boy of gentlemanly
feeling, to the coarse caprices of a tradesman's son. I have myself
_requested_ the present Marquis of D----e to walk into the
playing-fields each evening, with a slop-basin in his hand, and milk
an unusually quiet cow that used to be there; but this office fell to
his lot, merely from his being the only boy in my dames who knew how
to milk a cow--in fact, it was his boast that he could milk a cow
better than any man in England. Lord C----stl----h too, must well
remember when a great wild, raw-boned Irish fellow, with a rope round
his waist, would throw himself from Lion's Leap into the river, by
way of learning to swim, while his lordship was appointed to pull him
out again; but the particular time that I now mean was, when he was
all but drowned, and vociferating with Hibernian vehemence, "pull, you
blackguard!" every time his head emerged for a moment from the bottom
of the river. But whatever effects this levelling process may have in
youthful days, I suspect that they are by no means permanent, and are
completely obliterated on leaving the school.
With regard to the punishment of flogging, many persons condemn it, as
degrading to a boy's character. These same persons would, probably,
deem it out of place to raise their hats on entering a man's shop, and
perhaps every one would feel it to be so in England; but in other
countries, were they not to do so, the shopkeeper, from experience,
would merely attribute the omission to what he deems an instance of
ill-breeding, habitual to John Bull; or, when he is not aware of this,
he will frequently decline to accommodate his customer. I mention this
instance to show, that what may meet with disapprobation in one place,
will not do so in another; and thus what to us at a distance, and in
after years, may appear to be repulsive, may by no means be so
considered during boyhood. Again, others will say, that it ought to
be felt as a disgrace. To this, I can only answer that it never will
be; for where there are so many boys as at Eton, this mode of
punishment must frequently be adopted; and as often as it is, so
certain, from its repetition, will it cease to be considered in that
light--it is altogether a necessary evil, which flesh is heir to.
Should the boy have committed anything unbecoming a gentleman, he is
invariably and appropriately punished by the manner adopted towards
him by his own associates, and the feeling of the school in general.
Let flogging, then, still be tolerated as a mere physical and
convenient inconvenience--its effect, too, is but ephemeral, and soon
becomes lost among the things that were.
Not so will be the effects of frequent attendance in church.
Concerning these three subjects, perhaps no two persons could be found
who might entertain similar opinions; therefore, it behoves one to
advance any decision as regards them with caution and diffidence; but
if one of them admits of greater certainty of opinion than the others,
is it not that relative to the frequent occurrence of the church
service? However the other two subjects may be opposed, some
advantages may be still held out in extenuation of their practice, but
I cannot help feeling that this cloying attendance on chapel must be
altogether pernicious.
His religion is not to be flogged or forced into a boy, like so much
Latin and Greek, or even to be instilled into him by a comparative
stranger. Until he comes to be able to inquire or think about it for
himself, the duty of instructing him is exclusively incumbent on his
parents, or on those who are in more immediate contact with him than
the tutors of a college can be. The superior and sufficient influence
of the former, in this respect, may be evidenced by the fact of a
little Catholic boy whom I knew, duly attending church with the rest
of us, and afterwards leaving the school, and remaining to this day as
stanch a Papist as ever entered the confessional.
Out of the six or seven hundred boys present during divine service,
should only fifty of them have their minds properly disposed, there
would be something to advance in support of the practice; but that
even this cannot be urged, I would appeal not only to every old
Etonian, but to every boy of the present day. With the exception of
Sunday, to which, of course, I am not now alluding, a boy, in my time,
would almost as soon think of bringing a cricket-bat into church with
him as a prayer-book; and if the prayers attracted our attention at
all, it was but momentarily, and that merely to ascertain whether the
tedious chaplain had nearly arrived at the conclusion of the service.
I assume the nature of boys of the present day to be similar to that
of boys twenty years ago; and if so, I suspect that all these services
have added about as much to the growth and strength of their religious
principles, as the hundred-and-one paternosters and ave-marias
muttered by a monk of Camaldoli for the last half century.
But was the evil merely negative, one would hesitate to object to
anything that has been adopted for ages by a foundation so admirably
conducted as that of Eton, and which has ever worked so well; but an
additional effect of this compulsory attendance is to induce, by the
force of early habit, an indifference and callousness of feeling
during divine service, which but few in after life have the grace to
overcome. But are the tutors of the College sensible of similar
effects within themselves? Probably not; for there is little reason
that they should, inasmuch as they have been preferred to their
present situations, and carefully selected from a multitude, in
consequence of their very singularity in this respect.
The promoters of this system seem to be guided, not by how it affects
the boys, but by how they wish it would. While attending these
services with appropriate feeling themselves, I suspect that they are
apt to forget how different was their own conduct on the same
occasions in their youth; or if not, they must imagine that the
rising generation has become far more immaculate than their
predecessors; "but boys will be boys" to the end of the chapter--and
here it is.