No More Learning

Robert Fergusson
379
of M'Gibbon, the Edinburgh musician, is in a more poetic vein
than either of the elegies just mentioned. It was, like Ramsay, as
the bard of Edinburgh that Fergusson first won fame; but, unlike
Ramsay, his main title to fame is in this capacity. Had he
lived longer, he might have attained to some ease and freedom
in English verse; though, as in the case of Burns, his environ-
ment, the cast of his genius, his latent predilection for the
vernacular, and the foreign character which, to him as to many
Scots of his time, seemed to belong to English speech, militate
against this possibility. Be this as it may, in the short career that
was to be his, he succeeded, like Burns, in depicting the scenes
which he thoroughly knew, and expressing the thoughts and senti-
ments akin to his circumstances and to the life he led. Unlike
Burns, he was, for this reason, an urban, more than a rustic, bard.
The influence of a few months spent by him in early manhood with
a
his uncle in the country is revealed in his odes To the Bee
and The Gowdspink, delicately descriptive, humorous and faintly
didactic, and in The Farmer's Ingle, a picture of a winter evening
in a farmhouse kitchen, sketched with perfect insight into the
character of the life he depicts and with the full human sympathy
essential to true creative art. But it was as the poet of 'Auld
Reekie, wale of ilka town' that he was to make his mark-not
Auld Reekie as represented in its resorts of fashion, but as revealed
in its tavern jollifications, street scenes and popular amusements
on holidays and at fairs and races. The subject is not great or
inspiring, but, such as it is, it is treated with insight and a power
of verisimilitude that brings vividly before our imagination the
modes and manners of the Edinburgh populace in the eighteenth
century. Here, and, indeed, generally, he proved himself, as a
vernacular bard, young though he was and short as was his career,
superior to Ramsay. Fergusson's wit is not so gross and it is more
keenly barbed, his sympathetic appreciation is stronger, his survey
is more comprehensive, his vernacular is racier, he has a better
sense of style, he is more of a creative artist, and he is decidedly
more poetic. He displayed the capacity of the Habbie stave for
a variety of descriptive narrative as well as for elegies and epistles,
and showed a mastery in its use beyond that of his predecessors,
though two of his most racily descriptive and humorous pieces,
Leith Races and The Hallow Fair, are in the stave of Christis
Kirk, with a single refrain ending in 'day. ' Another Hallow Fair,
modelled on Let us a' to the Bridal, signally evinces the hearty
merriment which was one of his inborn traits, though ill-health,
6
Ti
6


## p. 380 (#404) ############################################

380 Scottish Popular Poetry before Burns
irksome taskwork, poverty and irregular living clouded it soon
with hopeless melancholy. The Farmer's Ingle is written in a
nine-line stave, formed by adding a line to the old alternatively
riming octave; and his other staves are the octosyllabic and heroic
couplets, which he also used for English verse. The most notable
of his couplet pieces are Planestanes and Causeway-an imaginary
night dialogue between these two entities, on which Burns modelled
his night dialogue between the new and the old Brigs of Ayr—the
picture of Auld Reekie, and The Bill of Fare, in which he makes
Dr Samuel Johnson the subject of his satire.
The verse of Fergusson is small in bulk; it lacks maturity
of sentiment; here and there it shows patent faults and lapses.
But the genuineness, the cleverness, the racy humour and vivid
truthfulness of his art are beyond question : and his achievement,
so far as concerns the portrayal of the Edinburgh that he knew,
has a certain rounded completeness.


## p. 381 (#405) ############################################

1
!
i
CHAPTER XV
EDUCATION
Two parallel lines of interest may be traced in the history of
English education from the restoration to the end of George II's
reign. One consists of a series of writings by innovators in inten-
tion, some of whom were prominent in the world of letters; the other
is formed by attempts, only partially successful, to readjust ancient
machinery or to create new agents. Thinkers and practical men
alike were stimulated by an evident failure of schools and universi-
ties to meet the new conditions of life which had arisen during the
seventeenth century. Projects of reform took various shapes. Most
of them proposed changes in the plan of work which would recognise
the existence of contemporary culture and the requirements of the
age by introducing ‘modern' studies ; some writers, inspired by
Francis Bacon and Comenius, turned to problems of method, for
whose solution they looked in a fuller and more accurate knowledge
of mental process; a few preached the interest or the duty of the
state to instruct all its members. Incidentally, the story exhibits
the dependence of education upon national life, and the mischief
wrought in the body politic when education is permitted to develop
in a partisan atmosphere.
In the seventeenth century, the accepted educational curriculum
of school and university, as distinct from the professional studies
of divinity, law and medicine, was, in effect, the medieval seven
liberal arts, but with the balance of studies somewhat changed.
Of these, the quadrivium (arithmetic so-called, geometry, music,
astronomy) belonged to the university; the trivium (grammar,
logic, rhetoric) was loosely distributed between schoolboys and
freshmen, the latter being undistinguishable in modern eyes from
the former. Anthony à Wood entered Merton in 1647 at the age of
fifteen; Gibbon, more than a century later, was admittedat Magdalen
before completing his fifteenth year; Bentley was a subsizar at


## p. 382 (#406) ############################################

382
Education
.
St John's college, Cambridge, in 1676, at the age of fourteen.
Whether the story be true or not that Milton was birched by his
tutor at Cambridge, the following passage from Anthony à Wood
seems conclusive that, so late as 1668, the Oxford undergraduates
were liable to that punishment. Four scholars of Christ Church
having broken some windows, the vice-chancellor 'caused them
to repair the breaches, sent them into the country for a while, but
neither expelled them, nor caused them to be whipt? ' Ten years
later, the vice-chancellor ordered that no undergraduate buy or
sell ‘without the approbation of his tutor’any article whose value
exceeded five shillings. The Cambridge undergraduate of the
eighteenth century was not a 'man' but a 'lad,' for himself and
his companions no less than for his elders. The fact is to be
remembered when the reform of university studies in that age is
under discussion.
Of the trivium, 'grammar' meant Latin literature and, more
particularly, its necessary preliminary, Latin grammar, the special
business of schools. Indeed, the seventeenth century school course
may be said to have consisted of Latin, supplemented by Greek;
a few schools added Hebrew, fewer still yet another eastern
tongue. The underlying theory is thus enunciated by Henry
.
Wotton (An Essay on the Education of Children, 1672): Observe
therefore what faculties are strongest in the child and employ and
cherish them; now herein it is agreed that memory and what
logicians call simplex apprehensio are strongest of all. ' He infers
that a child's instruction should begin with Latin, passing to Greek
and Hebrew, since in these three languages are to be found 'both
the fountain of learning as well philology as philosophy and the
principal streams and rivers thereof. ' Wotton's essay is an account
of the method which he employed in teaching his son, William,
(Bentley's comrade in A Tale of a Tub), a child who learned to
read before he was four years old, began Latin without book at
that
age, and at five had already begun Greek and Hebrew. It is
not surprising, therefore, that William Wotton took his B. A. degree
when thirteen (1679); the surprising thing is that he lived to
become the able, judicious and modest collaborator of Bentley in
the controversy of ancients and moderns. But his father had
always refrained from overburdening the child, and the reformer's
note is not entirely absent from his severely classical teaching, for
the boy read English daily; 'the more gracefully he read English,
the more delightfully he read the other languages. '
1 Clark, A. , Life and Times of Anthony Wood, vol. 11, p. 139.
>


## p. 383 (#407) ############################################

The University Degree 383
The official round of study and of exercises for degrees remained
at both universities what they had been in the later middle ages;
this fact reacted upon schools supposed chiefly to prepare for
the universities. The medieval conception of the degree was that
of a licence to teach; the exercises which led to it were, in effect,
trial lessons in disputation or declamation given by novices before
other novices and fully accredited teachers, the topics being
selected from the Aristotelian metaphysics and natural philosophy,
school divinity, or trite literary themes susceptible of rhetorical
handling. At Oxford, the Laudian statutes of 1636 had stereotyped
these exercises, and had given them an appearance of life which
they retained to the close of the commonwealth. Speaking of
that period, Anthony à Wood says, “We had then very good
exercises in all matters performed in the schools; philosophy dis-
putations in Lent time, frequent in the Greek tongue; coursing
very much, ending alwaies in blows? ' The training manifested itself
in much of the controversial divinity of the time; at the Savoy
conference (1661), both sides seemed to enjoy wit combats greatly,
whole pages of Reliquiae Baxterianae being filled with argu-
ments and counter-arguments stated syllogistically. But life and
reality went out of these medieval exercises at the restoration,
and, though they remained part of the apparatus of both univer-
sities, they were regarded throughout the eighteenth century as
forms more or less empty, to be gone through perfunctorily,
mocked or ignored as the fashion of the moment prompted.
During the seventeenth century and long afterwards, neither
school nor university, as distinct from the educational system of
the colleges, took account of that advance in knowledge which
university men were very notably assisting; or attempted to adapt,
for disciplinary purposes, science, modern languages, history or
geography, and the schools neglected mathematics, teaching
arithmetic for purely practical ends. Consequently, educational
reformers were many.
But the enemies of universities were not confined to those
who considered them homes of antiquated knowledge. Through-
out the seventeenth century, Oxford and Cambridge were closely
associated with the national life, frequently to their material
disadvantage, and sometimes to the impairing of their educa-
tional functions. Both universities offered an opposition to
Clark, op. cit. vol. 1, p. 300. •Coursing' (a term not confined to English univer-
sities) was a fashion of disputation in which a team from one college disputed with a
eam from another college; the reason for the usual issue will be appreciated.
be
BRE
11
。
THE


## p. 384 (#408) ############################################

384
Education
parliamentary government, which brought upon them the charge of
disaffection. Under the commonwealth, a desire for the super-
session of universities became evident, which is reflected not only
in the writings of such men as Milton, Harrington and Hobbes,
but, also, in the fatuous tracts written by obscure scribblers like
John Webster.
Apart from the inspiring passages which often occur within
its very brief compass, Milton's tractate, Of Education (1644), is
now chiefly interesting as a criticism of the schools and universities
of its time, and as a statement of its author's notions of reforming
them'. He finds their most patent faults in a premature meddling
with abstract and formal studies, and a neglect of that concrete
knowledge of men and things without which the formal remains
empty or barren. He would therefore introduce a plethora of
matter into the course, most of it dealing with the objects and
processes of nature, but, also, those languages without which
he assumed that Englishmen could make little or no advance in
the kingdoms of science or of grace. Carried away by the faith
in the omnipotence of method which marks most writers on educa-
tional reform in his day, Milton sees no insuperable difficulty in
communicating, to boys between the ages of twelve and twenty-
one, the full round of knowledge and the ability to pursue it in six
foreign languages, of which the only modern tongue is Italian.
Milton's entire dissatisfaction with educational institutions as then
conducted is obvious; it is equally clear that he is wanting in
real appreciation of the new philosophy, and in understanding of
the method by which the new studies should be conducted. As a
consequence, Of Education has not exercised any direct influence
upon educational practice.
But there is more in the tractate than disparagement of an
obsolete system; it is written with a burning indignation against
persons and institutions, of which the universities come first.
Milton would set up in every city of the kingdom an academy,
which, as school and university combined, should conduct the
entire course of education from Lily [i. e. from the beginning of
school attendance to the commencing as they term it Master of
Art. ' The only other educational institutions permissible are
post-graduate professional colleges of law and physic, a con-
cession, perhaps, in deference to the inns of court and the
college of physicians.
6
1 Cf. ante, vol. vii, pp. 100, 123, 127.


## p. 385 (#409) ############################################

Distrust of Universities 385
The same desire to supersede universities and the same
indifference to, or but partial comprehension of, Bacon's teaching,
appear in the anonymous Latin book Nova Solyma (1648). But
the writer has a better notion of what is needed to effect a great
educational reform. He plans a national system including state-
inspected schools to teach religion and morality, reading, writing
and arithmetic, geometry, military drill and handicrafts. A scheme
of exhibitions enables poor boys of good capacity to share the
liberal and religious education offered by academies, and to
follow this in selected cases by a three years' professional study
of divinity, law, medicine or state-craft.
Harrington's distrust of the universities as displayed in The
Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) is based on their predominantly
clerical government and on the determination not to permit the
intrusion of ecclesiastics into political life. In his utopian polity,
for all but a relatively small number of citizens, military service
is the great agent of public instruction. Harrington's ideas
respecting education are purely formal, except on the adminis-
trative side. Oceana has a compulsory system of education, free
to the poor and covering the years from nine to fifteen, conducted
in state-inspected schools, whose management and course of study
are to be everywhere the same. The universities are, mainly,
clerical seminaries and custodians of the national religion, but
expressly forbidden to take part in public affairs, from which the
professional class generally is to be excluded.
In Leviathan, Hobbes has some characteristic references? to
universities, which he elaborated in Behemoth (c. 1668), a tract
surreptitiously printed in faulty copies, 'no book being more
commonly sold by booksellers,' says William Crooke, the printer of
the 1682 edition. According to Behemoth, universities encourage
speculation concerning politics, government and divinity, and so
become hotbeds of civil discord and rebellion.
I despair of any lasting peace till the universities here shall bend and
direct their studies . . . to the teaching of absolute obedience to the laws of
the king and to his public edicts under the Great Seal of England.
For Latin, Greek and Hebrew, it would be better to substitute
French, Dutch and Italian; philosophy and divinity advantage their
professors but make mischief and faction in the state ; natural
philosophy may be studied in the gazettes of Gresham college.
The kind of opposition to learned societies here exhibited by
Hobbes became virulent about 1653, when the fanatics in the
? See chap. xxix.
E. L. IX.
25
CH. XV.


## p. 386 (#410) ############################################

386
Education
Barbones parliament anticipated the measures of the French
convention of September 1793, by debating the 'propriety
of suppressing universities and all schools for learning as un-
necessary. ' The good sense of the majority of the members
refused to concur; but a lively war of pamphlets immediately
ensued, the most notable champions against the universities being
Dell, master of Caius college, and John Webster, 'chaplain in
the army,' and author of Academiarum Examen (1654). These
obscurantists appear to have been more feared than greater men of
a similar way of thinking. Seth Ward, Savilian professor of astro-
nomy, and John Wilkins, warden of Wadham college, men of the
highest distinction at Oxford, condescended to traverse the puerili-
ties of Webster's 'artless Rapsody,' as the author himself styled
his tract. The spirit of this rhapsody is revealed in its statement
that the end of the Gospel is to discover the wisdom of the world
to be mere foolishness. As Ward pointed out, Webster's notion
of reform was a combination of the incompatible methods of
Bacon and Fludd. Nevertheless, Ward devotes the greater part
of his apologia (Vindiciae Academiarum, 1654) to Webster's
Examen. Like Hobbes, Webster is mistaken in attributing to
the universities a blind devotion to Aristotle ; natural science
and all new forms of knowledge are welcomed, mathematics has
been considerably advanced, chemistry and magnetism are studied,
and projects are afoot for establishing a laboratory for chemical,
mechanical and optical researches. Those who cry out upon the
university exercises in the schools close their eyes to the work
done in college halls and in tutors' chambers. Ward's defence
curiously anticipates by nearly half a century that made on a
similar occasion by John Wallis (the Savilian professor who
exposed Hobbes's mathematical pretensions) when writing against
Lewis Maidwell's projected academy? Ward's readiness to answer
a writer like Webster marks a critical stage in the history of
Oxford and Cambridge, whose monopoly, if not existence, was
seriously threatened. A project for a northern university, mooted
in 1604, was revived in 1642 with Manchester and York as rival
claimants for the honour of its seat; in 1652, York petitioned parlia-
ment in that sense. The liberal scheme of foundation enjoyed by
Gresham college confined its operations to the quadrivium and the
three learned professions, but it periodically stimulated the thought
that London should possess a university; and the notion had
been again mooted in 1647. Wilkins, who wrote the preface to
1 See post, p. 397.


## p. 387 (#411) ############################################

The Long Parliament and Education 387
Ward's Vindiciae, is said to have dissuaded his father-in-law,
Oliver Cromwell, from confiscating the rents belonging to the
universities in order to pay the army? Even after the restoration,
there were reverberations of these movements to destroy Oxford
and Cambridge or to establish dangerous rivals. Sprat, in his
History of the Royal Society (1667), while urging the claims of
the new foundation, thought it expedient to explain that its
researches could not conflict with the work of schools or of
universities, and that the Royal society owed its birth to the
labours of university men who had saved the seats of learning
from ruin. But, in July 1669, Evelyn heard Robert South at Oxford
advert in the most public manner to the possible injury which the
Society might inflict upon the universities. So late as 1700, Lewis
Maidwell's proposal for an academy was viewed with some alarm
at Oxford and Cambridge.
But, though drastic reforms or innovations in the universities
were undoubtedly contemplated by responsible men during the
commonwealth, it would be unjust to represent their authors as
hostile to learning or to public education. Throughout its history,
the Long parliament gave occasional attention to the latter;
through Hartlib, some of its members invited Comenius to London,
where he stayed during the months preceding the civil war. The
Long parliament initiated the parliamentary subvention for educa-
tion, voting an annual grant of £20,000 for the stipends of ministers
and schoolmasters, and reserving £2000 of it for the better emolu-
ment of heads of colleges in the universities. The same body
appointed a committee for the advancement of learning, which
soon found itself considering many of the plans then current for
the extension of schools and the reform of curriculum. Finally,
Cromwell brought the project of a northern university to a head in
1657 by issuing letters patent for the foundation of a university
of Durham; but the scheme did not take material shape.
In the eyes of reformers, seventeenth century schools were
defective in their studies and insufficient in number. Professional
opinion occasionally deplored their neglect of the mother tongue ;
the complaint appears in the writings of prominent school-
masters like John Brinsley and Charles Hoole. The latter
(New Discovery of the Old Art of teaching Schoole, 1660)
suggested that a school should be placed in every town and
populous village to prepare little ones for the grammar school,
and, also, for the benefit of those who were too dull or too poor to
See Notes and Queries, 13 Aug. 1881.
25_2


## p. 388 (#412) ############################################

388
Education
cultivate scholarship, to teach arithmetic, writing and the reading
of English so as 'to sweeten their otherwise sour natures. ' But lay
reformers, while desiring to establish schools accessible to the mass
of the people, were intent on changes more radical than commonly
crossed the minds of schoolmasters. They desired to curtail the
time devoted to Latin and Greek, and so find room within the
school course for some knowledge of natural objects and pheno
mena— real knowledge,' as Locke called it, together with the
history and geography of modern times, and the application of
mathematics to the practical concerns of daily life. To those who
objected that, not under any circumstances, could time be found in
which to teach all these things, they answered that the ability to
learn could be wellnigh indefinitely increased if teaching followed
the natural processes of the child's mind, instead of forcing upon
it subjects and modes of study better suited to more mature
intelligences.
The Moravian, John Amos Comenius (1592-1671) took a promi-
nent part in familiarising Europe with the idea of national systems
of education, covering the whole field from the teaching of infants
to the instruction given in universities. His projects form an
epitome of contemporary reform; the introduction of modern
studies, more especially the mother tongue, the belief in the
extraordinary power of method and the search for psychologically
grounded principles of teaching are characteristic features of his
Didactica Magna, whose contents seem to have been well known
before its inclusion in his Opera Didactica Omnia (1657). Come-
nius received from Bacon the impulse which made him an ardent
believer in method and a tireless advocate of 'real' studies pursued
inductively. His scheme for a 'pansophic' college has a partial
prototype in the Solomon's house of Bacon's New Atlantis (1627),
a state-supported institute for scientific research directed to the
relief of man's estate. Bacon's own purely educational writings
are few and of comparatively small importance, but, through
Comenius, he affected educational thought, and, in a minor degree
educational practice, on the continent, thus anticipating the part
played by Locke in the following century.
A more direct, but much less influential, connection between
Bacon and the history of English education was established by a
small group of reformers who interested themselves in the problem
of method, especially in its relation to modern studies of the
‘useful' kind. Prominent amongst them was Samuel Hartlib, an
See Advancement of Learning, bk. II, passim, and De Augmentis, bk, vi, chaps. 2, 4.
a


## p. 389 (#413) ############################################

Projects of Reform 389
indefatigable publisher, and sometimes writer, on mechanical
invention, trade, agriculture, industry and protestant re-union.
Hartlib instigated the publication of Milton's Of Education, of The
Advice of W. P. , an educational tract by William Petty (1648), and
of another The Reformed School by John Dury (1649 ? ), who found
it advisable to disavow any desire of superseding universities.
Hartlib himself wrote a pamphlet? advocating a state system of
schools, and, in Macaria (1642), described the state endowment of
research and its administration through boards of agriculture,
health, industry, and so forth. Petty's independence of mind was in
none of his many projects so completely demonstrated as in his pro-
posed ergastula literaria—schools for all children above the age of
seven, who should there study all sensible objects and actions,'
reading and writing being postponed a little for the purpose. All
children should learn drawing, mathematics, bodily exercises and
a handicraft; the musical should be taught music, and only those
should learn foreign languages who would afterwards make use of
them. Petty’s notion of school education is nakedly utilitarian;
nevertheless, some of his suggestions respecting method are antici-
pations of Pestalozzi and Froebel.
The flow of reforming schemes was steadily maintained after
the restoration. On the eve of the change, John Evelyn sent to
Robert Boyle a 'proposal for erecting a philosophic mathematic
college,'to which he did not assign any strictly educational function”.
But the instruction of boys and of adults was expressly included
in Cowley's A proposition for the Advancement of Experimental
Philosophy (1660/1). Cowley's Proposition has already been
described. The opening address to the Honourable Society for
the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy marks the position
attained by the 'Invisible College,' soon to be incorporated as
the Royal society, an incorporation to which this pamphlet gave
an impetus. Cowley makes the customary complaints that the
universities do not take any account of the advance in scientific
knowledge and that schools waste six or seven years in the learning
of words only and that too very imperfectly. His suggestions are
chiefly directed towards the endowment of research and of public
teaching of an advanced kind, but he has also a scheme for a school,
to be taught in turn by two of the sixteen resident fellows of the
philosophical college. Here, again, is the familiar combination of
1 Considerations tending to the happy accomplishment of England's reformation, etc. ,
1647.
Diary, in, 3 Sept. 1659.
3 Vol. VIII, chap. XVII, ante.
6
a
2


## p. 390 (#414) ############################################

390
Education
school and university. Boys are to be admitted at the age of
thirteen, being already well advanced in the Latine grammar and
some authors. ' No fees may be exacted from any, 'though never
so rich ; as funds permit, boarding-houses are to receive such poor
men's sons whose good natural parts may promise either use or
ornament to the commonwealth,' and no differences of political or
religious opinion are to be made grounds of exclusion. Had this
tolerant attitude become customary, English education would have
had a different history during the last two centuries. Cowley's
schoolboys were to study a long list of Latin and Greek authors
who had treated of 'some parts of Nature'; like Milton, Cowley
cannot surrender the scholarly type of education. He wants to
repeat his own upbringing at Westminster and Cambridge, and
to add the studies of the 'men of Gresham'; consequently, he is
incapable of scheming a feasible course of instruction calculated
to secure his own chief aims.
It is easy to exaggerate the importance of a controversy which,
in some of its essential features, is but one more instance of
contrary temperaments brooding over the good old times. But
the dispute over the respective merits of ancient and modern
learning which raged in France and England during the last
decade or so of the seventeenth century shows that modern
studies had become self-conscious in both countries; those who
followed them were no longer willing to acquiesce in the con-
ventional judgment which elevated all ancient learning into a
region apart, and made education an almost superstitious defer-
ence of it, while neglect of the newer forms of study was readily
tolerated. An early intimation of a different opinion came from
Thomas Burnet (The Theory of the Earth, 1684) who assumed
that there was order and progress in the growth of knowledge,
a modest thesis which Temple regarded as a 'panegyric' of the
moderns. The contrast between the two ages was limited at first
to letters, and it was this particular field which, subsequently,
displayed the English “squabble,' as Swift called it. Fontenelle
(Digression sur les Anciens et les Modernes, 1688) took the reason-
able ground that humanity, whether Greek, Latin or French, is, at
bottom, much the same, and that differences are due to opportunity,
or the want of it, rather than to intrinsic merit or demerit. After
Locke, this became the general opinion amongst theorisers on
education, English and foreign; differences between man and man
were ascribed to the accident of education. Perrault brought the
controversy to an acute stage in France. Beginning with adulation


## p. 391 (#415) ############################################

Temple and Bentley
391
of the king (Le Siècle de Louis le Grand, 1687), he expanded
his theme into a laudation (Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes,
1688) of modern progress in science and the arts: the moderns
excel in astronomy, anatomy, painting, sculpture, architecture and
music, and may justly compare with the ancients in oratory and
poetry. At this point, Sir William Temple (Essay on Ancient
and Modern Learning, 1690) took up the quarrel, belittled modern
science and philosophy, declared that art had been sterile for a
century past, and that society was being vulgarised by the pursuit
of gain. Temple was so little fitted to criticise the moderns that,
in common with many of his contemporaries, he doubted the truth
of the discoveries of Copernicus and Harvey ; on the other hand,
he had little or no Greek. In 1694, William Wotton traversed the
assertions of this Essay and, in the course of his book, Reflections
upon Ancient and Modern Learning, stated, with much detail as
to names and discoveries, the condition of European, and especially
English, science, his general conclusion being that the extent of
knowledge is at this time vastly greater than it was in former
ages.
' Temple's uninstructed championship of the spurious Letters
of Phalaris and Fables of Aesop gave Bentley the occasion in an
appendix (Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris) to Wotton's
second edition (1697), to demonstrate the absurdity of the claims
made for these two works. This particular 'squabble' is now
even more outworn than the greater issue of which it is a part;
but, in spite of triviality and disingenuousness, it troubled the
reading public at that time and long afterwards. The contem-
porary verdict seems, on the whole, to have gone in favour of
Temple and Charles Boyle; it is from the side which was in the
wrong that we derive such familiar phrases as 'from China to
Peru,''sweetness and light,' and the misapprehension which traces
the renascence to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The
Phalaris controversy, with the learning and critical acumen of
Bentley on the one side and the brilliant pretentiousness of the
Christ Church set on the other, is an episode in the perennial feud
between the scholar (understood as 'pedant') and the man of the
world, with the man of letters for ally. The academic pedant,
whether as represented by Anthony à Wood or Thomas Hearne, or
as caricatured at a later date in Pompey the Little, did not com-
mend himself to the man of the world. In the eyes of Temple's
friends, Bentley and Wotton were mere index-grubbers and
pedantic boors who could not be in the right against a distin-
guished public man like Temple, or a scion of nobility like Boyle.
>


## p. 392 (#416) ############################################

392
Education
But, apart from its merits, such as they are, the controversy will
always be memorable as the occasion of Temple’s Essay, Swift's
A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books, and Bentley's
initiation of the higher criticism in classical literature!
Under the commonwealth, the superseding of the universities
by institutions of a very different kind had been no more than a
question for debate; after the restoration, and under stress of
political circumstances, this supersession became an actual fact
so far as great numbers of dissenters were concerned. Backed,
no doubt, by the majority of Englishmen, the church party was
determined to render impossible a return of presbyterian or of
independent dominance, and, to that end, inflicted the most serious
disabilities upon all who refused to conform to the doctrine and
practice of the church of England. The act of uniformity and
various acts of the same character passed between 1662 and 1672
deliberately extruded dissenters from the schools and universi-
ties, whether teachers or pupils. When expounding the bill of 1662
to the lords, sergeant Charlton said that the commons thought it
necessary to take care for the upbringing of youth, in view of the
great effect of education and, therefore, they attached rather more
importance to the conformity of schoolmasters than to that of
ministers. The act of 1662 required, on pain of deprivation, un-
feigned assent and consent to the book of common prayer, and
abjuration of the solemn league and covenant from all masters,
fellows and tutors of colleges, from all professors and readers of
universities, from all schoolmasters keeping public or private
schools and from every person instructing any youth in any house
or private family, as a tutor or schoolmaster. In accordance with
ancient ecclesiastical law and custom, all schoolmasters were
compelled to seek licence from the Ordinary, and, by the act of 1662,
private tutors were put in the same position. Those who presumed
to teach without this licence were liable to imprisonment and fine.
An immediate consequence of the act of 1662 was the dismissal
of a considerable number of university teachers and other graduates,
of whom Singleton, master of Eton, was one, and many of these
opened schools for boys or received young men as pupils. Others
set up 'private academies' which included both school teaching
and instruction of a university standard ; one of the earliest was
carried on by Richard Frankland, whom Cromwell had designed to
be vice-chancellor of the university at Durham. In Frankland's
case, as in others, the penal laws were not consistently enforced ;
1 See ante, vol. VIII, chap. XVilt ; vol. Ix, chaps. IV and xm, section 1.
3


## p. 393 (#417) ############################################

Dissenting Academies
393
it is said that in the space of a few years he had three hundred
pupils under his tuition at Rathmill, his Yorkshire home. Indeed,
the rapid increase of these 'academies' in the last thirty years of
the seventeenth century shows that some discretion was used as to
car out the law so far as it was directed against purely educa-
tional institutions which were not endowed schools or universities.
There were many academies in the provinces, and the northern
suburbs of London-Hackney, Stoke Newington, Islington, at that
time the recognised homes of boarding schools-contained some
famous dissenting academies. That kept by Charles Morton, a
former fellow of Wadham, at Newington green, was a very con-
siderable establishment; and its head was accordingly prosecuted,
and his academy dispersed, while he himself left the country.
Morton was one of many who suffered; even those who were
permitted to keep their schools or their pupils realized how
unstable was their position.
The instruction given by the academies was of different types
and standards; but, when they became established institutions, their
first care was the education of ministers; dissenting academies
supplied their earliest training beyond school age to Samuel Wesley,
the elder, to bishop Butler (of The Analogy) and to archbishop
Secker. But not all the pupils were being educated for the
ministry, and this fact was made the ground of a charge, in the
circumstances very discreditable to those who preferred it, that
the academies diverted men from the universities.
Secker complained that the Latin and Greek which he carried
from the Chesterfield free school to Jolly's academy at Attercliffe
was lost at the latter place, ‘for only the old philosophy of the
schools was taught there, and that neither ably nor diligently';
like Wesley some years earlier, he thought but poorly of the
morals of his fellow-students. In 1710, Secker, then seventeen
years old, removed to Bowes's academy in Bishopsgate street,
where he learned algebra, geometry, conic sections, read Locke's
Essay and studied French ; Isaac Watts was an inmate of the
same house. About 1711, Secker again migrated, this time to an
academy kept at Gloucester by a dissenting layman, Samuel Jones.
There I recovered my almost lost knowledge of Greek and Latin, and
added to it that of Hebrew, Chaldee and Syriack. We had also lectures
on Dionysius's Geography, a course of lectures preparatory to the critical
study of the Bible, and a course of Jewish antiquities, besides logick and
mathematics. Here I . . . began a strict correspondence [i. e. intimacy) with
Mr Joseph Butler, afterwards Bishop of Durham1.
i Secker's unpublished MS Memoir.


## p. 394 (#418) ############################################

394
Education
The academy was removed to Tewkesbury, where, says Secker,
Jones
began to relax of his industry, to drink too much ale and small beer
and to lose his temper,. . . and most of us fell off from our application and
regularity.
Yet, here, Butler wrote his letters to Samuel Clarke, Secker carry-
ing them to a distant post office for concealment's sake, lest his
correspondent's youth and real situation should shock the London
rector.
Dissenting educators were singled out for especial attack
by the framers of that legislation under Anne which culmi-
nated in the Schism act of 1714. It would seem that concerted
action against the academies was determined upon in the first
years of the queen's reign. The earliest sign was given by the
publication of Samuel Wesley's Letter from a country divine,
1702, in which he asserted that the academies fostered 'the good
old Cause,' were actively hostile to the church and disloyal to the
crown. In the following year, the dedication to the queen of the
second part of Clarendon's History contained the rhetorical
question, repeated more emphatically in the third part, 1704:
What can be the meaning of the several seminaries, and as it were
universities, set up in divers parts of the kingdom, by more than ordinary
industry, contrary to law, supported by large contributions, where the youth
is bred up in principles directly contrary to monarchical and episcopal
government ?
In 1704, also, Sharp, archbishop of York, moved for an enquiry
into the conduct of the academies; in the same year, Defoe, who,
like Samuel Wesley, had been educated at Morton's academy,
joined in the fray, and Sacheverell at Oxford, in a diatribe against
comprehension, raged against illegal 'schismatical universities. '
In 1705, they were denounced in convocation by the Irish
clergy.
The struggle had lasting and disastrous effects upon the history
of English education; the feeling aroused by it has never since
entirely subsided. In the eighteenth century, it sterilised the first
promising experiment in popular education, and the triumph of
the church was a contributory cause to the apathy which fell upon
the universities in the same century. It injured the nation by
diverting a large portion of its youth from the main stream
of national education into backwaters or into alien rivers. The
action of the majority was determined by mixed motives, more


## p. 395 (#419) ############################################

23
. .
Courtly Academies
395
political than theological; but, whatever their intentions and
whatever their provocation, the churchmen of Anne's day gave
birth to a long-lived spirit of faction and contention.
It is true that nothing was taught at the dissenting academies
which could not be better learned within the university pre-
cincts; but such newer studies as mathematics, French and modern
history formed part of the ordinary scheme of work for all their
students, and experimental study carried on within the narrow
limits of a single building must have entered more intimately
into the daily life of the majority of the pupils than was the case at
Oxford and Cambridge, where, in fact, study of this kind was not
deemed suitable for undergraduates. The academies, therefore,
are to be reckoned among the forces which gathered during the
eighteenth century to destroy the monopoly held by the ancient
curriculum.
Discontent with the customary course of studies in school and
university had long been exhibited among the classes from which
men of affairs were most frequently drawn. Neither school nor
university took special note of the changed conditions under
which the administrator, courtier, soldier and provincial magnate
lived, or adopted any special measures for their benefit. The
private tutor was called in to redress the balance, or to take the
place of the school. While the ordinary course of those 'bred to
learning' was from the school to the university, there was an
increasing tendency amongst the nobility and the wealthy through-
out the seventeenth century to ignore the school in favour of the
tutor, who taught his pupil from childhood, accompanied him to
the university and acted as guardian on his travels in Europe.
The tutor's work, in many cases, ceased when his pupil, either on
the conclusion of his university course, or in place of it, entered
one of the inns of court. Clement Ellis ascribed the popularity of
the inns to the fact that students were there free from the trouble-
some presence of tutors. They might, or might not, follow the
study of law in earnest; to be a member of an inn was deemed
a fitting conclusion to an education and a direct introduction
into life.
Notably in France, discontent with current educational practice
had led to the institution of academies' where a combination was
sought of the medieval knightly arts with modern studies, as we
now understand that term; young men learned horsemanship,
the practice of arms and of physical exercises generally, modern
languages, history, geography and mathematics, particularly in its
>
?
1
6
a


## p. 396 (#420) ############################################

396
Education
application to the art of war. These French academies handed on
the tradition that the courts of princes and the houses of great
nobles were the natural places of education for those who were to
spend their lives in the personal service of the sovereign. In Italy,
the princely academies had given birth to a literature devoted to
'the doctrine of Courtesy, of which Castiglione's Il Cortegiano
(1528) may be regarded as the original, and Henry Peacham's
Compleat Gentleman (1622 and frequently reprinted with additions)
the most popular English exemplar? . Clarendon gave the subject
the benefit of his experience and good sense in two very readable
dialogues Concerning Education and of the Want of Respect due
to Age:
Peacham advises the study of such branches of knowledge as
modern history and geography, astronomy, geometry, music, draw-
ing, painting, all with an eye to the needs of the soldier and man
of action, for whose benefit physical training in various forms is
prescribed. But his typical gentleman is, also, a virtuoso interested
in 'antiquities,' and a cultivated man accustomed to sweeten his
severer studies by reading poetry, Latin and English ; no Greek
poet is named. Peacham exhorts his reader to 'forget not to
speak and write your own (tongue] properly and eloquently,' and
to read the best and purest English'; to which end a long list of
poets and prose-writers is given, including the names of Chaucer,
Spenser and Bacon, but omitting Shakespeare's. The manifold
interests of a cultured, travelled Englishman of a later date are
well illustrated by the mere mention of topics which Evelyn
treated in his various essays; these include forestry, architecture,
gardening, ‘sculptura' (engraving), painting, navigation, agri-
culture, horticulture and the dressing of salads. The list may be
compared with the 'manual arts' which Locke thought desirable
in a gentleman : gardening, woodwork, metalwork, varnishing,
graving, the polishing of glass lenses and the cutting of precious
stones (Some Thoughts concerning Education)*:
Higford's Institution of a Gentleman (1660) and The Courtier's
Calling (1675) by 'a Person of Honour' are courtesy books
1 See ante, vol. III, chap. XIX.
? See ante, vol. IV, p. 526.
3 See ante, vol. VII, pp. 220, 444.
* Swift, in the preface to A Tale of a Tub, announced that it was intended to erect
a large academy (to which only wits would be admissible) capable of containing nine
thousand seven hundred and forty-three persons, 'pretty near the current number of
wits in this Island,' who were to be distributed over the several schools of the academy,
there to study such matters as · Looking-glasses, Swearing, Criticks, Salivation,
Hobby-Horses, Poetry, Tops, the Spleen, Gaming. '
6
6


## p. 397 (#421) ############################################

6
Courtesy Books
397
which still afford interest to the student of educational history.
Jean Gailhard's The Compleat Gentleman (1678) and Stephen
Penton's Guardian's Instruction, written between 1681 and 1687,
and his New Instructions to the Guardian (1694), although dealing
with the same theme, take different lines, Gailhard recommending
private education and foreign travel with a tutor (he had been
a tutor himself), and Penton, sometime principal of St Edmund
hall, Oxford, preferring a university education. Both books
appear to have been familiar to Locke when he wrote Some
Thoughts. The courtesy books proper come to an inglorious
termination in such compilations as The Fine Gentleman (1732)
of Mr. Costeker. '
Variants of the courtesy books are Francis Osborn's Advice to
a Son (6th edition, 1658), The Gentleman's Calling and Clement
Ellis's The Gentile (i. e. 'genteel') Sinner (2nd edition, 1661).
Osborn's philosophy of life is that of his friend, Thomas Hobbes ;
in this popular bookhe displays much contempt for universities
and those long resident in them, and is without any belief what-
ever in a gentleman's need for 'learning' as usually acquired.
The other two works are of a sermonising, even ranting type,
abounding in generalities, but altogether wanting in the directness
of earlier books on the upbringing of a gentleman.
The miscellany of schemes which Defoe styled An Essay
upon Projects (1697) includes one for an English academy to
darken the glory' of the Académie Française and 'to polish and
refine the English tongue,''the noblest and most comprehensive of
all the vulgar languages in the world? ' A second scheme proposes
a royal academy for military exercises, which should provide a
scientific education for soldiers, and, incidentally, encourage
shooting with a firelock' as a national pastime in the place of
'cocking, cricketing and tippling. '
The species of academy on the French model, giving instruction
in military exercises and in the whole range of modern studies,
did not secure a footing amongst English institutions, in spite
of numerous attempts to found one in this country. Lewis Maid-
well approached parliament, or the government, on four several
occasions between 1700 and 1704, with the purpose of obtaining
official sanction, a public standing and a state subsidy for such
an academy, to be established in his house at Westminster. The
details of the project took different shapes at different times,
but instruction in navigation was put forward as an aim in all
1 See ante, vol. VIII, p. 377.
2 Cf. ante, p. 7.


## p. 398 (#422) ############################################

398
Education
of them. Though nothing came of Maidwell's plan, it aroused
opposition from the universities'; its absurd scheme of raising
funds by a registration fee imposed upon all printed matter showed
the author to be no man of business.
During the latter half of the seventeenth and the beginning
of the eighteenth century, it became the fashion among wealthy
country gentlemen and their imitators to substitute for the school
private tuition at home, more especially in the case of eldest
sons. As this fashion spread, less care was bestowed on the
choice of a tutor, who sometimes became the tool of a too indul-
gent mother bent upon playing special providence. Swift (Essay
on Modern Education, c. 1723) makes this charge; Defoe
(Compleat English Gentleman, c. 1728—9) denies its justice; but
it is frequently brought at this time against those who were in
well-to-do circumstances. Swift supports the classics, the birch,
schools and universities, against private education, coddling and
the modern studies. He thinks that the popularity of the army
has given the latter their vogue, and that education grew corrupt
at the restoration. But, in truth, this particular 'corruption
was of much earlier growth, and its cause is to be sought in the
defects of that mode of education which Swift championed. Defoe
represents the eldest sons of wealthy landowners who lived on
their estates as growing up in gross ignorance, the learning of
schools and universities being regarded as a trade suitable for
clergy and others who had to earn an income, but quite un-
necessary for gentlemen. Swift (On the Education of Ladies)
speaks of the shameful and almost universal neglect of good
education among our nobility, gentry and indeed among all others
who are born to good estates. ' The statement is, in effect,
reiterated by novelists as well as by professed writers on education.
The wellknown decline in the number of boys at public schools
during the greater part of the eighteenth century to some
extent confirms Defoe. In the public mind, the distinction between
learning and education was becoming more appreciated, and
schools were identified with learning chiefly. A great part of
the learning now in fashion in the schools of Europe. . . a gentle-
man may in a good measure be unfurnish'd with, without any
great disparagement to himself or prejudice to his affairs 3. '
The transition is short from the courtesy books to the reform
of education in general. The most notable instance of the passage
i See post, p. 413.
8 Locke, Some Thoughts concerning Education, 1693.
Op. cit.


## p. 399 (#423) ############################################

-;;
Locke's Thoughts on Education
399
is afforded by the work just quoted, the greatest of English books
of its time which deal with its subject, and the most trenchant
condemnation of the mode of education then in favour. The book
is the fruit of Locke's experience of tuition, but still more is it
the outcome of reading and reflection. His debt to Montaigne is
extensive. The general principles of the two writers are very
much the same; where Montaigne gives details of procedure, Locke
adopts and elaborates them; many passages in his book are but
free renderings of the earlier writer's French. Isolated passages,
when compared, are not without significance; but the really
instructive comparisons are those of general principles, of outlook
and attitude. So compared, it is evident that Montaigne is the
source of much of Some Thoughts. Both writers have chiefly in
mind the future man of affairs in whose education learning is much
less important than the discipline of judgment and character.
Both desire to make their pupils grow in practical wisdom, both
employ the same method of action, practice, example, as against
the bookish method of the school. The serious business of educa-
tion, as Locke saw it, was not a matter for children. The training
which he would give a child was, primarily, a moral or a quasi-
moral one ; at that stage, intellectual exercise should be altogether
subordinate. So far as knowledge is concerned, it is enough for
the child and boy to enjoy a moderate use of the intellectual powers,
to avoid unoccupied moments and to get a little taste of what
industry must perfect at a later period. Childhood, in Locke's
view, is that “sleep of reason' to which Rousseau afterwards
appealed in justification of the dictum that early education should
be purely negative. In spite of mistakes which a better informed
psychology has exposed, this conception of childhood gave birth,
in due time, to much in modern practice which distinctly benefits
the little child ; it was also a fruitful conception in eighteenth
century theorising about education in general.
This is not the place to attempt to follow Locke's many pre-
scriptions respecting the course of study, and the method of
teaching. He was in sympathy with the innovators of his day
who proposed to admit modern studies, and it is evident that
he was convinced of the value of the instruction given by
French academies to young nobles and gentlemen who resorted
to them from all parts of Europe, Britain included. Yet, even
in respect of academies, Locke asserts his own point of view,
1 Cf. ante, vol. VIII, p. 346.


## p. 400 (#424) ############################################

400
Education
passing lightly over their distinctive arts of riding, fencing,
dancing, music, but dwelling at length upon the manual arts,
particularly the useful handicrafts, as woodwork and gardening.
The importance of Some Thoughts was recognised from the
first, as witness the amended and amplified editions which
appeared during the author's lifetime. Leibniz valued the book
highly. Richardson introduces it into Pamela as a suitable
present for a young mother. It reached the continent so early
as 1695 in Coste's defective French translation, which passed
through five editions in fifty years. In 1763, it was translated
into Italian, and, in 1787, two German versions appeared. These
translations show that there was a greater demand for the work
than could be met by the French, a language familiar to the
educated all over Europe.
Locke's second contribution to the literature of education is
the fragmentary and posthumously published Of the Conduct of
the Understanding, an addition to the great Essay of 1690, and
one which Locke put forward as a substitute for the text-books of
logic studied by undergraduates in their first year at the university.
Of the Conduct and Some Thoughts are mutually complementary.
Originally, at least, the latter was meant to express Locke's opinions
concerning the education of children ; Of the Conduct is a manual
of practice for young men, who are educating themselves. It is
in this work that we find the true Locke, independent of the
authorities which lie behind Some Thoughts, intent mainly upon the
problem of building up, confirming, and making continuously
operative the essentially rational character of the mind. Locke
believes the solution of the problem to be largely independent
of schoolmasters and tutors; and every man in proportion to his
opportunities is called upon to face the question for himself. This
view of the educational process was unlikely to influence those
who wrote on, or dealt with, education as customarily understood.
The educated person, as he is drawn in Of the Conduct, is one
who before all else has learned to think for himself. Convinced that
reason will enable him to attain so much of truth as he needs to
know, he has habituated himself to its skilful exercise. Mathematics
and divinity are named as his appropriate studies; the concluding
pages of Some Thoughts enable us to add ethics, civil law and con-
stitutional history. A healthy, graceful body and considerable
manual skill are desirable possessions for whose attainment the
latter book gives many directions. The contrast between Locke's
ideal of culture and our own is sufficiently obvious. It is not


## p. 401 (#425) ############################################

6
Essay concerning Human Understanding 401
surprising that he says little of the educational advantage to be
got from the study of physical science, though his lifelong interest
in research shows this was not an oversight. But of the culture of
the human spirit, which literature confers, Locke says nothing, and
such cultivation of fine art as he recommends is chiefly for utili-
tarian ends. The development of the rational is, for him, wellnigh
everything: imagination and sentiment are not merely left out,
but are more than once referred to as objects of distrust. Locke
believed that the ancient authors observed and painted mankind
well and [gave] the best light into that kind of knowledge’; but
of English writers Some Thoughts recommends by name for the
pupil's reading, only two, Cudworth and Chillingworth, and neither
for that kind of knowledge. '
Locke's significance in the history of education is not to be
sought in his expressly pedagogical works. An Essay concerning
Human Understanding (1690), whence the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries derived their experimental psychology and their
rationalist and sceptical philosophies, is, also, the source of its
author's great influence upon subsequent educational theory and
practice, more especially as these developed in France and
Germany. The teaching of An Essay respecting the relation of
experience to mental development is paralleled by the doctrine
that formal education is a process which profoundly modifies the
minds subjected to it; when philanthropic feeling is added to this
doctrine, the desire of making instruction universal is bound to
arise. Locke's exposition of mind as itself a development leads
straight to the conception that the method of teaching is con-
ditioned, as to nature, material and sequence, by mental develop-
ment. Hence, the demand so frequently reiterated in eighteenth
century educational theory for the training of the senses, and for
modes of instruction, which will make children discover everything
for themselves ; hence, also, the impatience of authority, the anti-
thesis, sometimes foolishly expressed, between 'words' and 'things,'
and an inadequate test of what constitutes usefulness. In short,
from An Essay's teaching is derived much of the educational
theory of Rousseau, La Chalotais, Helvétius, Basedow and their
sympathisers, down to Herbert Spencer.
The education of girls above the humblest rank was wholly
private. Swift, in a fragmentary essay on the Education of Ladies,
states the practice thus : 'the care of their education is either
>
!
!
1
1 Cf. ante, vol. VIII, pp. 334 ff.
E. L. IX.
CH, XV.
26


## p. 402 (#426) ############################################

402
Education
entirely left to their mothers, or they are sent to boarding schools,
or put into the hands of English or French governesses,' generally
the worst that can be gotten for money.