The
work of antiquaries like Anthony à Wood and Thomas Hearne was
more to the purpose.
work of antiquaries like Anthony à Wood and Thomas Hearne was
more to the purpose.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v09
The
results must have differed greatly; but the general level was a
low one, especially in those numerous cases where it was thought
unnecessary to train the girl as a housewife though it was not
possible to furnish her with highly competent instructors. Swift,
in A Letter to a very young lady on her marriage, declares that
not one gentleman's daughter in a thousand can read or under-
stand her own language or ‘be the judge of the easiest books that
are written in it. ' They are not so much as taught to spell in their
*
childhood, nor can ever attain to it in their whole lives. ' Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu received lessons in carving in order to
take the head of her father's table on public days, occasions on
which she dined alone an hour beforehand. She was taught French
in childhood and Italian as a young woman of twenty; Latin she
studied surreptitiously for two years in her father's library, working
five or six hours a day, when it was thought she was reading novels
or romances. Elizabeth Elstob, editor of Aelfric's Homilies and
author of the earliest Old English grammar, pursued her early
education under similar discouraging circumstances.
The medieval distinction between the types of education of the
sexes was a distinction of function, and the difference between the
education of women and that of men was not greater than the
difference between the education of the knight and that of
the scholar. But, in the eighteenth century, the difference was
6
## p. 403 (#427) ############################################
Education of Girls
403
م
regarded as based on capacity. "You can never arrive in point
of learning to the perfection of a school-boy,' Swift assures a newly-
a
married girl, and he advises that, for some hours daily, she should
study English works on history and travel, so that she may prepare
to take an intelligent part in conversation. From this platform, it
is but a short step, and too often a downward one, to the 'accom-
plishments' of the seventeenth and eighteenth century boarding
school. Here, as in home education, the differences of aim and
method were very great. These are at their most ambitious point
in An Essay to revive the antient education of Gentlewomen
(1673) which, in truth, is a thinly-veiled prospectus of a new
boarding school for girls, to be established, or recently established,
at Tottenham cross by Mrs Bathsua Makin, a lady who acquired
an extraordinary reputation as 'tutress' to Charles I's daughter,
Elizabeth'. The interest of the essay, probably written by
Mrs Makin herself, lies in the account of her school. We learn
that the things ordinarily taught in girls' schools were 'works of
all sorts, dancing, music, singing, writing, keeping accompts. ' Half
the time of the new school is to be devoted to these arts, and the
remainder to Latin and French, "and those that please may learn
Greek and Hebrew, the Italian and Spanish, in all which this
gentlewoman hath a competent knowledge. ' The mixture of aims
and indecision as to means are strikingly illustrated in the optional
studies, 'limning, preserving, pastry and cooking,' and in the
branches to be taken up by those who remained long at school,
astronomy, geography, arithmetic, history. Mrs Makin was an
admirer of Comenius and warmly recommended his plan of
teaching Latin and 'real' knowledge in association. Experimental
philosophy may be substituted for languages in the new school,
which has 'repositories for visibles,' collections of objects, for the
purpose.
Swift's proposal for the reform of girls' instruction already
alluded to is not unlike that recommended in 1753 by Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu for the benefit of her grandchild, the countess
of Bute's daughter, except that she adds arithmetic and philosophy,
and attaches special importance to needlework, drawing and
English poetry. Reformer as she was, she shares the general
opinion that scholarly attainments were the affair of the pro-
fessional man and, accordingly, to be considered derogatory in the
owner of a title or of great estates. Lady Mary, therefore, is
careful to say that she considers the kind of education which she is
1 Princess Elizabeth died at the age of fifteen in 1650.
26_2
## p. 404 (#428) ############################################
404
Education
6
6
advising suited only to those women who will live unmarried and
retired lives; and even they should conceal their learning, when
acquired, as they would a physical defect.
Mary Astell, the ‘Madonella' whose 'seraphic discourse' and
'Protestant nunnery' furnished Swift' with topics for coarse satire,
was a great admirer of Lady Mary but a reformer on different
lines. Her Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694) attracted con-
siderable attention and opposition, partly on account of its suggested
conventual education, partly because its author was a known
controversialist on the church of England side. Her 'religious'
were to undertake the education of girls, instructing them in
“solid and useful knowledge,' chiefly through the mother tongue.
The ladies themselves were to substitute French philosophy and
the ancient classics (presumably in translations) for the romances
which formed most of the reading of fashionable women. William
Law held women's intelligence and capacity in at least as high
esteem as he did those of men; but the education which he advised
for girls is confined to plain living, and the practice of charity and
devotion.
Defoe's Essay upon Projects (1697) deprecates the idea of a
nunnery and proposes academies which differ but little from
'
public schools, wherein such ladies as were willing to study should
have all the advantages of learning suitable to their genius. ' He
indicates the customary instruction of girls of the middle class.
6
6
One would wonder indeed how it should happen that women are con-
versible at all, since they are only beholding to natural parts for all their
knowledge. Their youth is spent to teach them to stitch and sow, or make
bawbles; they are taught to read indeed, and perhaps to write their names
or so; and that is the heighth of a woman's education.
а
Defoe's academy 'would deny women no sort of learning,' but,
in particular, it would teach them history, languages, especially
French and Italian, music and dancing. This readiness to expand
the course of studies appears again in the same author's Compleat
English Gentleman, where Latin and Greek are said to be
not indispensable; but modern studies and, notably, the cultiva-
tion of the mother tongue, are described as essential.
The beginning of popular education is an obscure subject, as to
which we can with safety make only such general assertions as
that rudimentary instruction in the vernacular was first given
in response to a commercial, industrial or other distinctly utili-
tarian demand, and that teachers were private adventurers,
i The Tatler, XXXII, 1709.
## p. 405 (#429) ############################################
2
Elementary Education
405
frequently women, who carried on their small schools unlicensed.
Long before the period under review, children of all ranks but
the highest received their earliest schooling in dames' schools.
Brinsley (1612) speaks of poor men and women who, by such
teaching, ‘make an honest poor living of it, or get somewhat
towards helping the same'; at the close of the century, Stephen
Penton refers to the horn book . . . which brings in the country
school dames so many groats a week. ' Francis Brokesbyl writes :
There are few country villages where some or other do not get a livelihood
by teaching school, so that there are now not many but can write and read
unless it have been their own or their parents' fault.
The writer has a doubtful thesis to support, and therefore must
not be taken too literally. Shenstone had a much better right to
assume the presence of a dame school ‘in every village mark'd
with little spire’? ; but he wrote a whole generation later. In
spite of its banter and the prominence assigned to the rod, this
burlesque idyll is a tribute of respect to school dames and to the
value of their work amidst very unscholastic surroundings. The
instruction was usually confined to reading and the memorising
of catechism, psalms and scriptural texts ; writing was an occasional
'extra. ' Fielding and Smollett throw some light on the country
schools of their time.
Schools above this grade taught, or professed to teach,
arithmetic, history, geography and, sometimes, the rudiments of
Latin; others, of a grade still higher, prepared for Eton and West-
minster. Smollett makes Peregrine Pickle (1751) attend a boarding
school kept by a German charlatan who undertook to teach French
and Latin and to prepare for these two schools, though, in the end,
'Perry' was sent to Winchester.
But, of whatever grade, all these private schools were for
persons who could pay a fee; the very poor and the indifferent
were not helped by them. In spite of casual attempts of town
councils, vestries and private persons to provide instruction, the
number of the illiterate and untaught was great and the morals of
6
i Of Education, 1701.
3 The School-Mistress, 1742.
8 Thus, in Joseph Andrews (1742) the hero is said to have learned to read . very
early,' his father paying sixpence a week for the instruction. Tom Jones's henchman
had been a village schoolmaster, whose pupils numbered exactly nine, of whom seven
were 'parish-boys' learning to read and write at the ratepayers' cost; their comrades
were the sons of a neighbouring squire, the elder, a boy of seventeen just entered into
syntax,' a dunce too old for a more suitable school. Partridge eked out his income by
acting as parish clerk and barber, his patron providing a ten pound annuity.
6
## p. 406 (#430) ############################################
406
Eaucation
a large part of the population gave anxiety to thoughtful men
The increase of pauperism between 1692 and 1699 intensified the
evil, and the earliest attempts at amelioration were on economic
rather than educational lines. John Bellers came forward with
Proposals for Raising a Colledge of Industry (1696) which, in
fact, consisted of a proprietary workhouse in close association with
a farm, by whose means Bellers hoped to eliminate the middleman,
solve the puzzle of the unemployed and pay profits to the proprietors.
The teaching to be given in the school was to be addressed mainly
to reading, writing and handicrafts, children beginning to learn
knitting and spinning at four or five years old; the inmates might
remain to the age of twenty-four. The scheme secured the approval
of William Penn, Thomas Ellwood and other quakers, but it was
full of generalities and platitudes, without showing capacity to
found a living institution ; Cowley was the real author of some
of the notions which Bellers presented very nebulously.
In 1697, Locke, then a member of the commission of Trade
and Plantations, wrote a memorandum in which he ascribed the
increase of pauperism to relaxation of discipline and corruption
of manners. He put forward the more practicable portions of
Bellers's scheme, suggesting the erection at public expense in all
parishes of 'working schools' for pauper children, between the
ages of three and fourteen, who were to learn spinning, knitting or
other handicraft, and to be brought to church on Sundays! . Half
the apprentices of a district should be chosen from these paupers,
for whom no premium was to be paid. Locke estimated that the
children's labour would pay for their teaching and for a sufficient
ration of bread and water-gruel. Defoe (Of Royall Educacion,
c. 1728) expressed the opinion that 'in the manufacturing towns
of England, hardly a child above five year old but could get its
own bread. '
While men like Locke and Bellers addressed themselves chiefly
to the economic side of the problem presented by pauperism, others
tried to solve it by means of instruction, more particularly through
instruction in religion. There was, indeed, a growing uneasiness in
religious minds respecting the spiritual condition of the people
,
not only in these islands but in France and Germany also. Between
1678 and 1698, forty-two 'religious societies,' chiefly of churchmen,
were started in London alone, and similar associations were formed
at Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin and elsewhere, the object of all
being that deepening of personal piety which, at a later date and
* Fox Bourne, Life of John Locke, vol. I, p. 388.
6
## p. 407 (#431) ############################################
Charity Schools
407
on a more extensive scale, became methodism. In the last decade
of the seventeenth century societies for the reformation of
manners' endeavoured to effect improvement by setting in force
the laws against swearing, drunkenness, street-debauchery and
sabbath-breaking; their success was but trifling, and they died
out about 1740.
One of the immediate objects of the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge (founded in 1699) was the institution of
schools for instructing poor children between the ages of seven
and twelve in reading, writing and the catechism ; all boys and
some girls were to be taught to cipher, and all girls were to
learn sewing, or some other handicraft. The instruction was to be
given by a master or mistress, a member of the church of England,
licensed by the bishop. A convincing proof of the great popularity
of these schools in their earlier period is furnished by the
venomous attack upon them made by Bernard Mandeville in his
Essay on Charity, and Charity Schools (2nd edition, 1723). That
habitual paradoxmonger was dead against popular schooling : yet
he notes an enthusiastic passion for charity schools, a kind of
distraction the nation hath laboured under for some time,' a wide-
spread interest in their fortunes, and a great desire to share in
their management. He thought that the money bestowed on them
would be better spent upon higher and professional education. If
parents are too poor to afford their children the elements of
learning “it is impudence in them to aspire any further. '
These schools obtained a large measure of support during the
reigns of Anne and George I, but, with the accession of George II,
there came a check in their increase, and a decline in their
efficiency set in, which grew as the century advanced, while an
immense field for popular instruction was either unoccupied, or
occupied by even humbler schools. Their own defective course
and methods of instruction but partly account for the failure
of charity schools, which was mainly due to their connection
with the church and the supposed Jacobite sympathies of their
managers. Responsible persons like archbishop Wake and bishop
Boulter, of Bristol, formally warned the authorities of the schools
against any appearance of disloyalty.
Charity schools failed to expand, partly because they did
not retain the support of the crown, and partly because their
managers were too often partisan in their dealings with parents ;
readers of Fielding will remember why little Joseph Andrews did
not receive a charity school education. But these schools played
## p. 408 (#432) ############################################
408
Education
a part in our educational history which makes them memorable.
They familiarised men with the idea of a system of popular schools
centrally directed, yet very closely associated with the several
localities in which the schools were placed; they founded the
tradition that the three R's' are the primary ground of all school
work, and they first represented that voluntary system to which
English popular education owes much.
Eton and Westminster were commonly accounted the public
schools par excellence during the first half of the eighteenth
century, Winchester taking third place. Rugby's greatness only
began with the headmastership of Thomas James (1778–94), while
Harrow and Shrewsbury suffered from that instability, or decline
in number of pupils, which was general throughout the century
at all public schools. The fact is paralleled by the paucity of
grammar schools founded under George I and George II. Carlisle
gives nineteen schools as founded between 1702 and 1760, of
which eight belong to the reign of Anne: scarcely one of the
nineteen can lay any claim to importance.
Not in the official plan of studies alone had schools lost touch
with the general life of the nation. While domestic manners,
comforts and existence generally had become much less austere
than they were in the sixteenth century, public schools re-
tained their severity of discipline and roughness of manners.
The retention was valued by some as affording a counter-agent
to the supposed effeminacy of the times; but it accounts for the
unwillingness of many mothers to entrust their boys to boarding
schools. Nor were roughness of manners and frequent floggings
the most serious objections to be found in school life. The brutality
of an earlier time survived in some of the school sports ; at Eton,
the 'ram-hunt, in its most cruel and cowardly form, was not
abolished until 1747. 'All that gentleman's misfortunes arose from
his being educated at a public-school,' said parson Adams, com-
menting on the downfall of the dissipated Mr Wilson.
Schools were understaffed, and it was not possible, therefore, to
fill all the waking hours with a supervised routine which would
keep the more audacious spirits out of mischief. “Westminster's
bold race' was notorious for its readiness to defy law and order,
whether of the school or of the city. “Schemes,' or illicit excur-
sions out of bounds, were by no means confined to the hours of
daylight, and boys in their 'teens were brought into contact with
some of the worst evils of a great city. It was at Westminster that
young Qualmsick acquired 'a very pretty knowledge of the Town,'
6
## p. 409 (#433) ############################################
Public School Education
409
6
?
3
before he 'took lodgings at a University,' at the age of seventeen!
School discipline was ineffectual to restrain the more reckless
boys : Smollett sees no absurdity in making Peregrine Pickle
at fourteen 'elope' from Winchester, spend some days on a visit
and return, to have his escapade winked at, or condoned by the
headmaster. Indeed, Perry's private retinue of clerical tutor and
footman furnishes a hint as to the way in which laxity on the part
of the headmaster might arise.
The growth of tutoring was, also, in itself, one of the reasons for
the decline in the number of schoolboys. While William Pitt and
his elder brother, Thomas, retained their own domestic tutor at
Eton (171926), other boys of their rank were educated entirely
by tutors and away from schools. The objections to public school
education made on grounds of health, or morality, were the more
cogent, because boys frequently entered the schools very much
younger than they do today. In 1690, we read of a child of six
being admitted to Westminster: Jeremy Bentham went to the
same school at that age in 1754. Marbles, hop-scotch, and the
rolling circle of Gray's Eton Ode? , tell of boys much younger
than the public schoolboy of the present time.
So far as the systematic and recognised studies of the schools
were concerned, Latin and Greek were the only educational instru-
ments of which every boy could avail himself; presence in 'school?
meant attendance at a lesson in one of these languages. The
spectre schoolmaster of The Dunciad declares,
Whate'er the talents or howe'er designed,
We hang one jingling padlock on the mind.
But it must not be forgotten that, for boys who passed through
the entire school course, Latin and Greek were literatures, not
'subjects' comparable with one of the studies in a modern school
time-table. Further, much of the time devoted to classical
languages was spent in the active study and exercise of composi-
tion; the old rhetorical training survived from the sixteenth
century and, in spite of its manifest faults, that training required
boys to think about a great variety of topics of the first import-
Of course, no attempt was made to teach natural science at
any English public school during the period under review; writing,
arithmetic and, at a much later period, some algebra and geometry
received the partial recognition implied in their being taught on
half-holidays by teachers of inferior standing. Modern literature,
وفي 7
تیر
3
6
มี
1 History of Pompey the Little, pp. 230—2.
2 Gray was at Eton from 1727 to 1734.
در حال
## p. 410 (#434) ############################################
410
Education
English and French, together with accomplishments like drawing,
dancing and fencing, were regarded at Eton, and elsewhere, as
occupations for leisure hours only. Boys were expected to give some
of their leisure to private reading, the absence of the highly organised
athleticism of today leaving a broad margin of time for the
purpose. Cowper at Westminster (1741–9), in this way, read with
a schoolfellow all the Iliad and Odyssey in Greek, and some of
Milton's English poems. Peregrine Pickle is represented as learn-
ing at Winchester four books of Euclid, some algebra, trigonometry
and surveying, but he learned these from Jolter, his tutor, and,
therefore, apart from the school studies. The rigour of the classical
curriculum was a little relaxed, but only a little, in the prepara-
tory schools of the London suburbs through which ‘Westminsters'
sometimes passed to their school.
There is a common consent amongst authorities to the effect
that the years between the restoration and the close of the reign
of George II constituted a period of stagnation, if not of active
decay, in the history of English universities. Those who fix their
attention upon the statutory order of studies and the terms on
which universities then granted degrees are likely to consider this
an understatement. Today, the underlying supposition is that the
degree betokens some measure of intellectual achievement; it is
the conventional certificate of a liberal education and a passport
to certain forms of professional employment. But, in the eighteenth
century, its chief function was to regularise, in academic society, the
position of men who proposed to spend some further years at the
university in anticipation of clerical preferment. Intellectual
merit alone was not regarded as establishing an unquestionable
claim to a place in the academic community, or to the conferment
of a degree. Hence, degrees were sometimes refused, or with-
drawn, on what would today be regarded as irrelevant, or even
unfair, grounds. Hence, too, an easy assent to exercises which
were mere forms; the eighteenth century sometimes allowed the
forms to become farcicall.
But, soon after the restoration, it became clear that the
medieval system was antiquated beyond any possibility of a useful
existence. The scholastic exercises for the B. A. degree comprised
disputations, frequenting public lectures, examinations and deter-
minations. At Oxford, the last two could be satisfied by repeating
1 Convenient evasions had been found at & still earlier period. In 1675, candidates
at Cambridge might put down caution-money as a guarantee that they would go through
the statutory exercises ; they could get the degree by forfeiting the money.
a
## p. 411 (#435) ############################################
University Education
411
6
a few catch-phrases in a dubious Latin, often got up beforehand or
read from notes, 'strings,' as they were called. Candidates secured
a dispensation for non-attendance at lectures which were not
delivered; the examinations of 1716—19, if Amhurst may be
believed on the point, could be crammed for in a fortnight. In
a similar spirit, the sex solemnes lectiones of the statutes for. M. A.
became, in practice, so many 'wall-lectures '-delivered, or pro-
fessedly delivered, to four walls and to empty benches.
But these statutory courses and exercises fail to give a picture
of university education at that date. In the first place, the educa-
tional system of the colleges frequently ensured that the forms
were not empty. Thus, at St John's college, Cambridge, in 1694,
a candidate for the B. A. degree was examined by two fellows of
his college during three days in rhetoric, ethics, physics and
astronomy; the three days' examination in the schools' and
"answering questions, exercises before the university at a later
stage, were merely formal? Bentley, in 1702, introduced written
examinations for scholarships and fellowships at Trinity college,
and, twelve years later, we read of 'a full examination including
two days of book-work in classical literature for fellowships at
Merton College, Oxford? '
Wallis, opposing Maidwell' in 1700, maintained that the Oxford
tutorial system was an equivalent, and more, of the continental
privata collegia, or teaching by Seminar, which Maidwell had said
did not exist in England“. It is instructive to find two popular
manuals by Cambridge tutors, Waterland's Advice to a Young
Student (1706), and Green’s ’EY UKROTaidela (1707), recommending
the reading of the best English writers as well as books on the
new philosophy, in addition to those on the classical, mathematical
and philosophical studies of the customary course. At Cambridge,
in 1730, Locke's Essay and works by English and foreign philo-
sophers and men of science were in use. English essays were
regularly prepared for the Oxford tutors at Magdalen, in 1749,
and at Hertford, in 1747. Where the tutor was interested in
intellectual pursuits and, at the same time, took his tutoring
seriously, the extension of the pupil's studies (especially if the
latter was responsive) was almost inevitable. That there were
such tutors, and that opportunities existed for a wide range of
studies at both Oxford and Cambridge between 1660 and 1760, are
facts easily demonstrated.
i Wordsworth, Scholae Academicae, p. 23. ? Brodrick, Memorials of Merton, p. 130.
* See ante, p. 397.
• A Letter from a friend of the universities.
as
!
Is
## p. 412 (#436) ############################################
412
Education
The origin of the Royal society has already been told'. Sprat,
in his History of the Royal Society (1667), while protesting that
the new institution is in no sense a rival to the universities, goes
on to say that it could not be injurious to them without horrible
ingratitude, seeing that in them it had been principally cherished
and revived. ' In 1659, Robert Boyle brought from Strassburg the
chemist, Peter Stael, who taught his science in Oxford at different
times between that date and 1670. Though in no sense connected
with the university, his classes attracted men of every sort of
standing, above the undergraduate. In 1663, Anthony à Wood
and John Locke were fellow-members of Stael's 'chemical-club. '
Edward Lhwyd and his Cambridge friend John Ray were only less
interested in philology than they were in natural history.
At Cambridge, Bentley is a capital instance of the university
teacher whose catholic interest and zeal for knowledge extended
beyond his own chosen studies. As first Boyle lecturer (1692), he
attempted to confute atheism, not by the authority of the scriptures
but by a study of gravitation, physiology and psychology. This
sympathy with modern studies was not less characteristic of his
mastership of Trinity than was his desperate struggle to maintain
his office. In 1704, he made a dwelling and an observatory in the
college for one of its fellows, Roger Cotes, the first Plumian professor
of astronomy and of experimental philosophy ; the fact marks the
establishment at Cambridge of the Newtonian school of mathe-
matics. Bentley also fitted up a laboratory for Vigani, who, after
lecturing in Cambridge for some years, was made professor of
chemistry in 1703. In 1724, Bentley was instrumental in found-
ing the first botany chair in his university, and he favoured
a design for drawing up a history of modern geographical
discoveries.
Nor were these extra-academic interests confined to the seniors
or to the new philosophy. Ambrose Bonwicke (St John's college,
Cambridge, 1710—14) learned French under a private teacher in
order to study books on all sorts of learning published daily in
that language. ' In the same university, René La Butte taught
French from 1742, and there, also, Isola taught Gray Italian. At
Oxford, in 1741, Magdalen college employed Magister Fabre,
praelector linguae Gallicanae ; a little earlier, Shenstone, Graves
and Whistler met in each other's rooms at Pembroke to 'sip
Florence wine' and to read 'plays and poetry, Spectators or
Tatlers and other works of lighter digestion. ' Dr John Wallis,
1 Ante, vol. VIII, chap. XVII,
6
## p. 413 (#437) ############################################
1:1
6
6
University Chairs
413
in 1700, while arguing that Maidwell's projected academy was
superfluous, states that instruction was then accessible at Oxford
in anatomy, botany, pure and applied mathematics, French, Spanish,
Italian, music, dancing, fencing, riding and other manly exercises.
Nor must it be assumed that the universities in their corporate
capacity were insensible to the advance of knowledge or of their
own responsibility for it. The old curriculum retained its function
as an instrument of education, partly because the newer studies
had not yet reached that stage of systematisation which is requisite
in any branch of knowledge designed to educate. As early as
1683, Oxford found it necessary to open Ashmole’s ‘elaboratory'
‘for promoting several parts of useful and curious learning,' and
the study of chemistry was regularly pursued by members of the
university under the first 'custos,' Robert Plot. About the same
date, a philosophical society, consisting of a number of distinguished
a
seniors, including heads of houses, was instituted to correspond
with the Royal society and with a similar society in Dublin? . By
the close of the seventeenth century, the Newtonian mathematics
began to take possession of the Cambridge schools, not by statutory
regulation but simply in recognition of the advance in knowledge.
Between 1702 and 1750, Cambridge founded chairs in chemistry,
astronomy and experimental philosophy (Plumian), anatomy,
botany, Arabic, geology, astronomy and geometry (Lowndean);
and Oxford instituted chairs of poetry, Anglo-Saxon and anatomy.
It cannot be said that the regius professorships of modern history,
founded in 1724 by George II at both universities, did much to
advance the study of modern history during the eighteenth century;
still, they are, at least, evidence of goodwill on both sides, though
spoiled by vaguely conceived aims and faulty organisation.
The
work of antiquaries like Anthony à Wood and Thomas Hearne was
more to the purpose.
The lethargy which seized upon English university life in the
mid-eighteenth century seems to have been less profound at Cam-
bridge, the university which enjoyed a measure of court favour;
Oxford was persistently Jacobite down to the death of George II,
and, in consequence, forfeited influence and lost opportunities for
usefulness. The Cambridge senate house was opened in 1730 and,
almost immediately, was made the scene of university examina-
tions, which, from that time, became of a serious character. The
1 In two pamphlets, printed with Maidwell's proposal, in the Oxford Historical
Society's Collectanea, First Series, 1885.
Clark, Life and Times of Anthony à Wood, vol. III, pp. 75–8.
a
## p. 414 (#438) ############################################
414
Education
6
chancellor's regulations of 1750, which aimed at stiffening dis-
cipline and reducing the expenses of undergraduates, produced
a flood of pamphlets which give incidental information on the
condition of the university. The Academic, one of the best
known of these, credits undergraduates with 'taste for music and
modern languages, and due attention to mathematics, natural
philosophy and the ancient languages. The Remarks on the
Academic, while dissenting from the conclusions of its opponent,
agrees with it as to the condition of learning at Cambridge.
Edward Gibbon's impeachment of the Oxford system is well
known; he was at Magdalen college (when not elsewhere on
'schemes') for fourteen months, in 1752-3, entering from West-
minster before he completed his fifteenth year. But his remarks
are obviously too prejudiced to be accepted as a plain story of
events which happened many years before he wrote his Memoirs;
Oxford's chief offence was that it was clerical and tory. Still, the
charge of idleness which he brings against fellows of colleges had
been made as early as 1715 by dean Prideaux, and, in the interval,
the circumstances of clerical life at Oxford had not improved.
Prideaux in LVIII Articles for reformation of universities wanted
to enforce ancient discipline throughout academic society, to
punish neglectful tutors and to superannuate fellows twenty years
after matriculation. A fellow who had not secured a provision for
himself at that date was to be removed to a special residence sup-
ported by the colleges and named ' Drone Hall. The universities
were heavily handicapped by a policy which placed so much of
their teaching and government in the hands of clerical celibates,
whose professional ambition and hopes of 'settling in life'
frequently centred about a prospective college living.
## p. 415 (#439) ############################################
2
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
i
CHAPTER I
DEFOE-THE NEWSPAPER AND THE NOVEL
1
For the history of English journalism prior to and contemporary with
Defoe, see Nichols, J. , Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. 1,
pp. 6, 312; vol. iv, pp. 33-97; Hunt, F. Knight, The Fourth Estate, 1850;
Andrews, A. , History of British Journalism, 1859; Fox Bourne, H. R. , English
Newspapers, 1887, vol. I, pp. 1-130; Ames, J. Griffith, The English Literary
Periodical of Morals and Manners, Mt Vernon, Ohio, 1904; and the chief
authority for the earliest period (to 1666), Williams, J. B. , A History of
English Journalism to the Foundation of the Gazette, 1908.
For the history of English fiction prior to and contemporary with Defoe,
see Dunlop, J. C. , History of Prose Fiction, ed. Wilson, H. , 1896, vol. II,
chaps. IX-XIV; Tuckerman, Bayard, A History of English Prose Fiction,
New York, 1882; Raleigh, Sir W. , The English Novel, 1894; Cross, W. L. ,
The Development of the English Novel, New York, 1899; Millar, J. H. ,
The Mid-Eighteenth Century, Edinburgh, 1902; and Morgan, Charlotte E. ,
The Rise of the Novel of Manners, Columbia University Studies in English,
New York, 1911, which contains a full bibliography,
a
I. SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE
For L'Estrange's life, see a satisfactory article by Sir Sidney Lee in
Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XXXIII. For information as to his
writings, see this article; also Watt, R. , Bibliotheca Britannica, vol. I,
Edinburgh, 1824; Halkett and Laing, Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudo-
nymous Literature, 4 vols. , Edinburgh, 1882-8.
A. Original Writings
(1) To a Gentleman, a Member of the Honourable House of Commons
[a signed broadside]. July 8, 1646. (2) L'Estrange His Appeale from
the Court Martiall to the Parliament, etc. April, 1647. Rptd in Truth and
Loyalty Vindicated, pp. 38-45. (3) Lestrange His Vindication to Kent, etc.
1649. (4-23) The Declaration of the City, to the men at Westminster. —The
Engagement and Remonstrance of the City of London. December 12, 1659.
- The Final Protest, and Sense of the City. - The Resolve of the City.
December 23, 1659. -A Free Parliament Proposed by the City to the Nation.
Dated Dec. 6, 1659, but apparently combined with a letter To the Honorable
the Commissioners of the City of London, for the Liberties and Rights of the
English Nation, which is dated Jan. 3, 1659 (i. e. 1660). -A Plain Case.
January 24, 1659. –To His Excellency, General Monck. A Letter from the
Gentlemen of Devon in Answer to his Lordships of January 23 to them
## p. 416 (#440) ############################################
416
Bibliography
directed from Leicester. D. Jan. 18, 1659. —The Sense of the Army. D.
Feb. 2, 1659. —The Citizens Declaration for a Free Parliament (same date).
- For his Excellency Generall Monck. D. Feb. 4, 1659. -A Narrative. D. , with-
out title, Feb. 12, 1659. –A Word in Season, To General Monck (with his
officers, etc. ), To the City, and To the Nation. D. February 18, 1659,-A
Seasonable Word-Quære for Quære, etc. —No Fool to the Old Fool. D.
March 16, 1659. -A Paper against the Faction. D. , without title, March 24,
1659. —A Necessary and Seasonable Caution, Concerning Elections; A Sober
Answer to a Jugling Pamphlet, Entituled, A Letter Intercepted, etc. D.
March 27, 1660. -Treason Arraigned, In Answer to Plain English. 1660. -
An Answer to An Alarum to the Armies of England, Scotland and Ireland.
D. April 4, 1660. [Nos. 4–23, together in some copies with Nos. 24 and 25,
are rptd in No. 26, L'Estrange His Apology, and in almost every case
are said to have been ptd. ) (24) No Blinde Guides, In Answer To a
seditious Pamphlet of J. Milton's, Intituled Brief Notes upon a late
Sermon, etc. April 20, 1660. (25) Physician Cure thy Self: or, an Answer
To a Seditious Pamphlet, Entitled Eye-Salve for the English Army,
etc. . . . April 23, 1660. (26) L'Estrange His Apology: with A Short View
of Some Late and Remarkable Transactions, etc. 1660. (27) An Appeal
in the Case of the late King's Party. 1660. (28) A Plea for a Limited
Monarchy, etc. 1660. Rptd in Harleian Miscellany, vol. 1. 1744. (29) A Caveat
to the Cavaliers. . . Dedicated to the Author [James Howell] of A Cordial
for the Cavaliers. 1661. (30) A Modest Plea Both for the Caveat, and The
Author of It. With some Notes upon Mr. James Howell, etc. August, 1661.
(31) Interest Mistaken, or, The Holy Cheat. . . . By way of Observation upon a
Treatise, Entituled, The Interest of England in the Matter of Religion, etc.
1661. (32) The Relaps’d Apostate: or Notes upon A Presbyterian Pamphlet,
Entituled, A Petition for Peace, etc. November, 1661. (33) To the Right
Hon. Edward Earl of Clarendon, Lord High Chancellor of England: The
Humble Apology of Roger L'Estrange. December 3, 1661. (34) State
Divinity; or a Supplement to The Relapsd A postate, etc. Dec. 4, 1661.
(35) A Memento: Directed To all Those That Truly Reverence the Memory
of King Charles the Martyr; And as Passionately wish the Honour . . . of his
Royall Successour. . . Charles the II. The First Part. April, 1662. New ed.
omitting the three last chapters and entitled A Memento treating of the Rise,
Progress, and Remedies of Sedition. 1682. (36) Truth and Loyalty Vindi-
cated, From the Reproches and Clamours of Mr Edward Bagshaw, etc.
June 7, 1662. (37) A Whipp For the Schismaticall Animadverter (Bagshaw]
Upon the Bishop of Worcester's Letter, etc. February, 1662. (38) Toleration
Discussid. 1663. (39) Considerations and Proposals In Order to the Regulation
of the Press: together with Diverse Instances of Treasonous, and Seditious
Pamphlets, Proving the Necessity thereof. June 3,1663. (40) The Intelligencer.
Published for the satisfaction and information of the people. With Privilege.
From Aug. 31, 1663, on Mondays, to January 29, 1666. (41) The Newes.
Published for the satisfaction and information of the people. With Privilege.
From September 3, 1663, on Thursdays, until January 29, 1666. [Beginning
with 1664, these two periodicals were numbered and paged together. ] (42) Pub
lick Intelligence. With sole Privilege. [A single number. ] Nov. 28, 1665.
(43) Publick Advertisements (with Privilege). [One number (? ). ] June 25,
1666. (44) A Discourse of the Fishery, etc. 1674. (45) The Parallel or, An
Account of the Growth of Knavery, Under the Pretext of Arbitrary Govern-
ment and Popery. With some Observations upon a Pamphlet (by Andrew
Marvell], Entitled, An Account of the Growth of Popery, eto. 1677. 3rd
ed.
results must have differed greatly; but the general level was a
low one, especially in those numerous cases where it was thought
unnecessary to train the girl as a housewife though it was not
possible to furnish her with highly competent instructors. Swift,
in A Letter to a very young lady on her marriage, declares that
not one gentleman's daughter in a thousand can read or under-
stand her own language or ‘be the judge of the easiest books that
are written in it. ' They are not so much as taught to spell in their
*
childhood, nor can ever attain to it in their whole lives. ' Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu received lessons in carving in order to
take the head of her father's table on public days, occasions on
which she dined alone an hour beforehand. She was taught French
in childhood and Italian as a young woman of twenty; Latin she
studied surreptitiously for two years in her father's library, working
five or six hours a day, when it was thought she was reading novels
or romances. Elizabeth Elstob, editor of Aelfric's Homilies and
author of the earliest Old English grammar, pursued her early
education under similar discouraging circumstances.
The medieval distinction between the types of education of the
sexes was a distinction of function, and the difference between the
education of women and that of men was not greater than the
difference between the education of the knight and that of
the scholar. But, in the eighteenth century, the difference was
6
## p. 403 (#427) ############################################
Education of Girls
403
م
regarded as based on capacity. "You can never arrive in point
of learning to the perfection of a school-boy,' Swift assures a newly-
a
married girl, and he advises that, for some hours daily, she should
study English works on history and travel, so that she may prepare
to take an intelligent part in conversation. From this platform, it
is but a short step, and too often a downward one, to the 'accom-
plishments' of the seventeenth and eighteenth century boarding
school. Here, as in home education, the differences of aim and
method were very great. These are at their most ambitious point
in An Essay to revive the antient education of Gentlewomen
(1673) which, in truth, is a thinly-veiled prospectus of a new
boarding school for girls, to be established, or recently established,
at Tottenham cross by Mrs Bathsua Makin, a lady who acquired
an extraordinary reputation as 'tutress' to Charles I's daughter,
Elizabeth'. The interest of the essay, probably written by
Mrs Makin herself, lies in the account of her school. We learn
that the things ordinarily taught in girls' schools were 'works of
all sorts, dancing, music, singing, writing, keeping accompts. ' Half
the time of the new school is to be devoted to these arts, and the
remainder to Latin and French, "and those that please may learn
Greek and Hebrew, the Italian and Spanish, in all which this
gentlewoman hath a competent knowledge. ' The mixture of aims
and indecision as to means are strikingly illustrated in the optional
studies, 'limning, preserving, pastry and cooking,' and in the
branches to be taken up by those who remained long at school,
astronomy, geography, arithmetic, history. Mrs Makin was an
admirer of Comenius and warmly recommended his plan of
teaching Latin and 'real' knowledge in association. Experimental
philosophy may be substituted for languages in the new school,
which has 'repositories for visibles,' collections of objects, for the
purpose.
Swift's proposal for the reform of girls' instruction already
alluded to is not unlike that recommended in 1753 by Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu for the benefit of her grandchild, the countess
of Bute's daughter, except that she adds arithmetic and philosophy,
and attaches special importance to needlework, drawing and
English poetry. Reformer as she was, she shares the general
opinion that scholarly attainments were the affair of the pro-
fessional man and, accordingly, to be considered derogatory in the
owner of a title or of great estates. Lady Mary, therefore, is
careful to say that she considers the kind of education which she is
1 Princess Elizabeth died at the age of fifteen in 1650.
26_2
## p. 404 (#428) ############################################
404
Education
6
6
advising suited only to those women who will live unmarried and
retired lives; and even they should conceal their learning, when
acquired, as they would a physical defect.
Mary Astell, the ‘Madonella' whose 'seraphic discourse' and
'Protestant nunnery' furnished Swift' with topics for coarse satire,
was a great admirer of Lady Mary but a reformer on different
lines. Her Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694) attracted con-
siderable attention and opposition, partly on account of its suggested
conventual education, partly because its author was a known
controversialist on the church of England side. Her 'religious'
were to undertake the education of girls, instructing them in
“solid and useful knowledge,' chiefly through the mother tongue.
The ladies themselves were to substitute French philosophy and
the ancient classics (presumably in translations) for the romances
which formed most of the reading of fashionable women. William
Law held women's intelligence and capacity in at least as high
esteem as he did those of men; but the education which he advised
for girls is confined to plain living, and the practice of charity and
devotion.
Defoe's Essay upon Projects (1697) deprecates the idea of a
nunnery and proposes academies which differ but little from
'
public schools, wherein such ladies as were willing to study should
have all the advantages of learning suitable to their genius. ' He
indicates the customary instruction of girls of the middle class.
6
6
One would wonder indeed how it should happen that women are con-
versible at all, since they are only beholding to natural parts for all their
knowledge. Their youth is spent to teach them to stitch and sow, or make
bawbles; they are taught to read indeed, and perhaps to write their names
or so; and that is the heighth of a woman's education.
а
Defoe's academy 'would deny women no sort of learning,' but,
in particular, it would teach them history, languages, especially
French and Italian, music and dancing. This readiness to expand
the course of studies appears again in the same author's Compleat
English Gentleman, where Latin and Greek are said to be
not indispensable; but modern studies and, notably, the cultiva-
tion of the mother tongue, are described as essential.
The beginning of popular education is an obscure subject, as to
which we can with safety make only such general assertions as
that rudimentary instruction in the vernacular was first given
in response to a commercial, industrial or other distinctly utili-
tarian demand, and that teachers were private adventurers,
i The Tatler, XXXII, 1709.
## p. 405 (#429) ############################################
2
Elementary Education
405
frequently women, who carried on their small schools unlicensed.
Long before the period under review, children of all ranks but
the highest received their earliest schooling in dames' schools.
Brinsley (1612) speaks of poor men and women who, by such
teaching, ‘make an honest poor living of it, or get somewhat
towards helping the same'; at the close of the century, Stephen
Penton refers to the horn book . . . which brings in the country
school dames so many groats a week. ' Francis Brokesbyl writes :
There are few country villages where some or other do not get a livelihood
by teaching school, so that there are now not many but can write and read
unless it have been their own or their parents' fault.
The writer has a doubtful thesis to support, and therefore must
not be taken too literally. Shenstone had a much better right to
assume the presence of a dame school ‘in every village mark'd
with little spire’? ; but he wrote a whole generation later. In
spite of its banter and the prominence assigned to the rod, this
burlesque idyll is a tribute of respect to school dames and to the
value of their work amidst very unscholastic surroundings. The
instruction was usually confined to reading and the memorising
of catechism, psalms and scriptural texts ; writing was an occasional
'extra. ' Fielding and Smollett throw some light on the country
schools of their time.
Schools above this grade taught, or professed to teach,
arithmetic, history, geography and, sometimes, the rudiments of
Latin; others, of a grade still higher, prepared for Eton and West-
minster. Smollett makes Peregrine Pickle (1751) attend a boarding
school kept by a German charlatan who undertook to teach French
and Latin and to prepare for these two schools, though, in the end,
'Perry' was sent to Winchester.
But, of whatever grade, all these private schools were for
persons who could pay a fee; the very poor and the indifferent
were not helped by them. In spite of casual attempts of town
councils, vestries and private persons to provide instruction, the
number of the illiterate and untaught was great and the morals of
6
i Of Education, 1701.
3 The School-Mistress, 1742.
8 Thus, in Joseph Andrews (1742) the hero is said to have learned to read . very
early,' his father paying sixpence a week for the instruction. Tom Jones's henchman
had been a village schoolmaster, whose pupils numbered exactly nine, of whom seven
were 'parish-boys' learning to read and write at the ratepayers' cost; their comrades
were the sons of a neighbouring squire, the elder, a boy of seventeen just entered into
syntax,' a dunce too old for a more suitable school. Partridge eked out his income by
acting as parish clerk and barber, his patron providing a ten pound annuity.
6
## p. 406 (#430) ############################################
406
Eaucation
a large part of the population gave anxiety to thoughtful men
The increase of pauperism between 1692 and 1699 intensified the
evil, and the earliest attempts at amelioration were on economic
rather than educational lines. John Bellers came forward with
Proposals for Raising a Colledge of Industry (1696) which, in
fact, consisted of a proprietary workhouse in close association with
a farm, by whose means Bellers hoped to eliminate the middleman,
solve the puzzle of the unemployed and pay profits to the proprietors.
The teaching to be given in the school was to be addressed mainly
to reading, writing and handicrafts, children beginning to learn
knitting and spinning at four or five years old; the inmates might
remain to the age of twenty-four. The scheme secured the approval
of William Penn, Thomas Ellwood and other quakers, but it was
full of generalities and platitudes, without showing capacity to
found a living institution ; Cowley was the real author of some
of the notions which Bellers presented very nebulously.
In 1697, Locke, then a member of the commission of Trade
and Plantations, wrote a memorandum in which he ascribed the
increase of pauperism to relaxation of discipline and corruption
of manners. He put forward the more practicable portions of
Bellers's scheme, suggesting the erection at public expense in all
parishes of 'working schools' for pauper children, between the
ages of three and fourteen, who were to learn spinning, knitting or
other handicraft, and to be brought to church on Sundays! . Half
the apprentices of a district should be chosen from these paupers,
for whom no premium was to be paid. Locke estimated that the
children's labour would pay for their teaching and for a sufficient
ration of bread and water-gruel. Defoe (Of Royall Educacion,
c. 1728) expressed the opinion that 'in the manufacturing towns
of England, hardly a child above five year old but could get its
own bread. '
While men like Locke and Bellers addressed themselves chiefly
to the economic side of the problem presented by pauperism, others
tried to solve it by means of instruction, more particularly through
instruction in religion. There was, indeed, a growing uneasiness in
religious minds respecting the spiritual condition of the people
,
not only in these islands but in France and Germany also. Between
1678 and 1698, forty-two 'religious societies,' chiefly of churchmen,
were started in London alone, and similar associations were formed
at Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin and elsewhere, the object of all
being that deepening of personal piety which, at a later date and
* Fox Bourne, Life of John Locke, vol. I, p. 388.
6
## p. 407 (#431) ############################################
Charity Schools
407
on a more extensive scale, became methodism. In the last decade
of the seventeenth century societies for the reformation of
manners' endeavoured to effect improvement by setting in force
the laws against swearing, drunkenness, street-debauchery and
sabbath-breaking; their success was but trifling, and they died
out about 1740.
One of the immediate objects of the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge (founded in 1699) was the institution of
schools for instructing poor children between the ages of seven
and twelve in reading, writing and the catechism ; all boys and
some girls were to be taught to cipher, and all girls were to
learn sewing, or some other handicraft. The instruction was to be
given by a master or mistress, a member of the church of England,
licensed by the bishop. A convincing proof of the great popularity
of these schools in their earlier period is furnished by the
venomous attack upon them made by Bernard Mandeville in his
Essay on Charity, and Charity Schools (2nd edition, 1723). That
habitual paradoxmonger was dead against popular schooling : yet
he notes an enthusiastic passion for charity schools, a kind of
distraction the nation hath laboured under for some time,' a wide-
spread interest in their fortunes, and a great desire to share in
their management. He thought that the money bestowed on them
would be better spent upon higher and professional education. If
parents are too poor to afford their children the elements of
learning “it is impudence in them to aspire any further. '
These schools obtained a large measure of support during the
reigns of Anne and George I, but, with the accession of George II,
there came a check in their increase, and a decline in their
efficiency set in, which grew as the century advanced, while an
immense field for popular instruction was either unoccupied, or
occupied by even humbler schools. Their own defective course
and methods of instruction but partly account for the failure
of charity schools, which was mainly due to their connection
with the church and the supposed Jacobite sympathies of their
managers. Responsible persons like archbishop Wake and bishop
Boulter, of Bristol, formally warned the authorities of the schools
against any appearance of disloyalty.
Charity schools failed to expand, partly because they did
not retain the support of the crown, and partly because their
managers were too often partisan in their dealings with parents ;
readers of Fielding will remember why little Joseph Andrews did
not receive a charity school education. But these schools played
## p. 408 (#432) ############################################
408
Education
a part in our educational history which makes them memorable.
They familiarised men with the idea of a system of popular schools
centrally directed, yet very closely associated with the several
localities in which the schools were placed; they founded the
tradition that the three R's' are the primary ground of all school
work, and they first represented that voluntary system to which
English popular education owes much.
Eton and Westminster were commonly accounted the public
schools par excellence during the first half of the eighteenth
century, Winchester taking third place. Rugby's greatness only
began with the headmastership of Thomas James (1778–94), while
Harrow and Shrewsbury suffered from that instability, or decline
in number of pupils, which was general throughout the century
at all public schools. The fact is paralleled by the paucity of
grammar schools founded under George I and George II. Carlisle
gives nineteen schools as founded between 1702 and 1760, of
which eight belong to the reign of Anne: scarcely one of the
nineteen can lay any claim to importance.
Not in the official plan of studies alone had schools lost touch
with the general life of the nation. While domestic manners,
comforts and existence generally had become much less austere
than they were in the sixteenth century, public schools re-
tained their severity of discipline and roughness of manners.
The retention was valued by some as affording a counter-agent
to the supposed effeminacy of the times; but it accounts for the
unwillingness of many mothers to entrust their boys to boarding
schools. Nor were roughness of manners and frequent floggings
the most serious objections to be found in school life. The brutality
of an earlier time survived in some of the school sports ; at Eton,
the 'ram-hunt, in its most cruel and cowardly form, was not
abolished until 1747. 'All that gentleman's misfortunes arose from
his being educated at a public-school,' said parson Adams, com-
menting on the downfall of the dissipated Mr Wilson.
Schools were understaffed, and it was not possible, therefore, to
fill all the waking hours with a supervised routine which would
keep the more audacious spirits out of mischief. “Westminster's
bold race' was notorious for its readiness to defy law and order,
whether of the school or of the city. “Schemes,' or illicit excur-
sions out of bounds, were by no means confined to the hours of
daylight, and boys in their 'teens were brought into contact with
some of the worst evils of a great city. It was at Westminster that
young Qualmsick acquired 'a very pretty knowledge of the Town,'
6
## p. 409 (#433) ############################################
Public School Education
409
6
?
3
before he 'took lodgings at a University,' at the age of seventeen!
School discipline was ineffectual to restrain the more reckless
boys : Smollett sees no absurdity in making Peregrine Pickle
at fourteen 'elope' from Winchester, spend some days on a visit
and return, to have his escapade winked at, or condoned by the
headmaster. Indeed, Perry's private retinue of clerical tutor and
footman furnishes a hint as to the way in which laxity on the part
of the headmaster might arise.
The growth of tutoring was, also, in itself, one of the reasons for
the decline in the number of schoolboys. While William Pitt and
his elder brother, Thomas, retained their own domestic tutor at
Eton (171926), other boys of their rank were educated entirely
by tutors and away from schools. The objections to public school
education made on grounds of health, or morality, were the more
cogent, because boys frequently entered the schools very much
younger than they do today. In 1690, we read of a child of six
being admitted to Westminster: Jeremy Bentham went to the
same school at that age in 1754. Marbles, hop-scotch, and the
rolling circle of Gray's Eton Ode? , tell of boys much younger
than the public schoolboy of the present time.
So far as the systematic and recognised studies of the schools
were concerned, Latin and Greek were the only educational instru-
ments of which every boy could avail himself; presence in 'school?
meant attendance at a lesson in one of these languages. The
spectre schoolmaster of The Dunciad declares,
Whate'er the talents or howe'er designed,
We hang one jingling padlock on the mind.
But it must not be forgotten that, for boys who passed through
the entire school course, Latin and Greek were literatures, not
'subjects' comparable with one of the studies in a modern school
time-table. Further, much of the time devoted to classical
languages was spent in the active study and exercise of composi-
tion; the old rhetorical training survived from the sixteenth
century and, in spite of its manifest faults, that training required
boys to think about a great variety of topics of the first import-
Of course, no attempt was made to teach natural science at
any English public school during the period under review; writing,
arithmetic and, at a much later period, some algebra and geometry
received the partial recognition implied in their being taught on
half-holidays by teachers of inferior standing. Modern literature,
وفي 7
تیر
3
6
มี
1 History of Pompey the Little, pp. 230—2.
2 Gray was at Eton from 1727 to 1734.
در حال
## p. 410 (#434) ############################################
410
Education
English and French, together with accomplishments like drawing,
dancing and fencing, were regarded at Eton, and elsewhere, as
occupations for leisure hours only. Boys were expected to give some
of their leisure to private reading, the absence of the highly organised
athleticism of today leaving a broad margin of time for the
purpose. Cowper at Westminster (1741–9), in this way, read with
a schoolfellow all the Iliad and Odyssey in Greek, and some of
Milton's English poems. Peregrine Pickle is represented as learn-
ing at Winchester four books of Euclid, some algebra, trigonometry
and surveying, but he learned these from Jolter, his tutor, and,
therefore, apart from the school studies. The rigour of the classical
curriculum was a little relaxed, but only a little, in the prepara-
tory schools of the London suburbs through which ‘Westminsters'
sometimes passed to their school.
There is a common consent amongst authorities to the effect
that the years between the restoration and the close of the reign
of George II constituted a period of stagnation, if not of active
decay, in the history of English universities. Those who fix their
attention upon the statutory order of studies and the terms on
which universities then granted degrees are likely to consider this
an understatement. Today, the underlying supposition is that the
degree betokens some measure of intellectual achievement; it is
the conventional certificate of a liberal education and a passport
to certain forms of professional employment. But, in the eighteenth
century, its chief function was to regularise, in academic society, the
position of men who proposed to spend some further years at the
university in anticipation of clerical preferment. Intellectual
merit alone was not regarded as establishing an unquestionable
claim to a place in the academic community, or to the conferment
of a degree. Hence, degrees were sometimes refused, or with-
drawn, on what would today be regarded as irrelevant, or even
unfair, grounds. Hence, too, an easy assent to exercises which
were mere forms; the eighteenth century sometimes allowed the
forms to become farcicall.
But, soon after the restoration, it became clear that the
medieval system was antiquated beyond any possibility of a useful
existence. The scholastic exercises for the B. A. degree comprised
disputations, frequenting public lectures, examinations and deter-
minations. At Oxford, the last two could be satisfied by repeating
1 Convenient evasions had been found at & still earlier period. In 1675, candidates
at Cambridge might put down caution-money as a guarantee that they would go through
the statutory exercises ; they could get the degree by forfeiting the money.
a
## p. 411 (#435) ############################################
University Education
411
6
a few catch-phrases in a dubious Latin, often got up beforehand or
read from notes, 'strings,' as they were called. Candidates secured
a dispensation for non-attendance at lectures which were not
delivered; the examinations of 1716—19, if Amhurst may be
believed on the point, could be crammed for in a fortnight. In
a similar spirit, the sex solemnes lectiones of the statutes for. M. A.
became, in practice, so many 'wall-lectures '-delivered, or pro-
fessedly delivered, to four walls and to empty benches.
But these statutory courses and exercises fail to give a picture
of university education at that date. In the first place, the educa-
tional system of the colleges frequently ensured that the forms
were not empty. Thus, at St John's college, Cambridge, in 1694,
a candidate for the B. A. degree was examined by two fellows of
his college during three days in rhetoric, ethics, physics and
astronomy; the three days' examination in the schools' and
"answering questions, exercises before the university at a later
stage, were merely formal? Bentley, in 1702, introduced written
examinations for scholarships and fellowships at Trinity college,
and, twelve years later, we read of 'a full examination including
two days of book-work in classical literature for fellowships at
Merton College, Oxford? '
Wallis, opposing Maidwell' in 1700, maintained that the Oxford
tutorial system was an equivalent, and more, of the continental
privata collegia, or teaching by Seminar, which Maidwell had said
did not exist in England“. It is instructive to find two popular
manuals by Cambridge tutors, Waterland's Advice to a Young
Student (1706), and Green’s ’EY UKROTaidela (1707), recommending
the reading of the best English writers as well as books on the
new philosophy, in addition to those on the classical, mathematical
and philosophical studies of the customary course. At Cambridge,
in 1730, Locke's Essay and works by English and foreign philo-
sophers and men of science were in use. English essays were
regularly prepared for the Oxford tutors at Magdalen, in 1749,
and at Hertford, in 1747. Where the tutor was interested in
intellectual pursuits and, at the same time, took his tutoring
seriously, the extension of the pupil's studies (especially if the
latter was responsive) was almost inevitable. That there were
such tutors, and that opportunities existed for a wide range of
studies at both Oxford and Cambridge between 1660 and 1760, are
facts easily demonstrated.
i Wordsworth, Scholae Academicae, p. 23. ? Brodrick, Memorials of Merton, p. 130.
* See ante, p. 397.
• A Letter from a friend of the universities.
as
!
Is
## p. 412 (#436) ############################################
412
Education
The origin of the Royal society has already been told'. Sprat,
in his History of the Royal Society (1667), while protesting that
the new institution is in no sense a rival to the universities, goes
on to say that it could not be injurious to them without horrible
ingratitude, seeing that in them it had been principally cherished
and revived. ' In 1659, Robert Boyle brought from Strassburg the
chemist, Peter Stael, who taught his science in Oxford at different
times between that date and 1670. Though in no sense connected
with the university, his classes attracted men of every sort of
standing, above the undergraduate. In 1663, Anthony à Wood
and John Locke were fellow-members of Stael's 'chemical-club. '
Edward Lhwyd and his Cambridge friend John Ray were only less
interested in philology than they were in natural history.
At Cambridge, Bentley is a capital instance of the university
teacher whose catholic interest and zeal for knowledge extended
beyond his own chosen studies. As first Boyle lecturer (1692), he
attempted to confute atheism, not by the authority of the scriptures
but by a study of gravitation, physiology and psychology. This
sympathy with modern studies was not less characteristic of his
mastership of Trinity than was his desperate struggle to maintain
his office. In 1704, he made a dwelling and an observatory in the
college for one of its fellows, Roger Cotes, the first Plumian professor
of astronomy and of experimental philosophy ; the fact marks the
establishment at Cambridge of the Newtonian school of mathe-
matics. Bentley also fitted up a laboratory for Vigani, who, after
lecturing in Cambridge for some years, was made professor of
chemistry in 1703. In 1724, Bentley was instrumental in found-
ing the first botany chair in his university, and he favoured
a design for drawing up a history of modern geographical
discoveries.
Nor were these extra-academic interests confined to the seniors
or to the new philosophy. Ambrose Bonwicke (St John's college,
Cambridge, 1710—14) learned French under a private teacher in
order to study books on all sorts of learning published daily in
that language. ' In the same university, René La Butte taught
French from 1742, and there, also, Isola taught Gray Italian. At
Oxford, in 1741, Magdalen college employed Magister Fabre,
praelector linguae Gallicanae ; a little earlier, Shenstone, Graves
and Whistler met in each other's rooms at Pembroke to 'sip
Florence wine' and to read 'plays and poetry, Spectators or
Tatlers and other works of lighter digestion. ' Dr John Wallis,
1 Ante, vol. VIII, chap. XVII,
6
## p. 413 (#437) ############################################
1:1
6
6
University Chairs
413
in 1700, while arguing that Maidwell's projected academy was
superfluous, states that instruction was then accessible at Oxford
in anatomy, botany, pure and applied mathematics, French, Spanish,
Italian, music, dancing, fencing, riding and other manly exercises.
Nor must it be assumed that the universities in their corporate
capacity were insensible to the advance of knowledge or of their
own responsibility for it. The old curriculum retained its function
as an instrument of education, partly because the newer studies
had not yet reached that stage of systematisation which is requisite
in any branch of knowledge designed to educate. As early as
1683, Oxford found it necessary to open Ashmole’s ‘elaboratory'
‘for promoting several parts of useful and curious learning,' and
the study of chemistry was regularly pursued by members of the
university under the first 'custos,' Robert Plot. About the same
date, a philosophical society, consisting of a number of distinguished
a
seniors, including heads of houses, was instituted to correspond
with the Royal society and with a similar society in Dublin? . By
the close of the seventeenth century, the Newtonian mathematics
began to take possession of the Cambridge schools, not by statutory
regulation but simply in recognition of the advance in knowledge.
Between 1702 and 1750, Cambridge founded chairs in chemistry,
astronomy and experimental philosophy (Plumian), anatomy,
botany, Arabic, geology, astronomy and geometry (Lowndean);
and Oxford instituted chairs of poetry, Anglo-Saxon and anatomy.
It cannot be said that the regius professorships of modern history,
founded in 1724 by George II at both universities, did much to
advance the study of modern history during the eighteenth century;
still, they are, at least, evidence of goodwill on both sides, though
spoiled by vaguely conceived aims and faulty organisation.
The
work of antiquaries like Anthony à Wood and Thomas Hearne was
more to the purpose.
The lethargy which seized upon English university life in the
mid-eighteenth century seems to have been less profound at Cam-
bridge, the university which enjoyed a measure of court favour;
Oxford was persistently Jacobite down to the death of George II,
and, in consequence, forfeited influence and lost opportunities for
usefulness. The Cambridge senate house was opened in 1730 and,
almost immediately, was made the scene of university examina-
tions, which, from that time, became of a serious character. The
1 In two pamphlets, printed with Maidwell's proposal, in the Oxford Historical
Society's Collectanea, First Series, 1885.
Clark, Life and Times of Anthony à Wood, vol. III, pp. 75–8.
a
## p. 414 (#438) ############################################
414
Education
6
chancellor's regulations of 1750, which aimed at stiffening dis-
cipline and reducing the expenses of undergraduates, produced
a flood of pamphlets which give incidental information on the
condition of the university. The Academic, one of the best
known of these, credits undergraduates with 'taste for music and
modern languages, and due attention to mathematics, natural
philosophy and the ancient languages. The Remarks on the
Academic, while dissenting from the conclusions of its opponent,
agrees with it as to the condition of learning at Cambridge.
Edward Gibbon's impeachment of the Oxford system is well
known; he was at Magdalen college (when not elsewhere on
'schemes') for fourteen months, in 1752-3, entering from West-
minster before he completed his fifteenth year. But his remarks
are obviously too prejudiced to be accepted as a plain story of
events which happened many years before he wrote his Memoirs;
Oxford's chief offence was that it was clerical and tory. Still, the
charge of idleness which he brings against fellows of colleges had
been made as early as 1715 by dean Prideaux, and, in the interval,
the circumstances of clerical life at Oxford had not improved.
Prideaux in LVIII Articles for reformation of universities wanted
to enforce ancient discipline throughout academic society, to
punish neglectful tutors and to superannuate fellows twenty years
after matriculation. A fellow who had not secured a provision for
himself at that date was to be removed to a special residence sup-
ported by the colleges and named ' Drone Hall. The universities
were heavily handicapped by a policy which placed so much of
their teaching and government in the hands of clerical celibates,
whose professional ambition and hopes of 'settling in life'
frequently centred about a prospective college living.
## p. 415 (#439) ############################################
2
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
i
CHAPTER I
DEFOE-THE NEWSPAPER AND THE NOVEL
1
For the history of English journalism prior to and contemporary with
Defoe, see Nichols, J. , Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. 1,
pp. 6, 312; vol. iv, pp. 33-97; Hunt, F. Knight, The Fourth Estate, 1850;
Andrews, A. , History of British Journalism, 1859; Fox Bourne, H. R. , English
Newspapers, 1887, vol. I, pp. 1-130; Ames, J. Griffith, The English Literary
Periodical of Morals and Manners, Mt Vernon, Ohio, 1904; and the chief
authority for the earliest period (to 1666), Williams, J. B. , A History of
English Journalism to the Foundation of the Gazette, 1908.
For the history of English fiction prior to and contemporary with Defoe,
see Dunlop, J. C. , History of Prose Fiction, ed. Wilson, H. , 1896, vol. II,
chaps. IX-XIV; Tuckerman, Bayard, A History of English Prose Fiction,
New York, 1882; Raleigh, Sir W. , The English Novel, 1894; Cross, W. L. ,
The Development of the English Novel, New York, 1899; Millar, J. H. ,
The Mid-Eighteenth Century, Edinburgh, 1902; and Morgan, Charlotte E. ,
The Rise of the Novel of Manners, Columbia University Studies in English,
New York, 1911, which contains a full bibliography,
a
I. SIR ROGER L'ESTRANGE
For L'Estrange's life, see a satisfactory article by Sir Sidney Lee in
Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XXXIII. For information as to his
writings, see this article; also Watt, R. , Bibliotheca Britannica, vol. I,
Edinburgh, 1824; Halkett and Laing, Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudo-
nymous Literature, 4 vols. , Edinburgh, 1882-8.
A. Original Writings
(1) To a Gentleman, a Member of the Honourable House of Commons
[a signed broadside]. July 8, 1646. (2) L'Estrange His Appeale from
the Court Martiall to the Parliament, etc. April, 1647. Rptd in Truth and
Loyalty Vindicated, pp. 38-45. (3) Lestrange His Vindication to Kent, etc.
1649. (4-23) The Declaration of the City, to the men at Westminster. —The
Engagement and Remonstrance of the City of London. December 12, 1659.
- The Final Protest, and Sense of the City. - The Resolve of the City.
December 23, 1659. -A Free Parliament Proposed by the City to the Nation.
Dated Dec. 6, 1659, but apparently combined with a letter To the Honorable
the Commissioners of the City of London, for the Liberties and Rights of the
English Nation, which is dated Jan. 3, 1659 (i. e. 1660). -A Plain Case.
January 24, 1659. –To His Excellency, General Monck. A Letter from the
Gentlemen of Devon in Answer to his Lordships of January 23 to them
## p. 416 (#440) ############################################
416
Bibliography
directed from Leicester. D. Jan. 18, 1659. —The Sense of the Army. D.
Feb. 2, 1659. —The Citizens Declaration for a Free Parliament (same date).
- For his Excellency Generall Monck. D. Feb. 4, 1659. -A Narrative. D. , with-
out title, Feb. 12, 1659. –A Word in Season, To General Monck (with his
officers, etc. ), To the City, and To the Nation. D. February 18, 1659,-A
Seasonable Word-Quære for Quære, etc. —No Fool to the Old Fool. D.
March 16, 1659. -A Paper against the Faction. D. , without title, March 24,
1659. —A Necessary and Seasonable Caution, Concerning Elections; A Sober
Answer to a Jugling Pamphlet, Entituled, A Letter Intercepted, etc. D.
March 27, 1660. -Treason Arraigned, In Answer to Plain English. 1660. -
An Answer to An Alarum to the Armies of England, Scotland and Ireland.
D. April 4, 1660. [Nos. 4–23, together in some copies with Nos. 24 and 25,
are rptd in No. 26, L'Estrange His Apology, and in almost every case
are said to have been ptd. ) (24) No Blinde Guides, In Answer To a
seditious Pamphlet of J. Milton's, Intituled Brief Notes upon a late
Sermon, etc. April 20, 1660. (25) Physician Cure thy Self: or, an Answer
To a Seditious Pamphlet, Entitled Eye-Salve for the English Army,
etc. . . . April 23, 1660. (26) L'Estrange His Apology: with A Short View
of Some Late and Remarkable Transactions, etc. 1660. (27) An Appeal
in the Case of the late King's Party. 1660. (28) A Plea for a Limited
Monarchy, etc. 1660. Rptd in Harleian Miscellany, vol. 1. 1744. (29) A Caveat
to the Cavaliers. . . Dedicated to the Author [James Howell] of A Cordial
for the Cavaliers. 1661. (30) A Modest Plea Both for the Caveat, and The
Author of It. With some Notes upon Mr. James Howell, etc. August, 1661.
(31) Interest Mistaken, or, The Holy Cheat. . . . By way of Observation upon a
Treatise, Entituled, The Interest of England in the Matter of Religion, etc.
1661. (32) The Relaps’d Apostate: or Notes upon A Presbyterian Pamphlet,
Entituled, A Petition for Peace, etc. November, 1661. (33) To the Right
Hon. Edward Earl of Clarendon, Lord High Chancellor of England: The
Humble Apology of Roger L'Estrange. December 3, 1661. (34) State
Divinity; or a Supplement to The Relapsd A postate, etc. Dec. 4, 1661.
(35) A Memento: Directed To all Those That Truly Reverence the Memory
of King Charles the Martyr; And as Passionately wish the Honour . . . of his
Royall Successour. . . Charles the II. The First Part. April, 1662. New ed.
omitting the three last chapters and entitled A Memento treating of the Rise,
Progress, and Remedies of Sedition. 1682. (36) Truth and Loyalty Vindi-
cated, From the Reproches and Clamours of Mr Edward Bagshaw, etc.
June 7, 1662. (37) A Whipp For the Schismaticall Animadverter (Bagshaw]
Upon the Bishop of Worcester's Letter, etc. February, 1662. (38) Toleration
Discussid. 1663. (39) Considerations and Proposals In Order to the Regulation
of the Press: together with Diverse Instances of Treasonous, and Seditious
Pamphlets, Proving the Necessity thereof. June 3,1663. (40) The Intelligencer.
Published for the satisfaction and information of the people. With Privilege.
From Aug. 31, 1663, on Mondays, to January 29, 1666. (41) The Newes.
Published for the satisfaction and information of the people. With Privilege.
From September 3, 1663, on Thursdays, until January 29, 1666. [Beginning
with 1664, these two periodicals were numbered and paged together. ] (42) Pub
lick Intelligence. With sole Privilege. [A single number. ] Nov. 28, 1665.
(43) Publick Advertisements (with Privilege). [One number (? ). ] June 25,
1666. (44) A Discourse of the Fishery, etc. 1674. (45) The Parallel or, An
Account of the Growth of Knavery, Under the Pretext of Arbitrary Govern-
ment and Popery. With some Observations upon a Pamphlet (by Andrew
Marvell], Entitled, An Account of the Growth of Popery, eto. 1677. 3rd
ed.
