Schools, School-Books and Schoolmasters Part 12

Girls still depended, as a rule, on the old methods and channels of learning; the arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic formed the ordinary routine and limit, unless an acquaintance with French, or even with Italian, happened to be added as a special accomplishment. Very occasionally a maiden of studious character was permitted to avail herself of the tutor maintained at home for her brothers, as was the case of the Honourable Mrs. North, a younger daughter of Lord North of Kirtling, who learned Latin and Greek in this manner; and from Margaret Roper to Mrs.

Somerville, or indeed in the cases adduced by Ballard in his _Memoirs of Learned Ladies_, there were from time to time even in the old days splendid exceptions to the prevailing low level of female culture. But under any circ.u.mstances, until the period arrived when ladies were competent to undertake the tuition of ladies, all these matters necessarily devolved, in the first place, on the mother, and finally on a preceptor, who was necessarily a man, and most probably in holy orders.

His contribution to the development of character was exceedingly preponderant, and was beyond doubt a most important factor in maintaining and extending the power of the Church, and indemnifying the clergy for the direct political influence of which the Reformation dispossessed them.

The Ladies' School or College may be considered a product of the acute political distempers which accompanied the Civil War. Mistress Bathsua Makins, who had been governess to one of the daughters of Charles I.--the Princess Elizabeth--set up, after the fall of the King, an establishment at Putney, to which Evelyn mentions that he paid a visit in company with some ladies on the 17th May 1649; but I find no reference to this inst.i.tution in Lysons. A similar case existed somewhat later at Highgate; and the admirers of Charles and Mary Lamb, at least, do not require to be told that in the little volume called "Mrs. Leicester's School," 1809, there are some interesting hints, both historical and autobiographical, in relation to the old-fas.h.i.+oned seminary at Amwell. But, as a rule, these agents in our later civilisation and social refinement, important as they were, have left behind them few, if any, traces of their existence and management. They bred those who were content to become, in course of time, the wives and mothers of England, and to study the arts of domestic life. In such are centred the strength and glory of the country; but their careers, like "the short and simple annals of the poor," have escaped literary commemoration.

"A Gentleman of Cambridge," as he styles himself on the t.i.tle of an English adaptation of the Abbe d'Ancourt's _Lady's Preceptor_, 1743, defines the qualifications then thought necessary and adequate for a young gentlewoman. He does not go beyond a thorough knowledge of English, an acquaintance with French and Italian, a familiarity with arithmetic and accounts, and the mastery of a good handwriting; and yet how few probably reached this moderate standard a century and a half ago--nay, how few reach it now!

In the time of the early Stuarts, the training of girls in English country towns, if it is to be augured from that of the Shakespears at Stratford, even where the parents were in good circ.u.mstances and the father a man of literary tastes and occupations, was still extremely primitive and scanty.

The poet's elder daughter, Susanna, seems to have just contrived to write, or rather print, her name; but Judith used a mark, and Mrs. Quiney, whose son became Judith's husband, did the same.

Both the Quineys and the Shakespears were persons of substance and of local consideration; and in this case, at any rate, the explanation seems to be that such ignorance was usual, and did not prejudicially affect the position and prospects of a gentlewoman.

The inst.i.tution in England of elementary schools for girls only dates back to the neighbourhood of the Restoration; but the number of establishments long remained, doubtless, very limited, and the scheme of instruction equally narrow. The frontispiece to Anthony Huish's _Key to the Grammar School_, 1670, presents us with an interesting interior in the shape of a girls' school, where the mistress is seated at a desk surrounded by female pupils.

Goldsmith's _Poems for Young Ladies_, "Devotional, Moral, and Entertaining," 1767, partly arose out of Dr. Fordyce's _Sermons for Young Women_. The editor a.s.sures his fair readers that the Muse in this case is not a syren, but a friend; and there is plenty of the religious element in the volume. But there are, on the other hand, extracts from Pope's _Homer_, stories from Ovid and Virgil, Addison's _Letter from Italy_, and a selection from Collins's _Oriental Eclogues_. The source from which it came was a guarantee that its pages would be agreeably and sensibly leavened with matters not divine; it surpa.s.ses the average intellectual nutriment provided for women a century ago. Dr. Goldsmith was a decided improvement on Dr. Watts, and he could scarcely escape from being so, whether he offered them his own poetical compositions, or, as in the present case, merely exercised his judgment in selecting from the works of others. No one can object to Pope's _Messiah_ or his _Universal Prayer_, which const.i.tute the prominent features in the devotional section, when they are in such excellent company as Gay, Swift, and Thomson. But there is nothing in this volume to have prevented the editor offering a copy to either of the vicar's daughters.

The universal and unchanging aim of the ecclesiastical authority is manifestly temporal, and Henry VIII. and his coadjutors, and their immediate successors in the foundation of Protestantism, acted wisely in making it part of their scheme to furnish the realm with public seminaries based on an improved footing in the earliest endowed grammar schools, which set the example to private individuals and corporate bodies.

These schools, which, as we know, had been preceded--and doubtless suggested too--by that at Magdalen College, Oxford, and others framed on a humbler scale or (like the City of London and St. Paul's) under different auspices, opened the way to a partial secularisation of teaching throughout England. The preceptors employed were more often than not academical, unbeneficed graduates with a certain clerical bent; but the Statutes laid down rules for the management of the Charity and for the limitation of the subjects to be taught; and the scheme was a.s.suredly at the outset, and continued down to the last thirty or forty years--in fact, within the recollection of the present writer--so narrow and imperfect, that it supplied what would now be regarded as the mere groundwork of a genteel education.

III. But a farther and still more important step toward the emanc.i.p.ation of scholastic economy and discipline from Church control was taken when, first in Scotland, and subsequently, and also in a more limited degree, in England, after the union of the kingdoms, proprietary establishments were opened for boys or girls only, or for boys and girls, where the religious instruction, instead of being, as under the archaic conventual and Romish system, the primary feature, became a mere item on the prospectus, like Geography or History. This was the commencement of an entrance upon modern lines, and struck a fatal blow at the monastic and academical ideas of instruction, by widening the bias and range of studies, and liberating the intellect from religious trammels.

The success and multiplication of these new inst.i.tutions obliged the old endowments to reform themselves, and to meet the demands of the age; and the pressure was augmented, of course, by the concurrent rise of large public gymnasia of a novel stamp, as well as by the development of some of the already existing inst.i.tutions conformably to the great changes in political and social life.

The proprietary system, which had started by adopting, as a rule, the mixed method, or rather by the reception of pupils of both s.e.xes under the same roof, was eventually, and, except so far as dame-schools were concerned, finally modified in favour of the dual plan, and independent colleges for young gentlemen and for young ladies were the result.

In these latter the drift is certainly more and more lay; and as knowledge and culture spread, and the influence and fruits of masculine thought make themselves more and more appreciable, the Church in England will gradually loosen its grasp of the national intellect, and will probably owe to the higher education of women its collapse and downfall.

The ladies of England have propped up the tottering edifice long enough, and no one whose opinion is worth entertaining will lament the inevitable issue. But whether the consequences of this vital movement will be otherwise beneficial, it has scarcely yet, perhaps, been in active operation a sufficient time to enable us to judge. If it involves the sacrifice in any important measure of feminine refinement and dependence, we shall be forced to confess that the help to be rendered by our daughters and grand-daughters to the cause of intellectual enfranchis.e.m.e.nt and victory will have been bought at a cruel price.

As the old foundations discovered it to be imperative to comply with the growing philosophical temper in order to enable them to exist side by side with the improved types of school and teacher, so the successful conduct of ladies' colleges will become impossible in the future unless that liberality of doctrine and sentiment in all matters connected with theology which breathes around them and us is cordially recognised.

A spirit of disaffection to clerical guidance and clerical imposts has for some time shown itself in Great Britain among those who are becoming, in the natural course of events, husbands, fathers, and ratepayers; the revolt of the other s.e.x has also commenced; and the wise initiative of the Board School in excluding the Bible and Catechism from their programme must be ultimately obeyed by every school in the three kingdoms.

The Bible is for scholars, not for school-folk; and, as Jeremy Bentham demonstrated nearly a century ago, the Catechism is trash.

XIV.

The Abacus or A. B. C.--Its construction and use--The printed A. B.

C.--The first Protestant one (1553)--Spelling-books--Anecdotes of the A. B. C.--_Propria quae Maribus_ and _Johnny quae Genus_--The Catechism and Primer.

I. The manner in which the earliest _Abaci_ were constructed and applied is precisely one of those points which, in the absence of specimens of remote date and doc.u.mentary information as to their form and use, we have to elucidate, as far as possible, from casual allusions or internal testimony. The most ancient woodcuts representing a school interior display the method in which the master and pupils worked together; but here the latter appear, as I have stated elsewhere, to reiterate what their teacher reads from a book, or, in other words, the scene depicts a later stage in the educational course.

In the _Jests of Scogin_, a popular work of the time of Henry VIII., and probably reliable as a faithful portraiture of the habits and notions of the latter half of the fifteenth and opening decades of the following century, one of the sections relates "How a Husbandman put his son to school with Scogin." From the text it is plain that the lad was very backward in his studies, or had commenced them unusually late, considering that it was the farmer's ambition to procure his admission into holy orders. "The slovenly boy," we are told, "would begin to learn his A. B.

C. Scogin did give him a lesson of nine of the first letters of A. B. C., and he was nine days in learning of them; and when he had learned the nine Christ-cross-row letters, the good scholar said, 'am ich past the worst now?'"

The important feature in this pa.s.sage is the reference to the Christ-cross-row, which contained the nine letters of the alphabet from A to I in the form of the Cross. The time consumed in this particular instance in the acquisition of a portion of the rudiments is, of course, ascribable to a pleasant hyperbole, or to the scholar's phenomenal density; but the _Abacus_ or Christ-cross-row was, no doubt, the first step in the ladder, and although it was superseded by the Horn-book and the Primer, it did not substantially disappear from use in petty schools till the present century. Its shape and functions, however, underwent a material change, and instead of being employed as a medium for grounding children in the Accidence, it became a vehicle for arithmetical purposes, and resembled a slate in form and dimensions, consisting of a small oblong wooden frame fitted with rows of b.a.l.l.s of wood or bone strung on transverse wires. To those who, like the present writer, saw this apparatus in common use to induct the young into the art of counting, its pedigree was naturally unknown. It was an evolution from the contrivance which Scogin put into the hands of the country b.u.mpkin whom he was engaged to prepare for the priesthood, and who, as we learn from subsequent pa.s.sages in these Anecdotes, was actually ordained a deacon within a limited period.

II. To the Abacus, prior to the Reformation, was added the printed A. B.

C. accompanied by prayers and a metrical version of the Decalogue, and in 1553 appeared the first Protestant A. B. C. and Catechism for the use of schools and the young. It is after this date and the accession of Elizabeth that we find a marked and permanent stimulus given to elementary literature; and the press from 1553 onward teemed with A. B. C.'s of all sorts; as, for instance, "an a. b. c. for children, with syllables, 1558;"

"an a. b. c. in Latin," 1559; "the battle of A. B. C.," 1586; "the horn a.

b. c., 1587;" and even the t.i.tle itself grew popular, not only for manuals of other kinds, but for publishers' signs and ballads. There was "the aged man's A. B. C," the "Virgin's A. B. C.," and "the young man's A. B. C."

Subsequently to the A. B. C. of 1553, there seems to be nothing actually extant of this nature till we come to _The Pathway to Reading, or the newest spelling A. B. C._ of Thomas Johnson, 1590, which I have not been able to inspect, but as to which there was a litigation between two publishers in the following year, seeming to shew its popularity and a brisk demand for copies.

A few years later (1610) there is _A New Book of Spelling, with Syllables_, a series of alphabets, followed by the vowels, alphabetical arrangements of syllables, and remarks on vowels, in the course of which the writer furnishes us with an explanation of the virtue and force of the final _e_ in such monosyllables as _Babe_.

From vowels he proceeds to the diphthong, where he animadverts on the abuse of the _w_ for the _u_. He then presents us with the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the Decalogue, &c., as orthographical theses.

At the end of the Scriptural selections we arrive at this curious heading: "Certain words devised alphabetically without sense, which whosoever will take the pains to learn, he may read at the first sight any English book that is laid before him." These words are divided into two cla.s.ses, dissyllables and words of three and four syllables, and introduced by a few lines of introduction, in which the words are divided by way of guidance.

The spelling-book of 1610 was printed for the Stationers' Company, by which it had been perhaps taken over; and as the Company did not usually have a.s.signed to it any stock except old copyrights, there is little doubt that there were earlier impressions. At any rate, it is a Shakespearian volume, and, as the only manual for children or illiterate adults except the Protestant A. B. C. of 1553, it becomes interesting to consider that the great poet himself may have had a copy in his hands of some edition, if at least his scholastic researches ever went beyond the Horn-book and the Abacus.

The volume may be regarded as a pioneer in the direction of English orthography and p.r.o.nunciation; and when the author propounds that you might proceed from his pages to the Latin tongue, he does nothing more than follow in the steps of all teachers of that time, as well as of every other age and country down to almost yesterday.

While I have the book before me, it may be worth while to transfer to these pages a specimen of it:--

kach, kech, kich, koch, kuch, kash, kesh, kish, kosh, kush, kath, keth, kith, koth, kuth.

And so it runs through the alphabet. In the Lord's Prayer and other selections the syllables are also divided for the convenience and ease of the learner.

The biographer of Dean Colet mentions that Mr. Stephen Penton, Princ.i.p.al of St. Edmund's Hall, Oxford, in the days of Charles II., published a Horn-book or A. B. C. for children. This, which Knight oddly characterises as a piece of humble condescension on the part of so worthy and noted a man, I have not yet seen.

In Russia they have, or had very lately, the _stchoti_, a kind of Abacus, a small wooden frame strung with horizontal wires, on which slide a series of ivory b.a.l.l.s, each wire representing a certain value from the kopeck upwards. This piece of machinery is used in all commercial transactions, whether they take place in shop, market, counting-house, or bank; and familiarity and practice enable the parties concerned to calculate the amount payable or receivable with equal ease and rapidity.

There is a similar machine in use among the natives of British India, and also for mercantile purposes, not as a vehicle for acquiring the science of numbers in the schools.

III. It is said to have been John Rightwise, second head-master of St.

Paul's, and son-in-law of Lily, who introduced into his predecessor's book the _Propria quae Maribus_ and _As in Praesenti_, to which were subsequently joined the Rules of Heteroc.l.i.tes or Irregular Nouns, probably digested from Whittinton by Robertson of York. This last section, from the commencing words, combined perhaps with the Christian name of Rightwise, was the origin of _Johnny quae Genus_.

But an early authority[3] claims for Lily himself the honour of having written the _Propria quae Maribus_ and _As in Praesenti_, and informs us that Rightwise merely published them with a glossary.

In some of the schools the course seems to have been to commence with the A. B. C. and Catechism, and then proceed to the Primer. At the end of the A. B. C. of 1757 are these lines:--

"This little Catechism learned by heart (for so it ought), The PRIMER next commanded is for children to be taught."

When I speak here of the _Primer_, I must take care to distinguish between the Service-book so styled and the Manual for the young. It is singular enough that the most ancient which has come under my eyes is of the age of Elizabeth, and includes not only the Catechism, but "the notable fairs in the Calendar," as matters "to be taught unto children."

This type of Primer is very rare till we arrive at comparatively modern days. The mission which it was designed to fulfil was one precisely calculated to hinder its transmission to us.

The practice of printing children's books on some more than usually substantial material is not so modern as may be supposed; for there is an A. B. C. published at Riga for the use of the German pupils, the German population preponderating there over the Russian or Polish, on paper closely resembling linen, and of a singularly durable texture; and this little volume belongs to the commencement of the last century, several generations before such a system was adopted in England.