A

"Impressionists" and "Retainers."

thinks of making the beginner learn by heart all the Latin Grammar before he is introduced to the Latin language. To understand the machinery of which an account is given in the grammar, the learner must see it at work, and must even endeavour in a small way to work it himself. So it seems pretty well agreed that the information given in the grammar must be joined with some construing and some exercises from the very first. But here the agreement ends. Our teachers, consciously or in ignorance, follow one or more of a number of methodizers who have examined the problem of language-learning, such men as Ascham, Ratke, Comenius, Jacotot, Hamilton, Robertson, and Prendergast. These naturally divide themselves into two parties, which I have ventured to call "Rapid Impressionists," and "Complete Retainers." The first of these plunge the beginner into the language, and trust to the great mass of vague impressions clearing and defining themselves as he goes along. The second insist on his learning at the first a very small portion of the language, and mastering and retaining everything he learns. It will be seen that in the first stage of the course Ascham is a "Complete Retainer." He does not talk, like Prendergast, of "mastery," nor, like Jacotot, does he require the learner to begin every lesson at the beginning of the book: but he makes the pupil go over each lesson "a dozen times at the least," before he may advance beyond it. As for his practice of double translation, for the advanced pupil it is excellent, but if it is required from the beginner, it leads to unintelligent memoizing. I think I shall be able to show later on that other methodizers have advanced beyond Ascham. (Infra, 246 n.)

VIII.

MULCASTER.

(1531(?)-1611.)

1. THE history of English thought on education nas yet to be written. In the literature of education the Germans have been the pioneers, and have consequently settled the routes; and when a track has once been established few travellers will face the risk and trouble of leaving it. So up to the present time, writers on the history of European education after the Renascence have occupied themselves chiefly with men who lived in Germany, or wrote in German. But the French are at length exploring the country for themselves; and in time, no doubt, the English-speaking races will show an interest in the thoughts and doings of their common ancestors.

We know what toils and dangers men will encounter in getting to the source of great rivers; and although, as Mr. Widgery truly says, "the study of origins is not everybody's business,"* we yet may hope that students will be found ready to give time and trouble to an investigation of great interest and perhaps some utility-the origin of the school

Teaching of Languages in Schools, by W. H. Widgery, p. 6.

Old books in English on education.

course which now affects the millions who have English for their mother-tongue.

*

§ 2. In the fifteen hundreds there were published several works on education, three of which, Elyot's Governour, Ascham's Scholemaster, and Mulcaster's Positions, have been recently reprinted. Others, such as Edward Coote's English Schoolmaster, and Mulcaster's Elementarie, are pretty sure to follow, without serious loss, let us hope, to their editors, though neither Coote nor Mulcaster are likely to become as well-known writers as Roger Ascham.

§ 3. Henry Barnard, whose knowledge of our educational literature no less than his labours in it, makes him the greatest living authority, says that Mulcaster's Positions is " one of the earliest, and still one of the best treatises in the English language." (English Pedagogy, 2nd series, p. 177.) Mulcaster was one of the most famous of English schoolmasters, and by his writings he proved that he was far in advance of the schoolmasters of his own time, and of the times which succeeded. But he paid the penalty of thinking of himself more highly than he should have thought; and whether or no the conjecture is right that Shakespeare had him in his mind when writing Love's Labour's Lost, there is an affectation in Mulcaster's style which is very irritating, for it has caused even the master of Edmund Spenser to be forgotten. In a curious and interesting allegory on the progress of language (in the Elementarie,

Much information about our early books, with quotations from some of them, will be found in Henry Barnard's English Pedagogy, 1st and 2nd series. Some notice of rare books is given in Schools, School-books, and Schoolmasters, by W. Carew Hazlitt (London, Jarvis, 1888), but in this work there are strange omissions.

M.'s wisdom hidden by his style.

pp. 66, ff.), Mulcaster says that Art selects the best age of a language to draw rules from, such as the age of Demosthenes in Greece and of Tully in Rome; and he goes on: "Such a period in the English tongue I take to be in our days for both the pen and the speech." And he suggests that the English language, having reached its zenith, is seen to advantage, not in the writings of Shakespeare or Spenser, but in those of Richard Mulcaster. After enumerating the excellencies of the language, he adds: "I need no example in any of these, whereof my own penning is a general pattern." Here we feel tempted to exclaim with Armado in Love's Labour's Lost (Act 5, sc. 2): “I protest the schoolmaster is exceeding fantastical: too too vain, too too vain." He speaks elsewhere of his "so careful, I will not say so curious writing" (Elementarie, p. 253), and says very truly: "Even some of reasonable study can hardly understand the couching of my sentence, and the depth of my conceit" (ib., p. 235). And this was the death-warrant of his literary renown.

§ 4. But there is good reason why Mulcaster should not be forgotten. When we read his books we find that wisdom which we are importing in the nineteenth century was in a great measure offered us by an English schoolmaster in the sixteenth. The latest advances in pedagogy have established (1) that the end and aim of education is to develop the faculties of the mind and body; (2) that all teaching processes should be carefully adapted to the mental constitution of the learner; (3) that the first stage in learning is of immense importance and requires a very high degree of skill in the teacher; (4) that the brain of children, especially of clever children, should not be subjected to pressure"; (5) that childhood should not be spent in

I

Education and "learning."

learning foreign languages, but that its language should be the mother-tongue, and its exercises should include handwork, especially drawing; (6) that girls' education should be cared for no less than boys'; (7) that the only hope of improving our schools lies in providing training for our teachers. These are all regarded as planks in the platform of "the new education," and these were all advocated by Mulcaster.

§ 5. Before I point this out in detail I may remark how greatly education has suffered from being confounded with learning. There are interesting passages both in Ascham and Mulcaster which prove that the class-ideal of the "scholar and gentleman" was of later growth. In the fifteen hundreds learning was thought suitable, not for the rich, but for the clever. Still, learning, and therefore education, was not for the many, but the few. Mulcaster considers at some length how the number of the educated is to be kept down (Positions, chapp. 36, 37, 39), though even here he is in the van, and would have everyone taught to read and write (Positions, chapp. 5, 36). But the true problem of education was not faced till it was discovered that every human being was to be considered in it. This was, I think, first seen by Comenius.

With this abatement we find Mulcaster's sixteenth-century notions not much behind our nineteenth.

§ 6. (1 & 2) "Why is it not good," he asks, "to have every part of the body and every power of the soul to be fined to his best?" (PP., p. 34*). Elsewhere he says: "The end of education and train is to help Nature to her perfection,

+

The paging is that of the reprint. It differs slightly from that of first edition.