Art of teaching. Abraham Cowley.

knoweth what the Latine word importeth, nor what manner of thing it is which is signified to him in his own native language which is given him thereby to understand the rule? for rules consisting of generalities are delivered (as I may say) at a third hand, presuming first the things and then the words to be already apprehended touching which they are made." This subject Hoole wisely commends to the consideration of teachers, "it being the very basis of our profession to search into the way of children's taking hold by little and little of what we teach them, that so we may apply ourselves to their reach." (Preface to trans. of Orbis Pictus.)

$7. "Good Lord! how many good and clear wits of children be now-a-days perished by ignorant schoolmasters !" So said Sir Thomas Elyot in his Governor in 1531, and the complaint would not have been out of date in the 17th century, possibly not in the 19th. In the sixteen hundreds we certainly find little advance in practice, though in theory many bold projects were advanced, some of which pointed to the study of things, to the training of the hand, and even to observation of the "educands."

§ 8. The poet Cowley's "proposition for the advancement of experimental philosophy" is a scheme of a college near London to which is to be attached a school of 200 boys. "And because it is deplorable to consider the loss which children make of their time at most schools, employing or rather casting away six or seven years in the learning of words only, and that too very imperfectly; that a method be here established for the infusing knowledge and language at the same time, [Is this an echo of Comenius ?] and that this may be their apprenticeship in Natural Philosophy."*

A very interesting suggestion of Cowley's is that another house be built for poor men's sons who show ability. These shall be brought

Authors and schoolmasters. J. Dury.

§ 9. Rarely indeed have those who either theoretically or practically have made a study of education ever acquired sufficient literary skill to catch the ear of the public or (what is at least as difficult) the ear of the teaching body. And among the eminent writers who have spoken on education, as Rabelais, Montaigne, Milton, Locke, Rousseau, Herbert Spencer, we cannot find one who has given to it more than passing, if not accidental, attention. Schoolmasters are, as I said, conservative, at least in the school-room; and moreover, they seldom find the necessary time, money, or inclination for publishing on the work of their calling. The current thought at any period must then be gathered from books only to be found in our great libraries, books in which writers now long forgotten give hints of what was wanted out of the school-room and grumble at what went on in it.

§ 10. One of the most original of these writers that have come in my way is John Dury, a Puritan, who was at one time Chaplain to the English Company of Merchants at Elbing, and laboured with Comenius and Hartlib to promote unity among the various Christian bodies of the reformed faith (see Masson's Life of Milton, vol. iii). About 1649 Dury published The Reformed Schoole which gives the scheme of an association for the purpose of educating a number of boys and girls "in a Christian way."

§ 11. That Dury was not himself a schoolmaster is plain from the first of his "rules of education." "The chief rule of the whole work is that nothing be made tedious and grievous to the children, but all the toilsomeness of their business

up "with the same conveniences that are enjoyed even by rich men' children (though they maintain the fewer for that cause), there being nothing of eminent and illustrious to be expected from a low, sordid, and hospital-like education."

Disorderly use of our natural faculties.

the Governor and Ushers are to take upon themselves; that by diligence and industry all things may be so prepared, methodized and ordered for their apprehension, that this work may unto them be as a delightful recreation by the variety and easiness thereof."

§ 12. "The things to be looked unto in the care of their education," he enumerates in the order of importance : "I. Their advancement in piety; 2. The preservation of their health; 3. The forming of their manners; 4. Their proficiency in learning" (p. 24). "Godliness and bodily health are absolutely necessary," says Dury; "the one for spiritual and the other for their temporal felicitie" (p. 31): so great care is to be taken in “ exercising their bodies in husbandry or manufactures or military employments.”*

§ 13. About instruction we find the usual complaints which like "mother's truth keep constant youth." "Children," says Dury, "are taught to read authors and learn words and sentences before they can have any notion of the things signified by those words and sentences or of the author's strain and wit in setting them together; and they are made to learn by heart the generall rules, sentences and precepts of Arts before they are furnished with any matter whereunto to apply those rules and precepts" (p. 38). Dury would entirely sweep away the old routine, and in all instruction he would keep in view the following end: "the true end of all human learning is to supply in ourselves and others the defects which proceed from our ignorance of the nature and

* It would seem as if these Puritans were more active in body than in mind even the seniors, like the children at Port-Royal, tombent dans la nonchalance. Dury has to lay it down that "the Governour and Ushers and Steward if they be in health should not go to bed till ten." (p. 30.)

Dury's watch simile.

use of the creatures, and the disorderliness of our natural faculties in using them and reflecting upon them” (p. 41). § 14. Our natural faculties "-here Dury struck a new note, which has now become the keynote in the science of education. He enforces his point with the following ingenious illustration ::- "As in a watch one wheel rightly set doth with its teeth take hold of another and sets that a-work towards a third; and so all move one by another when they are in their right places for the end for which the watch is made; so is it with the faculties of the human nature being rightly ordered to the ends for which God hath created them. But contrariwise, if the wheels be not rightly set, or the watch not duly wound up, it is useless to him that hath it. And so it is with the faculties of Man; if his wheels be not rightly ordered and wound up by the ends of sciences in their subordination leading him to employ the same according to his capacity to make use of the creatures for that whereunto God hath made them, he becomes not only useless, but even a burthen and hurtful unto himself and others by the misusing of them" (p. 43). § 15. "As in Nature sense is the servant of imagination; imagination of memory; memory of reason; so in teaching arts and sciences we must set these faculties a-work in this order towards their proper objects in everything which is to be taught. Whence this will follow, that as the faculties of Man's soul naturally perfect each other by their mutual subordination; so the Arts which perfect those faculties should be gradually suggested: and the objects wherewith the faculties are to be conversant according to the rules of Art should be offered in that order which is answerable to their proper ends and uses and not otherwise."

§ 16. In this and much else that Dury says we see a firm

Senses, Ist; imagination, 2nd; memory, 3rd.

grasp of the principle that the instruction given should be regulated by the gradual development of the learner's. faculties. The three sources of our knowledge, says he, aṛe

-1. Sense; 2. Tradition; 3. Reason; and Sense comes first. "Art or sciences which may be learnt by mere sense should not be learnt any other way." "As children's faculties break forth in them by degrees to be vigorous with their years and the growth of their bodies, so they are to be filled with objects whereof they are capable, and plied with arts; whence followeth that while children are not capable of the acts of reasoning, the method of filling their senses and imaginations with outward objects should be plied. Nor is their memory at this time to be charged further with any objects than their imagination rightly ordered and fixed doth of itself impress the same upon them." After speaking of the common abuse of general rules, he says: “So far as those faculties (viz., sense, imagination, and memory) are started with matters of observation, so far rules may be given to direct the mind in the use of the same, and no further." "The arts and sciences which lead us to reflect upon the use of our own faculties are not to be taught till we are fully acquainted with their proper objects, and the direct acts of the faculties about them." So "it is a very absurd and preposterous course to teach Logick and Metaphysicks before or with other Humane Sciences which depend more upon Sense and Imagination than reasoning" (p. 46).

§ 17. In all this it seems to me that the worthy Puritan, of whom nobody but Dr. Barnard and Professor Masson has ever heard, has truly done more to lay a foundation for the art of teaching than his famous contemporaries Milton and Locke.