Chapter VIII: Part 8

But why not everything in English, a tongue in itself both deep in meaning and frank in utterance? I do not think that any language whatsoever is better able to express all subjects with pith and plainness, if he who uses it is as skilful and well-instructed as the foreigner. Methinks I myself could prove this in regard to the most varied subjects, though I am no great scholar, but only an earnest well-wisher to my own country. And though in dealing with certain subjects we must use many foreign terms, we are only doing what is done in the most renowned languages, that boast of their skill and knowledge. It is a necessity between one country and another to interchange words to express strange matter, and rules are appointed for adapting them to the use of the borrowers. It is an accident which keeps our tongue from natural growth out of its own resources, and not the real nature of the language, which could strain with the strongest and stretch to the furthest, either for the purposes of government, if we were conquerors, or for learning if we were its treasurers, no whit behind the subtle Greek for couching close, or the stately Latin for spreading fair. Our tongue is capable of all, if our people would bestow pains upon it. The very soil of Greece, it is noted by some, had a refining influence on Philelphus, who was born in Italy. Italy, says Erasmus, would have had the same effect on our Sir Thomas More, if he had been trained there. And cannot labour and practice work as great wonders in English wits at home as the air can do abroad? Is a change of soil the best or the only means of furthering growth? Nay, surely wits are equally sharp everywhere, though where there is less intercourse and a heavier climate, the labour must be greater to make up for what is wanting in nature. If such pains be taken we may boldly arm ourselves with that two-worded and thrice worthy question--Why not? But grant that it were an heresy, seeing that we are trained in foreign tongues, even to wish everything to be in English. Certainly there is no fault in handling in English what is proper to England, though the same subject well handled in Latin would be likely to please Latinists. But an English benefit must not be measured by the pleasure of a Latinist. It is a matter not for scholars to play with, but for students to practise, where everyone can judge. Besides, how many shallow things are often uttered in Latin and other foreign tongues, which under the bare veil of a strange form seem to be something, but if they were expressed in English, and the mask pulled off so that everyone could see them, would make but a sorry show, and soon be disclaimed even by those who uttered them, with some thought of the old saying--“Had I known, I would not!” And were it not better to gain judgment throughout in our own English than either to lose it or hinder it in Latin or any other foreign tongue? Such considerations make me thankful for what we have gained from foreign sources, but at the same time desirous of furthering the interest of my own natural tongue, and therefore in treating of the first rudiments of learning I am very well content to make use of English, without renouncing my right to use Latin or any other learned tongue, when I come to speak of matters where it may be suitable.

But while my writing in English may seem not amiss for the service of my country, my manner of writing may offend some in seeming fastidious and obscure, and I may be brought to task as failing in what I professed, by dealing with matters too hard for the ignorant to understand, or using too close a style and too rare terms for plain folks to follow. All these difficulties are very great foes to the perception of the ordinary man, who can understand only so far as he has been trained, and they are no good friends to my purpose, as I write for the benefit of the many, who are untrained and unskilful. But although these objections make a very plausible show, yet I must beg leave to plead my own cause in regard to matter, style, and the use of terms. Indeed half my answer is given when I say that I mean well to my country, for in attempting difficulties one may claim pardon for defects, and what I do is in the interest of our tongue, which I desire to see enriched in every way and honoured with every ornament of eloquence, so that it can vie with any foreign language.

But first to examine the charge of hardness in the subject-matter, which the reader is said to have difficulty in understanding. In what, I pray you, consists this hardness that is said to lie in the matter? Or rather does not all hardness belong to the person, and not to the thing, in this case as everywhere else? If the person who undertakes to teach does not know his subject well enough to make it properly understood, is the thing therefore hard that is not thoroughly grasped? Or if the learner either fails to understand owing to deficient knowledge, or will not make the needful effort owing to some evil disposition, is the thing therefore hard which is so crossed by personal infirmity? Surely not. There is no hardness in anything which is expressed by a learned pen, however far removed from common use, (though to shield negligence the charge is often made), if the teacher knows it sufficiently, and the learner be willing and not wayward. For what are the things which we handle in learning? Are they not of our own choice? Are they not our own inventions? Are they not meant to supply our own needs? And was not the first inventor very well able to open up the thing he invented before he commended it to others? Or did those who received it do so before they were instructed as to its use? Or could blunt ignorance have won such credit in a doubtful case, though professing to bring advantage, that it was believed before it had persuaded those who had any foresight, by plain evidence that the thing was profitable, as well for the present as for the time to come? If the first inventor could both find and persuade, his follower must do likewise, or be at fault himself; he must deliver the matter from the suspicion of hardness, which arises from his own defect in exposition. If he who reads fails to grasp the meaning through ignorance, he is to be pardoned for his infirmity; if having some capacity he fails from lack of will, he is punished enough by being left in ignorance; and if while able to follow with the best he keeps with the worst, blinded understanding is the greatest darkness, and punishes the evil humour with the depraving of reason. If an expounder, such as I am now, be himself weak, he is ill-advised if he either writes before he knows, or does not mend when he has written amiss, provided he knows where and how. Yet the reader’s courtesy is some protection against error to him who writes, as the writer’s pardon is a protection to him who reads, if simple ignorance is the only fault, without defect in goodwill.

It will be admitted that hardness must arise either from the thing itself or from the handling. If the thing itself is hard it must be because it is strange to the reader, because it is outside of his ordinary interests and occupations, or because he does not give full study and attention to it. To illustrate the former difficulty, what affinity is there, in respect of occupation, between a simple ploughman, a wary merchant, and a subtle lawyer, or between manual trades and metaphysical discourses, whether in mathematics, physics, or divinity? Again, even to students who profess some alliance with what they study, can anything be easy if they have not laboured sufficiently in it? I need say no more than this, that where there is no acquaintance in profession there is no help to understanding, where there is no familiarity there is no facility, where there is no conference there is no knowledge. If the man delves the earth, and the matter dwells in heaven, there is no means of uniting them over so great a distance. But when the understanding, though in affinity, is clearly insufficient, there is far more hardness than where there is a difference of occupation, because a vain conceit brings much more error than weak knowledge. Some good may come out of an ignorant fellow if he begin to take hold, but the lukewarm learned mars his way by prejudiced opinion. But in all this, if there be any difficulty about the matter, its cause lies in the man, and not in the nature of the thing. I am quick in teaching, and hard of understanding, but towards whom and why? Towards him, forsooth, who is not sufficiently acquainted with the matter in hand. Well, then, if want of familiarity is the cause of the difficulty, acquaintance once made and continued will remedy that complaint, if the matter seem worth the man’s acquaintance in his natural tongue, for that is a question in a vision blinded by foreign glamours, or if the learner is really desirous to be rid of his ignorance, for that is another question where a vain opinion over-values itself. For in the case of a book written in the English tongue there are so many Englishmen well able to satisfy fully the ignorant reader, that it were too great a discourtesy not to lighten a man’s labour with a short question, and an equally short answer. But where the matter, being no pleasant tale nor amorous device, but a serious and worthy argument concerning sober learning, not familiar to all readers, or even to all writers, professes no ease without some effort, then if such effort be not made an unnatural idleness is betrayed, which desires less to find ease than to find fault. For why should one labour to help all, and none be willing to help that one? Nay, why should none be willing to help themselves out of the danger and bondage of blind ignorance? If the book were all in Latin, and the reader were not acquainted with a single word, then the case would be desperate, but as it is, any man may compass it with very little inquiry from his skilful neighbour. Therefore if anything seems hard to an ignorant man who desires to know, and fails owing to the unfamiliarity of the subject, he must handle the thing often, so that it may become easy, and when a doubt arises he must confer with those who have more knowledge. For all strange things seem great novelties, and are hard to grasp at their first arrival, but after some acquaintance they become quite familiar, and are easily dealt with. And words likewise which express strange matters, or are strangers themselves, are not wild beasts, nor is a term a tiger to prove wholly untractable. Familiarity and acquaintance will bring facility both in matter and in words.

If the handling seems to cause the difficulty, and if that proceeds from him who presents the argument, not only in the opinion of the unpractised reader, but truly in the view of those who are able to judge, then such a writer is worthy of blame, in seeking to expound without sufficient study; but if the defective handling is due not to the writer, but to plain misunderstanding, then there is small praise to the reader who misconstrues without regard to courtesy or reverence for truth.

As for my style in treatment, if it be charged with difficulty, that also proceeds from choice, being intended to show that I come from the forge, being always familiar with strong steel and pithy stuff in the reading of good writers, and therefore bound to resemble that metal in my style. To argue closely and with sequence, to trace causes and effects, to seek sinews and sound strength rather than waste flesh, is seemly for a student, especially when he writes for perpetuity, where the reader may keep the book by him to study at his leisure, not being forced either to take it all at once or forgo it altogether, as is the case in speech. Discourses that are entirely popular, or are written in haste for the moment, may well be slight in manner, for their life is short; and where what is said is at once to be put to present use, the plainer the style the more plausible it will be, and therefore most excellent in its kind, since the expression must be adapted to the immediate end in view, leaving nothing to muse on, as there is no time for musing. But where the matter is no courier to post away in haste, and there must be musing on it, another course must be taken, and yet the manner of delivery must not be thought hard, nor compared with others of a different kind, considering that it is meant to teach, and can use such plainness only as the subject admits of. Does any man of judgment in learning and in the Latin tongue think that Cicero’s orations and his discourses in philosophy were equally well known and of equal plainness to the people of Rome, though both in their own way are plain enough to us, who know the Latin tongue better than our own, because we pore over it, and pay no attention to our own? Certainly not, as appears from many passages in Cicero himself, where he notes the difference, and confesses that the newness of the subjects which he transported from Greece was the cause of some darkness to the ordinary reader, and of some contempt to the learned because they fancied the Greek more. Yet neither ignorance nor contempt could discourage his pen from seeking the advantage of his own language, by translating into it the learning which others wished to remain in the Greek; he kept on his course, and in the end the tide turned in his favour, bringing him the credit which he enjoys to this day. And he himself bears witness that the resistance he met with was due not only to the matter of which he treated, but also to his manner of expression, and even to the very words he used, which being strange and newly-coined were not understood by the ordinary reader. “I could write of these things,” he says, meaning philosophical subjects, “like Amasanius” (an obscure writer of apophthegms) “but in that case not like myself; as plainly as he, but not then so as to satisfy myself, or do justice to the subject as I should handle it. I must define, divide, distinguish, exercise judgment, and use the terms of art. I must have regard as well to those from whom my learning is borrowed, that they may say they meant it so, as to those for whom it is borrowed, that they may say they understand it.”

The writer who does otherwise may be thought plain by those who seek nothing far, but if those who call for plainness are always to be pleased, and dealt with so daintily that they are put to no pains to learn and enquire, when they find themselves in a difficulty through their own ignorance; if they must be made a lure for learning to descend to, rather degenerating herself than teaching them to look up, what is the use of skill? He who made the earth made hills and dales, heights and plains, smooth places and rough, and yet all good of their own kind. Plainness is good for a pleasant course, and a popular style is in place in ordinary argument, where no art is needed because the reader knows none, and the matter can be simply expressed, being indeed in her best colours when she is dressed for common purposes. Likewise this alleged hardness, though it belong to the matter, has its special use in whetting people’s wits, and making a deep impression, where what seems dark contains something that must be considered thrice before it is mastered.

Labour is the coin which is current in heaven, for which and by which Almighty God sells His best wares, though in His great goodness He sometimes does more for some in giving them quickness and intelligence, even without great labour, than any labour can do for others, in order to let us know that His mercy is the mistress when our labour learns best. But in our ordinary life, if carpeting be knighting, where is necessary defence? If easy understanding be the readiest learning, then wake not my lady; she learns as she lies. If all things are hard which everyone thinks to be so, where is the privilege and benefit of study? What is the use of study, if what we get by labour is condemned as too hard for those that do not study. I will not allege that the learned men of old made use of obscure expressions in matters of religion in order to win reverence towards a subject that belonged to another world and could not be fully dealt with in ordinary speech, nor that the old wisdom was expressed in riddles, proverbs, fables, oracles, and mystic verses, in order to draw men on to study, and fix in the memory what was carefully considered before it was uttered. Are any of our oldest and best writers whom we now study, and who have been thought the greatest, each in his kind, ever since they first wrote, understood at once after a single reading, even though those who are studying them know their tongue as well as we know English--nay, even better, because it is more intricate? Or is their manner of writing to be disapproved of as dark, because the ignorant reader or fastidious student cannot straightway rush into it? That they fell into that compressed kind of writing owing to their very pith in saying much where they speak least, is clearly shown by the comments of those who expand at great length what was set down in one short sentence--nay, even in a single phrase of a sentence. Are not all the chief paragons and principal leaders in every profession of this same character, inaccessible to ordinary people, even though using the same language, and giving of their store only to those who will study?

But may not this obscurity lie in him who finds it rather than in the matter, which is simple in itself, and simply expressed, though it may not seem so to him? Our daintiness deceives us, our want of goodwill blinds us--nay, our lack of skill is the very witch which bereaves us of sense, though we profess to have knowledge and favour towards learning. For everyone who bids a book good-morrow is not necessarily a scholar, or a judge of the subject dealt with in the book. He may have studied up to a certain point, but perhaps neither hard nor long, or he may be very little acquainted with the subject he is seeking to judge of. Perhaps the desire of preferment has cut short his study when it was most promising, or there is some other of the many causes of weakness, although pretension may impose upon the world with a show of learning. Any man may judge well of a matter which he has sufficiently studied, and thoroughly practised (if it be a study that requires practice), and has regarded in its various relations. A pretty skill in some particular direction will sometimes glance beyond, and show a smattering of further knowledge, but no further than a glance, no more than a smattering. Therefore, in my judgment of another man’s writings, so much only is just as I should be able to prove soundly, if I were seriously challenged by those who can judge, not so much as I may venture uncontrolled, in seeking merely to please myself or those as ignorant as myself. Apelles could admit the opinion of the cobbler, so far as his knowledge of cobbling justified him, but not an inch further.

As for my manner of writing, if I do not meet expectation, I have always some warrant, for I write rather with regard to the essence of the matter in hand than to superficial effect. For however it may be in speech, and in that kind of writing which resembles speech, being adapted to ordinary subjects with an immediate practical end, certainly where the matter has to stand a more lasting test, and be tried by the hammer of learned criticism, there should be precision, orderly method, and carefully chosen expression, every word having its due force, and every sentence being well and deliberately weighed. Such writing, though it may be without esteem in our age through the triviality of the time, may yet win it in another, when its value is appreciated. Some hundreds of years may pass before saints are enshrined, or books gain their full authority.

As for the general writing in the English tongue, I must needs say that for some points of handling there is no language more excellent than ours. For teaching memory work pleasantly, as in the old leonine verses, which run in rhyme, it admits more dalliance with words than any other tongue I know. In firmness of speech and strong ending it is very forcible, because of the monosyllabic words of which it so largely consists. For fine translation in pithy terms I find it as quick as any foreign tongue, or quicker, as it is wonderfully pliable and ready to express a pointed thought in very few words. For apt expression of a good deal of matter in not many words it will do as much in original utterance as in any translation. This compact expression may sometimes seem hard, but only where ignorance is harboured, or where indolence is an idol, which will not be persuaded to crack the nut, though it covet the kernel. I need give no example of these, as my own writing will serve as a general pattern. No one can judge so well of these points in our tongue as those who find matter flowing from their pen which refuses to be expressed in any other form. For our tongue has a special character as well as every other, and cannot be surpassed for grace and pith.

In regard to the force of words, which was the third note of alleged obscurity, there are to be considered _familiarity_ for the general reader, _beauty_ for the learned, _effectiveness_ to give pleasure, and _borrowing_ to extend our resources and admit of ready expression. Therefore, if any reader find fault with a word which does not suit his ear, let him mark the one he knows, and learn to value the other, which is worth his knowing. Do we not learn from words? No marvel if it is so, for a word is a metaphor, a learned translation, something carried over from its original sense to serve in some place where it is even more properly used, and where it may be most significant, if it is properly understood. Take pains to learn from it; you have there a means of gaining knowledge. It is not commonly used as I am using it, but I trust I am not abusing it, and it may be filling a more stately place than any you have ever seen it in. Then mark that the place honours the parson, and think well of good words, for though they may be handled by ordinary, or even by foul lips, yet in a fairer mouth, or under a finer pen, they may come to honour. It may be a stranger, and yet no Turk, and though it were the word of an enemy, yet a good thing is worth getting, even from a foe, as well by the language of writers as by the spoil of soldiers. And when the foreign word has yielded itself and been received into favour, it is no longer foreign, though of foreign race, the property in it having been altered. But he who will speak of words need not lack them. However, in this place there is no further need of words, to say either which are familiar, or beautiful, or effective, or which are borrowed; nor is there need to say that in regard to any ornament in words we give place to no other tongue.

As for my own words and the terms that I use, they are generally English, and if any be an incorporated stranger, or translated, or freshly-coined, I have shaped it to fit the place where I use it, as far as my skill will permit. The example and precept of the best judges warrant us in enfranchising foreign words, or translating our own without too manifest insolence or wanton affectation, or else inventing new ones where they are clearly serviceable, the context explaining them sufficiently till frequent usage has made them well known. Therefore, to say what I mean in plain terms, he who is soundly learned will straightway recognise a scholar; he who is well acquainted with a strong pen, whether in reading authors or in actual use, will soon master a compact style; he who has skill in language, whether old and scholarly or newly received into favour, will not wonder at words whose origin he knows, nor be surprised at a thought tersely expressed, in a way familiar to him in other languages. Therefore, as I fear not the judgment of the skilful, because courtesy goes with knowledge, so I value their friendship, because their support gives me credit.

As for those who lack the skill to judge rightly, though they may be sharp censors and ready to talk loudly, I must crave their pardon if I do not bow to their censure, which I cannot accept as a true judgment. Yet I am content to bear with such fellows, and pardon them their errors in regard to myself, as I trust that those who can judge will in their courtesy pardon me my own errors. Those who cannot judge rightly for want of knowledge, but will not betray their weakness by judging wrongly, if they desire to learn in any case of doubt, have the learned to give them counsel. The profit is theirs, if they are willing to take it, but if not, they shall not deter me from writing, and I shall hope at length by deserving well to win their favour, or at least their silence. In conclusion as to the manner of writing and use of words in English, this is my opinion, that he who will justify himself may find many arguments, some closely related to the particular subject that may be in question, others more general but likely to be serviceable, and if in his practice he hath due regard to clear and appropriate expression, then even though one or two things should seem strange to those who judge, the writer is free from blame. As for invention in matter and eloquence in style, the learned know well in what writers they are to be found, and those who are not scholars must learn to think of such things before they presume to judge, lest by failing to measure the writer’s level, they should have no just standard to apply. As for the matter itself which is to be treated by any learned method, as I have already said, familiarity will make it easy, though it seem hard, just as it will make the manner of expression easy, though it seem strange, if the thing really deserves to be studied, which will not appear until some progress is made. And a little hardness, even in the most obscure philosophical discussions, will never seem tedious to an enquiring mind, such as he must have who either seeks to learn himself, or desires to see his native tongue enriched and made the instrument of all his knowledge, as well as of his ordinary needs.

But I have been too tedious, my good readers, yet perhaps not so, since no haste is enjoined, and you may read at leisure. I have now to request you, as I mentioned at first, to grant me your friendly construction, and the favour due to a fellow-countryman. The reverence towards learning which leads the good student to embrace her in his youth, and advances him to honour by her preference in later years, will plead for me with the learned in general, in my endeavour to assert the rights of her by whose authority alone they are themselves of any account. Among my fellow-teachers I may hope that community of interest will help me more with the courteous and learned than a foolish feeling of rivalry will harm me with ignorant and spiteful detractors. Regard for my own profession, and this hope of support from learned teachers, move me to lay stress upon one special point, which in duty must affect them no less than me, namely, the need for careful thought in improving our schools. I say nothing here of the conscientious and religious motives that influence us, nor of the need for personal maintenance that demands our labour. But I would acknowledge the special munificence of our princes and parliaments towards our whole order in our country’s behalf, partly in suffering us to enjoy old immunities, partly in granting us divers other exemptions from personal services and ordinary payments to which our fellow-subjects are liable. These favours deserve at our hands an honourable remembrance, and bind us further to discharge the trust committed to us. I doubt not that this feeling which moves me strongly, moves also many of my profession, whose friendship I crave for favourable construction, and whose conference I desire for help in experience, as I shall be glad in the common cause either to persuade or be persuaded. Of those that are not learned I beg friendship also, and chiefly as a matter of right, because I labour for them, and my goodwill deserves no unthankfulness. God bless us all to the advancement of His glory, the honour of our country, the furtherance of good learning, and the well-being of all ranks, prince and people alike!

CRITICAL ESTIMATE.

CRITICAL ESTIMATE.

If the saying of Plato may be applied to another sphere, not very far removed from civil government, we may believe that education will never be rightly practised until either teachers become philosophers, or philosophers become teachers. It is certainly remarkable how seldom in the history of educational progress there has arisen any writer whose authority was based alike on the power of the abstract thinker to rise above the conditions of the immediate present into the atmosphere of pure reason, and on the instinct of the professional worker, whose conceptions of what is possible have been chastened by direct experience of the actual. Of the five classical English writers who have made any noteworthy contribution to educational thought, all but one have failed to gain a lasting influence, through the limitation in their outlook caused by deficient practical knowledge. Ascham’s experience was too exclusively academic and courtly to suggest much to him beyond questions of method in the advanced teaching of Latin and Greek. Milton’s vision, restricted by his short and partial attempt at instructing a few selected boys, narrowed itself to one school period of one rank of society of one sex, and his genius could not save him from wild extravagance in his ideas of the acquirements possible for the average scholar. The suggestions of Locke, while in one aspect they were more comprehensive, are yet essentially those of a theorist, who had never faced the difficulty that the upbringing of a child by a private tutor is possible only to the merest fraction of any population. Herbert Spencer, as the heir of previous centuries, has naturally been able to command a wider view, but even those who have gained most from his book, must have felt that owing to his highly generalised mode of treatment he has at many points failed to grapple with the problems that chiefly beset the professional teacher. A little experience, like a little knowledge, is a dangerous thing, and it may be that those writers, all of whom claim to have made trial of the actual work of education, would have been more convincing if they had written from an avowedly detached standpoint. Richard Mulcaster alone holds the vantage-ground of being at once a thinker and a practical expert in matters of education. Nor does this mean only that his right to speak with authority will for that reason be more readily admitted; the evidence of his fuller equipment for the task may be seen through the whole texture of his writings. He had not Ascham’s ease in expression and charm of manner, nor Milton’s commanding intellect and power of utterance, nor the fearlessness and philosophic grasp of Locke, nor the encyclopædic knowledge and acumen of Herbert Spencer, but he had beyond them all two essential gifts that will in the end give him a unique place in the history of our educational development--a clear insight into the realities of human nature, and an enlightened perception of the conditions that determine the culture of mind and soul.

To those who know little or nothing of Mulcaster such a claim will seem extravagant, and it will naturally be doubted whether any writer who deserves to be put upon so high a pedestal, could possibly have remained so long in neglect. It may be rejoined that in a subject like education many factors have a part in the making of reputations. It is no mere coincidence that the authors named above, whose views on education are so much more widely-known than those of Mulcaster, all gained their chief fame in some other sphere of thought; we read what they have to say on this subject because it comes from writers who have caught the world’s ear in some field of more general interest. This advantage is naturally to be associated with gifts of expression such as Mulcaster unfortunately possessed only in a very limited degree, though his deficiency is due much more to the rudimentary condition of English prose in general in the sixteenth century, than to any lack of clear thinking on his own part. It is true, indeed, that no fine sense of harmony in sound can be credited to a writer who perpetrates such a sentence as--“I say no more, where it is too much to say even so much in a sore of too much.” But even if Mulcaster had spoken with the tongue of an angel, he would probably have remained a voice crying in the wilderness, for the time was not yet come. The ultimate value of Rousseau’s message to the world in the realm of education was far less, but his unique powers of persuasive eloquence, the fame he had achieved in other ways, and the ripeness of the time, combined to give the later writer an extraordinary influence. When Mulcaster’s judgments and suggestions are studied from the vantage-ground of the present, and in a form that divests them of adventitious difficulties of understanding, they will be recognised as giving him a place of high importance, not only in the chain of historical succession, but in the final hierarchy of educational reformers.

It is necessary to take into account the state of opinion on matters of learning and on the general conduct of life, in the England of Queen Elizabeth’s day, before we can appreciate the significance of our author’s thought. We must place ourselves in the atmosphere of the Renascence and the Reformation, for although these great movements, which represented the intellectual and moral aspects in the awakening of modern Europe, had been some time in progress, and had even given place to reaction in the countries of their birth, their full influence did not reach our shores till towards the close of the sixteenth century. The phase of English national life represented by Mulcaster is that immediately preceding the great expansion of conscious mental activity to which voice was so memorably given by Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon, and their contemporaries. The prestige of Elizabeth, depending as it did so largely on the secure establishment of the Protestant faith, had not yet reached the height it attained through the final repulse of Spanish aggression, but yet the power of the crown retained much of the absolute sway over individual freedom that had been built up and impressed on the popular imagination by the earlier Tudors. It was not a time either of revolt or of reaction. The more galling forms of political and intellectual despotism had already disappeared in the general overthrow of the medieval _régime_, and it was a more pressing question how to maintain existing charters of liberty than how to extend them. This conservative temper is to be discerned in all the purely English writers of the period, though in the northern part of Britain Knox and his companions were troubling the waters of controversy in a more strenuous fashion.

Apart from the influence of an atmosphere of general conformity to established authority and prevailing sentiment, Mulcaster was constitutionally cautious. He was no zealot, defiant of opposition, and careless of the esteem in which he might be held. His respect for tradition, and, it must be added, his sympathetic instincts, disposed him always to seek grounds of agreement rather than of difference, to support his suggestions by the weight of authority and precedent, to carry his readers with him by winning their consent unawares rather than by startling them into reluctant acquiescence through the use of paradox and exaggeration. Yet there was no timidity or half-heartedness in his temperament. He was profoundly convinced of the justice of his criticisms and the value of his proposals, and he was not backward in urging his views, in season at least if not out of season, on all who shared the responsibility of rejecting them or giving them effect. He has been accused, indeed, of overweening self-conceit, and it is to be feared that this is the only persistent impression of the man that remains with a number of those who know little of him beyond his name. He has been cited as a classical example of the folly into which a misplaced vanity can lead one who enters with a light heart into the region of prophecy, that “most gratuitous form of error,” on the ground that he believed the highest possible perfection of English prose to be represented by the style of his own writings. This conception, however, is due to a misunderstanding which it will be worth while to remove. The remark that is quoted against him occurs in the Peroration of the _Elementary_, “I need no example in any of these, whereof mine own penning is a general pattern.” Taken apart from the context, as it usually is, such a sentence sounds fatuous enough, being naturally understood to mean that Mulcaster thought he had nothing to learn from any other writers, and had himself devised a perfect model of English composition. But anyone who will take the trouble to read the whole passage (p. 201) will see at once that the statement really means, “I need give no example of any of these [idiosyncrasies of our language, especially compactness of expression], as they are sufficiently illustrated in my own writing.” This is a very different matter, and though Mulcaster had little sense of style, and was curiously mistaken in his idea that English prose had no greater heights to reach than the standard of his own time, the error was due to defects of literary taste and judgment, not of character or temper. When his writings are taken as a whole, they offer ample evidence that he was singularly modest in his pretensions, losing all self-consciousness in his enthusiasm for the causes he had at heart.

This attitude may account for the disposition in some quarters to deny Mulcaster any special originality in regard to his leading principles. But in a subject like education, which concerns so many departments of life and character, what is the precise meaning of originality? As the essential traits of human nature have remained unaltered in the last two or three thousand years, except for a slow development along lines in continuity with the past, it is vain to expect that the broader truths which underlie the arts of social improvement will be subject to any radical change. In such matters we must build on the wisdom of the ancients, and the only possible originality consists in discerning the new applications that are suited to the present time and place. It is safe to say that there is hardly a single educational doctrine that has ever won acceptance, the germs of which are not to be found in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. Yet every age and every country must work out its own salvation by choosing, combining, and applying to its needs the general principles that have been laid down by those that came before. Such eclecticism, if it cannot strictly be called originality, is at least the highest wisdom, and he who first proclaims the doctrine as true for his own time and place deserves the credit of the pioneer. The discoveries of the Greek philosophers in social politics, if discoveries they could be called, had to be made over again for the modern world, and it may even be said that they had to be made independently for each separate country. In the sixteenth century there was less uniformity in political and social conditions, and less mutual influence among the different States of Europe than there is now. Although the English nation under Elizabeth could not remain wholly unaffected by the more drastic changes of opinion and sentiment that marked the course of the reforming spirit in Germany and in Scotland, it certainly demanded a rare sagacity and independence of mind, if not absolute originality, to discern how far the new outlook could be shared by those whose experience had been less revolutionary. To understand the value of Mulcaster’s work it is of less moment to ask what may have been his indebtedness to Plato or Quintilian, or even to Luther and Knox, than to consider whether he had been directly anticipated by any of his own countrymen, and whether he himself anticipated, if he did not influence, later English writers on education.

A right estimate of Mulcaster’s temperament, and of his relation to the surrounding conditions of thought and feeling, is due not only as a matter of personal justice, but as affording a key to a proper estimate of his writings. For these have a significance beyond that of most works of the kind, in forming a somewhat unique record of historical facts for a bygone period. The attempt to trace the lines of progress by comparing one phase of culture with another, has hitherto had imperfect success in the sphere of education, for, like the arts of music and acting, it works in a perishable medium, and makes a direct impression only on a single generation. Even indirect testimony has until recently been almost entirely wanting. To hardly any writer of earlier times has it occurred to make any report of the actual conduct of teaching as it existed around him, for the benefit of future ages. Those who were interested in the subject have been more concerned to offer speculative suggestions of reform that have apparently little organic relation to the conditions of their own community. It is not so much to the formal treatises of Plato and Aristotle that we must look for such knowledge as we can obtain of Athenian education in the fourth century before Christ, as to the incidental references of writers who had no thought of conveying any definite or detailed information on the matter. We find the same dearth of evidence when we try to ascertain the actual working of educational methods and organisation in the most advanced countries of Europe during the two or three centuries that succeeded the Renascence. The contemporary writers on the subject are for the most part idealists; and while we gladly acknowledge their services in that capacity, we must regret that to the visionary outlook of the reformer they did not add the careful observation of the historian. If Mulcaster is a noteworthy exception to this rule, it is not because of set purpose he undertook the task of record and criticism. It was no part of his plan to offer any narrative or statistical report; indeed he expressly refrains from commenting on the current practice of teaching, and alludes to it only incidentally. His intention, as with the great majority of educational writers, was to suggest improvements, to propose an ideal; but his responsible position as a headmaster gave him an ever-present sense of what was practicable, and enabled him to base his efforts on the firm ground of accomplished fact. His proposals are so evidently related to the existing state of affairs that they may almost be taken as affording an historical record of contemporary practice. The common-sense criticisms of a shrewd observer like Montaigne, and the dreams of an idealist such as Rabelais, have their own value; but we shall listen even more readily to the words of one who speaks out of the fulness of immediate knowledge, yet with equal power to rouse our aspiration and energy.

Before considering Mulcaster’s contributions to the theory and art of education strictly so-called, it will be well to glance at his influence in the more general aspects of learning and literature. He must be credited with an important share in the movement towards the dethronement of Latin in favour of the vernacular tongues, as the medium of communication in subjects hitherto held to belong exclusively to the domain of the learned class. The initiative in this matter goes back, of course, to the time of Dante, but even with the examples of Italy, France, and Spain to suggest the change, it was a distinct and difficult task to work it out for our own language. Mulcaster was not the first Englishman to write a book in his native tongue which everyone would have expected to be written in Latin. Sir Thomas More, in some of his historical and controversial works, Roger Ascham, and a few other writers of lesser note, had anticipated him in practice, and had been more successful in attaining a lucid and graceful style, but it may fairly be claimed that Mulcaster was the first to give a reasoned justification of the course he followed and recommended, and to further the end in view by taking definite steps to elaborate the means. Nor is it only for his service in helping to establish a canon of literary English, and show the way to others by using it himself to the best of his ability, that acknowledgment is due. It was a still more conspicuous merit to see clearly, and to enforce by these means, the truth that the increase of learning, and the methods by which it may be furthered, are subjects of interest not to any limited class alone, but to every member of the community. There may be comparatively little present value in his judgments as to the proper content of the English vocabulary, and the forms of spelling which he thought should be made authoritative, but at least it is noteworthy that, at a time when linguistic science was at a rudimentary stage, he had reached a singularly just conception of the essential nature of a language, and the conditions of its growth and decay. The interesting allegory where he traces the process by which speech came to be represented by written symbols, proves him to have grasped the idea, only in later times fully understood, that language, as a product of human activity, shares in all the features characteristic of organic development.

It is not only the more formal aspects of language, moreover, that he treats with discrimination. On the still subtler question of its relation to thought and knowledge he speaks with a discernment far beyond his time. The usurping tyranny of _words_ over the minds of men, in place of the lawful domination of the realities they symbolised, had in the movement of the Renascence changed its form without relaxing its severity. If they were no longer so frequently used as mere counters in vain disputations, they were yet apt to be regarded with unreasoning idolatry, as the sacred embodiment of the thoughts and feelings of settled forms of civilisation in the past, exempt from any enquiry as to the conceptions they expressed. Mulcaster does not share this illusion. In his view language is primarily a means of communication, and though the acquirement of foreign tongues may be a necessity for the time, yet they “push us one degree further off from knowledge.” He may not have fully realised the degree in which language is to be reckoned with as a form of artistic expression and as an instrument of thought, though his appreciation of the possibilities of the English tongue shows that he did not forget these invaluable uses; but in any case he saw clearly, and he was one of the first to see, that the crying need of his time was to be set free from the despotism of words, which made them rather a hindrance than a help to real knowledge. “We attribute too much to tongues, in paying more heed to them than we do to matter.” The bearing of this opinion on educational theory will be considered presently, but it deserves to be noted at the outset in evidence of the advanced philosophical standpoint of a writer who belonged to the generation preceding Francis Bacon.

Mulcaster’s independence of conventional practice is further set beyond doubt by his conception of the place of authority in argument. Anticipating Locke in deprecating the constant use of great names in support of a writer’s thesis, he is of course laying down a principle now so universally accepted that it seems unnecessary to refer to it, but those who are acquainted with the Renascence writers of any country know how widely a slavish regard for the opinions of the classical authors took the place of a direct appeal to the rational judgment of the reader. It was no needless service to assign limits to this controversial habit, to discriminate between superstitious servility and justifiable deference to previous thinkers, to call for a fearless statement of the truth as it appeared to each new enquiring spirit, and claim that it should be tested wholly by its conformity to reason and nature and experience. Especially valuable for his time was his insistence on the difference of circumstance between the ancient and the modern worlds, and between the characters of the various nations. He may seem to us to carry these distinctions to an excess when in considering ideal types of human nature he takes account of the form of government under which each individual has to live, holding certain qualities appropriate to a monarchy and others to a republic, but at least he laid a useful emphasis on the relativity of progress, and on the need for harmony in the component institutions of a particular form of society.