Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

I have ventured to say, that this reformation will, in due time, come of itself. I think, it certainly _will_; as well in regard to the general plan of their studies, as their particular principles and opinions. Yet, in respect of the _former_ at least, it might perhaps be something quickened by external application. I know the attempt is delicate and difficult; but it might possibly succeed, if carried on under cover of some still greater reformation; which seizes the mind with much force, turns it to a new bias, and makes it propitious to every thing that tends to the attainment of its principal object.

Such occasions do not present themselves every day. One such we have seen; but we missed the season. Whatever was fundamentally wrong in the constitution of the Universities, should have been set right in that great æra, when the church was reformed. The undertaking had been of a piece with the rest of that extraordinary work; and the opportunity was inviting. But whether the minds of men were then ripe for this other reformation, or whether there was indeed light enough in the nation at that time fully and properly to effect it, may not unreasonably, I know, be made a question with your Lordship.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

It is no question at all with me, whether any service of that kind was to be expected from those great dealers in church-work. Perhaps another and _later_ æra may be pointed out, when the same office might, and should, have been undertaken by our political craftsmen.

MR. LOCKE.

Your Lordship means at the _Revolution_; and, as the generous principles of liberty, on which the Revolution was founded, had received but little countenance from the Universities, this consideration, you will say, afforded the best pretence for attempting their reformation. But wise men saw, that the credit which those learned bodies had drawn to themselves, and indeed deservedly, by their late conduct, notwithstanding their speculative systems and conclusions, was at that time too high, to suffer a rigorous inspection to be made into their statutes and constitutions: they saw, in that convulsion of the state, it would be impossible to carry on a design of this nature, without endangering the new settlement, or exposing it at least to many odious and inconvenient imputations: and they saw, besides, that the spirit of liberty, which had prevailed so far as to reform the state itself, would insensibly extend its influence to all subordinate societies.

In a word, the close and immediate connexion, which the Universities have with the church, made it natural and highly reasonable to expect that both should have shared the same fate at the _Reformation_: but the necessity was not so urgent, or so visible at least, that the Universities should be new-modelled, at the _Revolution_.

However, my Lord, what the wisdom of _either_ age omitted, or was unable to do, time, and that desuetude which attends upon it, will gradually bring about; not to say, has in some measure accomplished. And, to take matters as they now are, the studies and discipline of the Universities are not without their use, and should not be too violently declaimed against and degraded.

The elements of literature are reasonably well taught in those places. At least, the familiarity, which men have with the learned languages (the proper foundation, as I dare say your Lordship holds, of all real learning and politeness) is very much owing to the lectures of our colleges. And, though I am sensible what exceptions are to be made in other respects, yet, on the whole, religion, and good morals, receive an advantage from their institutions, and the regularity of their discipline.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

Yes; their religion is intolerance; and their morals, servility. For, as to any freedom of manly thought, or the dignity of virtue—

MR. LOCKE.

You are ready to look for them any where else than in our _English_ Universities.

Come on then, my Lord: have the goodness to point out to us those happier seminaries, where these and all other virtues are more successfully propagated.

But which way will your Lordship direct us to take, in this search? Shall we turn to the North of this country for those advantages, which we despair of finding in the South? Or, because the grossness of our island air may infect all parts alike, shall we shape our course to the Continent? And does your Lordship encourage us to look for some _Athens_ amidst the Protestant states of _Germany_, in the _Netherlands_, or the _Swiss_ Cantons?

These, I take it, are the only scenes which your Lordship can have in view; for, as high as their reputation may be in this respect, you would hardly advise the breeding of our _English_ youth in the colleges of the Jesuits.

One word then, if you please, on these Protestant Universities on the Continent.

Your Lordship and I have had some experience of the state of literature and education in those places. Eminent and excellent men they surely have amongst them. But so, your Lordship will confess, have the Universities of _England_. If we do not readily find those who, at this day, may be opposed to a LIMBORCH or a LE CLERC; yet it is not long since we had to boast of a CHILLINGWORTH, a CUDWORTH, and a WHICHCOT; all, men of manly thought, generous minds, and incomparable learning.

But the question is not, you know, of particular men, which such great bodies rarely want; but, of the general frame and constitution of learned societies, fit for the purposes of polite and liberal education.

Shall we say then, that the scattered tribes of students in a _Dutch_ or _Swiss_ town are likely to be better instructed, or better governed, than the young scholars in our colleges; or, that the good order, discipline, and sobriety of these places, is to be compared with the anarchy and licence of those other?

Your Lordship, I know, takes a pleasure to conceive of certain foreign academies, as of that ANCIENT one, where the students visited, without constraint, the schools of philosophers, and even bore a part in their free conferences and disputations: you even love to paint the noble youth to yourself, as of old, spatiating, at their leisure, in shady walks and porticos, and imbibing the principles of science as they drop upon them in the dews of Attic eloquence and politeness.

All this, my Lord, is very well: yet, setting aside a certain colouring of expression which takes and amuses the imagination, I see but little to admire in this picture; certainly not enough to make one regret the want of the original, and seriously to prefer this easy manner of breeding, to that stricter form which prevails in our own Universities: where the day begins and ends with religious offices: where the diligence of the youth is quickened and relieved, in turn, by stated hours of study and recreation: where temperance and sobriety are even _convivial_ virtues; and the two extremes of a festive jollity and unsocial gloom are happily tempered by the decencies of a _common table_; where, in a word, the discipline of Spartan HALLS and the civility of Athenian BANQUETS are, or may be, united.

Surely, my Lord, these wholesome regulations, with many others that might be mentioned, could we but strip them of the opprobrious name of collegiate and monastic, are of another use and value in education, than the lax unrestrained indulgence of foreign seminaries.

But, were there even no difference in this respect, as there is surely a great deal, are we to reckon for nothing the disparity of civil and religious constitutions?

Your Lordship, I dare say, will not suspect me of a bigoted adherence to any mere _mode_ of civil or ecclesiastical regimen. But is it all one, whether a young boy, who is destined to be a subject to the crown, and a member of the church of _England_, be inured to the equality of republican governments, and of calvinistical churches? It may be well for men of confirmed age and ability to look into both; but would you train up your son in a way that is likely to indispose him, right or wrong, to the institutions of his own country?

Besides, are there fewer prejudices, think ye, in the men of other churches and governments, than our own? or, are their professors and institutors of youth more free from popular errors and blind attachments, though of a different sort, than the tutors and masters of education in our country?

Nay, consider with yourself, my Lord; is there not as much tyranny in the administration of some they call _free states_; and as much restraint and persecution in the principles of some they call _free churches_, as can fairly be charged on the monarchy or church of _England_?

So that what you could expect to gain by preferring these foreign schools of learning to your own, I cannot easily imagine. All that is worth acquiring in either, you have, at least, an equal chance to meet with at home: and what should be avoided, may, nay must, with more probability, be encountered abroad.

But your Lordship, perhaps, would confine your young traveller to no _one_ seat of learning; and have it only in view to convey him hastily, under the wing of a tutor, through many a famous academy, without settling him in any. This, I must confess, is the way to keep clear of prejudices; but, whether any solid instruction, or just science either of men or things, is to be gathered from so cursory an education, your Lordship will do well to consider.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

You have done me the favour to imagine many projects and designs for me, which I was too dull to entertain in my own thoughts. But, if the education of a young man of rank and quality cannot be carried on without the assistance of academical instructors, I would much sooner trust him to the care of such as the more free and liberal genius of certain foreign Universities has formed, than submit him to the tutorage of those priestly guides, to whom our narrow and slavish institutions have consigned the province of education, in our own country.

MR. LOCKE.

Your Lordship now indeed speaks out very plainly. Your objection, then, is to CLERGY-TUTORS; and you think it absurd and even pernicious to commit our noble and liberal youth to the care of churchmen. You would rather see them in lay-hands; in the hands of philosophers, properly so called; who, indifferent to every thing but pure truth and reason, are in no danger of imbibing wrong principles themselves, and are therefore under no temptation of instilling any such into the minds of their followers.

The thought is happy, my Lord; and, if a number of these philosophers could any where be found, I might be induced to fall into the project of employing such only in the province of education. But, the condition, in which truth and reason are now left, and seem likely to continue, in this world of ours, affords little room for such flattering expectations. An unprejudiced instructor, I doubt, is a rarity not to be met with, I do not say in our Universities, but even out of them: and, prejudices for prejudices, some persons may be apt to think those of a churchman as tolerable as of any other.

But, my Lord, having no particular bias on my own mind in favour of that order, and having something perhaps to _resent_ from several individuals of it, it will not misbecome me to hazard a word or two, in its vindication.

You will permit me then to say, that I see no peculiar unfitness in the clergy for the office, they are called to, in this country, of superintending the business of education. The leisure they enjoy; the various learning and general studies, which that leisure enables them, and their profession obliges them, to pursue; and, lastly, the strictness of life and manners, or, if you will, the very decorum, which their character imposes upon them; these circumstances seem generally to have marked them out, as the properest persons to form the manners and cultivate the minds of youth, in all countries. In our _own_, that propriety strikes one the more, since their prejudices, of whatever kind, are but in common to them with other speculative and studious men; and since even their interest, rightly understood, and as seen by the best and wisest of themselves, (whatever may have been warmly and passionately said by some persons) is in no degree separate from that of the great community, to which they belong.

Yes, your Lordship will say, their hopes and views of preferment—

Yet, in this respect, they are but on a level with other men of most other professions; nay, with all men out of them, that aspire to rise, by their merits or the favour of their superiors, to any distinction in the world. And though we commonly say, that the clergy should be _only_ animated by purer motives, yet you cannot expect, nay would not seriously wish, that they should be altogether insensible to such as these.

It is true, in countries where the clergy have a dependance on some foreign power, or where they have usurped an independent power to themselves, or where, lastly, the civil constitution is so ill defined that the privileges of the subject lie at the mercy of the prince; in each of these cases, the ambition of the clergy may be, and in fact has been, productive of many public mischiefs. But our Protestant clergy, who are in no foreign subjection, claim no independency, and fill their place in a system all whose parts are, now at least, exactly regulated by known laws, cannot, by their private ambition, disturb the general interest, and have no peculiar inducements to attempt it. And though particulars may sometimes, by their follies and indiscretions, dishonour themselves, yet the effect cannot be considerable, and certainly affords no good reason for taking the province of education, for which on so many accounts they are well qualified, out of their hands.

Your Lordship’s candour and equity will then, upon the whole, permit an obvious distinction to be made between the MEN and their PROFESSION. Too many of the sacred order, I confess, and am sorry for it, seem now to have their minds perverted by those principles, and heated by those passions, which do little credit to their function, or themselves; and are equally inconsistent with the genius of that religion they profess to teach, as they are unfriendly to that legal constitution both of church and state, which they have bound themselves to support. But their _profession_ is little concerned in all this; and in a succession or two of these men (if the present set be, many of them, incorrigible) you may surely reckon upon all those prejudices and passions being worked off, which now administer the occasion of so much dislike to it.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

Well, but _clergy-manners_; will they, too, be worked off, with their other infirmities?

MR. LOCKE.

Perhaps, they may; if not, forgive them this one defect; at least, if it be their only one. But you do not mean, that the manners of the clergy, _as such_, are more offensive than those of other people. They are suited to their profession and way of life, from which they naturally result; and if the clergy have not that gloss upon them, which sets off the manners of finer men, they rarely disgust you with the affectation of it. But, after all, if persons of your Lordship’s quality and breeding would condescend to countenance them a little, they would, doubtless, brighten under your eye; and might come in time to reflect somewhat of that high polish, which glistens so much in the address and conversation of their betters.

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

What transmutations they may undergo hereafter, and by what means, I am not curious to enquire. On this head, their candid apologist is at liberty to be as much in jest, or in earnest, as he thinks fit. But from what appears at present, I must take leave, in my turn, to think less reverendly, than He would have me, of our sacred instructors; and though I value some particular persons of the order, as much as any man, yet, till I see a greater change in the principles, temper, and manners of that body, than, I fear, is likely to come to pass in our days, I can have no very favourable sentiments of those rude, illiberal, and monkish seminaries, where such worthies preside.

MR. LOCKE.

Let us have patience, my Lord. I have not scrupled to confess to you, that much is, at present, amiss in those seminaries, and wants to be set right. But so, God knows, there is every where else. As our factions and parties both in religion and government die away, the Universities will become more reasonable; and as the general manners refine, they too will, of course, take a better air and polish. In a word, they may not lead the public taste or judgment; but, as I said, they will be sure to follow it.

And the happy period is not, perhaps, far off. For, now I have taken upon me to divine so much of the future condition of our Universities, let me paint to you more particularly what I conceive of their growing improvements; and, in a kind of prophetic strain, such as old age, they say, pretends to, and may be indulged in, delineate to you a faint prospect of those brighter days, which I see rising upon us.

“The TIME will come, my Lord, and I even assure myself it is at no great distance, when the Universities of _England_ shall be as respectable, for the learning they teach, the principles they instil, and the morals they inculcate, as they are now contemptible, in your Lordship’s eye at least, on these several accounts.

“I see the day, when a scholastic theology shall give place to a rational divinity, conducted on the principles of sound criticism and well interpreted scripture: when their sums and systems shall fly before enlightened reason and sober speculation: when a fanciful, precarious, and hypothetic philosophy, shall desert their schools; and be replaced by real science, supporting itself on the sure grounds of experiment and cautious observation: when their physics shall be fact; their metaphysics, common sense; and their ethics, human nature.

“Do I flatter myself with fond imaginations, my Lord? Or is not the time at hand, when St. PAUL shall lecture our divines, and not CALVIN; our BACONS and BOYLES expel ARISTOTLE; Mr. NEWTON fill the chair of DES CARTES; and even your friend (if your Lordship can forgive the arrogance of placing himself by the side of such men) take the lead of BURGERSDICIUS?

“Still, my Lord, my prophetic eye penetrates further. Amidst these improvements in real science, the languages shall be learnt for use, and not pedantry: Your Lordship’s admired ancients shall be respected, and not idolized: the forms of classic composition be emulated: and a set of men arise, even beneath the shade of our academic cloysters, that shall polish the taste, as well as advance the knowledge, of their country.

“Yet, I am but half way in the portraiture of my vision. The appointed lecturers of our youth, whom your Lordship loves to qualify with the name of _bearded boys_, shall adopt the manners of men; shall instruct with knowledge, and persuade with reason; shall be the first to explode slavish doctrines and narrow principles; shall draw respect to themselves, rather from the authority of their characters, than of their places; and, which is the first and last part of a good education, set the noble and ingenuous youth intrusted to their care, the brightest examples of diligence, sobriety, and virtue.

“Perhaps in those days, a freer commerce shall be opened with the world: the students of our colleges be ambitious of appearing in good company: and a general civility prevail, where your Lordship sees nothing, at present, but barbarism and rudeness.

“Nay, who knows but, in this different state of things, the arts themselves may gain admission into these seminaries; and even the exercises be taught there, which our noble youth are now sent to acquire on the Continent?

“Such, I persuade myself, if the presage of old experience may pass for any thing, is the happier scene which a little time shall disclose to your view, in our _English_ Universities. What its duration may be, I cannot discover. Much will depend on the general manners, and the public encouragement. In the mean time, if any cloud rest upon it, it will not, I assure myself, arise immediately from within, but from the little, or, which is worse, the ill-directed favour, which the Great shall vouchsafe to shew to places, so qualified, and so deserving their protection.

“Yet, after all I have seen, or perhaps dreamt, as your Lordship may rather object to me, of the future flourishing estate of our Universities, and of their extreme fitness in all respects to answer the ends of their institution, I cannot be mistaken in one prediction, “that the mode of early Travel will still continue; perhaps its fury will increase; and our youth of quality be still sent abroad for their education, when every reason shall cease which your Lordship has now alleged in favour of that practice.”

LORD SHAFTESBURY.

This last prediction may, perhaps, be true; I mean, if those others should ever be accomplished. But as I have no great faith in modern prophecy, and see at present no symptoms of this coming age of gold, which your fancy has now presented to us, you must excuse me if these _prophetic strains_, as you termed them, have no great weight with me before their completion. Should that ever happen, I shall respect your foresight, at least; and rejoice extremely at an event, which, I shall then freely own, will leave my countrymen no excuse for their folly.

This, Sir, was the substance of what passed between us on the subject in question. Our other friends interposed, indeed, at times; but rarely, and in few words; and I have rather chosen to mix their occasional observations with our own, than perplex and lengthen this recital by a more punctilious exactness. Besides, I could not think it civil to introduce my friends upon the scene, only to shew them, as it were, for mutes; their politeness to us, who were principals in the debate, being such, as to restrain them from bearing any considerable part in it. Yet this way of relation would, no doubt, have given something more of life to the sketch I here send you; as their presence, you may believe, certainly did to the original conversation.

It is enough to say, that nothing more material, than what I have now related to you, passed on the occasion. For by this time the day was pretty well spent, and it was necessary for us to withdraw to our several engagements.

For myself, I leave you to guess the effect which our philosopher’s grave remonstrance left upon me. One thing you will think remarkable; that the part of arraigning the present state of things should fall to my share; while he, at an age that is naturally querulous and dissatisfied, was employed in defending it. Whether this be a proof of his wisdom, or good spirits, I pretend not to say. But it gave me a pleasure to hear the old man indulging himself in the prospect of better days, of which, as young as we are, and as warmly as we wish for them, you and I had always despaired.

LETTERS

ON

CHIVALRY AND ROMANCE.

LETTERS

ON

CHIVALRY AND ROMANCE:

SERVING TO ILLUSTRATE SOME

PASSAGES IN THE THIRD DIALOGUE.

_Guarda, che mal fato
O giovenil vaghezza non ti meni
Al magazino de le ciancie, ab fuggi,
Fuggi quell incantato alloggiamento.
Quivi habitan le maghe, che incantande
Fan traveder, e traudir ciascuno._
TASSO.

CONTENTS OF THE LETTERS.

Letter I. _The Subject proposed._

II. _Origin of Chivalry._

III. _Characteristics of, accounted for._

IV. _Heroic and_ Gothic _manners_, _compared_.

V. _Their differences, noted._

VI. Gothic _manners more poetical_, _than
the Heroic_.

VII. _Their effect on_ SPENSER, MILTON,
SHAKESPEAR.

VIII. _Fairy Queen criticized—the method
of that poem explained and justified._

IX. TASSO’S Gier. Lib. _considered_—_history
of the_ Italian _poetry_.

X. _Fairy way of writing—vindicated._

XI. Gothic _poetry_, _whence fallen into
disrepute_.

XII. _Steps of its decline, traced._

LETTERS

ON

CHIVALRY AND ROMANCE.