Part 45

But if I see weaknesses in the foregoing book, why do I not make it better? Just for two reasons: to improve the book I should have to spend more time on it and more money. The more I read and think about any one of my subjects, the more I want to go on reading and thinking. Perhaps I hear of an old book that has escaped my notice, or a new book comes out, sometimes an important book like Pinloche’s _Basedow_. So I can never finish an essay to my satisfaction, and the only way of getting it off my hands is to send the copy to the printer. By the time the proof comes in there is something that I should like to add or alter; but then the dread of a long bill for “corrections” restrains me. However, now the book is all in type, I see here and there something that suggests a note by way of explanation or addition, so I add this appendix. Taking a hint from one of my favourite authors, Sir Arthur Helps, I throw my notes into the form of a dialogue, but being entirely destitute of Helps’s dramatic skill I confine myself to =E.= (the Essayist) and =A.= (Amicus), who is only too clearly an _alter ego_.

=A.= So the Americans have kept alive your old book for you, and at last you have rewritten it. You at least have no reason to complain that there is no international copyright. Your book would have been forgotten long ago if a lady in Cincinnati had not persuaded an American publisher there to reprint it. =E.= Yes, I very readily allow that I have been a gainer. The Americans have done more for me than my own countrymen. To be sure neither have “praised with the hands” (as Molière’s _professeur_ has it); and, in money at least, the book has never paid _me_ its expenses; but three American publishers have done for themselves what no Englishman would do for me, viz., publish at their own risk. In 1868 when my MS. was ready, I went to my old friend, Mr. Alexander Macmillan; but he would not even look at it. “Books on education,” said he, “don’t pay. Why there is Thring’s _Education and School_, a capital book” (I assented heartily, for I was very fond of it), “well, _that_ doesn’t sell.” I was forced to admit that in that case I had little chance. “But,” I said, “I suppose you would publish at my risk?” “No,” said Mr. Macmillan. “The author is never satisfied when his book doesn’t pay.” “What would you advise?” I asked. “I’ll give you a letter of introduction to Mr. William Longman,” said Mr. Macmillan; “I dare say he’ll publish for you.” With this letter I went to Mr. William Longman (who has since those days been gathered to his ancestors, formerly of Paternoster Row). Mr. Longman said he would put the MS. in the hands of his reader. If the reader’s report was favourable the firm would offer me terms; if not, they would publish for me on commission. I sent the MS. accordingly, and soon after I had a letter from the firm offering to publish “on commission.” When the book was in type, Mr. Longman advised me to have only 500 printed, and to publish at a high price. “I should charge 9_s._,” he said. “Very few people will buy, and they won’t consider the price.” This was not my opinion, but in such a matter I felt that the weight of authority was enormously against me. So I consented to the publishing price of 7_s._ 6_d._ And at first it seemed that Mr. Longman was right—at least about the small number of purchasers. £30 was spent in advertising, and the book was very generally and I may say very favourably reviewed; but when about 100 copies had been sold, it almost entirely ceased “to move.” I think 13 copies were sold in six months. So to get rid of the remainder of my 500 copies (some 300 of them) I put down the price to 3_s._ 6_d._ Then it seemed that Mr. Longman had made a mistake about the price. Without another advertisement the 300 were sold in a month or two. Some time after, I heard that the book had been republished in Cincinnati, and on my writing to the publishers, Messrs. Robert Clarke & Co., they presented me with half-a-dozen copies. This proved to be a perfect reprint, which is more than I can say of those which years afterwards were issued by Mr. Bardeen and Messrs. Kellogg. I have therefore from time to time purchased from Messrs. Clarke and imported the copies (I suppose about 1500 in all) that have been wanted for the English market. I hope these details do not bore you. =A.= Not at all. The history of any book interests me, and your book has had some odd experiences. It has lived, I own, much longer than I expected, and for this you have to thank the Americans. =A.= In my case the absence of international copyright has done no harm certainly; but after all copyright has its advantages, international copyright included. Specialists suffer severely from the want of it. Perhaps the “special” public in this country is so small that an important book for it cannot be published. If to our special public were joined the special public of the U.S., the book might be fairly remunerative to its author. Take, _e.g._, Joseph Payne’s writings. These would have been lost to the world had not Dr. Payne published them as an act of filial piety. With an international copyright these works would be very good property. =E.= You think then that in the long run “honesty is the best policy” even internationally? =A.= I must say my opinion does incline in that direction.

=Class Matches (p 42).=—=A.= I think you have had a good deal to do with class matches? =E.= Yes. One must be careful not to overdo them, but I have found an occasional match a capital way of enlivening school-work. Some time before the match takes place the master lets the two best boys pick up sides, the second boy having the first choice. The subject for the match is then arranged, and to prevent disputes the area must be carefully defined. Moreover, there must be no opportunity for the boys to ask questions about unimportant details that are likely to have escaped attention. When the match is to take place each boy should come provided with a set of written questions, and whenever a boy shows himself ignorant of the right answer to a question of his own he must be held to have failed even if his opponent is ignorant also. At Harrow, where I had a class-room (“school-room” as it is there called) to myself, I used to work these matches very successfully in German. Say Heine’s Lorelei had been learnt by heart. I set as a subject for a match the plurals of the substantives and the past participles of the verbs in the poem. Or the boys had to make up for themselves and number on paper a set of short sentences in which only words which occurred in the poem were used. In this last case the questioner handed in to the master his paper with both the English and the German on it, and the master gave the other side the English, of which they had to write the German. The details of such matches may of course be varied to any extent so long as the subject set is quite definite. The scoring will be found best at the lower end, so that a match stimulates those who need stimulus. =A.= What did you call “scratch pairs?” =E.= Oh, that was a device for getting up a little harmless excitement. Knowing the capacities of my boys, I arranged them in pairs, the best boy and the worst forming one pair, the next best and next worst the second pair, &c., &c. I then asked a series of questions to which all had to write short answers. I then looked over the answers and marked them. Finally the marks of each _pair_ were added together, and I announced the order in which the pairs “came in.” It was really “anybody’s race” for neither I nor anyone could predict the result. If the number of boys was an odd number the boy in the middle fought for his own hand and had his marks doubled. Perhaps on the whole he had the best chance.

=Competition.=—=A.= There were then some forms of emulation which you did not set your face against? =E.= There were many, but I preferred emulation which stimulated the idle rather than the industrious. Most “prizes” act only on those who would be better without them. =A.= Do you see no danger in encouraging rivalry between different bodies? The strife between parties has often been more virulent than the strife between individuals. =E.= Yes, I know well that in exciting party-feeling one is playing with edged tools; and besides this, a boy who for any cause is thought a disgrace to his side, is very likely to be bullied by it. Let me tell you of one form of stimulus which seemed to work well and was free from most of the objections you are thinking of. When I had a small school of my own in which there were only young boys, I put up in the school-room a list of the boys’ names in alphabetical order with blank spaces after the names. I looked over the boys’ written work very carefully, and whenever I came across any written exercise evidently done with great painstaking and for that boy with more than ordinary success, I marked it with a G, and I put up the G in one of the spaces after that boy’s name in the list hung up in the school-room. When the school collectively had obtained a fixed number of G’s we had an extra half-holiday. The announcement of a G was therefore always hailed with delight. =A.= I see one thing in favour of that device. You might by a G give encouragement to a boy when he has just begun to _try_. This is often a turning-point in a boy’s life; and a master’s early recognition of effort may do much to strengthen into a habit what might, without the recognition, have proved nothing but a passing whim. At the very least, all such devices have one good effect; they break the monotony of school-work; and monotony is much more wearing to the young than it is to their elders. Can you tell me of others who have used such plans? =E.= A friend of mine who has a genius for inventing school plans of all kinds and marvellous energy in working them, has a boarding-house in connexion with a large school. The marks of every boy in the school are given out for each week. My friend gives a supper at the end of the quarter if the average marks of his house come up to a certain standard. He puts up each week a list of “Furtherers,” _i.e._, of the boys who have surpassed the average, and of “Hinderers,” _i.e._, of boys who have fallen below it =A.= No doubt this is an effective spur, but I should fear it would in practice deliver the hindermost to Satan. The boy whom nature has made a “hinderer” is likely to have by no means a good time in that house. Do you know if such devices as you have mentioned are common in schools? =E.= I really can’t say. I have seen in American school papers accounts of class matches. In the New England _Journal of Education_ (22nd November, 1888) Mr. A. E. Winship gave an account of some inter-class matches at Milwaukee. There is a match between three classes, say in penmanship. If there are seventy boys in the three classes together, each boy draws a number from one to seventy, and puts not his name but his number on his paper. The same lesson is set for all. The papers are collected, divided into three equal heaps, and looked over and marked by three masters. Finally the _average_ of each class is taken. In mental arithmetic each class chooses its own champions. This would be fun, but would do nothing for the lower end of the class. The principal of McDonough School No. 12, New Orleans, Mr. H. E. Chambers, gives an account in the New York _School Journal_ (8th December, 1888), how he organised sixteen boys into teams of four, putting the best and worst together as I did in making up scratch pairs. The match between these teams was to see which could get the best record for the month. As Mr. Chambers tells us the sharper boys managed with more success than the master to let light into the dull intellects of boys in the same team with them. This union of interests between the “strong” and the “weak” as the French call them, is a very good feature in combats of _sides_.

=The Jesuits.=—=A.= What is it that interests you so much in the Jesuits? =E.= Two things. First, the Jesuit shows the effects of a definitely planned and rigidly carried out system of education; and next, in such a society you find a continuity of effort which is and must be wanting in the life of an individual. If ever “we feel that we are greater than we know” it is when we can think of ourselves as parts of a society, a society which existed long before us, and will last after us. For instance, it is a great thing to be connected with an historical school such as Harrow. We then realise, as the school’s poet, Mr. E. E. Bowen, has said, that we are no mere “sons of yesterday,” and thinking of the connection between the mighty dead and the old school we join heartily in the chorus of the school song:—

“Their glory thus shall circle us “Till time be done.”

=A.= I verily believe you expect your share in this “glory” for having invented the Harrow “Blue Book,” which is likely to outlive _Educational Reformers_; but if the boys ever thought of the inventor (which they don’t) they would naturally suppose that he was some contemporary of Cadmus or Deucalion. _Sic transit!_ But what has this to do with the Jesuits? =E.= Only this, that by corporate life you secure a continuity of effort. There is to me something very attractive in the idea of a teaching society. How such a society might capitalise its discoveries! The Roman Church has shown a genius for such societies, witness the Jesuits and the Christian Brothers. The experience of centuries must have taught them much that we could learn of them. =A.= The Jesuits seem to me to be without the spirit of investigators and discoverers. The rules of their Society do not permit of their learning anything or forgetting anything. Ignatius Loyola was a wonderful man, but he must have been superhuman if he could legislate for all time. By the way, I see you say the first edition of the _Ratio_ was published in 1585. What is your authority? =E.= I took the date from the copy in the British Museum. According to a volume published by Rivingtons in 1838 (_Constitutiones Societatis Jesu_) the _Constitutions_ were first printed in 1558, but were not divulged till “the celebrated suit of the MM. Lionci and Father La Valette” in 1761.

=Alexander’s Doctrinale (p. 80).=—=A.= I thought you made it a rule to give only what was useful. What can be the use of the quotations which your old Appendix contained “from a celebrated grammar written by a Franciscan of Brittany about the middle of the 13th century”? =E.= Perhaps I had an attack of antiquarianism; but I rather think the quotations were given in order to shew our progress since those days. The Teachers’ art of making easy things difficult is well exemplified in Alexander’s rules for the first declension. But life is short, and folly is best forgotten.

=Lily’s Grammar (p. 80).= =A.= Would not your last remark rule out what you told us about Lily’s Grammar? =E.= As regards Lily’s assertion, “Genders of nouns be 7,” it certainly would. Surely nobody but a writer of school-books would ever have thought of making a “gender” out of “hic, hæc, hoc, felix”! But the absurdity did not originate with Lily. He was all for simplification, and though there were some changes in the Eton Latin Grammar which succeeded the “Short introduction of Grammar” known as Lily’s Grammar, these changes were, some of them at least, by no means improvements. The old book put _a_ before _all_ ablatives and taught that “by a kingdom” was _a regno_. If this was not any better than teaching that _domino_ by itself was “by a Lord,” it was at least no worse. The optative of the old book (“_Utinam sim_ I pray God I be; _Utinam Essem_ would God I were, &c.”) and the subjunctive (“_Cum Sim_ When I am, &c.,”) were better than the oracular statement which perplexed my youth, “The subjunctive mood is declined like the potential.” How often I said those words, and being of an inquiring mind wondered what on earth “the subjunctive mood” was!

=Colet.= =E.= The passage I refer to on page 80 from Colet is in a little book in the B.M. It is “Joannis Coleti theologi, olim Decani Divi Pauli, editio, una cum quibusdam G. Lilii Grammatices Rudimentis, &c. Antuerpiæ 1535.” After the accidence of the eight parts of speech, he says:—“Of these eight parts of speech in order well construed, be made reasons and sentences, and long orations. But how and in what manner, and with what constructions of words, and all the varieties, and diversities, and changes in Latin speech (which be innumerable), if any man will know, and by that knowledge attain to understand Latin books, and to speak and to write clean Latin, let him, above all, busily learn and read good Latin authors of chosen poets and orators, and note wisely how they wrote and spake; and study always to follow them, desiring none other rules but their examples. For in the beginning men spake not Latin because such rules were made, but, contrariwise, because men spake such Latin, upon that followed the rules, and were made. That is to say, Latin speech was before the rules, and not the rules before the Latin speech. Wherefore, well-beloved masters and teachers of grammar, after the parts of speech sufficiently known in our schools, read and expound plainly unto your scholars good authors, and show to them [in] every word, and in every sentence, what they shall note and observe, warning them busily to follow and do like both in writing and in speaking; and be to them your own self also speaking with them the pure Latin very present, and leave the rules; for reading of good books, diligent information of learned masters, studious advertence and taking heed of learners, hearing eloquent men speak, and finally, busy imitation with tongue and pen, more availeth shortly to get the true eloquent speech, than all the traditions, rules, and precepts of masters.” This passage is, I find, well known. It is given in Knights’ _Life of Colet_ and is referred to by Mr. Seebohm. Mr. J. H. Lupton, Colet’s latest biographer, has kindly corrected the date for me: it is indistinct in the Museum copy.

=Mulcaster for English (p. 97).= =A.= Except in Clarke’s edition, your extracts from Mulcaster’s _Elementarie_ have been omitted by your American reprinters. =E.= So I see. I should have thought the Americans would have been much interested by this early praise of our common language. The passage is certainly a very remarkable one, and Professor Masson has thought it worth quoting in his _Life of Milton_. The _Elementarie_ is a scarce book; so I will not follow my reprinters in leaving out this passage:—“Is it not a marvellous bondage to become servants to one tongue, for learning’s sake, the most part of our time, with loss of most time, whereas we may have the very same treasure in our own tongue with the gain of most time? our own bearing the joyful title of our liberty and freedom, the Latin tongue remembering us of our thraldom and bondage? I love Rome, but London better; I favour Italy, but England more: I honour the Latin, but I worship the English.... I honour foreign tongues, but wish my own to be partaker of their honour. Knowing them, I wish my own tongue to resemble their grace. I confess their furniture, and wish it were ours.... The diligent labour of learned countrymen did so enrich those tongues, and not the tongues themselves; though they proved very pliable, as our tongue will prove, I dare assure it, of knowledge, if our learned countrymen will put to their labour. And why not, I pray you, as well in English as either Latin or any tongue else? Will ye say it is needless? sure that will not hold. If loss of time, while ye be pilgrims to learning, by lingering about tongues be no argument of need; if lack of sound skill while the tongue distracteth sense more than half to itself and that most of all in a simple student or a silly wit, be no argument of need, then ye say somewhat which pretend no need. But because we needed not to lose any time unless we listed, if we had such a vantage, in the course of study, as we now lose while we travail in tongues; and because our understanding also were most full in our natural speech, though we know the foreign exceedingly well—methink _necessity_ itself doth call for _English_, whereby all that gaiety may be had at home which makes us gaze so much at the fine stranger.” Among various objections to the use of English which he answers, he comes to this one:—“But will ye thus break off the common conference with the learned foreign?” To this his answer is not very forcible:—“The conference will not cease while the people have cause to interchange dealings, and without the Latin it may well be continued: as in some countries the learneder sort and some near cousins to the Latin itself do already wean their pens and tongues from the use of the Latin, both in written discourse and spoken disputation, into their own natural, and yet no dry nurse being so well appointed by the milch nurse’s help.” Further on he says:—“The emperor Justinian said, when he made the Institutes of force, that the students were happy in having such a foredeal [_i.e._, advantage—German _Vortheil_] as to hear him at once, and not to wait four years first. And doth not our languaging hold us back four years and that full, think you?... [But this is not all.] Our best understanding is in our natural tongue, and all our foreign learning is applied to our use by means of our own; and without the application to particular use, wherefore serves learning?... [As for dishonouring antiquity], if we must cleave to the eldest and not the best, we should be eating acorns and wearing old Adam’s pelts. But why not all in English, a tongue of itself both deep in conceit and frank in delivery? I do not think that any language, be it whatsoever, is better able to utter all arguments either with more pith or greater plainness than our English tongue is.... It is our accident which restrains our tongue and not the tongue itself, which will strain with the strongest and stretch to the furthest, for either government if we were conquerors, or for cunning if we were treasurers; not any whit behind either the subtle Greek for crouching close, or the stately Latin for spreading fair.”

=Marcel’s “Axiomatic Truths.”=—=A.= I have seen Marcel referred to as a great authority in education, but I look in vain for his name in Kiddle’s Cyclopædia and in Sonnenschein’s. =E.= You would be more successful in Buisson’s. There I see that Claude Marcel was born at Paris in 1793, and died in 1876. He was one of Napoleon’s soldiers. After 40 years’ absence from France dating from 1825 he went back to Paris. He had been French Consul at Cork, and brought up nine children whom he taught entirely himself. In 1853 he published with Chapman and Hall his _Language as a Means of Mental Culture_ (2 vols.). This book was not very well named, for it contains in fact an analysis of the subject—education. To the study of this subject Marcel must have given his life, and it seems odd that his contribution to English (not French) pedagogic literature is so little known. A French abridgment of his work appeared in 1855 with the title _Premiers Principes d’Education_; and in 1867 he published in French _L’Études des Languages_ (Paris, Borrani) of which a translation was published in the U.S.A. Marcel’s notion of education is threefold, viz., Physical, Intellectual, and Moral Education: the 1st aiming at _health_, _strength_, and _beauty_; the 2nd at _mental power_ and the _acquisition of knowledge_; the 3rd at _piety_, _justice_, _goodness_, and _wisdom_. According to him the Creator has made the exercise of our faculties _pleasurable_. This will suggest his main lines. He expects to find general assent, for he quotes from Garrick:—

“When Doctrine meets with general approbation, “It is not heresy but reformation.”