Part 14

Of the prose, take these words about Coniston: 'Nowhere else have you seen wood and water, hill and valley, green-sward and purple heather, rugged crag and velvet lawn, gray rock and bright-blossoming shrub, waving forest and spreading coppice brought under the eye at once in such magnificent proportion and in such bewildering contrast.' He narrates some exciting fox-hunting experiences of the fell-side farmers and their hounds; he has some pithy tales of the native peasantry and their folklore and their customs, as well as of their parsons, poor as Goldsmith's 'Christian Hero'--passing rich at £40 a year, yet learned and of cultured minds, though dressed in homespun, and toiling on the land to eke out a living. His own adventures as a medical man in mists and storms sweeping across the mountains are sometimes graphic. This paragraph must suffice us: 'There had been a heavy snow, which for a day or two, under the influence of soft weather and showers, had been melting; the whole country was saturated with wet--every road was a syke, every syke a beck, and every beck a river. The high lands were covered with a thick, cold, driving, suffocating mist, which every now and then thinned a little to make way for one of those thorough-bred mountain showers, of which none can have any conception who have not faced them on the fells in winter--wetting to the skin and chilling to the marrow in three seconds, and piercing exposed parts like legions of pins and needles. The hollows in the roads, which are neither few nor far between, were filled with snow in a state of semi-fluidity, cold as if it had been melted with salt, through which I splashed and struggled, dragging my floundering jaded pony after me with the greatest difficulty.'

WRITTEN IN THE WORDSWORTH COUNTRY

'He is dead, and the fruit-bearing day Of his race is past on the earth; And darkness returns to our eyes. For, oh! is it you, is it you, Moonlight and shadow, and lake, And mountains, that fill us with joy, Or the poet who sings you so well? Is it you, O beauty, O grace, Or the voice that reveals what you are? Are ye, like daylight and sun, Shared and rejoiced in by all? Or are you immersed in the mass Of matter, and hard to extract, Or sunk at the core of the world Too deep for the most to discern? Like stars in the deep of the sky, Which arise on the glass of the sage, But are lost when their watcher is gone.' MATTHEW ARNOLD: _The Youth of Nature_.

[llustration:

_Photo by Herbert Bell, Ambleside._

FOX HOW, AMBLESIDE.

The Home of the Arnolds.]

XX

TWO PIONEER EDUCATIONISTS

THOMAS AND MATTHEW ARNOLD

'Speaking of the Arnolds, he (Hartley Coleridge) said they are a most gifted family. I asked what specially in their education distinguished them. He rose from the dinner-table, as his manner is, and answered, "Why, they were suckled on Latin and weaned upon Greek!"'--CAROLINE FOX'S _Journal_.

Do not the Ambleside and Grasmere char-a-bancs proclaim on their back-boards in letters large and ugly that they will 'return by Fox How, the residence of Dr. Arnold'? And is not the advertised route a pretty one, despite the disadvantage of its being frequented by thousands of 'trippers' to whom the Arnolds are not even names, and who can hardly be much illuminated by the drivers?

When Arnold of Rugby bought the property and built the house for a holiday home, with the hope of some day retiring permanently to it, he wrote of its being 'a mountain nest of sweetness.' Even his son Matthew, more of an introversive than a descriptive poet, more inclined to utter a thought of Goethe's or quote a song of Beranger's than to dwell on the inwardness of natural scenery, must perforce write of 'Rotha's living wave'--the stream that 'sparkles through fields vested for ever with green,' and of

'Moonlight, and shadow, and lake, And mountains that fill us with joy.'

The father died in harness, and was buried in Rugby Chapel, and not in Grasmere, by the Wordsworth graves, as he had hoped. The son spent his boyhood at Fox How, and returned to it often in later life, for Mrs. Dr. Arnold remained there--a widow--for many years.

Thomas Arnold, born in 1795, at Cowes, Isle of Wight, was the son of the Collector of Customs in that little port. He was educated first at Westminster, and then for four years at Winchester. As a child he was stiff, shy, and formal, says Dean Stanley, and after entering Oxford, indeed until mature life, was a 'lie-a-bed.' Still, he was forward at school, strong in history and geography, took early to his pen, and had a good memory for poetry. At the University, a scholar at Corpus Christi, Fellow of Oriel, he took a first-class in Classics, and two Chancellor's Prizes in 1815 and 1817. Corpus Christi was a small, intellectual community, and this fact helped to form his character. He was, and remained, a Liberal in a society of convinced Tories. Outside his companionship and his necessary studies the formative influences of that period of his life were Aristotle, Thucydides, and Wordsworth. He took 'orders,' and settled at Laleham, near Staines, where he remained nine years, taking youths as pupils to prepare them for the Universities. Here six of his children were born, including Matthew, and here he developed his theories of education, to become so important a factor in English life by-and-by. Here, too, he pursued diligently his own deeper studies in the Bible, in theology, and in Roman history. Some of the sermons preached at this village are incorporated with those, afterwards so celebrated, delivered to the Rugby School. He became Head-master of Rugby in 1827. At that time most of the great public schools with clerical headmasters were in low condition, and upper-class education was poor. The rich Churchmen held possession of the national Universities, and social rather than intellectual status was the chief thing aimed at. Of course there were many noble exceptions among the undergraduates to this general truth, and Arnold was one of them, and his compeers at Corpus Christi were others. Rugby as a school was in a very poor state when he took hold of it. He raised it into one of the first schools of its kind in the kingdom, and provoked the others into a healthy competition. It is impossible here to give more than the barest outline of his magnificent scholastic career. The ordinary reader may judge for himself of its character by reading Thomas Hughes' 'Tom Browne's School Days,' and the more studious Stanley's 'Life' of the Doctor. It has been my own privilege to know several clergymen who were Arnold's pupils. They reverenced his memory, they spoke of their intellectual and spiritual obligations to their master in the warmest terms, and in every case were among the most liberal-minded and cultured men I have known. They were but examples of hundreds, cleric and lay, of his excellent modelling. The key to his influence and reforms is found in his own high Christian character, and, as one biographer says, in the fact that 'the most strongly-marked feature of his intellect was the strength and clearness of his conceptions. It seemed the possession of an inward light so intense that it penetrated on the instant every subject laid before him, and enabled him to grasp it with the vividness of sense and the force of reality.' His administrative methods revolutionized the discipline and the punishments. He relied on the honour of the boys, and their Christian and gentlemanly characters, and especially on the right leadership of the older ones, whom he trusted implicitly, unless found untrustworthy. He had also, and this, doubtless, was part of his secret, an unusual faculty of right discernment in the selection of his masters. Character was the basis of his system--upon that he could build scholarship, without it he would not try to. 'It is not necessary,' he once said to his pupils, 'that this school should be a school of 300, or 100, or 50 boys; but it is necessary it should be a school of Christian gentlemen.' Through good and evil report, opposition and scoffing, he went on his way, and conquered. He took his part, too, in liberalizing the Anglican Church. For defending Bishop Hampden of Hereford, to whose appointment a violent outcry was raised for alleged unorthodoxy, Arnold nearly lost his own post. Earl Howe, one of the champions of the narrow-minded heresy hunters, moved a condemnatory resolution at the Board of Governors--there being four for, and four against, and none possessing a casting vote, the headmaster was not suspended, and did not resign. In 1841 he was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History, and his lectures remain in their published form as evidences of his accuracy and lucidity. The next year, however, he was seized with angina pectoris, and he died just about the time he was intending to retire from his fourteen years' successful pioneering of the modern methods of secondary and higher education. His character was well estimated by a writer in the _Edinburgh Review_, albeit the comparison of Arnold with Milton is not altogether felicitous in other respects. He says: 'They both so lived in their great Task-master's eye as to verify Bacon's observation, in his 'Essay on Atheism,' making themselves akin to God in spirit, and raising their natures by means of a higher nature than their own.' Matthew alludes to his father in his poem on Rugby Chapel. This poem is in awkward metre, and the query might have been answered more positively than he has ventured to do, if there is any truth whatsoever in the Christian doctrine of immortality and a 'labour-house vast' seems a poor substitute for scriptural imagery of the unseen spirit world.

'Oh, strong soul, by what shore Tarriest thou now? For that force, Surely, has not been left vain! Somewhere, surely, afar, In the sounding labour-house vast Of being is practised that strength, Zealous, beneficent, firm.'

Another appreciation of the father by the son is interesting. 'He was the first English clergyman who could speak as freely on religious subjects as if he had been a layman.'

Of Matthew himself there needs little to be said. From whom did he inherit his strange temperament? His poetry lacks the warmth of feeling his father would have put into it. His muse is cold, classical, joyless. His criticisms are keen, incisive, often just, more often marred by foolish prejudices, almost brutally expressed. To Dissenters he was intolerant, and never lost a chance of sneering at them, especially for their want of that culture, or rather that special form of culture, which he personally affected, and which his own Church had debarred them from obtaining at the Universities. He laid himself open to the retort of a leading Nonconformist, who spoke of Mr. Arnold's belief in the well-known preference of the Almighty for University men. Mr. Herbert Paul is not wide of the mark when he writes of his re-translations of the Bible 'making one feel as if one had suddenly swallowed a fish-bone.' Certainly the perusal of most of his books, such as 'Essays in Criticism,' 'Culture and Anarchy,' 'Paul and Protestantism,' 'Literature and Dogma,' 'God and the Bible,' gives to the thoughtful reader a sensation of being drawn by a swift, high-mettled, blood horse, trying to get his head, and to run away with you over a stony road--the pace is exhilarating, but the jolting is terrible. His best contributions to the commonwealth are some of his educational theories and suggestions, and most of his reports on foreign education, and on his experience as an Inspector of Schools. In the latter capacity he laboured for thirty-five years, and the impress of his genius abides.

Some of his forecasts of the future have come true, others are certain yet to be fulfilled. He was the real founder of University Extension, and he urged that the University of London should be made a teaching institution only. Mr. Paul's estimate of him we may cordially assent to: 'Of all education reformers in the last century, not excepting his father, Mr. Arnold was the most enlightened, the most far-sighted, and the most fair-minded.' 'Fair-minded' he assuredly was when dealing with the practical side of his profession. 'Fair-minded' he always believed he was. 'Fair-minded' he seldom was on purely political or academic matters, for then his extraordinary prejudices asserted their sovereignty over him, and he was helpless beneath their sway. Mr. Gladstone he disliked so intensely that we should hardly be wrong in saying he hated him and all his works.

He exhibited a supercilious contempt for what he chose to brand as the provincialism of the 'Low Church' and the Free Church; for the aristocracy, who to him were 'barbarians' for preferring field sports to the improvement of their minds; for the masses of the community, whom he dismissed with the epithet 'the populace,' while the middle-classes were 'Philistines' (a word he borrowed from the Germans), because they were 'respectable' and kept gigs! Really all this shows too small a mind, too circumscribed an outlook on humanity, to qualify Matthew Arnold for a place among philosophers or national reformers. It is satisfactory to turn from him as politician and critic of the Bible, of literature, and of society, to his status as a poet, which, though really secondary to that as an educationist, he will naturally be most widely remembered by. His letters, too, recently published, show the pleasant side of his private life. 'He was a poet of the closet,' is Mr. Stedman's summary of him. Arthur Clough preferred Alexander Smith (practically a forgotten minor poet) to the author of 'Empedocles,' and complained of the obscurity and 'pseudo-Greek inflation' of 'Tristram and Iseult.' 'The Scholar-Gipsy' is his best elegiac poem; 'The Forsaken Merman' his best narrative piece; 'Bacchanalia, or the New Age,' his best lyric. This is from 'The Merman':

'Children dear, was it yesterday We heard the sweet bells over the bay? In the caverns where we lay, Through the surf, and through the swell, The far-off sound of a silver bell? Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, Where the winds are all asleep; Where the spent lights quiver and gleam, Where the salt weed sways in the stream, Where the sea-breeze, ranged all round, Feed in the ooze of their pasture ground; Where the sea-snakes coil and twine, Dry their mail, and bask in the brine; Where great whales come sailing by, Sail, and sail, with unshut eye, Round the world for ever and aye? When did music come this way? Children dear, was it yesterday?'

Herein are lines more melodious, and ideas more English, than in other verses, just because he 'let himself go' more than usual. He was generally too self-conscious to do this at all.

His schools were Winchester and Rugby. His college was Balliol. For a short time he was master under his father. For four years he acted as private secretary to Lord Lansdowne, and in 1857 was made Inspector of Schools. He was Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1857 to 1867. He died suddenly of inherited heart disease while running to catch a tram at Liverpool in 1888, at sixty-six years of age. All this may be read in any Dictionary of Biography, and really there is little more to note of events in his life outside the daily routine of his official career. He was buried at Laleham, where he was born. Something better might be his epitaph than his own pessimistic lines:

'Creep into this narrow bed, Creep, and let no more be said.'

PHILARETVS, HIS INSTRUCTIONS TO HIS SONNE

'Deare Sonne, as thou art tender to mee, remember these advertisements of thy careful father. 'Bee zealous in the service of thy God; ever recommending in the prime houre of the day all thy ensuing actions to His gracious protection. 'Bee constant in thy Resolves, ever grounded on a religious feare, that they may bee seconded by God's favour. 'Bee serious in thy Studies; with all humility crave the assistance of others, for thy better proficiency. 'Bee affable to all; familiar to few. 'Bee to such a constant consort where thou hast hope to bee a daily proficient. 'Bee provident and discreetly frugal in thy expense. 'Honour those in whose charge thou art instructed. 'And, sweet Jesu, with Thy grace enrich him, to Thy glory, my comfort.

'Thy deare Father,

'PHILARETVS.'

'_Essais upon the Five Senses, Revived by a new Supplement, with a pithy one upon Detraction, continued with sundry Christian Resolves, etc._, by RIC. BRATHVVAYT, ESQ. (1635).

XXI

DRUNKEN BARNABY

RICHARD BRAITHWAITE

'A self-deluded fool is he who deems The head is innocent that moves the hand. A fount impure may taint a thousand streams. The devil did not do the work he planned. He is the very worst of evil pests Who fears to execute, and but suggests.' S. C. HALL: _The Trial of Sir Jasper_.

A mile or so from the picturesque town of Kendal is a village, standing on both sides of the rushing little river Kent, now called Burneside, though anciently Barnside. It has a church of old foundation, rebuilt early in last century, chiefly by private subscription, but partly by enforced church rates, after the custom of that age. It has a fine bridge crossed by the road leading to the mountain heights and the long, deep valleys, so wildly beautiful, and beginning to be so far-famed through Mrs. Humphrey Ward's romances. Adjoining the bridge is a large paper-mill, where formerly stood a worsted-mill and patent candle-wick cutting factory. The village possesses an institute and library, and a public-house of the Earl Grey type. The people seem contented and intelligent, and as the number of them has grown from 650 in 1830 to over 1,000 within fifty years, we may fairly point to it as an object-lesson for those who desire to see village industries and 'garden manufacturing villages' multiplied, and through them the neighbouring farming interests improved and enriched.

A short stroll towards the northern uplands brings the visitor to a ruined, ivy-clad Peel-tower, one of those relics of border-warfare days with which these regions abound. As in many other cases, so in this, when the times became more settled, a manor-house grew up around the grim, square-built battlemented tower, which mansion is now, in still later and quieter days, a farmhouse. To the manor and dwelling succeeded the subject of this sketch on his father's death in 1610, or shortly afterwards. He came of a race of Westmorland landed gentry, owning estates here, and at Ambleside and Appleby. It is not known where he was born. He was entered as a gentleman commoner at Oriel College, Oxford, as a native of Northumberland, and it is, of course, possible that his father, a wealthy man, held residential property in that county. The internal evidence of his writings, however, has been of late held to be sufficiently strong to prove him a native of Kendal. His words, in an address to 'The Aldermen of Kendall,' seem very explicit:

'Within that native place where I was born, It lies in you, dear townsmen, to reforme.'

Anthony a'Wood, in his 'Athenæ Oxoniensis,' tells how Braithwaite--or, as he spells the name, Brathwayte--was sent to the University at sixteen years of age in 1604. He remained there three years, 'avoiding as much as he could the rough pathes of Logic and Philosophy, and tracing those smooth ones of Poetry and Roman History, in which at length he did excell.' Thence he went to Cambridge, studying literature 'in dead and living authors.' From Cambridge he proceeded to London to read law in the Inns of Court. In his father's will there are indications, and in his own later writings there are sorrowful confessions, that, for a while, at all events, he lived a wild, roystering life in the Metropolis. 'The day seemed long wherein I did not enjoy these pleasures; the night long wherein I thought not of them. I knew what sinne it was to sollicit a maid into lightnesse; or to be drunken with wine, wherein was excesse; or to suffer mine heart to be oppressed with surfetting and drunkennesse; yet for all this, run I on still in mine evil wayes.' His father's death-bed doubts of him, and the tying up of the estate bequeathed to him, till he had amended, seem to have brought him to himself. While living at Burneside Hall, during the early days of the Civil Wars he was made a Captain of the local Royalist trained bands, a Deputy-Lieutenant, and J.P. for the county, and spent his leisure in composing and publishing the more serious of his books. Seven years after entering on his possessions, he married Miss Frances Lawson, of Darlington, but surreptitiously, probably because of objections raised by the young lady's parents. It seems to have been more than a love-match--a happy union of sixteen years' duration--producing a family of nine--six sons and three daughters. Six years of widowhood, and then he married a Yorkshire lady, who brought him another manor, Catterick, where for the future he resided till his death. The sole issue of this second marriage was a son--Strafford--who was knighted, and was killed in an engagement with an Algerian man-of-war--in the ship _Mary_, of which Sir Roger Strickland was commander. In 1673 Richard Braithwaite died, and was buried in Catterick Parish Church, a mural monument duly setting forth the fact in customary Latin. Anthony a'Wood says he bore during his steady years 'the character of a well-bread (_sic_) gentleman and a good neighbour.' Mr. Haslewood, his most competent editor, has collected, I know not from whence, some oral traditions of his personal appearance, interesting as a picture of the seventeenth-century northern gentry, as well as of the individual. He was, although below the common stature, one of the handsomest men of the time, and well proportioned, remarkable for ready wit and humour, and of polished manners and deportment. He usually wore a light gray coat, a red waistcoat, leather breeches, and a high-crowned hat. From a full-length portrait in the first edition of his 'English Gentleman,' which is believed to be his likeness, he wore also boots, spurs, sword, belt, and cloak. He was so neat in his appearance, and lively in manner, that his equals bestowed upon him the nickname of 'Dapper Dick.'

He earned from later generations a far less enviable soubriquet--that of 'Drunken Barnaby.' This is because he is--and rightly so, without doubt--credited with the authorship of a notorious book called by him originally 'Barnabæ Itinerarium, or Barnabee's Journal.' It was done in Latin and English on opposite pages, to 'most apt numbers reduced, and to the old tune of Barnabe commonly chanted.' The poem would seem to have passed out of general recollection, till in 1716 it was republished by London booksellers under the title of 'Drunken Barnaby's Four Journeys to the North of England,' and alleged to have been found among some musty old books that had a long time lain by in a corner, and now at last 'made publick.' This was a fabricated title with the intention of catching the public taste, because of a popular ballad of the same name then current. The Itinerary may well have been the production of his muse during his London wild-oat days. Drunken and licentious the traveller certainly was. He gives a rough, coarse picture of the depraved manners of the times, against which zealous Puritans were preaching and vigorously protesting.