Adventures among Books
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He was especially concerned about Sabbath desecration. "I confess,"
observes this sage of ten, "when I look upon the present and past state
of our public morals, and when I contrast our present luxury,
dissipation, and depravity, with past frugality and virtue, I feel not
merely a sensation of regret, but also of terror, for the result of the
change." "The late Revolution in France," he adds, "has afforded us a
remarkable lesson how necessary religion is to a State, and that from a
deficiency on that head arise the chief evils which can befall society."
He then bids us "remember that the Nebuchadnezzar who may destroy our
Israel is near at hand," though it might be difficult to show how
Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Israel.
As to the uncertainty of life, he remarks that "Edward VI. died in his
minority, and disappointed his subjects, to whom he had promised a happy
reign." Of this infant's thirty-nine sermons (just as many as the
Articles), it may be said that they are in no way inferior to other
examples of this class of literature. But sermons are among the least
"scarce" and "rare" of human essays, and many parents would rather see
their boy patiently acquiring the art of wicket-keeping at school than
moralising on the uncertainty of life at home. Some one "having
presented to the young author a copy of verses on the trite and familiar
subject of the Ploughboy," he replied with an ode on "The Potboy."
"Bliss is not always join'd to wealth,
Nor dwells beneath the gilded roof
For poverty is bliss with health,
Of that my potboy stands a proof."
The volume ends with this determination,
"Still shall I seek Apollo's shelt'ring ray,
To cheer my spirits and inspire my lay."
If any parent or guardian desires any further information about _Les
Enfans devenus celebres par leurs ecrits_, he will find it in a work of
that name, published in Paris in 1688. The learned Scioppius published
works at sixteen, "which deserved" (and perhaps obtained) "the admiration
of dotards." M. Du Maurier asserts that, at the age of fifteen, Grotius
pleaded causes at the Bar. At eleven Meursius made orations and
harangues which were much admired. At fifteen, Alexandre le Jeune wrote
anacreontic verses, and (less excusably) a commentary on the Institutions
of Gaius. Grevin published a tragedy and two comedies at the age of
thirteen, and at fifteen Louis Stella was a professor of Greek. But no
one reads Grevin now, nor Stella, nor Alexandre le Jeune, and perhaps
their time might have been better occupied in being "soaring human boys"
than in composing tragedies and commentaries. Monsieur le Duc de Maine
published, in 1678, his _OEuvres d'un Auteur de Sept Ans_, a royal
example to be avoided by all boys. These and several score of other
examples may perhaps reconcile us to the spectacle of puerile genius
fading away in the existence of the common British schoolboy, who is
nothing of a poet, and still less of a jurisconsult.
The British authors who understand boys best are not those who have
written books exclusively about boys. There is Canon Farrar, for
example, whose romances of boyish life appear to be very popular, but
whose boys, somehow, are not real boys. They are too good when they are
good, and when they are bad, they are not perhaps too bad (that is
impossible), but they are bad in the wrong way. They are bad with a
mannish and conscious vice, whereas even bad boys seem to sin less
consciously and after a ferocious fashion of their own. Of the boys in
"Tom Brown" it is difficult to speak, because the Rugby boy under Arnold
seems to have been of a peculiar species. A contemporary pupil was
asked, when an undergraduate, what he conceived to be the peculiar
characteristic of Rugby boys. He said, after mature reflection, that
"the _differentia_ of the Rugby boy was his moral thoughtfulness." Now
the characteristic of the ordinary boy is his want of what is called
moral thoughtfulness.
He lives in simple obedience to school traditions. These may compel him,
at one school, to speak in a peculiar language, and to persecute and beat
all boys who are slow at learning this language. At another school he
may regard dislike of the manly game of football as the sin with which
"heaven heads the count of crimes." On the whole this notion seems a
useful protest against the prematurely artistic beings who fill their
studies with photographs of Greek fragments, vases, etchings by the
newest etcher, bits of China, Oriental rugs, and very curious old brass
candlesticks. The "challenge cup" soon passes away from the keeping of
any house in a public school where Bunthorne is a popular and imitated
character. But when we reach aesthetic boys, we pass out of the savage
stage into hobbledehoyhood. The bigger boys at public schools are often
terribly "advanced," and when they are not at work or play, they are
vexing themselves with the riddle of the earth, evolution, agnosticism,
and all that kind of thing. Latin verses may not be what conservatives
fondly deem them, and even cricket may, it is said, become too absorbing
a pursuit, but either or both are better than precocious freethinking and
sacrifice on the altar of the Beautiful.
A big boy who is tackling Haeckel or composing _virelais_ in playtime is
doing himself no good, and is worse than useless to the society of which
he is a member. The small boys, who are the most ardent of
hero-worshippers, either despise him or they allow him to address them in
_chansons royaux_, and respond with trebles in _triolets_. At present a
great many boys leave school, pass three years or four at the
universities, and go back as masters to the place where some of their old
schoolfellows are still pupils. It is through these very young masters,
perhaps, that "advanced" speculations and tastes get into schools, where,
however excellent in themselves, they are rather out of place. Indeed,
the very young master, though usually earnest in his work, must be a sage
indeed if he can avoid talking to the elder boys about the problems that
interest him, and so forcing their minds into precocious attitudes. The
advantage of Eton boys used to be, perhaps is still, that they came up to
college absolutely destitute of "ideas," and guiltless of reading
anything more modern than Virgil. Thus their intellects were quite
fallow, and they made astonishing progress when they bent their fresh and
unwearied minds to study. But too many boys now leave school with
settled opinions derived from the very latest thing out, from the newest
German pessimist or American socialist. It may, however, be argued that
ideas of these sorts are like measles, and that it is better to take them
early and be done with them for ever.
While schools are reformed and Latin grammars of the utmost ingenuity and
difficulty are published, boys on the whole change very little. They
remain the beings whom Thackeray understood better than any other writer:
Thackeray, who liked boys so much and was so little blind to their
defects. I think he exaggerates their habit of lying to masters, or, if
they lied in his day, their character has altered in that respect, and
they are more truthful than many men find it expedient to be. And they
have given up fighting; the old battles between Berry and Biggs, or
Dobbin and Cuff (major) are things of the glorious past. Big boys don't
fight, and there is a whisper that little boys kick each other's shins
when in wrath. That practice can hardly be called an improvement, even
if we do not care for fisticuffs. Perhaps the gloves are the best
peacemakers at school. When all the boys, by practice in boxing, know
pretty well whom they can in a friendly way lick, they are less tempted
to more crucial experiments "without the gloves."
But even the ascertainment of one's relative merits with the gloves hurts
a good deal, and one may thank heaven that the fountain of youth (as
described by Pontus de Tyarde) is not a common beverage. By drinking
this liquid, says the old Frenchman, one is insensibly brought back from
old to middle age, and to youth and boyhood. But one would prefer to
stop drinking of the fountain before actually being reduced to boy's
estate, and passing once more through the tumultuous experiences of that
period. And of these, _not having enough to eat_ is by no means the
least common. The evidence as to execrable dinners is rather
dispiriting, and one may end by saying that if there is a worse fellow
than a bully, it is a master who does not see that his boys are supplied
with plenty of wholesome food. He, at least, could not venture, like a
distinguished headmaster, to preach and publish sermons on "Boys' Life:
its Fulness." A schoolmaster who has boarders is a hotel-keeper, and
thereby makes his income, but he need not keep a hotel which would be
dispraised in guide books. Dinners are a branch of school economy which
should not be left to the wives of schoolmasters. _They_ have never been
boys.
FOOTNOTES
{1} "Mauth" is Manx for dog, I am told.
{2} It is easy to bear the misfortunes of others.
{3} In the third volume of his essays.
{4} "I remember I went into the room where my father's body lay, and my
mother sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell
a-beating the coffin and calling 'Papa,' for I know not how, I had some
slight idea that he was locked up there."--STEELE, _The Tatler_, June 6,
1710.
{5} Longmans.
{6} I like to know what the author got.
{7} Salmon roe, I am sorry to say.
{8} "Why and Wherefore," Aytoun.
{9} _Fersitan legendum_, "Help Thou."
{10} I know, now, who Miriam was and who was the haunter of the
Catacombs. But perhaps the people is as well without the knowledge of an
old and "ower true tale" that shook a throne.
{11} Cannot the reader guess? I am afraid that I can!
{12} Edinburgh, 1685.