Thomas and Matthew Arnold and their influence on English education

Front matter

IF

2^5? UNIVERSITY

^S^ LIBRARY

Chapter I

Difficulties of biography — How Stanley's Life of Arnold has surmounted them — Chief incidents of Arnold's life — Influences which shaped his character — Ships and warfare — Literary revival — History and politics — School-boy experience — Religious doubts and difficulties — Evidential theology — His intellectual out> fit generally

Chapter II

Residence at Oxford — Arnold's friends and associates — Marriage and settlement at Laleham — Life as a private tutor — Studies and literary work — Aims and aspirations — Appointment to Rugby . . . .15 p CHAPTER III

Rugby and its foundation — Characteristics of ancient^ endowed grammar schools — iriustrations from statutes of Archbishop Grindal and" Dean Colet — The theory of classical education — Milton and tlie Humanists — Example of an entrance examination — Arnold's scheme of instruction — Latin and Greek not useless, even though forgotten in later life — ■ Evils of mechanical routine — Composition exercises — Versification — Objections to it — School-boy artifices for evading it — V

VI CONTENTS

FAGK

Construing — Bowyer of Christ's Hospital — Translation — Grammar and philology means not ends — Socratic questioning — General characteristics of Arnold's methods 25

Chapter IV

Language as a discipline contrasted with natural science — Knowledge of physical facts not the only science — History — Relation of Ancient and Modern History — Its claims as a school subject — Training for citizenship — Example of a school exercise — Niebuhr's researches in Roman History — Arnold's own treatment of the regal period of Rome — His love of history infectious — Geography — Thoroughness in teaching — Qualifications of assistants — School organization — Relation of a head master to governing body . . 52

Chapter V

Arnold as a disciplinarian — Moral evils in school — Description of their danger — Mr. Welldon's picture of school life — Eagging — Luxury and idleness — Expulsion — Religious lessons — Chapel services — School sermons — Extravagance — Home influence — Mental cultivation a religious duty — A memorable sermon — Religious exercises — Corporate life of a great school — What is Christian education — Clerical schoolmasters — The influence of Arnold's sermons generally — Punishments — Study of individual character — Games and athletics — Tom Brown's School Days — Rugby boys at the Universities — Bishop Percival's estimate . 75

Chapter VI

Arnold's extra-scholastic interests — Why such interests are necessary for a teacher — Foreign travel — Extracts

CONTENTS vii

PAGE

from diary — Love of Nature — Intercourse with the poor needed by himself and by his pupils — University settlements and mission work In connexion with public schools — Politics — The Reform BUI — The Englishman's Register — The society for the diffusion of useful knowledge — Mechanics' Institutes — The London University — Arnold's attitude towards each of these enterprises 110

CHAPTER Vn

The Oxford movement — The Hampden controversy — Arnold's relation to the movement — His views as to the condition of the Church of England and of necessary reforms — Dean Church's estimate of Arnold's ecclesiastical position — The Broad Church — Influence of outside interests on the life of the schoolmaster — The ideal teacher — Regius Professorship of Modem History — Arnold's scheme of lectures — Its partial fulfilment — His early death — Conjectures as to what might have been had he lived — Mr. Forster and the Education Act — Testimonies of Dean Boyle and of the Times 135

Chapter VIII

Matthew Arnold — The materials for his biography — His wishes — The main facts of his life — His letters — His character — His inspectorship — Distaste for official routine — His relations to managers — A school manager's recollections — The office of a School Inspector — Its opportunities of influence — The Revised Code — Arnold's methods of work — Testimony of his assistafiT ; . 157 viii CONTENTS

Chapter IX Page

Arnold as an officer of the Education Department — His official reports — Inspection and examination — Formative studies — Learning of poetry — Grammar — Latin • and Erench in the primary school — Science teaching and NaturJeunde — ^ Distrust of pedagogic rules — General aim and scope of an elementary school — The teacher's personal cultivation — Religious instruction — The Bible in the common school — Arnold's attempt at a school reading-book with extracts from Isaiah — The failure of this attempt 176

Chapter X

Matthew Arnold's employment in foreign countries — The Newcastle Commission of 1859 — The Schools Inquiry Commission of 1865 — Special report to the Education Department, 1885 — Democracy — Relation of the State to voluntary action in Erance and in England — Why Germany interested Arnold less than Erance — Advantages of State action — The religious difficulty in Erance — Why a purely secular system became inevitable in that country — A Erench Eton — Comparison with the English Eton — Endowments under Erench law — Latin and Greek as taught in Erench Lyc^es — Entrance scholarships — Leaving examinations — Instruction in civic life and duties 200

Chapter XI '^

Ajmold^ views of English s ocie ty — The three cla sses, \ thejiarbarians, lb£.Jhllistines, the_Populac e — Char^ acteristics of the Philistine or middle class — Why his diagnosis, though true in the main, was inadequate — The want of culture among Nonconformists — The disabilities under which they had suffered — A sonnet

CONTENTS

PAGE

Illustration of the difference between public schools and private " academies " — Schools for special trades, sects, or professions — Hymns — Effects of his polemic in favour of a system of secondary instruction . . 220

Chapter XII

Arnold as a literary critic, a humorists amj-as-a^ -noet — - "CfiHcSii and its functions — Comparison with Sainte Beuve — Examples of his critical judgments — Homer, Pope, and Dryden, Byron, Wordsworth, Burke, Tennyson, Charlotte Bronte, and Macaulay — The gift of humour indispensable to a critic — English newspapers

— The Telegraph and the Times — His American experiences — His personal charm — Tributes of Mr. John Morley, Augustine Birrell, and William Watson

— Poems — Arnold's place as a poet — Examples of his poems — General estimate of his own and his father's services to English education — Rugby Chapel 241

THOMAS AND MATTHEW ARNOLD

Chapter I

Difficulties of biography — How Stanley's Life of Arnold has surmouDted them — Cliief incidents of Arnold's life — Influences which shaped his character — Ships and warfare — Literary revival — History and politics — School-boy experience — Religious doubts and difficulties — Evidential theology — His intellectual outfit generally

Thomas Arnold has had the good fortune to be the subject of one of the best biographies in our language. In the history of English literature, when one comes to enumerate the most notable biographies which have been produced, it will be found that the number of such books entitled to the highest rank as works of art is not large. It is easy to record the dates and parentage, the public employments, the events and movements of a man's outward life, to give a selection from his letters and to add a critical account of his principal writings. But it is not easy to present a true portraiture of the hero's character, to acquire a keen insight into the motive forces of his life, to distinguish the significant from the insignificant, the typical from the exceptional incidents in his career, to look at him from without, and also to understand him from within, and to know B 1 witli what eyes he saw the world around him, and in what spirit he encountered the problems it presented. "I have remarked," says Carlyle, "that a true delineation of the smallest man, and his scene of pilgrimage through life, is capable of i:gi;eresting the greatest man; and that all men are to an unspeakable degree brothers, each man's life a strange emblem of every man's, and that human portraits faithfully drawn are of all pictures the welcomest on human walls." ^ Of English books which have best fulfilled these conditions Bacon's Henry VII., Walton's Lives, Johnson's Lives, Boswell's Johnson, Carlyle's Life of Sterling, Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay, Mr. John Morley's Rousseau and Walpole are among the best. But Dean Stanley's Life and Correspondence of Dr. Arnold will ever be entitled to a high rank, not only for the vividness of its presentation of a striking character and the circumstances of a life, but also for the skill with which relevant and irrelevant facts are discriminated, and for the profound sympathy of the author with its subject. The book will long remain to the student of the social, religious, and political history of the former half of the nineteenth century a treasury of valuable material, because it portrays in clear outline a central figure round which clustered some of the most remarkable personages and incidents of a stirring and eventful period. Stanley's book is a large one and deals necessarily with much ephemeral controversy, religious and political, which 1 Carlyle's Life of Sterling, Chap. I.

STANLEY'S LIFE OF ARNOLD 3

may possibly not excite any strong interest in the present generation of readers. It is to be feared that these facts may have the effect of concealing from those readers much that is of permanent value in Arnold's history and performance. A smaller volume, The Life of Dr. Arnold, by Miss Emma J. Worboise, is also distinguished by care and sympathy, by a reverent and yet candid estimate of character, and especially by the emphasis with which she dwells on the religious side of Arnold's nature and influence. It is not in the vain hope of adding new material to the story which has twice been so well told, or with a view to present any new theory by which to interpret the significance of Arnold's career, that the present book is written, but simply in order to bring into special prominence those features of his own character and that of his more gifted son Matthew, which possess special interest and are likely to be of permanent value to the professional teacher.

Of his personal history during the forty-seven years in which he lived, a brief outline will here suffice. He was born in 1795, at West Cowes in the Isle of Wight, the son of a collector of customs, who died suddenly when the boy was five years old, from the same malady — angina pectoris — which afterwards proved fatal to himself. He owed much of his early education to the pious care of his mother, and more to the wisdom and unfailing devotion of his aunt, Miss Delafield, towards whom he through life evinced the strongest affection and gratitude. From 1803 to

1807 he was a pupil in the endowed school at Warminster, and was then transferred to Winchester. In 1811, at the age of sixteen, he was entered at Oxford as a scholar of Corpus Christi College. Three years later he took his degree, and gained a First Class in Classics. In 1815 he was elected a Fellow of Oriel; in 1815 he won the Chancellor's prize for Latin, and in 1817 that for an English essay. He continued in the University until 1820 at work as a tutor, having been ordained two years earlier. He then left Oxford and took a curacy at Laleham in Surrey, married Mary Penrose, and during the next eight years was chiefly occupied in historical studies and in preparing private pupils for the University. In 1828 he accepted the Head-Mastership of Eugby School, and continued in that pos t untiTT Es sudden death in 1842.

Of the influences which contributed to shape his character in early life, perhaps the most potent, next to those of a happy, intelligent, well-ordered home, were the political and military events which at a crisis of extraordinary interest in English history, were well calculated to fire the imagination and call forth the latent patriotism of a young boy. He was but a little child when Pitt was at the zenith of his power, and

" Launched that thunderbolt of war On Egypt, Hafnia, Trafalgar,"

when Nelson's victories filled all English hearts with exultation, when the name of Buonaparte was so asso-

EAELY TRAINING 5

ciated with terror and alarm that nurses used to frighten children with the threat that he was coming; and when every gazette brought exciting news of battle by field or at sea. The news of Trafalgar to a boy of ten, and of Corunna four years later, and the succession of peninsular victories ending at Vittoria in 1813, could not fail to make an enduring impression on the mind of an open-hearted, thoughtful lad, habitually predisposed to look upon human history rather as the scene of action and of noble endeavour than in any other light.

Years after, he looked back and counted his early experience of ships and warfare as among the formative influences of his life. "More than half my boys," he said in 1829, "never saw the sea and never were in London, and it is surprising how the first of these disadvantages interferes with their understanding much of the ancient poetry. Brought up myself in the Isle of Wight, amidst the bustle of soldiers and sailors, and familiar from a child with boats and ships and the flags of half Europe, which gave me an instinctive acquaintance with geography, I quite marvel to find in what a state of ignorance boys are at seventeen or eighteen who have lived all their days in inland parishes or small country towns." ^

To such experience, and to the events of the great war, may be attributed the zest with which he afterwards described the wars of Greece and of Eome, the keen interest with which he traced with Livy the march of Hannibal over the Alps, or described the 1 Letter XII.

battle of jUgospotamos or Salamis. Down to the time when he went to Oxford, all English politics were warlike. Great questions of domestic politics, such as the emancipation of the Catholics, and social and electoral reform, were for the time in abeyance, or they would probably have had, even at that early date, profound interest for him. If the combative instinct was strongly manifest in him through life, so that it is hardly too much to say that in one sense he was a "man of war from his youth," the fact may be partly ascribed to the fierce national rivalries and contests in the midst of which his childhood was passed, and to the strong impulse which those contests gave to his youthful patriotism.

Nor could the changed aspect of the literary horizon be without its influence on a young boy who was from the first a voracious reader, as sensitive to the intellectual as to the~political movements of his time. The taste for the classical poetry of Pope and Dryden had declined; Cowper, Thomson, and Crabbe had sought the subjects of their verse in the incidents of familiar life, had evinced a keener sense of the beauties of outward nature, had revolted against established tradition, and had prepared the way for a revival of the healthy romanticism, which was beginning to find a fuller expression in Coleridge, Scott, Wordsworth, and Southey, and was afterwards to achieve some of its greatest triumphs in Tennyson and Browning. But although ballad poetry and Pope's Homer had ever a certain fascination for him, chiefly because of the incidental light it threw on his-

BOOKS AND STUDIES 7^

tory, it was not from the poets, ancient or modern, that he derived the main inspiration of his life. History and political philosophy always had stronger attractions for him. Gibbon and Burke, Mitford, Eussell, and Priestley, Thucydides and Livy, Herodotus and Xenophon, were eagerly read by him at a very early age, and had a larger share than tragedians or poets in the direction of his aims and the formation of his tastes and character. "Every man," says Coleridge, "is born an Aristotelian or a Platonist. The one considers reason a quality or attribute, the other considers it a power." We may well hesitate to accept Coleridge's rough classification of mankind as exhaustive; but in so far as the distinction on which he insists is real, it is well illustrated in Arnold's mind and character. He was Aristotelian, mainly in the sense in which he sought to make all speculative enquiry subservient to the solution of practical problems. To the last he had a peculiar reverence and affection for the "dear old Stagyrite," and when the time came for him to send his sons to the University, he was led to prefer Oxford, because there Aristotle was held in higher esteem and was more likely to be well studied than at the sister University. The parent of science, properly so called, the master of criticism, and in one sense the founder of formal logic, Aristotle was to Arnold something more than all this ; he was the guide to right methods of study, the seer who beheld the larger problems of life, of society, and of polity in their true perspective, and the intrepid and earnest seeker after truth. Mr. Justice

Coleridge, in his interesting reminiscences of Arnold as an undergraduate at Corpus, remarks, " He was so imbued with Aristotle's language and ideas that in earnest and unreserved conversation or in writing, his train of thoughts was so affected by the Ethics and the Rhetoric, that he cited the maxims of the Stagyrite as oracles, and his language was quaintly and easily pointed with phrases from him. I never knew a man who made such familiar, even fond, use of an author; it is scarcely too much to say that he spoke of him as of one intimately and affectionately known and valued." '

For one who was destined many years later to exert so large an influence on the public ^ schools of England, it was a happy and appropriate circumstance that his own early education was obtained at public schools and largely influenced by the traditions of venerable endowments. From the age of eight to nearly twelve, he was at Warminster, one of the minor grammar schools, founded early in the eighteenth century; and thenceforward, until the age of sixteen, he was a scholar at Winchester. There is

1 Stanley's Life and Correspondence.

^ This title, " Public Schools," is one which may easily be misinterpreted by American readers, since in their country it connotes the ordinary common and municipal school, which is accessible to all classes, and in which instruction ot the most elementary character is given. But in England the common use of the name is limited to ten or fifteen schools of the highest rank and the closest relation to the Universities, and for the most part of ancient and historic foundation, — Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Westminster, St. Paul's, Charterhouse, Merchant Taylor's, Rugby, and Shrewsbury being the most famous examples of the " Public School " type.

SCHOOL-BOY LIFE 9

little to be recorded respecting his residence at the former of these schools, except that he always spoke gratefully of the obligations he owed to Dr. Griffiths, the head master. But his residence at Winchester had a far larger share in determining the future development of his tastes and the aims of his life. The oldest, nearly the richest, and in many respects the most illustrious, of the public schools of England, Winchester is specially fortunate, not only in its situation and its surroundings, but in its history and traditions. The memory of William of Wykeham, scholar, architect, bishop, and benefactor, the association of the College with the noble Cathedral, the nave of which he had designed, and with New College, Oxford, also a monument of his genius and his munificence, the long roll of famous pupils, which in the course of more than four centuries has contained the names of Chichele, of Warham, Waynflete, of Ken, and of South among ecclesiastics; of Cole, Grocyn, and Udal among scholars ; and of Sir Thomas Browne, Sir Henry Wotton, Otway, YOung, Collins, and Warton among other notable men in literature or in public life, — all combined to strengthen in him that feeling of reverence for what is ancient and noble, and that pride in a great intellectual inheritance, which form such potent factors in the education of a youth, especially of one filled with ardour and sensibility, and with a desire to do something worthy of his spiritual ancestry. In the massive architecture of the Cathedral, in its solemn mediaeval surroundings, in the neighbouring hospital of

Saint Cross, and in the buildings of the ancient College itself, there was much to kindle the imagination of one who loved history ; and in the. fair and pleasant country round, watered by the Itchen, and beautified by shady elms, there was room for delightful rambles, scope for boyish enterprise, and much to encourage that love of nature which afterwards showed itself to be one of his healthiest characteristics, and which exercised a purifying influence on the whole of his life. To the last he was a loyal Wykehamist, proud of his association with Winchester, grateful to the memory of Goddard and Gabell, who had been head masters during his stay, and steadfastly attached to the friends whom he had made while at school.

No estimate of the intellectual and moral equipment with which he embarked on the voyage of active life would be complete if it did not take into account the deep seriousness of his character, his strong interest in religious questions, and his high sense of duty and of human responsibility. Sir John Coleridge's letter, already quoted, contains a striking record of the impression he made on that acute observer and sympathetic friend, when he was an undergraduate at Corpus, and afterwards Fellow of Oriel.

"His was an anxiously inquisitive mind, a scrupulously conscientious heart : his enquiries previously to his taking orders led him on to distressing doubts on certain points in the Articles ; these were not low nor rationahstic in their tendency according to the bad sense of that term, there

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 11

was no indisposition in him to believe merely because the Article transcended his reason : he doubted the proof and the interpretation of the textual authority. His state was very painful, and I think morbid, for I remarked that the two occasions on which I was privy to the distress were precisely those in which to doubt was against his dearest schemes of worldly happiness ; and the consciousness of this seemed to make him distrustful of the arguments which were intended to lead his mind to acquiescence."

A friend to whose counsel he had recourse at this crisis, and who had advised him to pause in his enquiries, to seek earnestly for further help and light from above, and meanwhile to turn himself more strongly than ever to the practical duties of life, wrote of him in 1819 :

"It is a defect of A.'s mind that he cannot get rid of a certain feeling of objections, and particularly when, as he fancies the bias is so strong upon him to decide one way from interest : he scruples doing what I advise him, which is to put down the objections by main force whenever they arise in his mind ; fearful that in so doing, he shall be violating his conscience for a maint«nance sake."

It may well be doubted whether the latter part of this friendly prescription was the best calculated to heal the hurt of a sensitive conscience. But the advice to busy himself in practical work proved very helpful. Little by little, though after severe trials,

" He fought his doubts and gathered strength, He would not make his judgment blind ; He faced the spectres of the mind — And laid them : thus he came at length

" To find a stronger faith his own,

And power was with him in the night Which makes the darkness and the light And dwells not in the light alone." ^

Though doubt was characteristic of him, and was from the nature of his mental constitution inevitable, he could not, like Montaigne, " se reposer tranquillement sur I'oreiller du doute." His mind was averse from suspense, and after much effort he laid hold firmly on the central truths of the Christian revelation, a hold never abandoned or relaxed. Perhaps in arriving at this result he was helped most by Hooker and Butler, whom to the last he held in higher estimation than any other of the English divines, even than Jeremy Taylor, whose genius, no less than his devout aspirations after holiness, he greatly admired. He certainly owed little to Paley's evidences, or any of the colder evidential theology of the eighteenth century. Very sadly, he said in late life in reference to his youthful studies : ^ " There appears to me in the English divines a want of believing or of disbelieving anything, because it is true or false. It is a question which does not seem to occur to them." This sentence is characteristic of the impatience with which he always treated what seemed to him insincere or half-hearted attempts to defend the Christian faith. His passionate desire to see clearly into the truth of things, and to brush away all hindrances and prejudices by which counsel might

1 In Memoriam. 2 Stanley, Letter CLII.

HIS INTBLLECTCrAL OUTFIT 13

be darkened, alarmed the more timid and orthodox of his companions, but nevertheless led some of them to admit that one had better have Arnold's doubts than most men's certainties.

Thus the environment of his early years and the mental and spiritual outfit with ■which he entered upon the duties of his life were in many ways happily adapted to the part he was destined to play in the world. Without fortune, but with all the comforts and shelter of a godly home, he was free from any temptation to idleness or extravagance, and conscious from the first that his future was to be assured only by his own strenuous effort. Without patronage or the help of infiuential friends, he was euabled to breathe the atmosphere of a renowned public school, and to make valuable friendships there. With tastes especially directed towards history and language, and to ethical and political problems, his studies were precisely such as had the closest relation to a profession in which the formation of character is of no less importance than the communication of knowledge. And the fact that his religious convictions had been reached after dearly bought spiritual experience, helped all through life to place him in sympathy with young and earnest enquirers, to make him understand their difficulties and to qualify him for the office of a teacher and a guide. To be fortunate in the circumstances and in the discipline of early life is the lot of many men. But it is the lot of comparatively few to find in later days such singular opportunities as Arnold enjoyed of turning this discipline to useful account, or to be so strongly and so early penetrated with a sense of the obligation which the possession of privileges entails.

Chapter II

Kesidence at Oxford — Arnold's friends and associates — Marriage and settlement at Laleham — Life as a private tutor — Studies and literary work — Aims and aspirations — Appointment to Rugby

The period of Arnold's residence at Oxford — 1811-1820 — was one of great intellectual activity and even of unrest. It was indeed anterior to the time of Eoyal Commissions and of schemes for academic reorganization, for the revival of the professoriate, or for the introduction of new systems of graduation and examination. The importunate claims of the physical sciences for fuller recognition, either in the teaching or the examinations of the Universities, had not yet been urged, and had they been put forth at the time would have met with scant sympathy, either from the most influential leaders of thought in academic circles, or from Arnold himself. He had been elected scholar at Corpus Christi College on his admission to the University; but after taking his degree in the first class in 1814, he became a Fellow of Oriel, and it was in this college that his chief academic friendships were formed. Dean Boyle, in his Reminiscences, says, "Many years ago Matthew Arnold said to me that he had been very much struck, in reading again Stanley's life of his father, with the high-minded religious tone of the Corpus set, as 15 they were called, and the great interest shown by them in literature."^ Whateley, Copleston, Davison, Keble, Hawkins, and Hampden were among the Fellows of Oriel. Arnold obtained the Chancellor's prize for two University essays, Latin and English, but failed to obtain the prize for verse. "What are now called educational problems did not possess very great interest in such a society. The principles of political and theological science, and their application to the social problems and the moral needs of the people, were, it would seem, the dominant subjects of thought and discussion in the common room at Oriel. Many of the residents were, as Sir John Coleridge said :

" For the most part Tories in Church and State, great respecters of things as they were, and not very tolerant of the disposition which Arnold brought with him to question their wisdom. Many and long were the conflicts we had and with unequal numbers. There can be little doubt that his father pugnacious Radicalism and his hatred of the corrupt French Aristocracy often betrayed him into intemperate speech, and placed him out of sympathy with many of his associates, but as he afterwards said, ' All the associations of Oxford, which I loved exceedingly, blew my Jacobinism to pieces.' "