The statutes regarding recreation were drawn up with Puritanic rigorism. Old traditions on this head met with small indulgence at the hands of the reforming founder, and hardening his heart to all the infirmities of the schoolboy nature, he strictly forbade Shrovetide cock-fighting and the disputations of St. Bartholomew’s day, which he denounced as “idle babbling.” The abolition of cock-fighting was beyond all praise, but I grieve to add that there were absolutely no play days. Nay, so rigid was this rule, that the master was to forfeit forty shillings every time he broke it, unless at the request of an archbishop, bishop, or king. But, strange to say, there was a special provision for the due celebration of Childermas day, when they were all to repair to St. Paul’s church, hear the child-bishop’s sermon, assist at the High Mass, and offer his lordship a penny. The studies were to consist of good Greek and Latin authors, especially Christian ones, “for my intent is,” writes the founder, “by this scole specially to increase the knowledge and worshipping of God and our Lord Jesus Christ, and good Christian life and manners in the children.” But whilst giving this preference to Christian over Pagan authors he requires “the verrye Romayne eloquence” to be taught, and warming at the bare notion of Scholastic barbarism ever invading his seminary, “will utterly have banished and excluded all such abusion as the later blind world hath brought in, which is rather to be called bloterature than literature.”
Colet had no difficulty in finding a master fully qualified to undertake the direction of this academy. William Lily, the god-son and pupil of Grocyn, and the fellow-student of More, the very ideal of a humble, devout, and unworldly scholar, who had never yet thought of making his learning a way to fortune, but was still plodding on as a poor London pedagogue, was at once promoted to the mastership of St. Paul’s, with John Rightwyse for his usher. The next step was to draw up a little book for the use of his scholars containing the rudiments of grammar, and an abridgment of Christian doctrine; and this little book, commonly called Paul’s Accidence, was dedicated by Colet to Lily. Herein we find the creed in Latin and English, the seven sacraments, brief explanations of the love of God, and our duty to ourselves and our neighbours, including precepts for the observance of appointed fasts and holy days, and some rules of holy living, with a beautiful Latin prayer to “the Child Jesus, Master of this school,” and two others for daily use, one for parents, and another for the virtue of docility.
In his preface to his “Rudiments,” Colet apologises for writing on a subject whereon so many had written before him, but explains his purpose to have been the putting things in a clear order for the use of young wits, out of compassion to the tenderness and small capacity of little minds. “I pray God,” he continues, “that all may be to His honour and the erudition of children. Wherefore I pray you all, lytel babes, learn gladly this lytel treatise, and commende it dyligently unto your memorye, trusting that ye shall proceed and growe to perfyte literature, and come to be grete clerkes. And lyfte up your lytel whyte hands for me also, which prayeth for you to God.”
Wolsey reprinted this little manual for the use of his Ipswich scholars, recommending it to the masters in an epistle from his own pen. In 1513 the indefatigable founder resolved on providing his boys with something more complete. Grammars, indeed, there were in plenty; there was the old Donatus, and the more modern “Lac puerorum” of good Master Holte,[345] and a host of others whose quaint names and flimsy contents have been whimsically criticised by Erasmus. But they did not satisfy the requirements of Colet, and he accordingly composed his treatise on the Eight Parts of Speech, which, with some alterations and considerable additions, forms the syntax of the grammar which afterwards bore the name of Lily’s grammar. After Lily had revised and corrected the manuscript, Colet put it into the hands of Erasmus, who made so many alterations, that neither of them could in justice call the work his own, and in 1515 it was published, with an epistle from Erasmus. After its publication Lily drew up the rules, known as the Propria quæ maribus, and As in præsenti, his usher Rightwyse adding some finishing touches. About the same time Linacre was engaged on a somewhat similar work, but his “Compendium of Grammar,” originally drawn up for the use of the Princess Mary, was judged by Colet rather too abstruse for the comprehension of beginners, and he did not, therefore, admit it into his school. This seems to have been resented by the sensitive grammarian, and Erasmus had to interpose to restore a good understanding between him and the dean.
Lily proved an excellent master, and among his first pupils were the famous antiquary Leland and Thomas Lupset, son to Colet’s amanuensis, who was afterwards admitted to close intimacy by More and Reginald Pole. One fault, however, appeared in the management of the school, too common at that time, namely, the excessive severity of the discipline. This is perhaps to be charged partly to the account of Colet, whose views were as austere in what regarded the education of children, as they were in the direction of souls; and partly to the influence of Rightwyse, who was a scholar of Eton, and brought with him thence maxims of school government, which were exceedingly harsh, not to say cruel. In fact, since education had passed from the hands of the monastics into those of professional pedagogues, the paternal spirit which formerly presided over the Catholic schoolroom had been gradually fading away. It seemed agreed by all that the Greek grammar, and the “verrye Romayne eloquence,” could not be attained without an unsparing use of the rod; for we find the same complaint of cruelty made of the French professors of the time. In England this unmerciful system kept its ground throughout the whole of the Tudor period, and we find Sir John Elyot advising his “governor” to provoke a child to study with a pleasant face, and deprecating “cruel and yrous masters, by whom the wits of children be dulled, whereof we need no better witness than daily experience.” The Eton fashion was to flog a boy directly he appeared in the school, as a sort of entrance fee, of which old Tusser dolefully complains;[346] and something of this sort of discipline existed at St. Paul’s, and was supported by the approval of Colet.
To the credit of Erasmus, it must be said that he strongly condemned such severity; he knew from his own experience that brutal tutors ruin many a hopeful lad, and advocated the milder system of teaching, which he himself followed with so much success. He was wont to quote the example of Spensippus, who would have pictures of joy and gladness to be set round his school: and in his tract on education, quotes with pleasure the story of an English gentleman, who seeing that his little son was very fond of archery, bought him a bow and arrows, and painted them with the letters of the Greek alphabet. The capitals were marked on the butt, and whenever the child had hit a letter and could tell the name of it, he was rewarded with a cherry.
This was not at all in Colet’s way, and Erasmus tells a frightful story of the cruelty which he himself witnessed—practised under his direction. “I once knew a certain theologian,” he says, “who must needs have masters who were zealous floggers. He esteemed this an excellent means for subduing all asperity of character, and mastering the wantonness of youth. Never did he sit down to a repast with his disciples, but at the end of the meal some one or other of them was brought out to be flogged; and his cruelty was sometimes exercised on the innocent, merely to accustom them to stripes. I was once standing by when he thus called out from dinner a boy of, I should think, ten years old, who had recently come to the school from his mother. He began by saying that his mother was a most pious woman, and had specially recommended the boy to his care, and then that he might have an opportunity of flogging him, he charged him with I know not what atrocity, and made a sign to the prefect of the school to give him a flogging. The latter at once knocked the boy down, and beat him as if he had committed a sacrilege. The doctor called out several times, ‘Enough, enough,’ but the savage went on with his barbarity, till the boy almost swooned. Then turning to us, the doctor quietly observed that he had not merited any punishment, but that it was done to humble his spirit. Who would treat his bondslave in such a way? nay, I may say, who would thus treat his ass?”[347] Though Colet is not named in this passage, yet he is generally believed to have been the “theologian” in question, the prefect of discipline being no other than his usher, Rightwyse.
We gather from Colet’s letters to his friend, that on one point of opinion they greatly differed, namely, in the view they took of religious life. Erasmus, when he speaks of monks, forgets his usual politeness, and descends to a style of which Luther might have been proud. They are designated as “foul and noxious insects, which it is a sort of pollution to touch; creatures so detested and so detestable, that it is regarded as an ill omen to meet one in the street; dolts and idiots, who think it a mark of consummate piety not to be able to read; wretched beings, who are distinguished by a certain obstinate malignity of disposition, and who think that they are charming the ears of the saints when, with asinine voices, they bray out their psalms in choir.” One is ashamed to transcribe such language, and to remember that the greatest scholar of his time considered it to be wit.
But Colet was of another mind. He condemned the relaxed life led in many religious houses; but there was a theory of monasticism which he loved and admired. It was hardly the Catholic theory of religious life, for Colet’s dream seems to have been to have found some retreat where he could have spent the close of life with a few chosen friends of kindred tastes, living and conversing with them after the manner of the ancient philosophers. He even set on foot inquiries, to discover if any house suitable for his purpose existed in Italy or Germany; but finding none to his mind, he built himself a residence adjoining the Carthusian monastery at Shene, whither he often retired, and purposed withdrawing there altogether, and giving up all his public engagements that he might prepare in quiet for his end. In his last letter to Erasmus, we see that his old interests were fast losing their hold upon him as he felt the sands of life running out. His friend had sent him some of Reuchlin’s Cabalistic works. “O Erasmus,” he replies, “of books and knowledge there is no end. There is no better thing in this world than a holy life, and no other way to attain it than by the earnest love and imitation of Jesus. Wherefore, leaving all wandering paths, this, to the best of my ability, is what I long for.” He made all his last dispositions, therefore, bestowing extraordinary care in drawing up his will, in which there occurs no word suggestive of suffrages for his soul; a fact which shows, that if he did not condemn the practice of praying for the dead, he at any rate attached no value to it. Death overtook him sooner than he anticipated, and in the year 1519 he expired at his favourite retreat, almost at the moment when Luther was making his mock submission to the Sovereign Pontiff.
What shall we say of the character of this celebrated man? a strong and earnest one it was, no doubt; one that loved justice and hated iniquity, and had a zeal for the interests of God. Erasmus somewhere speaks of his “passionate admiration for the wonderful majesty of Christ.” Nor in judging him must we forget that he lived in an age when worldliness had infected the high places in the Church; and that, if his denunciation of abuses was often arrogant, there were plenty of abuses to denounce. Yet granting all this, our readers will long ago have agreed on their verdict. From such a type of Catholicism, they will say, in which we see piety without unction, austerity without sweetness, and an absence—if not of faith—at least of all its tenderest instincts; from such a form of godliness, over which the coming spectre of Lutheranism had already projected somewhat of its baneful shadow, may the schools and scholars of England be long preserved! Such characters, if we cannot impeach them of formal heresy, yet indicate a woful wane of faith, and fully explain the significance of those rules[348] left by St. Ignatius to his disciples, wherein he taught them how to conform their sentiments to the sentiments of the Catholic Church. He was not content with bidding them hold fast to her creeds, but would have them esteem and speak highly of all her minor practices of devotion. For these, in the judgment of one of the most sagacious among the saints, are the pulses by which we count the heart-beatings of the true believer; and in Colet these were silent. Though he died a Catholic, therefore, Protestants unanimously claim him as one of their precursors; and his panegyric, from which we gather all that is known of his life, was drawn up by Erasmus for the edification of his Lutheran friend, the notorious Dr. Jonas Jodocus.