The reader may advantageously be spared my boyish impressions of the Great Exhibition and the other sights of London. Of course we fatigued our brains, as country people always do, by seeing too many things in a limited time; and as we had no special purpose in view, we got, I fear, very little instruction from our wanderings amidst the bewildering products of human industry. I remember being profoundly impressed by Westminster Abbey, though I would gladly have seen all the modern monuments calcined in a lime-kiln; and Westminster Hall affected me even more, possibly because one of our ancestors, Sir Stephen Hamerton, had been condemned to death there for high treason in the time of Henry VIII. I was also deeply impressed by the grim, old Tower of London, and only regretted that I did not know which cell the unlucky Sir Stephen had occupied during his hopeless imprisonment there.
The rooms of the Royal Academy left a more durable recollection than the contents of the great building in Hyde Park. Those are quite old times for us now in the history of English art. Sir Frederick Leighton was a young student who had not yet begun to exhibit; I think he was working in Frankfort then. Millais was already known as the painter of strange and vivid pictures of small size, which attracted attention, and put the public into a state of much embarrassment. There were three of these strange pictures that year,—an illustration of Tennyson, "She only said, 'My life is dreary,'" the "Return of the Dove to the Ark," and the "Woodman's Daughter." I distinctly remember the exact sensation with which my young eyes saw these works; so distinctly that I now positively feel those early sensations over again in thinking about them. All was so fresh, so new! This modern art was such a novelty to one who had not seen many modern pictures, and my own powers of enjoying art were so entirely unspoiled by the effect of habit that I was like a young bird in its first spring-time in the woods. I much preferred the beautiful bright pictures in the Academy, with their greens and blues like Nature, to the snuffy old canvases (as they seemed to me) in the National Gallery.
The oddest result for a boy's first visit to London was a quiet mental resolution of which I said nothing to anybody. What I thought and resolved inwardly may be accurately expressed in these words: "Every Englishman who can afford it ought to see London once, as a patriotic duty, and I am not sorry to have been there to have got the duty performed; but no power on earth shall ever induce me to go to that supremely disagreeable place again!"
Of course the intelligent reader considers this boyish resolution impossible and absurd, as it is entirely contrary to prevalent ideas; but a man may lead a very complete life in Lancashire, and even in counties less rich in various interest, without ever going to London at all. A man's own fields may afford him as good exercise as Hyde Park, and his well-chosen little library as good reading as the British Museum. It was the Fine Arts that brought me to London afterwards; the worst of the Fine Arts being that they concentrate themselves so much in great capitals.
CHAPTER XV.
1851-1852.
The love of reading a hindrance to classical studies.—Dr. Butler becomes anxious about my success at Oxford.—An insuperable obstacle.—My indifference to degrees.—Irksome hypocrisy.—I am nearly sent to a tutor at Brighton.—I go to a tutor in Yorkshire.—His disagreeable disposition.—Incident about riding.—Disastrous effect of my tutor's intellectual influence upon me.—My private reading.—My tutor's ignorance of modern authors.—His ignorance of the fine arts.—His religious intolerance.—I declare my inability to sign the Thirty-nine Articles.
The various mental activities hinted at in the preceding chapters had naturally a retarding effect upon my classical studies, which I had never greatly taken to. It seemed then, and it seems to me still, that for one who does not intend to make a living by teaching them, the dead languages, like all other pursuits, are only worth a limited amount of labor. It may appear paradoxical at first, but it is true, that one reason why I did not like Latin and Greek was because I was extremely fond of reading. The case is this: If you are fond of reading and have an evening at your disposal, you will wish to read, will you not? But construing is not reading; it is quite a different mental operation. When you read you think of the scenes and events the author narrates, or you follow his reasoning; but when you construe you think of cases and tenses, and remember grammatical rules. I could read English and French, but Latin and Greek were only to be construed à coups de dictionnaire.
The case may be illustrated by reference to an amusement. A man who is indifferent to rowing cares very little what sort of boat he is in, and toils contentedly as peasants do in their heavy boots, but a lover of rowing wants a craft that he can move. This desire is quite independent of the merits of the craft itself, considered without reference to the man. A sailing yacht may he a beautiful vessel, but an Oxford oarsman would not desire to pull one of her cumbersome sweeps.
I was at that time a private pupil of Dr. Butler's, and was getting on at such a very moderate pace that he began to be anxious about his responsibility. My guardian and he had decided together that I was to be sent to Oxford, and it was even settled to which college, Balliol; and my dear guardian expected me to come out in honors, and be a Fellow of my college and a clergyman. That was her plan; and a very good scheme of life it was, but it had one defect, that of being entirely inapplicable to the human being for whom it was intended. I looked forward to Oxford with anything but pleasure, and, indeed, considered that there was an insuperable obstacle to my going there. In those days most of the good things in life were kept as much as possible for members of the Church of England, and it was necessary to sign the Thirty-nine Articles on entering the University. This I could not do conscientiously, and would not do against the grain of my conviction. I looked upon this obstacle as insuperable; but if I had been as indifferent on such questions as young men generally are, there would still have remained a difficulty in my own nature, which is a rooted dislike to everything which is done for social advancement. I might possibly have desired to be a scholar, but cannot imagine myself desiring a degree. However, I might have taken the trouble to get a degree, simply to please my guardian, if there had not been that obstacle about the Thirty-nine Articles.