Colet on the duty of self-sacrifice.
‘Thou must know that thou hast nothing that good is of thyself, but of God. For the gift of nature and all other temporal gifts of this world ... well considered have come to thee by the infinite goodness and grace of God, and not of thyself.... But in especial is it necessary for thee to know that God of his great grace has made thee his image, having regard to thy memory, understanding, and free will, and that God is thy maker, and thou his wretched creature, and that thou art redeemed of God by the passion of Jesus Christ, and that God is thy helper, thy refuge, and thy deliverance from all evil.... And, therefore, think, and thank God, and utterly despise thyself, ... in that God hath done so much for thee, and thou hast so often offended his highness, and also done Him so little service. And therefore, by his infinite mercy and grace, call unto thy remembrance the degree of dignity which Almighty God hath called thee unto, and according thereunto yield thy debt, and do thy duty.’
Colet was not the man to preach one thing and practise another. No sooner had he been appointed to the deanery of St. Paul’s, than he had at once resigned the rich living of Stepney,[367] the residence of his father, and now of his widowed mother. And no sooner had his father’s fortune come into his hands, than he earnestly considered how most effectually to devote it to the cause in which he had laboured so unceasingly at Oxford and St. Paul’s.
Colet founds St. Paul’s School.
Colet’s object in founding it.
After mature deliberation he resolved, whilst living and in health, to devote his patrimony[368] to the foundation of a school in St. Paul’s Churchyard, wherein 153 children,[369] without any restriction as to nation or country, who could already read and write, and were of ‘good parts and capacities,’ should receive a sound Christian education. The ‘Latin adulterate, which ignorant blind fools brought into this world,’ poisoning thereby ‘the old Latin speech, and the very Roman tongue used in the time of Tully and Sallust, and Virgil and Terence, and learned by St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine,’—all that ‘abusion which the later blind world brought in, and which may rather be called Blotterature than Literature,’—should be ‘utterly abanished and excluded’ out of this school. The children should be taught good literature, both Latin and Greek, ‘such authors that have with wisdom joined pure chaste eloquence’—‘specially Christian authors who wrote their wisdom in clean and chaste Latin, whether in prose or verse; for,’ said Colet, ‘my intent is by this school specially to increase knowledge, and worshipping of God and Our Lord Jesus Christ, and good Christian life and manners in the children.’[370]
And, as if to keep this end always prominently in view, he placed an image of the ‘Child Jesus,’ to whom the school was dedicated, standing over the master’s chair in the attitude of teaching, with the motto, ‘Hear ye him;’[371] and upon the front of the building, next to the cathedral, the following inscription:—‘Schola catechizationis puerorum in Christi Opt. Max. fide et bonis Literis. Anno Christi MDX.’[372]
The building consisted of one large room, divided into an upper and lower school by a curtain, which could be drawn at pleasure; and the charge of the two schools devolved upon a high-master and a sub-master respectively.
Salaries of the masters.
Cost of Colet’s school.
The forms were arranged so as each to seat sixteen boys, and were provided each with a raised desk, at which the head boy sat as president. The building also embraced an entrance-porch and a little chapel for divine service. Dwelling-houses were erected, adjoining the school, for the residence of the two masters; and for their support Colet obtained, in the spring of 1510, a royal license to transfer to the Wardens and Guild of Mercers in London, real property to the value of 53l. per annum[373] (equivalent to at least 530l. of present money). Of this the headmaster was to receive as his salary 35l. (say 350l.) and the under-master 18l. (say 180l.) per annum. Three or four years after, Colet made provision for a chaplain to conduct divine service in the chapel, and to instruct the children in the Catechism, the Articles of the faith, and the Ten Commandments—in English; and ultimately, before his death, he appears to have increased the amount of the whole endowment to 122l. (say 1,200l.) per annum. So that it may be considered, roughly, that the whole endowment, including the buildings, cannot have represented a less sum than 30,000l. or 40,000l. of present money.[374]
And if Colet thus sacrificed so much of his private fortune to secure a liberal (and it must be conceded his was a liberal) provision for the remuneration of the masters who should educate his 153 boys, he must surely have had deeply at heart the welfare of the boys themselves. And, in truth, it was so. Colet was like a father to his schoolboys. It has indeed been assumed that a story related by Erasmus, to exhibit the low state of education and the cruel severity exercised in the common run of schools, was intended by him to describe the severe discipline maintained by Colet and his masters; but I submit that this is a pure assumption, without the least shadow of proof, and contrary to every kind of probability. The story itself is dark enough truly, and, in order that Colet’s name may be cleared once for all from its odium, may as well be given to the reader as it is found in Erasmus’s work ‘On the Liberal Education of Boys.’