It is related of Dr. Clarke that when he reached the middle of 'As in præsenti,' in Lilly's Latin Grammar, he came to a dead stop and could get no further. His fellow-pupils, however, jeered him to such an extent that he determined to go on and conquer the difficulty. And this resolution seems to have helped him considerably, as, instead of the grammar being forced into him, he began to study and think for himself.
Nevertheless, he always found great difficulty in learning anything at school, but was passionately devoted to reading imaginative books and stories of adventure, such as 'Jack the Giant-killer,' 'Arabian Nights,' 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' 'Sir Francis Drake,' and a host of similar works. To these, in fact, and not to his painfully acquired school education, he was wont to attribute the formation of his literary taste.
Disraeli's education was by no means thorough. There is no record of his having distinguished himself academically in the slightest degree. It is related of him, on the contrary, that he was such a duffer at classics as to be incapable of grasping the rule that 'ut' should be followed by the subjunctive mood. The following account of Disraeli's schooldays, given by one of his school-fellows, is quoted by Sir William Fraser:
'I cannot say that Benjamin Disraeli at this period of his life exhibited any unusual zeal for classical studies; and I doubt whether his attainments in this direction, when he left the school for Mr. Cogan's at Walthamstow, reached higher than the usual grind in Livy and Cæsar. But I well remember that he was the compiler and editor of a school newspaper, which made its appearance on Saturdays, when the gingerbread-seller was also to be seen, and that the right of perusal was estimated at the cost of a sheet of gingerbread, the money value of which was in those days the third of a penny.'
Turning to literary men, we find an imposing array of dunces. I have not had time to examine into the school experiences of more than a limited number of great names. If the reader is anxious to pursue the investigation further, he will doubtless find that there is scarcely a famous man of letters who made his mark at school or university.
The first person to teach Oliver Goldsmith his letters was a woman, who afterwards became village schoolmistress, named Elizabeth Delap. She did not form a very flattering opinion of her young pupil. 'Never was so dull a boy,' she was wont to declare; 'he seemed impenetrably stupid.' From this kind but undiscriminating teacher Oliver gravitated to the village school, where he learnt nothing. Thence he was sent to Elphin; and of this period of his school life Dr. Strean says: 'He was considered by his contemporaries and school-fellows, with whom I have often conversed on the subject, as a stupid heavy blockhead, little better than a fool, whom every one made fun of.'
Goldsmith has himself, in his 'Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning,' recorded some very striking impressions as to the value of academic success. 'A lad whose passions are not strong enough in youth,' he writes, 'to mislead him from that path of science which his tutors, and not his inclination, have chalked out, by four or five years' perseverance, probably obtains every advantage and honour his college can bestow. I forget whether the simile has been used before, but I would compare the man whose youth has been thus passed in the tranquillity of dispassionate prudence to liquors that never ferment, and consequently continue always muddy. Passions may raise a commotion in the youthful breast, but they disturb only to refine it. However this be, mean talents are often rewarded in colleges with an easy subsistence.'
Another 'impenetrable dunce,' according to the opinion of his tutor, an eminent Dublin scholar, was Richard Sheridan. He was afterwards sent to Harrow, where he earned for himself a great reputation for idleness. Dr. Parr, one of the under-masters, wrote to Sheridan's biographer the following expression of opinion:
'There was little in his boyhood worth communication. He was inferior to many of his schoolfellows in the ordinary business of a school, and I do not remember any one instance in which he distinguished himself by Latin or English composition, in prose or verse.... He was at the uppermost part of the fifth form, but he never reached the sixth, and, if I mistake not, he had no opportunity of attending the most difficult and the most honourable of school business, when the Greek plays were taught—and it was the custom at Harrow to teach these at least every year. He went through his lessons in Horace and Virgil and Homer well enough for a time. But, in the absence of the upper master, Dr. Sumner, it once fell in my way to instruct the two upper forms, and upon calling up Dick Sheridan, I found him not only slovenly in construing, but unusually defective in his Greek grammar.... I ought to have told you that Richard, when a boy, was a great reader of English poetry; but his exercises afforded no proof of his proficiency.'
The latter statement speaks volumes for a method of teaching which failed to evoke, even in such a master of English literature as Sheridan eventually proved himself to be, a proper development of his greatest talent. No doubt the exercises in which so little proficiency was shown were compulsorily executed against the grain, being of such a pedantic character that no sane schoolboy could possibly be found to evince the smallest interest in them.