As for those who lack the skill to judge rightly, though they may be sharp censors and ready to talk loudly, I must crave their pardon if I do not bow to their censure, which I cannot accept as a true judgment. Yet I am content to bear with such fellows, and pardon them their errors in regard to myself, as I trust that those who can judge will in their courtesy pardon me my own errors. Those who cannot judge rightly for want of knowledge, but will not betray their weakness by judging wrongly, if they desire to learn in any case of doubt, have the learned to give them counsel. The profit is theirs, if they are willing to take it, but if not, they shall not deter me from writing, and I shall hope at length by deserving well to win their favour, or at least their silence. In conclusion as to the manner of writing and use of words in English, this is my opinion, that he who will justify himself may find many arguments, some closely related to the particular subject that may be in question, others more general but likely to be serviceable, and if in his practice he hath due regard to clear and appropriate expression, then even though one or two things should seem strange to those who judge, the writer is free from blame. As for invention in matter and eloquence in style, the learned know well in what writers they are to be found, and those who are not scholars must learn to think of such things before they presume to judge, lest by failing to measure the writer’s level, they should have no just standard to apply. As for the matter itself which is to be treated by any learned method, as I have already said, familiarity will make it easy, though it seem hard, just as it will make the manner of expression easy, though it seem strange, if the thing really deserves to be studied, which will not appear until some progress is made. And a little hardness, even in the most obscure philosophical discussions, will never seem tedious to an enquiring mind, such as he must have who either seeks to learn himself, or desires to see his native tongue enriched and made the instrument of all his knowledge, as well as of his ordinary needs.
But I have been too tedious, my good readers, yet perhaps not so, since no haste is enjoined, and you may read at leisure. I have now to request you, as I mentioned at first, to grant me your friendly construction, and the favour due to a fellow-countryman. The reverence towards learning which leads the good student to embrace her in his youth, and advances him to honour by her preference in later years, will plead for me with the learned in general, in my endeavour to assert the rights of her by whose authority alone they are themselves of any account. Among my fellow-teachers I may hope that community of interest will help me more with the courteous and learned than a foolish feeling of rivalry will harm me with ignorant and spiteful detractors. Regard for my own profession, and this hope of support from learned teachers, move me to lay stress upon one special point, which in duty must affect them no less than me, namely, the need for careful thought in improving our schools. I say nothing here of the conscientious and religious motives that influence us, nor of the need for personal maintenance that demands our labour. But I would acknowledge the special munificence of our princes and parliaments towards our whole order in our country’s behalf, partly in suffering us to enjoy old immunities, partly in granting us divers other exemptions from personal services and ordinary payments to which our fellow-subjects are liable. These favours deserve at our hands an honourable remembrance, and bind us further to discharge the trust committed to us. I doubt not that this feeling which moves me strongly, moves also many of my profession, whose friendship I crave for favourable construction, and whose conference I desire for help in experience, as I shall be glad in the common cause either to persuade or be persuaded. Of those that are not learned I beg friendship also, and chiefly as a matter of right, because I labour for them, and my goodwill deserves no unthankfulness. God bless us all to the advancement of His glory, the honour of our country, the furtherance of good learning, and the well-being of all ranks, prince and people alike!
CRITICAL ESTIMATE.
[CRITICAL ESTIMATE.]
If the saying of Plato may be applied to another sphere, not very far removed from civil government, we may believe that education will never be rightly practised until either teachers become philosophers, or philosophers become teachers. It is certainly remarkable how seldom in the history of educational progress there has arisen any writer whose authority was based alike on the power of the abstract thinker to rise above the conditions of the immediate present into the atmosphere of pure reason, and on the instinct of the professional worker, whose conceptions of what is possible have been chastened by direct experience of the actual. Of the five classical English writers who have made any noteworthy contribution to educational thought, all but one have failed to gain a lasting influence, through the limitation in their outlook caused by deficient practical knowledge. Ascham’s experience was too exclusively academic and courtly to suggest much to him beyond questions of method in the advanced teaching of Latin and Greek. Milton’s vision, restricted by his short and partial attempt at instructing a few selected boys, narrowed itself to one school period of one rank of society of one sex, and his genius could not save him from wild extravagance in his ideas of the acquirements possible for the average scholar. The suggestions of Locke, while in one aspect they were more comprehensive, are yet essentially those of a theorist, who had never faced the difficulty that the upbringing of a child by a private tutor is possible only to the merest fraction of any population. Herbert Spencer, as the heir of previous centuries, has naturally been able to command a wider view, but even those who have gained most from his book, must have felt that owing to his highly generalised mode of treatment he has at many points failed to grapple with the problems that chiefly beset the professional teacher. A little experience, like a little knowledge, is a dangerous thing, and it may be that those writers, all of whom claim to have made trial of the actual work of education, would have been more convincing if they had written from an avowedly detached standpoint. Richard Mulcaster alone holds the vantage-ground of being at once a thinker and a practical expert in matters of education. Nor does this mean only that his right to speak with authority will for that reason be more readily admitted; the evidence of his fuller equipment for the task may be seen through the whole texture of his writings. He had not Ascham’s ease in expression and charm of manner, nor Milton’s commanding intellect and power of utterance, nor the fearlessness and philosophic grasp of Locke, nor the encyclopædic knowledge and acumen of Herbert Spencer, but he had beyond them all two essential gifts that will in the end give him a unique place in the history of our educational development—a clear insight into the realities of human nature, and an enlightened perception of the conditions that determine the culture of mind and soul.
To those who know little or nothing of Mulcaster such a claim will seem extravagant, and it will naturally be doubted whether any writer who deserves to be put upon so high a pedestal, could possibly have remained so long in neglect. It may be rejoined that in a subject like education many factors have a part in the making of reputations. It is no mere coincidence that the authors named above, whose views on education are so much more widely-known than those of Mulcaster, all gained their chief fame in some other sphere of thought; we read what they have to say on this subject because it comes from writers who have caught the world’s ear in some field of more general interest. This advantage is naturally to be associated with gifts of expression such as Mulcaster unfortunately possessed only in a very limited degree, though his deficiency is due much more to the rudimentary condition of English prose in general in the sixteenth century, than to any lack of clear thinking on his own part. It is true, indeed, that no fine sense of harmony in sound can be credited to a writer who perpetrates such a sentence as—“I say no more, where it is too much to say even so much in a sore of too much.” But even if Mulcaster had spoken with the tongue of an angel, he would probably have remained a voice crying in the wilderness, for the time was not yet come. The ultimate value of Rousseau’s message to the world in the realm of education was far less, but his unique powers of persuasive eloquence, the fame he had achieved in other ways, and the ripeness of the time, combined to give the later writer an extraordinary influence. When Mulcaster’s judgments and suggestions are studied from the vantage-ground of the present, and in a form that divests them of adventitious difficulties of understanding, they will be recognised as giving him a place of high importance, not only in the chain of historical succession, but in the final hierarchy of educational reformers.