THOMAS ARNOLD.
THOMAS ARNOLD.
Dr. Thomas Arnold of Rugby, "England's greatest schoolmaster," was born at West Cowes, Isle of Wight, June 13, 1795. He was the youngest son and seventh child of William and Martha Arnold. His father died before he was six years old. His early education was intrusted to his mother's sister, Mrs. Delafield; and later, at the age of twelve, he was sent to Winchester.
This aunt he never forgot. When she was seventy-seven he wrote to her, "This is your birthday, on which I have thought of you, and loved you, for as many years past as I can remember. No tenth of September will ever pass without my thinking of you and loving you."
The shy, retiring boy was early fond of books. When he was three, he received a present from his father of Smollett's "History of England," "as a reward," says Dean Stanley, in his life of Arnold, "for the accuracy with which he had gone through the stories connected with the portraits and pictures of the successive reigns; and at the same age he used to sit at his aunt's table arranging his geographical cards, and recognizing by their shape at a glance the different counties of the dissected map of England."
His first childish literary work was at the age of seven,—a play, on "Piercy, Earl of Northumberland." Between eight and twelve, when at school at Warminster, he rejoiced in Homer. A schoolmate writes: "Arnold's delight was in preparing for some part of the Siege of Troy; with a stick in his right hand, and the cover of a tin box, or any flat piece of wood, tied upon his left arm, he would come forth to the battle, and from Pope's Homer would pour forth fluently the challenge or the reproach.... Every book he had was easily recognized as his property by helmet and shields, and Hectors and Achilleses, on all the blank leaves; many of mine had some token of his graphic love of those heroes."