A year later, his Journal shows that he began a new study. He had become by this time an accomplished draughtsman, and he thought perhaps to turn his powers to good account. “I this day,” he writes, “began to study Architecture. I can hardly say as yet how I shall like it. I am rather afraid that there is too much to be remembered for me, as I have but a poor memory.” He learnt enough of the Art to enable him, a few years later on, to be the sole architect of his new school-house.
His mind would at this time have puzzled an examiner—his knowledge and his ignorance were so strangely mixed. “One cause,” he said, “of our backwardness in school learning no doubt was that my father, who was proud of us, never informed us of our great deficiencies. Perhaps he was not aware of them, for though very backward we were, I think, in advance of our schoolfellows, who in those early days were drawn almost exclusively from the lower grade of the middle class.” In a passage that I have already quoted, Rowland Hill stated that he owed much in many ways to Mr. Beasley. He it was who first let him know how much there is to learn. He was, indeed, both in parts and in knowledge, far below his brother schoolmaster, Thomas Hill; yet in many ways he was a better teacher. He formed a high opinion of the lad, and as he grew older, used to be fond of talking of “my young friend Rowland Hill,” and of the great things he was to do. He would often take him to the small inn at Hagley, and give him tea. There he would at times hold forth in praise of his powers to the admiration of the small company. When the first Arctic expedition was on the point of starting, he one day said to them, in all gravity, “If the Government really wants to succeed, they will send my young friend Rowland Hill.” At this time his young friend certainly was no longer a boy. As the old man told this story of his early days, he laughed very heartily. Indeed, he had been just as much amused, he said, when he first heard himself thus praised. Nevertheless, extravagant though his good friend’s estimate of him had always been, yet it had done him good, as it had roused his ambition, and had not satisfied and soothed his vanity.
This worthy man, after a life of no small benevolence and usefulness, unhappily went out of his mind. A very harmless vanity that grew upon him was the first sign he gave that his reason was failing. In one of his letters to Rowland Hill, which chance has preserved, he says, “No book need be written in these times, unless it be of an original kind, and very perfect in its construction. But now my vanity urges me to say that my books are of the original character. Who ever published a Dictation Book before me?” The next sign that he gave of his eccentricity—and a very strong sign it was in those days—was leaving off shaving. The following story I tell as his “young friend” told it me. “One morning Mr. Beasley’s son came in late for breakfast. The father, who was very formal in his talk, said to him, ‘Well, Mr. Thomas, what piece of utility have you done this morning? I have wheeled three barrows of muck from the pig-yard into the field.’ His son replied, ‘I, Sir, have shaved my chin this morning, and that’s the utility I have performed.’ His father slowly rose, and stumping out of the room (he was a fat man) exclaimed, ‘What! violate the laws of God and man, and call that utility!” However, as has been shown, he had rendered his young friend one great service, which by him was never forgotten.
Still more did Rowland Hill learn how little he had already learnt, when his eldest brother and he began to give lessons in a neighbouring school. “We went,” he said, “to teach mensuration and the lower branches of mathematics. I went as my brother Matthew’s assistant. The boys were immoral, and, so far as conduct went, were very far behind our boys. But Matthew soon became aware that in instruction, especially in Latin, they were far in advance of ours. This led him to investigate the causes of this superiority. He at once began to take into his own hands the teaching of Latin in our own school.” The two lads had to go a distance of five miles to give these lessons, and Matthew at this time was not strong enough to stand the double walk.
“For the first time in our household history, a horse had to be bought. We had hitherto never dreamt of travelling by any other means than the feet. My father and I undertook the purchase. We had been informed that a certain butcher had a horse on sale. We went to his house, looked as wise as we could, and being informed that the price was twelve pounds, ventured, with some trepidation, to bid eleven. This was refused: the butcher declaring that he did not at all want to part with his horse, and that ‘his missis’ had been scolding him for thinking of such a thing. My father was no more fitted for bargain-making than was the Vicar of Wakefield, and we agreed to pay the full sum. The butcher clinched the matter, as soon as the terms were settled, by taking down a leg of mutton and offering to give it us if we would release him from his bargain. With this offer we were of course too cunning to close. I need not add that the beast was a sorry jade. When it made its first appearance at Mr. ——’s school, the pupils tauntingly inquired which cost most, the horse or the saddle, which was new. I used to ride behind my brother till we were near the house, when I got down and walked. In the end we resold the horse in the horse-fair for five pounds.”
Most of all was Rowland Hill indebted for that first of all knowledge, the knowledge of self, to an eminent physician, Dr. Johnstone, who had engaged him to give lessons to his sons. It was at his table, he said, that it was first brought home to him with full force how little he as yet knew. “I heard matters talked of which I could not in the least understand. This discovery of my ignorance was at first very painful to me, and set me to work very hard—too hard, in fact, for my health.” He thus touchingly describes in his Journal his state of mind. He was twenty-four years old when he made this entry:—
“There is one regret that will force itself upon my mind whenever I am led to contemplate the effects of the improvements which have from time to time been made in the proceedings of the school. I cannot help examining my own education, and contrasting what it unfortunately is with what it might have been had I been placed under the influence of such a system. Except my own, I am unacquainted with any language, whereas my youngest brother Howard, who has been educated, I may almost say, by myself—for it has been almost entirely according to my own plans—is familiar with Latin and French, and has made considerable progress in Greek, and this without neglecting anything else. When I left school—that is, when I became a teacher—I had for about two years held undisputed the first place in the school. It is fair, then, to suppose that I should occupy the same place under any system of procedure—that if I were a boy in the school at this moment, I should be at the head of the school. Compare, then, the acquirements of the boy who now stands in the first place in the school, with mine at his age, and oh, what a difference will be found! When I left school I was a proficient in no single thing. I could not write fit to be seen; I understood but very little of arithmetic; and was not master even of the paltry art of spelling. Of the classics and of the higher branches of the mathematics I was altogether ignorant. I believe drawing was the only thing I understood even tolerably. Every attainment I am now master of—and, God knows, they are but few!—I have acquired since I became a teacher, and for the most part by myself. Fortunately I have, in a tolerably high degree, the faculty of invention (and here I ought to consider that this may be in a great measure the effect of education, and if I have acquired this only, much has been done for me). Many a time have I given lessons, both at home and abroad, on subjects which I began to study with my pupils. Frequently have I solved a problem of which I never had heard till asked by my pupil to explain it to him. I remember well that the first time I ever saw the inside of a work on mensuration was when asked by a young gentleman at a school where I assisted Matthew in giving lessons, to explain to him one of the most difficult problems in the book: it is to find the area of a zone—a problem which involves many minor ones. Many of these I had before invented for myself, ignorant of the existence of any work on the subject. I was able to give the young man the assistance he required, and with so little hesitation that I believe he did not suspect my ignorance.
“Circumstances similar to this have forced me into an acquaintance with many subjects, and I may truly say that almost all I know has been acquired in teaching others. For from the circumstance of my having, till within the last few years, found among those with whom I associated, few who were my equals, and scarcely any who were my superiors, I thought that, except my father and one or two other individuals, there were none whose acquirements would entitle them to a rank higher than my own. I was, therefore, satisfied with the progress I had made. But what was my disappointment when the increasing character of the school and other circumstances opened my way into a class of society among whom I found it was taken for granted that a man should be acquainted with Latin, and Greek, and French—languages of which I was profoundly ignorant, and the knowledge of which I foolishly thought was confined to a few. No one knows the pain which I have frequently felt when, in a company where I was but slightly known, the conversation has turned upon literary subjects, lest it should be discovered that I was unacquainted with that which no one seemed to take credit to himself for knowing, and to be ignorant of which appeared, therefore, to be so much the more disgraceful. With what shame have I sometimes declared my ignorance, rather than appear to understand that which I did not! What would I not give to become young again, and enter the school in its present state! I do not blame my father; he has been an excellent parent to us all. The difficulties he had to contend with in early life were such as to leave him but little time to attend to the education of his children. His whole efforts, together with my mother’s, were necessary to enable him to maintain us; and notwithstanding his talents are so great, he certainly is not acquainted with the modes of influencing others. System is what he likes as little as he understands. We cannot blame him for this; we may with as much justice blame a man because he is not six feet high. And I have often thought that the education which he gave us was more favourable to originality than if we had made great acquirements. Perhaps if I had been a good classical scholar I never should have invented the system of operating upon others which I have arranged. It is impossible to say how it would have been. I have often asked myself the question, Is it now too late to educate myself? I am afraid it is too late to do much. Ever since I was a child I have worked very hard; my time has always been very closely occupied in gaining a livelihood; and I now begin to feel the effects of so laborious a life. My memory is less tenacious than it was; and I find great difficulty in beginning a study to which I am not accustomed. Besides, my time is so fully occupied in attending to the school, and to the great mass of private teaching on which I am engaged (altogether seldom amounting to less than thirteen hours per day, even subtracting meal-times), that I feel I cannot work any harder. My mind almost always feels wearied. If I rise earlier than usual in the morning, I am no gainer, for I fall to sleep in the middle of the day; so that the only alternative left me is, either to be satisfied with the little time I can now devote to my own improvement, or give up some of my engagements, and thus lessen our income, which is not at all superfluous. What to do I know not; and the dissatisfied, uncertain state of mind in which I now am makes me sometimes very miserable, and I am afraid materially injures my health. Here I ought to say that my kind parents have frequently expressed their wish that I should not labour so hard as I do, but I am constantly in hopes that by so doing I may secure future ease.”
The ease that he desired to secure was only that “independence, that first earthly blessing,” to use Gibbon’s words, which a man may enjoy to the full, and yet scorn delights and live laborious days, while he freely indulges the last infirmity of noble mind, and pursues with unrestrained course some lofty object of ambition. “So inviting are the distant prospects of ambition,” Rowland Hill wrote in his Journal only a year later, “and such is my anxiety to correct the defects of my education, that I feel it difficult to resist the temptation of sacrificing physical to mental health—future strength to future fame.... I am convinced of the necessity of making very vigorous improvements in my own mind. I hope I have already done much, and I am determined to accomplish more.” In some of his letters that have been preserved, I see that more than once he turned his mind towards Cambridge. Even at the age of seven-and-twenty he had not given up all hope of getting for himself a University education. He asked his eldest brother to ascertain the cost. On hearing from him in answer, he wrote, “I do not know how to decide respecting Cambridge. I am disappointed at finding the thing so terribly expensive.”