“Continuo auditæ voces, vagitus et ingens,
Infantumque animæ flentes in limine primo.”
In the year 1821, Southey thus wrote of one of the playmates of his own childhood:—
“The eldest son was taken from the Charter House because he was, literally, almost killed there by the devilish cruelty of the boys. They used to lay him before the fire till he was scorched, and shut him up in a trunk with sawdust till he had nearly expired with suffocation. The Charter House, at that time, was a sort of hell upon earth for the under boys. He was of weak understanding and feeble frame.”[46]
I own the value and the force of the traditions of a school. I know that they cling to places, and are not easy to transplant; but, were I a Charter House boy, after reading such a passage as this, I should feel that I drew a freer, as well as a purer, air on the open downs above Godalming, than in the old buildings near Smithfield.
In the instruction that was given there had been but little general improvement. The old classical education was, no doubt, in many ways admirably well suited for boys who were quick at languages. But it made the dull ten times as dull as they came from nature, and marked down many a lad as a hopeless blockhead whose good parts were merely overwhelmed by the gross ignorance of his teachers. Pedantry, scarcely less than penury, can freeze the genial current of the soul. If the fools and blockheads could only once gather their poor wits together, and only once give their thoughts utterance, what a tale of wrong would they pour forth against the brutal and ignorant pedants who had, in their childhood, puffed out the far too feeble light which had been given to light them through the world.
Bad, indeed, was the general state of education when Rowland Hill set up for its reformer—so bad that it almost excuses the audacity of the young enthusiast. His audacity, certainly, was almost boundless. “We must honestly confess,” his eldest brother and he say, in the volume which they published on education, “that we retain hardly a single opinion relating to any part of our profession which we held in early life. One by one we have surrendered them all to the force of experience.” He was but twenty-five at most when he wrote this, and all the wisdom of our forefathers he had already scattered to the winds. With some reason did one of his pupils say, “There was a great want of reverence for authority in his school. There was no respect for the opinion of the great and good men of all ages—that consensus of opinion.” In his old age, Rowland Hill described his career as a schoolmaster as a series of experiments. In the years when he was making his greatest changes, and striking out into the newest of paths, he had, as he himself said, no misgivings as to his fitness for his post; and yet it was not till after this time that he so painfully found out how little he knew, and how much he had still to learn. He had, however, this ground for his confidence, that all his plans did work. In the midst of his boldness he was still cautious. He had a horror of failure, and a strong but wholesome dread of that ridicule which awaits the mere dreamer. Many might well have thought that such a school as he described could scarcely have existed even in Utopia, and yet it flourished in Birmingham.
It was in the year 1822 that the two brothers brought out their work on Public Education.[47] Part of it had been written, at all events, as early as 1818. The plans, so far as the government of boys is concerned, are almost all Rowland’s; the composition of the work is mostly Matthew’s. Fanciful though it often is, dogmatic, and even arrogant in places, yet it can still be read with pleasure and with advantage by those who take an interest in education. The young schemer was, indeed, fortunate in finding in his eldest brother a writer who could throw over his plans the charm of a lively and a singularly clear style. In this work is set forth a complete scheme for the government of a large school. From the best method of cultivating the heart and the head, down to the pettiest details of every-day life, all is considered, and for all provision is made. Here it is shown how out of almost any boy, however unpromising he may at first sight seem, can be made a good man and a good citizen. Here, too, is laid down a plan for drying school-boys’ wet shoes. The brothers, one and all alike, had the fullest trust in their system. “Even if they had never made a penny by it,” said one who knew them well, “they would still have tried to carry it out. They were like ministers of religion who were, indeed, paid for their ministry, but who, nevertheless, taught their dogmas as a matter of conscience.” The founder was for many years confident that his system could be worked by others, if only they took it up with understanding and zeal. He looked forward to the time when he should see great colleges on the same system spring up in all parts of the country, to the almost boundless advantage of his fellow-men. He has since been heard to confess that having, after long years, looked into his code of laws, he thought it far too complex. He added, with a smile, that he greatly doubted whether he should send his own son to a school conducted on such a complicated system.[48] In truth, even before he had given up school-keeping, he had found out the need of greater simplicity, and had cleared away much of the machinery which he had so laboriously constructed.
In the preface to the first edition, the brothers state:—