without any great disparagement to himself or prejudice to his affairs." 1 ( These Thoughts concerning Education' furnish, by inference, if not directly, so many illustrations of Locke's own schoolboy experiences, that it is proper here to quote a few of them, though the terms in which they are expressed give utterance to the ripe wisdom of a full-grown man, rather than the raw judgment of a youth of nine teen. He of course approved of classical studies, if there was time for them, and if they were to be put to any good use hereafter. But he objected that "custom, which prevails over everything, has made it so much a part of education, that even those children are whipped to it, and made spend many hours of their precious time uneasily in Latin, who, after they are once gone from school, are never to have more to do with it as long as they live." "Can there," he asked, "be anything more ridiculous than that a father should waste his own money and his son's time in setting him to learn the Roman language, when at the same time he designs him for a trade wherein he, having no use of Latin, fails not to forget that little which he brought from school, and which,'tis ten to one, he abhors for the ill-usage it procured him?" And he objected yet more to the way in which it was taught. "How necessary soever Latin be to some, and is thought to be to others to whom it is of no manner of use or service," he said, "yet the ordinary way of learning it in a grammar-school is that which, having had thoughts about, I cannot be forward to encourage. 1 'Some Thoughts concerning Education' (1692), § 94. . 14–19 The interminable study of grammatical rules he strongly condemned; yet more the custom of compelling boys to write themes and verses in Latin. "Do but consider," he said in words that were evidently prompted by his own experience, "what 'tis, in making a theme, that a young lad is employed about. 'Tis to make a speech on some Latin saying, as Omnia vincit amor,' or 'Non licet in bello bis peccare,' etc. And here the poor lad, who wants knowledge of those things he is to speak of, which is to be had only from time and observation, must set his invention on the rack to say something where he knows nothing; which is a sort of Egyptian tyranny, to bid them make bricks who have not yet any of the materials; and therefore it is usual in such cases for the poor children to go to those of higher forms with this petition, 'Pray give me a little sense!' which, whether it be more reasonable, or more ridiculous, is not easy to determine. Would you not think him a little cracked who would require another to make an argument on a moot point who understands nothing of our laws? And what, I pray, do schoolboys understand concerning those matters which are used to be proposed to them in their themes as subjects to discourse on, to whet and exercise their fancies ?" 1 Locke of course disapproved yet more of Latin versewriting than of Latin theme-writing, and of writing themes and verses in Greek yet more than in Latin. "Of another thing very ordinary in the method of grammar-schools," he said, "I see no use at all, unless it be to baulk young lads in the way of learning languages, which, in my opinion, should be made as easy and pleasant as may be, and that which is painful in it as much as 1 Some Thoughts concerning Education,' § 171. possible quite removed." "That which I mean here, and complain of, is their being forced to learn by heart great parcels of the authors which are taught them; wherein I can discover no advantage at all, especially to the business they are upon. Languages are to be learnt only by reading and talking, and not by scraps of authors got by heart, which, when a man's head is stuffed with, he has got the furniture of a pedant, and 'tis the ready way to make him one, than which there is nothing less becoming a gentleman. For what can be more ridiculous than to mix the rich and handsome thoughts and sayings of others with a deal of poor stuff of his own, which is thereby the more exposed, and has no other grace in it, nor will otherwise recommend the speaker, than a threadbare russet coat would, that was set off with large patches of scarlet and glittering brocade? Indeed, where a passage comes in the way, whose matter is worth remembrance, and the expression of it very close and excellent (as there are many such in the ancient authors), it may not be amiss to lodge it in the mind of young scholars, and with such admirable strokes of those great masters sometimes exercise the memory of schoolboys. But their learning of their lessons by heart, as they happen to fall out in their books, without choice or distinction, I know not what it serves for but to misspend their time and pains, and give them a disgust and aversion to their books, wherein they find nothing but useless trouble."1 We should not be at all justified in assuming that Locke held in 1652, when he left school, the opinions about school-teaching that he published in 1692; but it is worth remembering that his eminently reasonable views as a man were based on his own experience as a boy, and 1 'Some Thoughts concerning Education,' § 175. . 14-19 those views furnish the best proof that, however just was his condemnation of the teaching provided for him, it did no great harm to him at any rate. Though as a second or third form boy he may have begged his elders to give him a little sense, he must have had a good stock of his own; and however much his head may have been stuffed with " scraps of authors got by heart," they never gave to the outcome of his brain the appearance of scarlet patches upon threadbare russet. It is impossible, however, that all the instruction imparted to him at Westminster can have been of the old-fashioned pedagogic sort. If Dr. Busby taught him nothing but Latin and Greek, there was much else that he could not fail to learn. He was within hearing of the noise, if not an actual eye-witness, of the exploit for which the 30th of January, 1648-9, will ever be one of the most memorable days in English history, the day on which a king professing to reign by divine right was executed in Whitehall Palace Yard as a traitor to the commonwealth entrusted to his keeping; and, during the two or three years before and the two or three years after that great crisis, he was very near to the centre of the English Rebellion, and must have heard much, and doubtless thought much, about all these strange and solemn doings. The great political events of the time must have conveyed many memorable lessons to the schoolboy whose quiet cloisters were in such immediate proximity to the very spring and centre of their action. By listeners in peaceful nooks and corners the sounds that reach them from the bustling outside. world are sometimes more plainly heard than by those among the crowd whose voices help to make the turmoil. CHAPTER II. STUDENT LIFE AT OXFOrd. [1652-1660.] HAVING been elected to a studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, at Whitsuntide, 1652, Locke proceeded in the autumn to claim his right of admission to the university, and matriculated on the 27th of November. His name appears under that date in the records of the college, with the description "generosi filius," son of a gentleman.1 Though at Westminster School he had been very near to the centre of all the political and religious excitement of the day, he could hardly have had a quieter corner in all England in which to learn how to talk Latin as fluently as his mother-tongue, and to acquaint himself with all the pedantic rules of grammar which had been bequeathed by the medieval schoolmen. In becoming a student at Oxford he entered a much larger and more boisterous world. When, in the autumn of 1642, Charles the First, kept out of London, found shelter in Oxford-which he had just before inundated by the nomination of four hundred and two "courtiers, nobles, and gentlemen," and other 1 Christ Church College Entry Book. The common statement that Locke went to Oxford in 1651 may be partly excused on the ground that he was elected to his studentship in the fourth (i.e. Trinity) term of the academical year beginning in 1651. |