Biographia Literaria | Page 4

introductory, and
transitional, including a large assortment of modest egoisms, and
flattering illeisms, and the like, might be hung up in our Law-courts,
and both Houses of Parliament, with great advantage to the public, as
an important saving of national time, an incalculable relief to his
Majesty's ministers, but above all, as insuring the thanks of country
attornies, and their clients, who have private bills to carry through the

House.
Be this as it may, there was one custom of our master's, which I cannot
pass over in silence, because I think it imitable and worthy of imitation.
He would often permit our exercises, under some pretext of want of
time, to accumulate, till each lad had four or five to be looked over.
Then placing the whole number abreast on his desk, he would ask the
writer, why this or that sentence might not have found as appropriate a
place under this or that other thesis: and if no satisfying answer could
be returned, and two faults of the same kind were found in one exercise,
the irrevocable verdict followed, the exercise was torn up, and another
on the same subject to be produced, in addition to the tasks of the day.
The reader will, I trust, excuse this tribute of recollection to a man,
whose severities, even now, not seldom furnish the dreams, by which
the blind fancy would fain interpret to the mind the painful sensations
of distempered sleep; but neither lessen nor dim the deep sense of my
moral and intellectual obligations. He sent us to the University
excellent Latin and Greek scholars, and tolerable Hebraists. Yet our
classical knowledge was the least of the good gifts, which we derived
from his zealous and conscientious tutorage. He is now gone to his
final reward, full of years, and full of honours, even of those honours,
which were dearest to his heart, as gratefully bestowed by that school,
and still binding him to the interests of that school, in which he had
been himself educated, and to which during his whole life he was a
dedicated thing.
From causes, which this is not the place to investigate, no models of
past times, however perfect, can have the same vivid effect on the
youthful mind, as the productions of contemporary genius. The
discipline, my mind had undergone, Ne falleretur rotundo sono et
versuum cursu, cincinnis, et floribus; sed ut inspiceret quidnam
subesset, quae, sedes, quod firmamentum, quis fundus verbis; an
figures essent mera ornatura et orationis fucus; vel sanguinis e materiae
ipsius corde effluentis rubor quidam nativus et incalescentia
genuina;--removed all obstacles to the appreciation of excellence in
style without diminishing my delight. That I was thus prepared for the
perusal of Mr. Bowles's sonnets and earlier poems, at once increased

their influence, and my enthusiasm. The great works of past ages seem
to a young man things of another race, in respect to which his faculties
must remain passive and submiss, even as to the stars and mountains.
But the writings of a contemporary, perhaps not many years older than
himself, surrounded by the same circumstances, and disciplined by the
same manners, possess a reality for him, and inspire an actual
friendship as of a man for a man. His very admiration is the wind
which fans and feeds his hope. The poems themselves assume the
properties of flesh and blood. To recite, to extol, to contend for them is
but the payment of a debt due to one, who exists to receive it.
There are indeed modes of teaching which have produced, and are
producing, youths of a very different stamp; modes of teaching, in
comparison with which we have been called on to despise our great
public schools, and universities,
in whose halls are hung Armoury of the invincible knights of old--
modes, by which children are to be metamorphosed into prodigies. And
prodigies with a vengeance have I known thus produced; prodigies of
self-conceit, shallowness, arrogance, and infidelity! Instead of storing
the memory, during the period when the memory is the predominant
faculty, with facts for the after exercise of the judgment; and instead of
awakening by the noblest models the fond and unmixed love and
admiration, which is the natural and graceful temper of early youth;
these nurslings of improved pedagogy are taught to dispute and decide;
to suspect all but their own and their lecturer's wisdom; and to hold
nothing sacred from their contempt, but their own contemptible
arrogance; boy-graduates in all the technicals, and in all the dirty
passions and impudence of anonymous criticism. To such dispositions
alone can the admonition of Pliny be requisite, Neque enim debet
operibus ejus obesse, quod vivit. An si inter eos, quos nunquam
vidimus, floruisset, non solum libros ejus, verum etiam imagines
conquireremus, ejusdem nunc honor prasentis,