On The Art of Reading | Page 5

remaining alike in statu pupillari until qualified as
Masters-- _Magistri._ Mark the word, and mark also the title of one
who obtained what in those days would be the highest of degrees (but
yet gave him no voting strength above a Master). He was a
Professor-'Sanctae Theologiae Professor.' To this day every country
clergyman who comes up to Cambridge to record his _non-placet,_
does so by virtue of his capacity to teach what he learned here--in
theory, that is. Scholars were included in College foundations on a sort
of pupil-teacher-supply system: living in rooms with the lordly masters,
and valeting them for the privilege of 'reading with' them. We keep to
this day the pleasant old form of words. Now for various reasons--one
of which, because it is closely germane to my subject, I shall
particularly examine--Oxford and Cambridge, while conserving almost
intact their medieval frame of government, with a hundred other
survivals which Time but makes, through endurance, more endearing,
have, insensibly as it were, and across (it must be confessed) intervals
of sloth and gross dereliction of duty, added a new function to the
cultivation of learning--that of furnishing out of youth a succession of
men capable of fulfilling high offices in Church and State.
Some may regret this. I think many of us must regret that a deeper

tincture of learning is not required of the average pass-man, or injected
into him perforce. But speaking roughly about fact, I should say that
while we elders up here are required-- nay, presumed to know certain
things, we aim that our young men shall be of a certain kind; and I see
no cause to disown a sentence in the very first lecture I had the honour
of reading before you--'The man we are proud to send forth from our
Schools will be remarkable less for something he can take out of his
wallet and exhibit for knowledge, than for being something, and that
something recognisable for a man of unmistakable intellectual breeding,
whose trained judgment we can trust to choose the better and reject the
worse.'
The reasons which have led our older Universities to deflect their
functions (whether for good or ill) so far from their first purpose are
complicated if not many. Once admit young men in large numbers, and
youth (I call any Dean or Tutor to witness) must be compromised with;
will construe the laws of its seniors in its own way, now and then
breaking them; and will inevitably end, by getting something of its own
way.. The growth of gymnastic, the insensible gravitation of the elderly
towards Fenner's--there to snatch a fearful joy and explain that the walk
was good for them; the Union and other debating societies; College
rivalries; the festivities of May Week; the invasion of women students:
all these may have helped. But I must dwell discreetly on one
compelling and obvious cause--the increased and increasing
unwieldiness of Knowledge. And that is the main trouble, as I guess.
VII
Let us look it fair in the face: because it is the main practical difficulty
with which I propose that, in succeeding lectures, we grapple. Against
Knowledge I have, as the light cynic observed of a certain lady's past,
only one serious objection--that there is so much of it. There is indeed
so much of it that if with the best will in the world you devoted
yourself to it as a mere scholar, you could not possibly digest its
accumulated and still accumulating stores. As Sir Thomas Elyot wrote
in the 16th century (using, you will observe, the very word of Mr
Hamerton's energetic but fed-up tradesman), 'Inconveniences always

doe happen by ingurgitation and excessive feedings.' An old
schoolmaster and a poet--Mr James Rhoades, late of Sherborne--
comments in words which I will quote, being unable to better them:
This is no less true of the mind than of the body. I do not know that a
well-informed man, as such, is more worthy of regard than a well-fed
one. The brain, indeed, is a nobler organ than the stomach, but on that
very account is the less to be excused for indulging in repletion. The
temptation, I confess, is greater, because for the brain the banquet
stands ever spread before our eyes, and is, unhappily, as indestructible
as the widow's meal and oil.
Only think what would become of us if the physical food, by which our
bodies subsist, instead of being consumed by the eater, was passed on
intact by every generation to the next, with the superadded hoards of all
the ages, the earth's productive power meanwhile increasing year by
year beneath the unflagging hand of Science, till, as Comus says, she
would be quite surcharged with her own weight And strangled with her
waste fertility.
Should we