CHAPTER XII. P. I.

A HISTORY NOTICED WHICH IS WRITTEN BACKWARD. THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES AN ESPECIAL EVIL FOR SCHOOLBOYS.

It has been the general practice of historians, from the time of Moses, to begin at the beginning of their subject: but as a river may be traced either from its sources or its mouth, so it appears that a history may be composed in the reversed order of its chronology; and a French author of very considerable ability and great learning has actually written a history of the Christian religion from his own times upwards. It forms part of an elaborate and extensive work entitled Parallele des Religions, which must have been better known than it appears to be at present if it had not happened to be published in Paris during the most turbulent year of the Revolution. Perhaps if I had carried back the memoirs of the Dove family, I might have followed his example in chusing the up-hill way, and have proceeded from son to father in the ascending line. But having resolved (whether judiciously or not) not to go farther back in these family records than the year of our Lord 1723, being the year of the Doctor's birth, I shall continue in the usual course, and pursue his history ab incunabulis down to that important evening on which we find him now reaching out his hand to take that cup of tea which Mrs. Dove has just creamed and sugared for him. After all the beaten way is usually the best, and always the safest. “He ought to be well mounted,” says Aaron Hill, “who is for leaping the hedges of custom.” For myself I am not so adventurous a horseman as to take the hazards of a steeple chace.

Proceeding therefore after the model of a Tyburn biography, which being an ancient as well as popular form is likely to be the best,—we come after birth and parentage to education. “That the world from Babel was scattered into divers tongues, we need not other proof,” says a grave and good author, “than as Diogenes proved that there is motion,—by walking;—so we may see the confusion of languages by our confused speaking. Once all the earth was of one tongue, one speech and one consent; for they all spake in the holy tongue wherein the world was created in the beginning. But pro peccato dissentionis humanæ (as saith St. Austin,)—for the sin of men disagreeing,—not only different dispositions but also different languages came into the world.—They came to Babel with a disagreeing agreement; and they came away punished with a speechless speech. They disagree among themselves, while every one strives for dominion. They agree against God in their Nagnavad lan Liguda,—we will make ourselves a rendezvous for idolatry. But they come away speaking to each other, but not understood of each other; and so speak to no more purpose than if they spake not at all. This punishment of theirs at Babel is like Adam's corruption, hereditary to us; for we never come under the rod at the Grammar School, but we smart for our ancestor's rebellion at Babel.”

Light lie the earth upon the bones of Richard Guy, the Schoolmaster of Ingleton! He never consumed birch enough in his vocation to have made a besom; and his ferule was never applied unless when some moral offence called for a chastisement that would be felt. There is a closer connection between good-nature and good sense than is commonly supposed. A sour ill-tempered pedagogue would have driven Daniel through the briars and brambles of the Grammar and foundered him in its sloughs; Guy led him gently along the green-sward. He felt that childhood should not be made altogether a season of painful acquisition, and that the fruits of the sacrifices then made are uncertain as to the account to which they may be turned, and are also liable to the contingencies of life at least, if not otherwise jeopardized. “Puisque le jour peut lui manquer, laissons le un peu jouir de l'Aurore!” The precepts which warmth of imagination inspired in Jean Jacques was impressed upon Guy's practice by gentleness of heart. He never crammed the memory of his pupil with such horrific terms as Prothesis, Aphæresis, Epenthesis, Syncope, Paragoge, and Apocope; never questioned him concerning Appositio, Evocatio, Syllepsis, Prolepsis, Zeugma, Synthesis, Antiptosis, and Synecdoche; never attempted to deter him (as Lily says boys are above all things to be deterred) from those faults which Lily also says, seem almost natural to the English,—the heinous faults of Iotacism, Lambdacism, (which Alcibiades affected,)—Ischnotesism, Trauli'sm and Plateasm. But having grounded him well in the nouns and verbs, and made him understand the concords, he then followed in part the excellent advice of Lily thus given in his address to the Reader:

“When these concords be well known unto them (an easy and pleasant pain, if the foregrounds be well and thoroughly beaten in) let them not continue in learning of the rules orderly, as they lie in their Syntax, but rather learn some pretty book wherein is contained not only the eloquence of the tongue, but also a good plain lesson of honesty and godliness; and thereof take some little sentence as it lieth, and learn to make the same first out of English into Latin, not seeing the book, or construing it thereupon. And if there fall any necessary rule of the Syntax to be known, then to learn it, as the occasion of the sentence giveth cause that day; which sentence once made well, and as nigh as may be with the words of the book, then to take the book and construe it; and so shall he be less troubled with the parsing of it, and easiliest carry his lesson in mind.”

Guy followed this advice in part; and in part he deviated from it, upon Lily's own authority, as “judging that the most sufficient way which he saw to be the readiest mean;” while therefore he exercised his pupil in writing Latin pursuant to this plan, he carried him on faster in construing, and promoted the boy's progress by gratifying his desire of getting forward. When he had done with Cordery, Erasmus was taken up,—for some of Erasmus's colloquies were in those days used as a school book, and the most attractive one that could be put into a boy's hands. After he had got through this, the aid of an English version was laid aside. And here Guy departed from the ordinary course, not upon any notion that he could improve upon it, but merely because he happened to possess an old book composed for the use of Schools, which was easy enough to suit young Daniel's progress in the language, and might therefore save the cost of purchasing Justin or Phædrus or Cornelius Nepos, or Eutropius,—to one or other of which he would otherwise have been introduced.