the head master, added to the circumstance that so large a proportion of the prefects were college boys, gave him as second master exceptional importance, and Wordsworth writes of his work with all the freedom of one who had only to consult his own judgment, and whose spontaneous action was entirely unfettered by the supervision of any superior officer. Whether any friction arose in consequence we are not informed, although Wordsworth confesses that there may have been some ground at one time for the complaint of serious jealousy between Moberly and himself. But after sɔ long an interval, it is scarce worth while to revert to possible failings by which the best of human works are marred, and the testimony is too general to allow of our questioning the reality and extent of the improvement effected by Wordsworth in the religious tone of the Winchester boys. The reader of the Annals will fully concede his claim to a real and independent share in whatever change for the better was effected. It might have seemed needless so elaborately to assert what none probably would have desired to dispute. But in the intervals of poetic inspiration the prophet of Rydal Mount was ever on the alert to vindicate the rights of the Wordsworths, and he had observed, with much displeasure, a letter in the life of Dr. Arnold, in which Moberly spoke of the real and great improvement at Winchester as mainly attributable to Arnold more than to any advice or example of any other person.' In writing thus, Charles Wordsworth holds (and we fully agree with him) that Moberly did less than justice both to himself and his colleague. To Arnold himself Charles Wordsworth was not in any way indebted either for the suggestion of his work or for his mode of performing it. He had not been brought in any way under Arnold's influence; had not read any of his school sermons. It has been far too widely assumed that all modern improvement in public schools should be traced to Rugby. The truth is, there was a general awakening, which in many instances, as with us at Winchester, partook decidedly of a Church character, such as Arnold's teaching and example, however excellent in their way, had little or no tendency to create' (p. 278). We have not space to enter at length upon the subject of reform in Greek Grammar, which occupies so large a space in these Early Annals. Half a century ago the elementary teching of Greek in English schools was in a most unsatisfactory condition. We can recall the sarcastic comments and classic jokes upon the errors of the primers then in vogue. "Av VOL. XXXIII.-NO. LXVI. CC gaudet optativo, was a dictum invariably followed in our own school experience by the remark that av must exercise remarkable self-denial, as it was never found in the optative's company. But important as is the part filled by grammars or dictionaries in classical education, the discussion of the subordinate interests which hindered the immediate adoption of a better book, and the quotation of a score of letters bearing upon the minuter details of points that have been settled fifty years ago, hardly possess more than a shadowy technical interest at the present day, and they do but serve to impede the movement of the history which lingers over them. We live in too hurried a day to care much about the order in which individual head masters accepted a reform which all alike admitted to be inevitable. This critical impatience (if such it be) must not lead us to overlook the invaluable service which Charles Wordsworth rendered to Greek scholarship by his labours-a service which was by no means restricted to that elementary teaching which necessarily underlies all really sound learning. An exposition of the new grammar's merits was undertaken by Roundell Palmer for the British Critic and by Christopher Wordsworth for the Quarterly Review. The former article contained an elaborate analysis and comparison of twelve other Greek Grammars then in use, and gave the preference to Wordsworth's in terms of high eulogy. His work may safely be described as a more complete magazine of the facts of the language than can be found even in the elaborate volumes of the best among the German grammarians' (p. 189). Even if this praise were somewhat excessive, it might serve to compensate for the disappointment occasioned by the suppression of the article designed for the Quarterly. It had been both printed and corrected when the writer was informed that its publication would give offence, and therefore it must be abandoned. In the course of his investigations, Christopher Wordsworth had discovered that the famed Eton Greek Grammar was not an Eton book at all. It was the work of Camden, the famous antiquary, a former head master of Westminster, and had been discarded for two centuries at Westminster. The pride of Eton could not brook so damaging a revelation, and subsequent negotiations failed to secure its recognition as the standard Greek Grammar for all public schools. Of Dr. Wordsworth's work at Winchester, the best summary is given by an old pupil--boys are keen and true judges of those set over them-in the following graphic language: 'I should like to say a word about the Bishop of St. Andrews when second master. No finer athlete ever entered a school, and no master ever did more to promote all that was noble and manly among boys; and no man had more tact in proposing changes. In my time, during my later years at Winchester, Mr. Wordsworth, as he then was, took an immense interest in cricket and all manly sports. . . In 1836 he was mainly instrumental in getting the college to form a new ground in "Meads.” . . . He also laid out a small ground for the junior boys, and in my later days he always gave leave from every roll-call for fellows playing in matches. . . . I believe he was as fond of Cicero as he was of cricket, and he certainly made many boys like both and understand both. He never meddled with oldestablished customs; but his suggestions were generally accepted; and when he suggested to prefects that quiet should be kept in chambers at nine o'clock p.m., for ten minutes, to enable boys, who wished to do so, to say their prayers (in 1838), it was carried out at once; as was another suggestion that on half holidays, when leave from rollcalls was given from two o'clock till eight for matches, prefects should discontinue the twelve o'clock practice and give the fags a rest' (p. 235). Twelve years of laborious work at Winchester told severely upon a constitution that had never been thoroughly robust, and in 1846 Dr. Wordsworth sent in his resignation, to the sincere regret alike of the head master and the Warden. His energy and scholarship were too marked to allow of his remaining permanently in a secondary position, and there was no immediate prospect that a vacancy would occur through such promotion as Moberly eventually and deservedly obtained. But the success which had attended his efforts had stamped him as a school reformer of no ordinary merit, and his experience, added to his unswerving loyalty to sound Church principles, marked him out as exceptionally fitted to rule the new public school which some leading Scotch Episcopalians, amongst the foremost of whom were Sir John Gladstone and Mr. Hope-Scott, were founding at Glenalmond. Mr. W. E. Gladstone took a deep interest in the matter, and urged on his old friend and tutor the importance of the position in terms well calculated to win his correspondent's consent. Dr. Wordsworth found a second wife in one of Warden Barter's nieces, and started with her for his new, northern home. At this point the autobiography comes, for the present, to a halt, but it is followed by nearly a hundred pages consisting of an episode on the Oxford Movement and by English and Latin compositions which secured prizes at Oxford and HarOn the Oxford Movement Dr. Wordsworth claims to be row. allowed to speak with some authority, owing to his own personal acquaintance with some of its more prominent advocates and to the minute accuracy with which he was kept informed of all that transpired after he had gone down from Oxford. Upon the causes of so many defections to Rome he makes some suggestive comments. He attributes them partly to the youthful inexperience of those by whom the Catholic revival was inaugurated; partly to the conviction which the seceders entertained that they were hopelessly excluded from preferment in the English Church; but principally to a lack of firm grip upon the fundamental principles of the Anglican communion, and to their resort to the study of the fathers in preference to that of our great AngloCatholic divines. It is not a little startling to learn from Newman's letters that neither he nor Pusey ever liked the scheme for publishing the Anglo-Catholic Library. Such an admission seems to us equivalent to a renunciation of the Anglican position. It would be well that more of our present-day teachers learned in the pages of Bramhall and Andrewes, of Bull and Hammond, how to grapple with the pretensions of the Papacy and to build up souls in Catholic truth. The inauguration of Glenalmond closes the period embraced within the present volume. The foundation stone was laid by Sir J. Gladstone (Sept. 8, 1846), and afforded opportunity for the happiest example of Wordsworth's singularly effective epigrammatic power; and at the luncheon which followed, Bishop Russell, without the author's permission, read it to the assembled company : Auctus honore novo,' proprio cognomine lætus, In honours new, for high deserts arrayed, With a few words of further criticism we must conclude our notice of these Early Annals. It might be supposed that distance of time would help to place past events in their proper perspective, and that unimportant events would not bulk too largely after the lapse of years. Such a theory would find scant support in Dr. Charles Wordsworth's pages. That 1 Sir John Gladstone had just received a baronetcy. his book contains much that is of interest, we have already sufficiently shown; but the reader is wearied by lack of proportion and absence of pruning. The volume is spun out to inordinate length. There is more than ordinary disregard of that artistic effort which ought always to be bestowed on a work designed to describe a scholarly career. It is a marked deficiency in much English, as compared with French, prose literature, that it is essentially inferior in style, and these Early Annals suggest that classical scholarship is not incompatible with heaviness in English composition and a straggling invertebrate patchwork of original letterpress and quotation. Nor are these blemishes lamentable on artistic. grounds alone. We think the author hardly does himself or his work justice in quoting at so great length the complimentary letters of his wide circle of friends on each and every point of his Winchester life. Surely his own standing there needs no such bolstering as mere acknowledgment of the receipt of a sermon which the recipient has not yet had time to read or commendation in terms of general politeness. Even the quaint conceit of a copy of Latin verses written by his favourite pigs to the absent Warden becomes a little wearisome when the theme is repeated next year by the cows. A lover's 'new found ballad to his mistress' eyebrows,' when prettily turned, may rank as a fair specimen of vers de société, but with the memory of that and of the exquisite Latin epitaph upon a first, lost love, we are conscious of some impatience on being presented with a copy of lines addressed to the lady who replaced her. We should be grieved if these redundancies turned readers aside from the record of a life devoted to scholarly and religious pursuits with exemplary purity of purpose and with undeviating fidelity to the guidance and spirit of the Church, of which Dr. Charles Wordsworth has ever been one of the truest sons. |