Yet what we actually find in this early poem is removed toto cœlo from this.

O Faithless World, and thy more faithless part,

A woman's heart!

The true shop of variety, where sits
Nothing but fits

And feavers of desire, and pangs of love,

Which toyes remove.

He winds up by saying:

Know, that love lodg'd in a woman's breast

Is but a guest.

One remark only I wish to make on this apparently self-revealing poem. Izaak Walton delighted to record the love of his friends and their married experiences (e.g. the curious and unfortunate married life of Richard Hooker), and yet not a word on this subject about Henry Wotton. For anything we read, this might be a world without women in it. Remark the omission from the life of a man, handsome, brave, clever, generous, attractive, with all the qualities which win at woman! Evidently friendship in Izaak Walton's view of it did not include the telling to the world of that with which the world has nothing to do, or even accounting for the absence of that which might be expected. Would that modern biographers would learn of him!

When, in his fifty-seventh year, Sir Henry Wotton was so fortunate as to light upon restful Eton, he set himself to quiet work. We have to consider him in this third aspect as the writer of books.

III. His printed works are contained, as mentioned before, in the Reliquiæ Wottonianæ. Let me quote from Izaak Walton an account of the contents:-"Now of the work itself. Thou shalt find in it many curious things about Architecture, Picture, Sculpture, Landskip, Magnetical experiments, Gardens, Fountains, Groves, Aviaries, Conservatories of rare beasts, Fish-ponds. And also many observations of the mysteries and Laberinths in Courts and States, delivered in Lives, Letters to Characters of sundry Personages, as Observations and Characters (which he took in his employment abroad) of these Dukes of Venice, Giovanni Bembo and four others; an account of Foscarini, the Archduke Leopold, and Count Tampier; Artists and famous men mentioned. Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and ten others; Observations (at home) of the Courts of Queen Elizabeth, King James, and King Charles, with Lives and Characters of the Earl of Essex, Duke of Buckingham, and of King Charles; Characters and observations of Queen Elizabeth and twenty-five other leading his

torical characters of the reigns of Queen Elizabeth, King James I., and King Charles I.; the author's character; Censure of Felton, Egglesham, Stamford, Scioppius."

One of the most important of these subjects treated is "The Elements of Architecture," following and improving upon Vitruvius.

Besides these actually written subjects, it had been Sir Henry Wotton's cherished intention to write a life of Martin Luther. For this Walton points out that Wotton was eminently qualified on account of his experience in embassies abroad, and his favour with various princes, which would have secured for him access to various records, and "to the knowledge of many secret passages that fell not under common view. But in the midst of this design, his late Majesty, King Charles I., that knew the value of Sir Henry Wotton's pen, did, by a persuasive loving violence, to which may be added a promise of £500 a year, force him to lay Luther aside, and betake himself to write the history of England." This at the time of his death he had to some slight extent attempted. He had written "Characters" of a few Kings, and had laid the plan of writing at greater length an account of the life of Henry VI., the founder of Eton College, when death seized him from his restful and grateful work.

IV. Sir Henry Wotton as Schoolmaster.

Mr. Thomas Murray, Provost of Eton College, the successor of the famous Sir Henry Savile, died in 1623. Sir Henry Wotton, by sheer dint of influence, amongst a number of competitors, secured the post. Indeed, it was lucky for him that he succeeded in obtaining it, for, to all account, his finances were in a most unsatisfactory state. We are told that he had to borrow money from his good friend, Mr. Nicholas Pey, to pay his expenses of removal. It is quite clear that Wotton took the Provostship as a means of livelihood, and not from any love of the pedagogic profession.

Teachers nowadays recognise the advisability, most, indeed, the necessity of adequate training for the work of, at any rate, a head master. It would be interesting to consider how far a large, wide, varied experience of human affairs by a large-minded and large-hearted man may practically more than compensate for the lack of special training. To suggest this I am afraid may seem rank heresy. But the fact is, we must admit, that we have had so seldom the opportunity of observing a thoroughly able man, with an active varied experience, set himself to the work of teaching, that we can hardly judge a priori what the result would be.

Moreover, in the case we are now considering, teaching, in the

specialised sense in which we employ the term, scarcely can be said to have been stuff of the intellectual conscience. In the words of the good Jeremy Taylor, himself a schoolmaster, education leads a man to build and adorn his house "with advantages and ornaments of learning, upon the foundation of piety."

We may judge from such words that the ideal of a schoolmaster in those days was not that of the most methodic instiller of knowledge, but, as it is surely in all times, the most efficient man in influencing the whole character of pupils, of which the intellect forms an important part. Now in this work of influence on character, undoubtedly, Sir Henry Wotton was not inexperienced. It may be objected that his experience had reference to men only, and that men and boys are so widely different that experience in the one cannot be read off into terms of the other. Perhaps so, generally speaking, but the case of Sir Henry Wotton tends to show that this is not an impossibility. Wotton, in short, gives the impression of being a man whose resources (except, indeed, his financial resources) were never exhausted. He shows power in action, and what is quite as necessary, power in repose. He can act vigorously, and he can sit still, smoke his pipe, and forget there is a schoolroom only the other side of his study-door. Voilà, a model for some latter-day masters.

Now for his methods of teaching. Do not laugh at them. Remember he flourished 250 years ago. I give Izaac Walton's words, thankful such (must I call them unscientific ?) methods can be spoken of so pleasantly:

He was a constant cherisher of all those youths in that school in whom he found either a constant diligence or a genius that prompted them to learning.

To-day the youngest pupil-teacher could tell him that he was only thinking of the "interesting" cases, and that he was neglecting the dull boys. Next, however, to our joy, we hear of something that looks uncommonly like an object-lesson.

He was (besides many other things of necessity and beauty) at the charge of setting up in it (the school) two rows of pillars, on which he caused to be choicely drawn the pictures of divers of the most famous Greek and Latin historians, poets, and orators: persuading them not to neglect rhetoric, because "Almighty God has left mankind affections to be wrought upon." And he would often say, "that none despised eloquence but such dull souls as were not capable of it." He would also often make choice of some observations out of those historians and poets, and would never leave the school without dropping some choice Greek or Latin apothegm or sentence that might be worthy of a room in the memory of a growing scholar.

Surely a pleasing picture! One too that should make us feel that essential as is the study of methods for us to-day, yet such

study only goes a short way to make the teacher; beyond and above that is the personal influence which attracts, and which by its own graciousness unconsciously refines and draws those around into imitation. Wotton had, we allow, no knowledge of method, but he had the otium cum dignitate, and, above all, he had a passionate love of goodness and a restful content, which when joined with great powers of mind, fascinates young and old alike. In the life of the Hon. Robert Boyle, the well-known philosopher, we are told that he (Boyle) was "bred up at Eton College, whose provost at that time was Sir Henry Wotton, a person that was not only a fine gentleman himself, but very well skilled in the art of making others so." To return to Izaak Walton.

Sir Henry "was pleased constantly to breed up one or more hopeful youths, which he picked out of the school and took into his own domestic care, and to attend him at his meals; out of whose discourse and behaviour he gathered observations for the better completing of his intended book of education: of which, by his still striving to make the whole better, he lived to leave but part to posterity.”

Now I have dwelt, it may be thought, with unnecessary emphasis on Sir Henry Wotton's ignorance of the study of methods. I was obliged to do so, because the idea of a man between fifty and sixty, ignorant of the science of education, holding a prominent educational post, to us is ludicrous. But I must therefore the more earnestly call attention to the passage I have just quoted. It is an instance of a man, over 250 years ago, without scientific training, deliberately setting about to consider for himself the psychological basis of education. Nor is that all. We have seen that to our notions Wotton was in some respects behindhand. Now I fear we have to see that he is in advance of some of us. How many of us practically observe and note down for useful purposes of reference and general direction that which goes on day by day in our contact with boys? How many head masters take hopeful boys and, at their own expense, "breed them up," so as to more closely see the conditions and possibilities of sound education? How many of us, with our vaunted interest in the science of education, study and make observations, and are able to quote our "cases,” as do our professional fellows, the lawyer and the doctor?

Yet this is precisely what we find Sir Henry Wotton doing. The energetic and successful diplomatist, the graceful and refined courtier, the astute man of the world, if you will, the tasteful, tuneful poet, and the contented lover of the angle, is not only the most enterprising schoolmaster of his time (and that without training), but he

is also an investigator of the principles of psychology on inductive lines, in exactly the way that our leaders would have us, in the nineteenth century, to go. Mark, too, his desire of thoroughness and his reluctance to rush into print. "Of which, by his still striving to make the whole better, he lived to leave but part to posterity."

His educational work, therefore, is unfortunately only a fragment. It is entitled "A Philosophical Survey of Education: or Moral Architecture." There is, as is usual with the age of Elizabeth and the early Stuarts, an Epistle Dedicatory to the Sovereign. Wotton early explains that education, though conversant with children, is not merely a domestic affair, but has a direct relation to the Commonwealth, and quotes the instances of the ancients to prove that it belongs to the domain of politics.

The heads under which he divides his work are:

I. There must proceed a way how to discern the natural capacities and inclinations of children.

II. Next, the culture and furnishment of the mind.

III. The moulding of behaviour and decent forms.

IV. The tempering of affections.

V. The quickening and exciting of observations and practical judgments.

VI. Timely instilling of conscientious principles and seeds of religion.

Sir Henry Wotton only completed his treatment of the first head, touching the study of natural capabilities and inclinations.

He urges that the teacher must search for "signatures of hopefulness" or "characters," whereby may timely be descried what the child will prove in probability.

"Characters" are either (1) impressed on the outward person, like stamps of Nature, or (2) taken from some emergent art of his mind.

As examples of "characters" impressed on the outer person he takes (a) the child's colour or complexion; (b) the structure and conformation of limbs; (c) "spirituous resultance" from the other two, which makes the countenance.

All these are matters of observation, and can be noted and reduced to empirical principles. For instance, it is easy to distinguish two classes of complexions-(a) a palish clearness (the sign of an even, phlegmatic humour); (b) a pure sanguine melancholic tincture.

As to the outward frame and fabric, Wotton draws attention to the importance of observing carefully the shape and size of the head and the quickness of the eye. As to the former he says: "It must