Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

than one or two listeners.

....

We learn, on authority which can hardly be called in question, that the schools still usually presented the same deserted aspect as in the days when Walter Haddon and Dr Caius uttered their pathetic remonstrances and laments, that to ignore the ordinary lectures of the professors had become by this time a tradition in the College." 1

Antony à Wood makes the sinister statement that, in the year 1561, no degrees in Divinity were given at Oxford, "but one in the Civil Law, three in Physic, and eight in Arts."

"At the University of Cambridge," says the miserable Greene, "I light among wags as lewd as myself, with whom I consumed the flower of my youth."

The average student here and on the continent, seems to have been not unfairly characterised by a contemporary professor who described him as one who "cares nought for wisdom, for acquirements, for the studies which dignify human life, for the Churches weal, or for politics. He is all for buffooneries, idleness, loitering, drinking, lechery, boxing, wounding, killing." " It appears from the State papers of the time that in one year (1570) the students of Trinity College, Cambridge, consumed two thousand, two hundred and fifty barrels of beer. 3

2

If these sturdy drinkers proved but untoward scholars, it must be conceded that the blame rested largely with their teachers. "Whereas they make one scholler, they marre ten," averred Peacham,

I

History of Cambridge University. Vol. 2, p. 426.

2 Ibid. Vol 2, p. 434.

3

The England of Shakespeare. Goadby, p. 73.

who describes one country specimen as whipping his boys on a cold morning "for no other purpose than to get himself a heate." 1

Giordano Bruno, who visited Oxford in 1582-4, avers that the pedantry of its scholars, their ignorance and arrogance conjoined with the rudeness of their demeanour, would have tried the patience of a Job. 2

A contemporary observer characterises the Universities, not as flourishing homes of Learning and Virtue, but as " abodes of discontent and brawling."

A Fellow of Trinity, described the colleges as, "the haunts of drones, the abodes of sloth and luxury [lasciviousness], monasteries whose inmates yawn and snore rather than colleges of students, trees not merely sterile but diffusing a deadly miasma all around." "

Mr Andrew Lang informs us that, in the time of Elizabeth, Oxford was "so illiterate that she could not even provide a University preacher!" +

4

"The Universities," says Goadby, "did little or nothing to instruct in natural philosophy, either for the want of the men to teach, or the means to pay them." 6

Not only in philosophy, but in every other branch of knowledge, a state of affairs existed, so difficult for a modern mind to realise, that I shall, as far as possible, give the facts in the words of my authorities.

I The England of Shakespeare. P. 99.

2

See Cambridge University, Mullinger, vol. 2, p. 284.

3 Ibid. p. 263.

4 Oxford. p. 101.

5 England of Shakespeare. p. 103.

Towards the close of the sixteenth century the sole exponent of Hebrew at Cambridge was a poverty-stricken Jew, who earned a precarious livelihood by giving private instruction; probably," says Mullinger, "in the rudiments of the language.' At Oxford, another poor Jew was similarly licensed to teach rudiments. Circumstances compelled the Cambridge Jew, whose name was Ferdinand, to leave the University. "Among those," observes Mullinger, "who deplored his departure, was William Eyre, a learned fellow of Emmanuel who, writing to Ussher, (afterwards the Archbishop), observes that, While Ferdinand remained, there existed a slight hope' that by his means, a certain knowledge of the language might be kept alive at the University.'

[ocr errors]

"If Hebrew," continues Mullinger, was yet so much neglected (at least in our own University) we can hardly be surprised to find that the study of Greek was equally on the wane. When John Bois entered at St Johns College in 1580, the knowledge of the language in the former house of Ascham and Cheke had become almost extinct.”

By the efforts of one bright particular star, the study was to some extent revived, "but for the last forty years of the century, it had but few cultivators.' After citing four examples of conspicuous scholars, Mullinger observes, "If to these instances we add the well known attainments of Aylmer, and perhaps one or two others, we shall have before us the chief names which serve to prove that a knowledge of Greek at Cambridge, at the period of which we are treating, was not wholly extinct. One's industry,' wrote

Casaubon to Camerarius in 1594, 'is sadly damped by the reflection how Greek is now neglected and despised. Looking to posterity or the next generation, what motive has one for devotion to study?'" '1

While Greek was thus at its last gasp in the abode of learning, it is remarkable to find it apparently flourishing amid the villainous and illiterate atmosphere of the theatre. It has been shewn by Mr. J. Churton Collins that Shakespeare was acquainted with the great Greek Tragedies. This cult of the Greek classics was, as we shall see, shared by Shakespeare's disreputable compeers.

All testimony tends to shew that in the age of Shakespeare the Universities, so far from being depositories of all science and all learning, had fallen to be mere elementary and badly conducted schools, wanting, as Peter Martyr said, in loyalty, in teachers, and even in any hope for learning.

At the age of fifteen, Francis Bacon entreated to be removed from Cambridge as he had acquired everything the University had to teach!

The easiest means to attain distinction were Theology and Disputation. These two subjects, conceived and handled in a mean and intolerant spirit, absorbed the best brain power of the country. Mullinger states that the Universities "came to be regarded as little more than seminaries for the education of the Clergy of the Established Church." To what a depth of degradation the Priesthood had fallen will be seen later. Of the rabble, who mainly constituted the

1 History of Cambridge. Vol. 2, p. 420.

1

student class, the future career is ominously foreshadowed by the fact that, the Poor Law of 1572, aiming at the suppression of the beggars and vagrants that swarmed over the face of the country, included in the term vagabond, "scholars of the Universities begging without license from the University Authorities. This in all probability is the reason why Travers characterised the Colleges as trees not merely sterile but diffusing a deadly miasma around. They appear to have served as a prolific seeding ground for the spirit of disputation which fruited in the religious horrors of the time, and is manifest today in the variety of sects by which Christendom is distracted.

It is mentioned by Defoe that during his lifetime, thirty thousand stout fellows were ready and anxious to lay down their lives for "No Popery," not knowing for a certainty whether Popery was a man or a horse. If we imagine in an earlier and coarser period the effect of a fractionally educated rabble, equipped with a beggars' license, scattered over the length of the land shouting their shibboleths at 'Prophesyings' and such like disorderly gatherings, it will go far to explain the ferocities of witch-finding and the excesses which polluted the name of Religion. This inference is confirmed by a passage put into the mouth of George Pyeboard in the psuedoShakespearean play The Puritan. George Pyeboard is unquestionably George Peele, a baker's pieboard still being sometimes called a "peel."

1 Social England, Traill. Vol. 3, p. 756.

2 Act I, Sc. 2 (1607).

3 (Paelle Fr. instrument de patissier).

2

"9 3

« AnteriorContinuar »