Rugby, the prospect of succeeding to that office was not only opportune but peculiarly welcome. Among the testimonies in his favour, probably the weightiest was that of his old associate at Oriel, Dr. Hawkins, the Provost, who gave it as his opinion, that "if Arnold were elected, he would change the face of education all through the public schools of England." He himself was not without misgivings about his own adequacy for the task, but was nevertheless conscious of powers which had not yet found their fullest exercise, and he responded with characteristic courage and eagerness to what seemed to him the call of duty. Before the election, he wrote, "If I do get it, I feel as if I could set to work very heartily, and, with God's blessing, I should like to try whether my notions of Christian education are really impracticable, whether our system of public schools has not in it some noble elements, which, under the blessing of the Spirit of all holiness and wisdom, might produce fruit even to life eternal. When I think about it thus, I really long to take rod in hand; but when I think of the pôs Tò TÉλOS, the perfect vileness which I must daily contemplate, the certainty that this can only be partially remedied, the irksomeness of 'fortemque Gyan, fortemque Cloanthum,' and the greater form and publicity of the life we should there lead. . . I grieve to think of the possibility of a change." 1

He was elected to the Head-Mastership of Rugby on Dec. 2, 1827.

1 Letter to G. Cornish, Nov. 30, 1827.

ELECTION TO RUGBY

23

After the election his letters have a more reassuring tone. "I have long since looked upon Education as my business in life. You know that I never ran down public schools in the lump, but grieved that their exceeding capabilities were not turned to better account, and if I find myself in time unable to mend what I consider faulty in them, it will at any rate be a practical lesson to teach me to judge charitably of others who do not reform public institutions as much as is desirable." 1 And in writing to J. T. Coleridge, he says: "John Keble is right, it is good for us to leave Laleham, because I feel that we were daily getting to regard it as too much of a home. I cannot tell you how much we both love it, and its perfect peace seems at times an appalling contrast to the publicity of Rugby. I am sure that nothing could stifle this regret, were it not for my full consciousness that I have nothing to do with rest here, but with labour; and then I can and do look forward to the labour with nothing but satisfaction, if my health and faculties be still spared to me."

The trustees of the school, who were chiefly noblemen and country gentlemen of Warwickshire, of whom no one was personally known to Arnold, elected him to the office when he was thirty-two years of age, and he entered on his new duties in the August of 1828. The school had then the reputation of being the lowest and most Boeotian of English public schools; perhaps it was for

1 Letter to F. C. Blackstone, March 14, 1828.

that very reason that it offered a larger field for the ambition of a new man filled with ideas and theories of his own, and conscious of his power to realize them.

CHAPTER III

Rugby and its foundation-Characteristics of ancient endowed grammar school-Illustrations from statutes of Archbishop Grindal and Dean Colet - The theory of classical education - Milton and the Humanists-Example of an entrance examination - Arnold's scheme of instruction - Latin and Greek not useless, even though forgotten in later life - Evils of mechanical routine - Composition exercises - Versification - Objections to it - School-boy artifices for evading it - Construing - Bowyer of Christ's Hospital-Translation - Grammar and philosophy means not ends - Socratic questioning - General characteristics of Arnold's methods

LAWRENCE SHERIFF, grocer, in 1567 left land and some property in Middlesex to maintain a "fair and convenient schoolhouse at Rugby." Half a century before, Erasmus had been lecturing on Greek at Cambridge, and had advised his friend, Colet, in respect to the foundation of St. Paul's School in London. Within that interval no fewer than one hundred and thirty-seven endowed grammar schools had been founded, including Manchester, Bosworth, Durham, Chester, Warwick, Ipswich, Skipton, Norwich, Sherborne, Louth, Sedbergh, Birmingham, Leeds, Shrewsbury, Christ's Hospital, Tonbridge, Ripon, York, Westminster, Bristol, Merchant Taylors', Highgate, Bedford, and Richmond. Some of these had been founded by Henry VIII., Edward VI., or Elizabeth, and endowed with the property of dissolved monas

teries. Others owed their origin to ecclesiastical corporations, but for the most part they were the product of private munificence, whether of scholars, like Dean Colet and Archbishop Holgate, or traders, like Sir Andrew Judd of Tonbridge and Lawrence Sheriff of Rugby. These men had been profoundly influenced by the new hopes and prospects of learning which characterized the period of the Renaissance and the Reformation, and desired to make permanent provision for instruction in the Greek and Latin tongues, then the only learning which had been formulated and reduced to a system. The record of the development and increasing wealth and repute of Sheriff's foundation will be found at length in Carlisle's Endowed Grammar Schools,1 1818, and in Mr. Thomas Hughes' lucid and interesting sketch in Great Public Schools. The most important material additions to the ground and to the building and its equipment were made by the trustees during the mastership of Dr. John Wooll, Arnold's immediate predecessor, who presided over the school from 1810 till 1827. Of him Mr. Hughes says: "My own belief is that Wooll was a kindly gentleman and a good scholar and teacher, but a choleric as well as exceed

1 It is again necessary to guard against the misleading associations which, with American readers, may possibly be connected with this name. In the United States the grammar school is simply the upper department of an ordinary public elementary school, and is distinctly inferior to a "high" or secondary school. But in England the name is generally understood to apply to those institutions, generally some centuries old, which were founded expressly for instruction in the Latin and Greek languages, and were designed to prepare scholars for the Universities.