Addresses.' These two books, with a few others from the Bromley shelves, are now with me.

At a cousin's house in Essex we also used to come upon some novelties. It was there that I read Sandford and Merton,' a very well-known book for the young at the beginning of the last century; but I was rather too old to enjoy it, except as in some ways ridiculous.

One thing must be noted about our early teaching: it was entirely home teaching, from our parents and such near relations as might be staying with us or we with them. Parents nowadays seem to have no time or taste or learning for their children's education. It gets delegated to governesses, preparatory schools, etc. Even where the father is a clergyman, and presumably a scholar, one does not often see the boys home-taught as they used to be. A very close parallel to our case I find in the early teaching of the Austen-Leigh boys by their father, as recorded in W. Austen-Leigh's memoir of his brother, the late Provost of King's College, Cambridge. The father began with his boys in Latin the day after their seventh birthday, and in Greek two years later. We three boys were taken in hand by my father even earlier than that: my surviving Latin Accidence proves me to have started on musa, musæ some time before my fifth birthday. There are, and will be, differences of opinion about the best time of beginning such learning. My father, like Mr. Austen-Leigh, began early, and did not make lessons long or tedious. He was a wonderful teacher, the best I ever knew. Nothing was lost in our case by an early start, nor will there be generally (I believe), if there be no hurry or pressure. Latin and Greek, some argue, will be learnt much more quickly if begun later. That I do not deny; but it does not follow that it is better so. What is not forced, what grows slowly, grows healthily and lasts long.

My father often read aloud to us in the evenings. In this way parts of Shakespeare came before us; we heard with delight about Fluellen, about Pistol's being forced to eat the leek, the parallel between Harry of Monmouth and Alexander of Macedon, how there is a river in Macedon and at Monmouth, and there is salmons in both.' We were left pretty free to forage in the downstairs shelves for other than our nursery stores. I got early teaching in French from my mother, also from old Mr. Tarver at Eton. 'Télémaque' I read when very young, also Gil Blas,' or a good deal of it.

Some years before I entered the school at Eton (1843) a new class

of books and booksellers sprang up-railway books and stalls. Coaching and posting went out; the steam-sped traveller wanted to improve his hours; a supply met the demand, and so he who ran (or railed) could read. Railway novels became abundant. As I remember them first, they mostly cost a shilling and were mostly green now there is no colour, no price, no character that they do not assume.

When my schooldays at Eton began, schoolbooks took much of my reading time. Far fewer were these then. Greek and Latin classics were the staple. We used some plain Eton editions, noteless or nearly so; some larger we had, with Latin notes, of which few boys could or would make much use. More helpful are the editions of to-day. Yet the puzzling out a lesson, without help save of dictionary and grammar, drove it into the learner perhaps quite as well as the quicker and easier ways now possible. Our first Greek learning had for lexicon 'Donegan': 'Liddell and Scott' came out in 1843. I very soon possessed the abbreviated edition, the large one not till its third edition in 1849. Some of our schoolbooks were antiquated-e.g. Æsop and Farnaby. Yet this last-named little book put before one some beautiful old Greek poems, short, and thus suitable lessons for a low Form. So I do not regret having read in it. In the Upper Forms we read some authors continuously, and less scrappily than is now the fashion. Homer's Iliad ' I read completely through (plus two books) while at Eton; Virgil's 'Eneid' about twice through. Capable industrious learners became as sound scholars then as now. German editions were coming in-some, indeed, were earlier than this. My father had Heyne's eight-volumed 'Homer,' and four-volumed 'Virgil' (1804); editions even now hard to beat, monuments of learning, and of what some Germans do not always show, poetic taste and sound common sense.

Out of school, we boys in the forties had fewer books accessible. But for much of our time-out of school' meant out of doors and at games. I remember there was a little back room at Ingalton's, the bookseller up Eton, in which any boy might read what he found. Sometimes I read there on a wet afternoon. The shelves contained light reading, stories, several translations of German tales. At my Dame's a few amusing books went the round of the house-e.g. 'The Bottle Imp.' And, when recovering from the measles, I read · Charles O'Malley.'

My migration into College, at about the middle of my school

career, put me among a more reading set. Apart from our school work, really sensible books, and talk about them, were with some of us a part of our life. Southey's Thalaba' and 'Kehama ' I read, borrowed from H. J. Reynolds or E. D. Stone. The Boys' Library (close to our College buildings) was established about this time, and Collegers used it much. I read out of this nearly all the Waverley novels before I left school. According to my memory, most of us read them eagerly. Yet a little more than twenty years afterwards, when I became a master at Rugby, I found that hardly any of the Rugby boys cared for them at all. I cannot but suppose that the increase of more exciting and sensational fiction was answerable for this change of taste.

Passing to Cambridge in 1851, I there found books copiously within my reach. We King's men were just now brought under University rules as to B.A. degree: I myself was the very first King's man who compulsorily went in for the B.A. examination. But of our degree work and books I mean not here to speak.

We of King's were not even then (nor had we been so much as some report of us) prevailingly idle and unstudious. We had indeed been left very free in our studies, and this freedom continued to some extent for years after my time at Cambridge began and ended. But my contemporaries were a reading set, though not recluses or bookworms. The greatest reader among us was W. E. Ridler, who died young (in 1862). He never went into the examination for the Classical Tripos, in which he must have won a high place. For he failed to secure a first-class Poll; and either that or a Mathematical Honour was then a condition for the Classical Tripos. Ridler devoured books of all kinds: we looked upon him as our chief critic and taster, so to say, in light literature. Almost all of us were members of the Union, then in Green Street; and the library there, though small compared to what it is now, had a good supply of books. The new books, latest novels, etc., were in a special downstairs room. During these years several of Dickens' and Thackeray's stories came out (1851-57). I remember well what a rush there was at the Union for Esmond.' 'The Heir of Redclyffe' I read while an undergraduate; and was moved by it to buy a translation of Sintram,' which I afterwards got in its German original-one of my first German books. But from the Union I often took out English books of a more solid kind-French also sometimes. With another scholar of King's I used to read some French; and German I took to soon after my B.A. As I stayed

6

up in College for three years after my Triposes, taking classical pupils, I must have done a good deal of reading of all sorts. then took school-work at the Collegiate Institution, Liverpool. A contrast to Cambridge was Liverpool. But we masters at the College were in the literary line. There was a good bookseller. One of my colleagues gave me a book, picked up for a shilling or two at a sale-Servius' 'Virgil,' printed by Robertus Stephanus, Paris, in 1532. It is quite a perfect copy; and has an additional interest for me (as an Etonian and King's man), bearing the bookplates of two King's men, E. Maturin and Edward Craven Hawtrey, and the autograph of the latter in 1815, the year after he went to Eton as assistant master. I suppose Hawtrey got the book from Maturin by gift or purchase. Maturin was afterwards Rector of Ringwood, Hants. My schoolwork no doubt employed much of my time at Liverpool, but I and mine were always readers. The Public Library (the gift of Sir W. Brown) was opened during these years. But I do not remember that I was often there. I went once to see Gould's splendid books on Birds.

I returned to Cambridge in 1863; was there for seven years, taking pupils, and lecturing in a College, indeed in several, for the system of intercollegiate lectures was soon established. During these years I read with pupils largely in Greek and Latin. The masterly edition of Lucretius by H. A. J. Munro came out in 1864. I had bought and used Lachmann's work, that landmark for scholars,' in 1853. And of Juvenal I had possessed Mayor's excellent edition, which came out in 1853.

For other reading, I came back to a greatly enlarged Union. But also I availed myself much of the great opportunities open to M.A.'s in the University Library, taking out books of all sorts from that learned forest. Often I read aloud to my wife at home. I came upon Galt's novels, with which I was much charmed; first with the Annals of the Parish.' It surprised me that he seemed then so little known. But I suppose Scott, by his Waverleys, had put Galt in the shade. Of the University Library I continued to make use through forty years and more.

After school-work again at Rugby (1871-1883) I retired to a country living; and after twenty-six years of that am now altogether rude donatus. Though free from rules and time-tables, with books I have still been much concerned-with plenty in other languages beside Latin and Greek. Yet I have not been an exclusively indoors worker. Nor did I ever eschew open-air amusements; VOL. XXXIV.-NO. 202, N.S. 31

whether at school, college, or afterwards. One used to hear of undergraduates whose hours of reading per day trenched upon the 'teens. Not so much as half that can have been my college average. My work had come easily to me as a boy at school; so too did it when I was an undergraduate. Nor, when employed in tuition, did I feel myself overworked, save now and then during some hard spells of examination. And for this I thank first my father and his teaching-begun early, unhurried, steady; then, too, the less forcing system of education pursued at Eton in my time.

The increase of books-what has it been, say, from 1840 to 1910? Some statistics could probably be found through publishers, booksellers, libraries. But a more interesting question is: What has been the effect of the increase of books and reading? Has it been all gain? Are we better educated and wiser than our grandsires? I was a boy at a public school, then a master at one for many years. How did boys under me compare with my own schoolmates? Doubtless they had chances of learning more. But in keenness for learning, and in taste for what they chose freely to read, I could not pronounce them better than my own boyish companions. Wonderful examples of ignorance and utter carelessness about learning and culture came before me, even from wealthy homes. I was surprised to find how few chose the good, how many preferred the rubbishy. Of course it would not be fair to compare the best upper boys of an Eton Form (and I was much among these) with the merely average boys of a public school now but I cannot help thinking that the average boys of my time were the better for not reading (because it did not exist) some of the stuff now accessible.

Again, in a lower class we have increased book-learning. The Three R's, three and free, were expected to work wonders. But they have not quite answered the sanguine hopes entertained. In the country (where my last thirty years' experience has been) villagers are doubtless more wideawake to what is going on around them, more alive to their own interests; but are they more thoughtful and conscientious? There is increased knowledge nowadays, more books, yes, and better books on many subjects. But booklearning will not make everybody wise, and it does make some conceited. While a key to stores of good, it is often used to open stores of what is useless or harmful. Does it not spoil some for the work in life that is most fitted for them and equally needed for the general good?

In fine, the extension of learning by books must be, it is granted,