University of Virginia Library

If the rising generation do not greatly excel its predecessors in the knowledge and practice of humanity, every philosopher, divine, and poet, who has glanced upon the subject of education, will have completely failed in his conjecture. Eighty years back it would have been deemed the height of folly in an author to appropriate his talents to the service of an infantile race. The whole juvenile library then consisted of a dry book, entitled “Geography for Children,” and in a set of volumes descriptive of Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London; Mother Goose also added her tales, from which neither instruction nor moral was to be acquired. The ingenious Christopher Smart was the first man of talent who thought the minds and morals of children deserving of literary attention. In his Lilliputian Magazine he inculcated the best principles, but at the same time thought it necessary to introduce into the drama “Woglog the Great Giant,” in order to terrify and amuse by turns. From the success experienced by Smart, a new class of writers appeared, who have exerted their talents to compose histories in common life, which uniformly tend to inculcate suavity of manners, with the practice of morality and religion. Children thus tutored must indubitably retain some portion of the precepts so inculcated, and where the seeds of virtue are early planted there can be no doubt but the procreative soil will expand the ripening germs, and in the end produce a plenteous harvest.

If we continue to dilate upon female tuition, a very striking instance of perfection is handed down to us from undeniable authority, in the family of Sir Thomas More, in the reign of Henry the 8th; upon which subject I shall beg leave to dwell a little, in order to excite emulation in the minds of those who can justly appreciate the incalculable benefits derivable from education.

“Fuit ejus domus,” says Erasmus, “schola et gymnasium Christianæ religionis.”—“The tutors of More's children were John Clements, who was afterwards a Greek professor at Oxford; William Gonellus (or Gunnell), afterwards distinguished at Cambridge; Richard Hertius; one Drus, and one Nicholas,” says Stapleton, Vit. Mori, 221, 2. More's letter to Gonellus, concerning the education of his children (which Stapleton has extracted, p. 224), is full of curious information and great tenderness of sentiment. Most of the learned men of that day, Erasmus, Ludovicus Vives, and Grynæus, celebrated the school of More.

Erasmus, from whom we derive these particulars, and who was often an inmate of that delightful society, greatly captivated with the easy manners, the animated conversation, and the extraordinary accomplishments of More's daughters, could not help owninghimself a complete convert to More's sentiments of female education. Yet while he admired their improvement, and shared in the pleasures it diffused, he could not help remarking one day to his friend, how severe a calamity it would be, if, by any of those fatalities to which the human race is liable, such accomplished beings, whom he had so painfully and successfully laboured to improve, should happen to be snatched away! “If they are to die,” replied More, without hesitating, “I would rather have them die well informed than ignorant.” This reply, continues Erasmus, reminded me of a saying of Phocion, whose wife, as he was about to drink the poison according to his sentence, exclaimed, “Ah! my husband, you die innocent!” “And would you, my wife,” he rejoined, “rather have me die guilty?”— Macdiarmid's Lives of British Statesmen, p. 32. Erasm. Epist.605.

Warner, at p. 154, speaking of Margaret Roper, says—Of his two youngest daughters we know nothing, but that they were married to gentlemen; but his eldest daughter, Margaret, the wife of Mr. Roper, and the favourite child of Sir Thomas More, who has been often mentioned in this history, was a woman of extraordinary parts and learning. She wrote declamations in English, which her father and she turned so elegantly into Latin, that it was very difficult to determine which was best. She wrote also a treatise of the “four last things,” with so much piety, judgment, and strength of reasoning, that her father declared it was a better performance than a discourse which he had written himself on the same subject. Erasmus wrote an epistle to her, as to a woman famous, not only for her manners and virtue, but for true and solid learning. And Cardinal Pole was so charmed with the elegance of her Latin style, that it was long before he could be brought to believe that what he read was penned by a woman. In short, she was a perfect mistress of the Greek and Latin tongues, and of all sorts of music, with a great skill in arithmetic and many sciences, and was complimented by the greatest men of the age on that account.

The three daughters of Sir Thomas were born first, which is stated to have given his wife much uneasiness, whose constant prayer was that she might produce a boy; which event at length taking place, and the child proving little better than a fool, Sir Thomas told his wife, “that she had prayed so long for a boy, that she had one now who would be a boy as long as he lived.” Notwithstanding these natural disadvantages, Sir Thomas More did every thing for the improvement of his son's mind, and, although incapable of rendering him a shining figure, and the worthy representative of such a father, he nevertheless displayed the wholesome effects of a good education, and thus made a sterile soil productive of some fruit.

In addition to Hannah More, we have the late Dr. Gregory's Legacy to his Daughters, which I conceive to be very far from correct in many of its dictates. A Mr. Gregory also, who ranked among the dissenters, was as pure in his system of practical education, as he was conspicuous for the virtues of the heart. To the labours of Lindley Murray the rising generation will own itself highly indebted, while the volumes of Mistresses Bonhote and Trimmer will ever be regarded with the most respectful consideration by the instructors of youth. Add to these the names of Butler and Shepherd, together with a variety of others, who, if not chronicled in this note, are not the less honoured by the writer, who conceives that there is scarcely a class of individuals devoted to literature who are more worthy of panegyric than those persons whose meritorious labours are uniformly dedicated to expand the intellect and amend the human heart.