ART. V.-1. The Life and Letters of Dr. Samuel Butler, Head-Master of Shrewsbury School, 1798-1836, and afterwards Bishop of Lichfield. By Samuel Butler. London, 1896.

2. Memoir of Edward Craven Hawtrey, D.D. By the Rev. Francis St. John Thackeray. London, 1896.

3. Education and School. By the Rev. Edward Thring. Cambridge and London, 1864.

4. Edward Thring, Teacher and Poet. By H. D. Rawnsley. London, 1889.

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HE system of Aristotelian categories might be applied, if it were thought worth while, to the different types of character which find their place in the conduct of human affairs. We might describe statesmen according to the types illustrated by Chatham, Walpole, Mazarin, Melbourne, and Bismarck, by the qualities of genius, common-sense, finesse, tact, mastership. The soldiers would range from Napoleon, the man of great designs and methods, to Wellington, the man of practical wisdom and means suited to his needs. The judges would be reckoned as men of principles, of practice and of learning. The bishops would be ranked under the heads of piety, learning, orthodoxy, timidity, worldliness, business.

If we applied this method of generalization or outlining to schoolmasters, we should be led to the conclusion that a single type is no more desirable in this department than in any other. An Arnold might be as much out of place at Harrow as a Vaughan at Rugby. At different periods in the life of a school a different type is required; though the choice is always limited by the field, and sometimes is only that of Hobson. A headmaster may be wanted to brace up discipline, or to improve the moral and religious tone, or to clear away rubbish, or to raise the standard of scholarship, or to inspire public confidence by a reputation for practical wisdom; and if all the corresponding qualities could be combined in one person, that person would be the ideal head-master.

But we must take men as we find them. As a rule the system is stronger than the man, and his individuality is absorbed in the school; even in cases where (as often happens) his first years of office are a time of new devices, and experiments disturbing old routine. The best schoolmaster is not always he who makes the fewest mistakes, but rather he who has the most positive qualities. It is not high praise to say of a minister or a head-master that he can steer the ship in quiet times. Weather is uncertain, whether the sea is large or small, and a storm in a tea-cup, fluctus in simpulo, may capsize a head-master before he has time to right

his craft, if he is a man of rules and precautions, and not a captain trusted by his crew.

To say that character is the chief requisite is to say nothing, for what elements go to make character? Courage alone, though we should put it down among the first essentials, is not enough, for courage is no guarantee of wisdom. Sincerity may be weak, tact may degenerate into practice, common-sense is not incompatible with timidity. The subjects of the little kingdom are men and boys; the men living in close contact with each other, absorbed in lessons and games, seeing little of the world outside; the boys critical, impulsive, volatile, governed by codes of honour and morality, which may neither be ignored nor accepted as authoritative; parents may sometimes be unreasonable; it is a presage of trouble if the school gets into the newspapers, yet publicity is its life. It is difficult for a head-master to recognize what, among many discordant notes, represents the public opinion which he has to take into account, or it will call him to account. His safeguard is that if his school prospers, he will be credited with its success, and the public will not listen to the croakers who are always ready to raise their voices, but will let him alone.

A head-master, like a statesman or a clergyman, must put up with results short of his aims; but a sanguine temperament will carry him beyond disappointment, and save him from being discouraged by the discovery, which most men put in command make at an early period of their career, that their life has to be spent rather in contending with difficulties, than in carrying ideals into action.

Shall we say, then, that ideals are misleading, and that to do the routine work of the day is the wisest course? So, perhaps, thought Dr. Butler, or seemed to think. But his memory is still green, and the memory of those who live by routine, after a few years, is as a dream when one awaketh.'

Mr. Samuel Butler has done a pious and a serviceable work in reviving the memory of his grandfather, the head-master of Shrewsbury, the most successful schoolmaster of his day, and the founder of the high reputation of Shrewsbury School; a reputation which was maintained and even increased in the place itself under Butler's successor and pupil, Dr. Kennedy, and which has been upheld by Dr. Moss, himself trained by Dr. Kennedy; and at Cambridge by another pupil of Butler's, Shilleto, whose Porsonian figure and genius were familiar to all Cambridge men of thirty years ago, and who may be said to have converted that University to the Butlerian method of scholarship; a method rather scientific than literary, and limited Vol. 187.-No. 373.

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in its aims, but necessary as a foundation to whatever structure of philosophy and philology may be built upon it.

To Shilleto, following the traditions of the classical school founded by Porson, and continued down to our time by Clark, Mayor, Munro, Sandys (all Shrewsbury men), by Thompson and his successor and superior Jebb, may be attributed the predominance at Cambridge of the scholarship which aims in the first place at accuracy, i.e., establishing what the usage of the Greek and Latin languages actually was, and the right interpretation of the classical literature. This method has borne fruit not only in the field of classics, but also in the region of Biblical Scholarship. Oxford has taken its cue from Cambridge, and Lightfoot, Hort, and Westcott have worthy rivals in the sister University.

We do not say that Butler was eminently an accurate scholar. His Latin and Greek had a smack of the eighteenth century, in which he was brought up, but he taught his scholars to go to the fountain-head, and acquaint themselves in the first place with the true meaning of words. Thus, though Butler may not stand on the same elevation with Arnold as an educator, as a teacher of the classics he was unsurpassed by his contemporaries, and deserves a higher reputation than he perhaps enjoys, outside his own school, as one of the fathers of modern scholarship. Samuel Butler was born 120 years ago, of a respectable middleclass family, in which the name 'Samuel' appears often enough to suggest a connexion with the author of "Hudibras,' but with no tradition or family-Bible pedigree to support it. His father sent him at nine years old to Rugby, then presided over by Dr. James; who revived, if he did not recreate,' the school, bringing with him from Eton many sound traditions and not a few prejudices, and applying them with much commonsense and some humour. The toleration of mediocrity which this good man practised (for, said he, 'the world is content with moderate acquisitions') may have had some influence in impressing Butler with the sturdy belief, which, as schoolmaster and bishop, never left him, that he must work with the material supplied to him, and trust to his own exertions to make the best of it by stimulating industry and keeping up discipline. This self-reliance, which made him sometimes seem hard, and even arrogant, was the backbone of his character. He could bear praise and blame without being thrown off his balance. He was dangerous in controversy, as he was generous in reconciliation and trustworthy in friendship, a warm-hearted, quicktempered man, without too much sentiment, though in the presence of the Alps and of the ruins of Rome he was strangely

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affected to tears. It may be that his stoical mood, asking for nothing but recognition, however tardy, of hard work honestly done, enhanced the value of the softer side of a character best known to his family and to a few intimate friends; one of whom was the whimsical, clever, unworldly fisherman, Tillbrook, Fellow of the Fisherman's College at Cambridge. Old Till,' as his companions called him, will not be soon forgotten by those who read Mr. Butler's volumes.

At Rugby, the young Butler was a contemporary and rival of Walter Savage Landor, and like him was looked upon by some as a fellow of a 'churlish temper;' that is, he lived alone, and did his work as it suited him. His capacity for Latin and Greek approached genius.

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'How were his exercises composed?' says a schoolfellow, Mr. Apperley; how were his lessons construed and parsed? I will tell you how all this was performed. "Fetch me half a sheet of paper,' he would say to myself, or to any other boy much lower in the school than himself, at the hour of awaking in the morning; when, taking some novel or play-book from under his pillow, which he had been reading over-night, and using it as a desk, he would write off the best exercise of the day, and "play" (i.e. a holiday) "for Butler," would be often heard throughout the schools, Then his lessons :"Where is the place?" he would say to his neighbour, on joining his form ten minutes before a Greek play was to be read. Perhaps half a dozen words might be looked out in his lexicon, when the Greek book would be shut up, and one more to his mind be brought forth from his pocket. If "called up," however, there was no mistake. Now, how this was done is quite beyond my comprehension.'

He absorbed everything, contented with the range of Dr. James's Etonian course; and to the end of his life he upheld the doctrine-which has never been disproved, that classical literature is the best foundation for a liberal education.

Such a scholar was sure to be distinguished at the University. He was intended for Christ Church, and was on the point of entering there, when Dr. Parr's advice diverted him to St. John's College, Cambridge. Always a patriot and a partisan, Cambridge and St. John's College became to him the navel of the world. He learnt to despise Oxford, and Christ Church in particular, and at Christ Church its Dean: and he took a fierce joy in the traditional rivalry between Trinity and John's-a rivalry so ancient and so keen that when Bentley, a century earlier, leaped over the wall' and found himself Master of Trinity, he did but carry war into the enemy's country, and establish the Lodge as a kind of Johnian Decelea, from which to vex the Fellows of Trinity. The two Colleges dine with I 2 each

each other, and sit on the same syndicates in time of peace; but let an important university office fall vacant, and to it they go again, for glory, or for liberty.

A Johnian with heart and soul was Butler till his last day, ever ready to back his college, right or wrong. At Cambridge he cleared the board of all the classical distinctions that were open to competition, gaining more honours than even his favourite pupil B. H. Kennedy twenty years later; and from Cambridge he was in 1798 removed to the scene of his life's labour as head-master of Shrewsbury.

Shrewsbury Free School, an ancient but hitherto not very famous institution, was one of those local or provincial schools in which most of the upper middle class and many of the gentry of England were educated a century ago. Shrewsbury and Rugby were the principal Midland schools, occupying a like place to that which was held by Tiverton and Sherborne in the West, Sedbergh and Giggleswick in the North, and Bury and Ipswich in the East of England.

At the time of Butler's appointment Shrewsbury had sunk so low that he found there scarcely a single boy.' He was unpopular at first. He had a rough set of pupils to deal with ; and the fashion of the day, as well as the need of the moment, was to coerce, not to humour, the young barbarians. His strict discipline produced resistance, and he had trouble in making himself obeyed. Wear a wig, sir,' said Dr. Parr; but the wig had no better fortune than Dr. Parr's own wig, of which sad stories are told; and as for the broader brim' which the same adviser told him to add to his hat, i.e., the Doctor's degree, he did not assume it until 1810, by which time we may suppose that he had learnt to keep order. 'Be a beast,' was the advice once given by a senior at another school to a young master just beginning his business. It was a blunt way of saying, 'Make yourself respected;' kindness comes better as a corrective to severity than the other way. There is wisdom in the advice, but not too much wisdom; for it is not every schoolmaster who, having made himself feared, goes on, like Dr. Butler, to make himself beloved. Dr. Butler was indeed, we are told, 'as much hated at first as he was afterwards liked.' His severity 'furnished a subject for the Shrewsbury tea-tables.' These teatables were well furnished with subjects during the greater part of Dr. Butler's head-mastership; for from his first arrival at Shrewsbury, a quarrel based on a mere misunderstanding with the second master of the School, who held his appointment independently of the head-master, made him an irreconcilable enemy. It is difficult to understand how such a situation should