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for searching only. 46o SMALL LATINE AND LESSE GREEKE
I believe, will look upon as any great Accomplishment. This, without a more perfect Acquaintance with those, as well as other Things, is worse than none at all; and serves only to fill their Heads with a vain Conceit of themselves, and renders them oftentimes Pedantick and impertinent, all the Days of their Lives after."
Being a good eighteenth century "Man of Sense," Clarke wanted the boys to have something more practical than words, language, and scraps of Greek and Roman History and Heathen Mythology. The poetry, we shall find, is not merely a dead loss, but even a vicious evil. The very things Clarke deplores are exactly the things which were "practical" for the poet Shakspere. Clarke's condemnation is the highest tribute. His brethren the literary critics were as inept as he.
Similarly, Clarke's ideas of the "practical" are good eighteenth century ideas,
It is not therefore bare Latin and Greek a Boy should spend his whole Time in at School. These must of Necessity go to the making of a Scholar; but then there are other things as necessary, which School-Boys are not only capable of, but may easily be taught, without any Hindrance to their Proficiency in the Tongues: I mean History and Geography, both Ancient and Modern, with Chronology, and the most necessary and useful Things in Divinity, &c. These, if a right Method was used with them," might be taught them, to a greater Degree of Perfection than most Men of a Scholastick Education, that apply themselves to Reading, ever attain to. And what a Byass, what an Inclination for Books and Learning, it would give Boys if they were to leave the School so furnished, I need not say.S2
All the boys need is to be taught these "practical" things by Clarke's method. They would then be so fired that they would go forth breathing out divine platitudes from history, geography, and chronology. I feel quite certain that Shakspere was lucky in going to grammar school in the sixteenth century when it still had an impractical literary objective. I can quite well understand why some critics in the eighteenth century thought grammar school for Shakspere was a total loss of time. Men of Clarke's mind had already robbed grammar school of most that had been valuable to Shakspere.
One of the eight fundamental defects of the contemporary system, says Clarke, was, "V. The making Boys get their Lessons in the
Io Clarke, Euay (1720), pp. vs-II.
Of course, Clarke constructed texts on the right method. My copy of his Introduction is of the twenty-sixth edition, 179o. This prophet was not without honor in his own century. v Clarke, Essay (:750), pp. II-I2.
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