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THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
Digitized by the Internet Arcinive 
 
 in 2007 witii funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 littp://www.arcliive.org/details/commemorationaddOOhkhkrich 
 
IN PKAISE OF DEAN COLET, 
 
 FOUNDER OF ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL. 
 
 " Tardi ingenii est rivulos consectari, fontes rerum non videre." 
 
 Cicero, de Orafore, H. 37. 
 
 APPOSITION, MAY 26, 
 
 1852. 
 
k4^ 
 
1652- 
 
 COMMEMORATION ADDRESS. 
 
 We meet this day to render our annual homage of 
 grateful commemoration to the Founder of St. Paul's 
 School, " whose singular praise it is to have done the best 
 things in the worst times, and to have hoped them in the 
 most calamitous ; " ' to have resolved the surrender of his 
 whole patrimony to God's glory and the well-being of 
 mankind, at a period of courtly rapacity, and clerical 
 luxuriousness of life, and to have anticipated for this 
 memorial of his love by wise laws, and their wholesome 
 administration, a perpetuity of existence, when the sound 
 was already in his ears of the ruin of the monastic insti- 
 tutions of a former age. Nor was his bounty the easy 
 result of a testamentary disposition, as in former times, of 
 wealth which could be retained no more in this world, and 
 was thought to be available, through pious uses, for the 
 soul's repose in the next; nor the scarcely less easy 
 transfer, as in following reigns, to holy purposes of the 
 confiscated possessions of religious houses. He " did what 
 he could " ^ for his Saviour's glory ; he did it in his life- 
 time, and he did it with his own. The blessings wmeh 
 thus resulted to this Church and kingdom, and the whole 
 religious and literary world, each of themselves supply 
 abundant subject of thankful acknowledgment, which no 
 
 » Said of Sir Robert Shirley, Bart. See his Epitaph in Staunton Harold 
 Church, founded by him during the Civil Wars. Ob'. 1653. 
 ^ Markxiv. 8. ^ ^.^.^ , ^ 
 
 mS67^ 5 
 
"4 
 
 yearly repetition can make tedious, no reiterated expression 
 of our gratitude entirely exhaust or supersede. 
 
 From the founding of St. Paul's School, it followed that 
 the commonalty of England, her Londoners' in particular, 
 fast rising in importance, through extended commerce, to 
 the place and dignity of baronial feudalism, now decimated 
 and impoverished by protracted warfare, was religiously and 
 nobly trained to fulfil the purposes of their exalted desti- 
 nation. It followed that ancient learning, received into 
 a stately home, like the Idasan goddess in the house of 
 Scipio, or rather — for she came in the form of pure and 
 amended worship — ^like the Ark of God in the house of 
 Obed-Edom,* with blessing, fixed her habitation in this 
 country, remaining with us, when in the land of her 
 second birth, the melodious language of Tully, which 
 made such music in the ear of Petrarch, and seemed 
 to live again in the soul of Muretus, had passed away, 
 and the light of classical genius was lost in the glories 
 of its revival. It followed, that innumerable Public 
 Schools started into being in the short space of this and 
 the following reign, some founded in the exact similitude, 
 and all dispersing, in some measure, the same advantages 
 as St. Paul's;^ and that from Colet's foundation, — ^so writes 
 his great contemporary and friend. Sir Thomas More, — 
 there issued forth at once, as from the Trojan horse, armed 
 chfeftains to surprise the citadel of ignorance in the hour 
 of its darkest night,^ — Paget, Denny, and North, to en- 
 lighten the council of the Sovereign, — Whitaker, to refute 
 the errors of Popery in Cambridge, — Lupset, to reform the 
 studies of Oxford, — Leland the historian, — Canaden, the 
 
 ^ See Dean Colet's Statutes. 
 * Comp. Juv. Sat. III. 137. 2 Sam. vi. 10—12. 
 5 See a List in Knight's Life of Colet, p. 90. 
 ^ Ibid. note. 
 
Catoof our archaeologists and prose writers, — "cui nullum 
 eloquentiae lumen defuit,"' — to delight all ages with his 
 general stores of learning, and to dispense, with the hap- 
 piest auspices, that accurate knowledge of the Greek 
 language, as Master of Westminster, which he had gained 
 as a scholar of St. Paul's. 
 
 An institution crowned from the first with such success 
 as this, must of necessity have possessed the threefold 
 strength, combined in one, of a wise and noble purpose, 
 effectual means, an honest, zealous, and vigorous adminis- 
 tration ; — the purpose, Colet's intent by this School " to 
 increase knowledge and worshipping of God and our Lord 
 Christ Jesu, and good Christian life and manners in the 
 children ;" — the means, the study of " good literature, both 
 Latin and Greek authors, such as have joined with wisdom 
 the pure chaste eloquence ; " — the administration, the per- 
 petual rule of the " honest and faithful fellowship of the 
 Mercers' Company of London." Of these, his appointed 
 Representatives in future ages, it is no mean praise to say, 
 that if the misrule and perpetual departure from their 
 founders' orders, proving the corrupt tendencies as they 
 brought on the ruin of the Monastic Houses, attested by 
 the experience of past centuries the sad conclusion of our 
 Founder's, — " that there was no absolute certainty in 
 human affairs,"^ — the equally assured experience of three 
 centuries and a half has proved that he made a right ex- 
 ception to the general rule of the progressive deterioration 
 of such associated superintendence, in declaring such a 
 body as that of the Mercers' Company to be, in his judg- 
 ment, the least corruptible order of mankind. The 
 Governors of this Foundation have increased to an incre- 
 dible extension the resources of their trust by thrifty and 
 7 Cicero, Brutus, xvii. 6Q. * Erasmus' Letters. 
 
6 
 
 careful stewardship, — ^have made its endowment not only 
 self-supporting, as Dean Colet hoped, but self- expanding, 
 and self-enriching to a wonderful degree, — have twice re- 
 built the School, — have founded Exhibitions, and augmented 
 their allowance, and increased their number, — have founded 
 costly and numerous prizes for the encouragement of the 
 Scholars throughout our Classes, — above all, by a diligent 
 observance of the Founder's purpose, and a prudent assi- 
 milation of his statutes to the progress of society, accord- 
 ing to the liberty which was allowed them, have sustained 
 in all ages the reputation of the School, and have raised it 
 to its present pinnacle of usefulness and public favour. 
 
 " It might seem," says Fuller in his Church History,'' 
 "false Latin, that this Colet being Dean of St. Paul's, 
 the School dedicated to St. Paul, and distanced but the 
 breadth of the street from St. Paul's Church, should not 
 be entrusted to the inspection of his successors, the Dean 
 and Chapter of St. Paul's, but committed to the care of the 
 Company of the Mercers, for the management thereof.'^ 
 But he highly approves of this apparent incongruity of the 
 Dean's procedure in the matter, which he considers to have 
 been not only prudential, but something prophetical, not 
 only as suggested by his confidence in the approved faith- 
 fulness of the Mercers in the discharge of their still more 
 ancient trusts, but justified by his anticipation of the ruin of 
 Church lands and Ecclesiastical appendants, which, for the 
 reasons already stated, he so sagaciously foresaw. And 
 already the fruits of the Mercers' governance satisfied 
 Fuller, no doubt, that Dean Colet's judgment in this case 
 was not " false Latin," but a sentence of the most felicitous 
 construction in respect alike of " regimen," " concord," and 
 " collocation," and one of the happiest import to his School 
 » Book V. Cent. XVI. 13—16. 
 
Of the necessary relevance of the means to the end 
 proposed, that is, the tendency of the ancient languages of 
 Greece and Rome, if studied in their utmost purity, to 
 promote the glory of God, and the religious and moral 
 excellence of mankind, a question may be entertained by 
 some who nevertheless desire, like our Founder, to see 
 such intents realized to the utmost attainments which our 
 imperfect means and fallen nature may allow, and who 
 approve Dean Colet's choice of the agency and effective 
 administration of the means thus placed at their disposal. 
 It may be said of human means and human agency alike, 
 that neither are without danger of corruption or failure, 
 and that there is no certainty in them; but that the 
 study of the languages of Greece and Rome is the best 
 system of training, in conjunction with Holy Scripture, 
 and the least fallible ; and that such in fact, or similar, 
 have been all methods of education in all civilized countries 
 in all ages of the world. 
 
 The Schools of the ancients, of Judaea, of Greece, of 
 Alexandria, and of Rome, will be found to have been 
 marked with one or more, or all of the characteristics of 
 modern training in such foundations as this — Religion, 
 Language, Ancient Languages, and a prescribed and 
 limited cycle of instruction. The Schools of the Prophets 
 in the Levitical cities were, in all their stages, so far as 
 we can trace them, essentially schools of language. 
 Taking their rise in the time when " the Word of God 
 was precious," there being no longer any " open vision in 
 those days,"^" — while the Angels in Heaven were desiring to 
 look into God's Gospel of salvation, without intervention 
 of speech or language to express its purport," the Prophets 
 in these schools were searching its revelations in the 
 i» 1 Sam. iii. 1. " Psalm xix. 3. 
 
s 
 
 words in which they were delivered upon earth, comparing 
 Scripture with Scripture; and thus, when not only had 
 open visions ceased, but the Word itself had become more 
 precious from its infrequency, eliciting novel and undis- 
 covered indications of God's purposes to man.*^ 
 
 Much more did these seminaries become schools of 
 language, and ancient language, when the pure Hebrew 
 separated itself gradually from the contamination of 
 colloquial usage, — most of all, when, after the Captivity, 
 Hebrew became a dead language as it were to the people, 
 and the Word of God, more precious now than ever, 
 receiving no further augmentation of prophecy, required 
 to be studied with other and human helps to its investi- 
 gation, — to be illustrated by ancient glosses, to be rendered 
 in contemporary dialects, or translated into other lan- 
 guages, — specially when that of Greece, rolled by the 
 tide of conquest, flowed, like a mighty wave, over the 
 province of Syria, — secularized, in great measure, the 
 education of the Jews, and rendered it in many respects 
 identical with our own. 
 
 In Greece and Rome, to pass over the Alexandrian age, 
 which is simply one of transition between them, and 
 where ancient models and an exclusive system were alone 
 upheld, and in the Schools which marked the close of the 
 middle ages of Europe and the revival of literature, we 
 shall not fail to observe, in like manner, that ancient 
 authors, separated alike by long intervals of time and 
 change of language, were invariably- made the text books 
 of their teaching, and the foundation of the whole fabric 
 of their education of the young. 
 
 The Homeric Poems — the Bible of the Greeks (for 
 there was no other) they may well be called — was the 
 "1 Pet. i. 11, 12. 
 
9 
 
 ocean from which all the rivers of their teaching took their 
 source, and to which, after all their windings, they failed 
 not to return.^^ At Rome, the obsolete archaisms of ancient 
 laws, or the scarcely less antiquated productions of her first 
 literary efforts, the poems of Livius Andronicus, Ennius, 
 and Lucilius, matured, though he was slow to acknowledge 
 the obligation, in early youth the tact and genius of 
 Horace, the erudite simplicity and elegance of Virgil, — 
 who themselves again, at a later period, when the purity of 
 Augustan Latin had declined, became the models and the 
 ground-work for the education of the youth of Rome. 
 And the period of the revival of literature in Europe 
 is chiefly that, when the language of Rome, purged of the 
 dross of its provincial corruptions, became strictly an 
 ancient and classical language, spoken no more, but studied 
 in the Schools, as a pure well and source of literature, 
 unmixed and undefiled; and, last of all, when Greek, 
 which needed no such purification, — for it never had been 
 debased at all, — under Colet's auspices, completed the 
 full scope of Education, and gave us access to God our 
 Saviour through the language in which it pleased Him 
 to conclude, at last, the substance of all former prophe- 
 cies, and to convey His latest message of good tidings and 
 salvation to the world. 
 
 But it is said they are dead languages, and therefore 
 inapplicable as effective elements for the education of 
 youth in an age of lively development of man's inherent 
 energies, and unfitted to train it for the part which it is 
 to play in the destination of after years. . They are dead, 
 indeed, in the sense in which they required to die and 
 to be dead for the full operation of their beneficial 
 influence; they are dead as presenting a perfect whole — 
 '3 Quintilian, x. 1. 
 
10 
 
 a ySto9 r€\€Lo<s^* for the study of mankind, as awaiting no 
 further development of their latent powers, and as safe 
 from all deterioration of colloquial usage, or arbitrary caprice 
 of age or fashion ; dead, as exempt from the shock and con- 
 tagion of foreign collision or admixture with tongues less 
 perfect than themselves. They are not dead, in the sense 
 of being " cut off," or " abiding alone," or exercising no 
 agency on our hearts or feelings, and having no asso- 
 ciation with the sentiments and sympathies of our ordinary 
 lives ; they are not dead in any such sense as this, — they 
 are the most lively, it might almost be said they are the 
 onli/ living languages of the world. 
 
 The necessity of restricting the study of Greek and 
 Latin to authors of the best and purest ages, need scarcely 
 be urged, though it is due to Dean Colet to remark, that 
 he was the first in this country to make the distinction ; 
 but generally of all education it is to be received as an 
 almost axiomatic principle, that its scope must be of a 
 limited and exclusive kind. Teaching should be confined 
 to the end of moral and religious training; to the means, 
 of the ancient languages, and of these a few authors only, 
 of the noblest wisdom and the purest eloquence, and these 
 again interpreted by fixed rules of criticism of the precisest 
 and most determined kind. It would seem to follow, that 
 as is Religion, so should be its appointed process of ac- 
 quirement. As it is essential to the Gospel to be "the 
 same to-day, yesterday, and evermore," ^^ and to Holy 
 Scripture to admit of neither detraction, addition, or 
 ulterior development of its leading doctrines, so their 
 adjuncts and attendant sciences must possess in themselves, 
 and their collateral illustrations, a kind of fixedness and 
 finality of their own. 
 
 1* Aristotle, Ethics, Book I. 5. »s Heb. xiii. 18. 
 
• 11 
 
 Restricted thus, such a system of learning cannot how- 
 ever be effectively administered without including and 
 perpetually drawing within its range those matters of 
 practical instruction, for which so much is claimed, nor 
 elegant and polite accomplishment, for which other pe- 
 titioners are equally disposed to ask. It would be an entire 
 misunderstanding of the spirit of our Founder's statutes, 
 and a most unjust depreciation of the studies of his School, 
 to imagine such lifeless and barren teaching as the 
 absolute exclusion of these elements would thus imply. 
 As the wisdom of Colet commends itself in declaring any 
 amount of liberty in adapting his statutes to the altered 
 condition of society, compatible with the strict observance 
 of the ends which his Governors are solemnly charged to 
 pursue ; so it has ever been the glory of this School to be 
 as useful to the latter as the former age, — to combine with 
 a Dorian unbending severity of tradition an Ionian capacity 
 of progressive change. Mathematics, and some higher 
 branches of pure Physical Science are professedly and 
 effectively associated with the Classical teaching at St. 
 Paul's. Moral Philosophy has begun to be an integral 
 element in the head classes ; yet both sciences are taught 
 with some observance still of the wholesome rule of a 
 defining limitation. In the latter, care is taken to combine 
 ancient and modern authorities in their just proportions, — 
 to correct the subjective idealism of Plato with the 
 sensuous objectivity of Locke, and to expand the somewhat 
 contracted views of Aristotle into the fuller proportions 
 of Bishop Butler's enlarged contemplations of the moral 
 condition and destinies of Man. 
 
 Modern Languages, in like manner, are philologically 
 employed to illustrate our teaching; those of Western 
 Europe to trace the extinction, or illustrate the construe- 
 
12 
 
 tion of the Latin language, as those of the Northern races 
 might be used to trace, by connexion with a common 
 stock, both Latin and Greek to the Semitic origin of the 
 chief languages alike of the modern and the ancient world. 
 Neither Modern Languages nor Modern History, as 
 subsidiary, can be considered therefore as excluded from 
 our system ; the inherent objection to their being primary 
 departments of our training is alike the indeterminateness 
 of either ; the incompleteness and inconclusiveness of the 
 study of languages still subject to arbitrary and capricious 
 changes, and contemporary histories which have worked 
 out as yet but few, if any, independent deductions of fixed 
 political science. 
 
 It remains for us to allude to the study of English, and 
 English Composition in particular, of which indeed we 
 have much reason, and some encouragement, perhaps, to 
 speak.^^ If that illustrious Pauline," who tells us of his 
 visit to the Apposition of 1662, and some preparations 
 which he was making, on his brother John's account, for the 
 anniversary speeches of an earlier date, could after the 
 space of nearly two hundred years have passed through 
 our Library, and have been one of this company, he would 
 have noted down some important entries for his Diary, 
 which, as he is not here, we must shortly endeavour to do 
 for him to-day. 
 
 He might see, in passing to this room, the very copy of 
 Stephani Thesaurus, which he tells us he presented to the 
 School,^^ an obsolete but highly-prized reminiscence of his 
 
 ^^ It is hoped that the English Essay and Poem will be thought not alto- 
 gether unworthy of the notice of the Founders of the Truro and Milton 
 Prizes. They are printed without erasure or correction. — H. K. 
 
 ^' Mr. Secretary Pepys. See Extracts from his Diary, in the Programme 
 of the Speeches. 
 
 '8 Diary— Dec. 27, 1661. 
 
13 
 
 kindness, now shrunk into insignificance by the comparison 
 with the more numerous and bulky volumes of a later 
 edition which stands by its side. The same proportion 
 he might observe between the extinct masses of effete and 
 forgotten disquisitions, and the modern and more perfect 
 illustrations of those Classics which he studied in his 
 boyhood at St. PauFs. He would see, moreover, Modern 
 History, and our glorious English Poetry, occupying a 
 considerable amount of space, and he would discern in 
 their well-thumbed leaves and disordered exteriors, some 
 pleasing assurance that Modern Literature forms no in- 
 considerable part of the Master's illustrations of his 
 teaching, and the occupation and amusement of his 
 Scholars in their hours of leisure. And had he "gone 
 down to see the head forms posed,'' as in the Apposition of 
 1662, observing by the way that the posing had become 
 much too formidable a matter to admit of its following 
 instead of preceding, as now, the festivities of this day, 
 he would have found the learned and kindly representa- 
 tives of " Dr. Wilkins and Outram," on whom we pray 
 an equal share of promotion to the dignities of the 
 Church may descend,^^ posing the boys in ancient lan- 
 guages and learned authors as of old, yet not taxing our 
 memories alone, but watching eagerly the development of 
 our minds in all that constitutes a wholesome, lively, 
 pure, tasteful, and intellectual concentration at once, and 
 refinement of their powers. He might regret, indeed, the 
 cessation of Hebrew, — for who would not regret to lose, in 
 a place of Religious Education, one of the Sacred Triad of 
 languages which met upon the Saviour's Cross .? — but he 
 would have seen the head forms posed in English as well 
 
 " J. Wilkins, D.D., afterwards Bishop of Chester ; W. Outram, D.D., 
 Prebendary of Westminster. 
 
14 
 
 as in Latin and Greek, and would have rejoiced that such 
 addition has been made to the Apposition of his time, 
 and the usual studies of the year. 
 
 And so coming last of all into this Schoolroom, he 
 might remark of our Speeches, no doubt, that they ap- 
 proached more nearly than ever to the " Schoolboy" usual 
 standard of indifferent merit, and have declined still 
 further from that of his recollections of what. they used to 
 be in his own time; but he would close all his regrets, and 
 sum up the whole pleasure derived from this year's visit to 
 the School, in seeing splendid Prizes bestowed for the com- 
 position of English Essays and English Verse, not as 
 before by the Mercers' Company alone, ^** but through the 
 liberality and affectionate remembrance of illustrious 
 Alumni of the School. 
 
 And great indeed would be his delight, when he heard 
 that one of those Scholars, — themselves so distinguished, 
 and thus distinguishing the School, — was the Lord Chan- 
 cellor OF England, one of three contemporary Attorney 
 Generals,^^ one of two Chief Judges, educated in this place; 
 and that one of the first acts of his Lordship was to attest 
 the sincerity of his gratitude to Dean Colet^s foundation, 
 by founding a munificent and princely Prize for the further 
 encouragement of English Composition in this School. 
 
 Nor would Sir Charles Clarke's institution of the 
 " Milton Prize," in the same year, fail to awaken similar 
 emotions of grateful acknowledgment of this threefold 
 endeavour, on the part of the Donor, to do justice at once 
 to his own feelings of affection for the School of his 
 boyhood, his admiration for the most famous of its Scholars, 
 his desire to combine pure taste with Religious and Scrip- 
 
 2° A Prize was founded by the Goyemors for English Essay, or Verse 
 Composition, a.d. 1839. 
 
 21 Wetherell, Wilde, Pollock. 
 
15 
 
 tural habits of thought, and find a fitting occasion for 
 their union in the study and composition of English and 
 Sacred Verse. 
 
 And he would not leave this Schoolroom, perhaps, 
 without some general reflections, suggested by what he 
 had seen and heard to-day, of the true end and theory of 
 Public School Education in England, with some consi- 
 deration of the manner in which these ends are here pur- 
 sued, where such a system of teaching seems first to have 
 had its rise. 
 
 He would reflect that Education is not merely Practical 
 Instruction, nor the acquisition of useful or elegant ac- 
 complishments, suited to the various fashions of public 
 favour ; but. Religious and Moral Training of the Soul of 
 Man, for its progress through the essentials of this world 
 to its Eternity in the next. And he would confidently 
 expect for St. Paul's School, and the governance of its 
 appointed Guardians, that — distinguishing only between 
 such studies as were primary sources, and those which 
 were but collateral and illustrative accessories of the 
 Education of the Young, — it would retain all that it 
 already possessed, and reject nothing which might be 
 wanting for the full efficiency of its Founder's Statutes ; 
 and that, — as in the Roman Capitol, " Youth " and 
 " Boundary " " were the only deities whose images could 
 not be removed, — so in this Empire of Sound Literature 
 and Holy. Training, no institutions were absolutely fixed 
 and unchangeable, save Religion and Ancient Learning , 
 which promise it an undecaying bloom of youthful vigour, 
 and an interminable blessing to mankind. 
 
 22 Livy, I. 65, and V. 54. 
 
 H. K. 
 
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