Diversions of a Pedagogue.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 870, 2 November 1888, Page 10

Diversions of a Pedagogue.

J. H. Raven, in Macmillan’s Magazine. . Boys’ themes or essays are generally worth reading, for, dull as they are for the most pait, they abound in literary surprises. The following obscure passage is from a junior theme on Robinson Crusoe: —‘There, have been many claims as to the authorship of this volume as a gentleman assured the Rev. Benjamin Holdby that Lord Somerset told him that Lord Oxford wrote it when he was in prison, and that Lord Oxford had given it to Defoe Then as to the place where this interesting book , was written. Some say that Defoe was under the frowns of the Government when he wrote it; others say that it was written in a little village in Kent, and others in a field at Stoke Newington, but that it was written when he was under the frowns of government is thought moat- probable.’ And here is a remark apparently directed against the Church Militant, occurring in a theme on Ancient and Modern Warfare :—‘Fighting is not so much now man against man as canon against canon.’ But it would be an endless task to record the absurdities produced by bad spelling. One of my essayists had an eloquent passage on a short-lived genius : •Kirke White was soaring upwards to.try and make a distinguished man of himself, when Death’s sting struck him, and in the words of the poet ‘Byron, “ O what a noble heart was here undone.” ’ The next specimen is from a history paper : ‘ He got into a row for dressing up like a girl and going into some sort of Woman’s Rights Meeting. The boy was aiming at the rites of the Bona Dea. This entirely irrelevant answer was oh one occasion given to the demand, * Describe the translation of Elijah :’ * I do not know what tha translation of Elijah is, but the translation of Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin is as follows.’ Unfortunately it did not follow at all. The boy who produced the next answer had been hoaxed, but I am assured it is a genuine product of the Oxford and Cambridge Local Examinations. Q. ‘ What do you know of Isaac Walton ? ’ A. ‘ He wrote the Complete Angler, and was such an enthusiast in his art that he was termed the Judicious Hooker.’ A note will be needed to elucidate’ the next sample. Q. ‘ What is the Eoliptio ’’ A. ‘ An imagin. ary line going round the Equator. It Beems to be the path which the Earth goes round, but it is really the path to Heaven..’. This is dueto a misconception of the definition given in the text-book, ‘ The apparent path of the Sun through the heavens.’ I shall make no attempt to classify the authors of the miscellaneous blunders that follow. ‘Jenny Lind, ’ says one, * sang at Exeter Hall, and gave the proceeds to the London Hospital, also called Miss Florence Nightingale.’ The boy who started a proposition of Euclid with these words, ‘ Let a b be a straight line, which is impossible,’ was plainly something of a philosopher. CandenSe nitena elephanto, • Leaning on a fiery elephant,’is a graphio picture from the battle-field ; but I have my doubts whether the following, related from a public school, is not apocryphal, Rusticus quldam publioosludosspeotabat, ‘A country gentleman was inspecting the National Schools.’ Vere fabis satio, says Virgil: ‘Truly, I am full of.beans, ’ tays a translator. Vivax apiutn has been not unnaturally rendered ‘ The busy bee, ’ but this was the work of an Oxford undergraduate. More boylike, perhaps, ia the following, V6tue & la Grecque, •Virtuous in Greek.’ Many of my readers will remember the expression used by Virgu of the warrior’s chariot in.the Happy Fields, Similisque est currus inani ; but this rendering, a genuine one, will be new to them, ‘And the chariot is like an empty.’ And this perhaps will be also a surprise, Jmmundum odorem, * An unearthly Bmell.’ Of course I am far from maintaining that this record of school-room blunders will throw any clear light on the nature of the schoolboys. They are offered less iu the didactic

spirit than in the hope that they may afford others, as they have afforded me, some diversion. Still, as I have said before, it is just possible that being facts, they may have their uses. The record of a blunder in the educational world may be as useful as the gauging of a given day’s rainfall in the meteorological world. The late head of my college used to say (whether at first or second hand, I do not know) : ‘ When you enter upon the study of any wide, subject, you may expect to finfl yourself in three successive states of mind : first, that in which you think you will soon know all about it; second, that in which you feel that you will never know anything about it ; third, that in which you trust you know a little, and humbly hope that eventually you.may know a little more. On the vast subject of the school-boy I am certainly not iu the first of these three stages. On a previous occasion I ventured to classify the perpetrators of aoademicnl blunders, but on reviewing my attempts in that direction I am painfully reminded that *he who classifies, invents.’ As I have said before, I am content to record my experiences, and leave it to more philosophical heads to use the materials here supplied. Some twenty years, however, spent among boys do give one some claim to write and speak of them as one has found them. Their minds are not as their teachers’ minds. There is a great deal about them that is and must remain very puzzling, even to those who have the clearest recollection of their own boyhood. On observing their eccentricities, and their openness on the one hand and their excessive reticence on tho other, one is inclined to speak of them as Waggle spoke of Wiggle .- * Who does know that fellow’s intrigues ? . . . What a genius he is, if he would but apply himself