A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



writes that he had been private tutor to Lord 

 Mountfort, and was ' a great scholar. It was 

 supposed his reputation would retrieve the mis- 

 chief of Cooke's mastership ; but success was not 

 adequate to expectation.' In 1745 the numbers 

 had sunk to 244. But the reputation of the 

 school was restored and more than restored 

 under Edward Barnard, 1754-65, when they 

 rose to over 500. Charles James Fox was the 

 most distinguished of them, but he owed little 

 to Eton, from which his father used to take him 

 to play the fop at Paris. 



Barnard mitigated the rule of the birch. 

 John Foster, who succeeded him on his election 

 as provost in 1765, could only govern by its 

 aid. He was the son of a Windsor tradesman, 

 which of itself did not increase his popularity. 

 The result was that he brought the school down 

 to 230 and had to resign in 1773. In 1768 a 

 rebellion broke out in which 156 boys and the 

 Vlth and Upper Vth forms left the school, threw 

 their books into the Thames, and spent a night 

 out at Maidenhead, owing to a controversy as to 

 the right of assistant masters to send back pre- 

 postors to college when caught out of bounds. 

 Many went home ; among them William 

 Grenville, afterwards Prime Minister, who was 

 sent back by his father to be flogged and then 

 removed. There is extant a full curriculum and 

 time-table 143 drawn up about 1765 by James, 

 who went to King's in 1766, and, as head 

 master of Rugby, first made that school into ' a 

 great Public School.' It is recorded 144 that 

 George III, who was more Etonian than Eton- 

 ians, in congratulating James on his success at 

 Rugby, said : ' No wonder ! you were educated 

 at Eton.' 



James's time-table shows that, as at Winches- 

 ter, all saints' days were holidays, every Tues- 

 day was a whole holiday, and every Thursday a 

 half-holiday, while on Saturday school ended 

 with afternoon chapel at 3, this being called ' a 

 play at four.' The other days were known as 

 whole-school days. But arithmetic and geo- 

 graphy, for which Salmon's Geography was 

 used, and writing for ' the littles,' were taught 

 on holidays. On whole-school days school now 

 began at 7 o'clock, though the first lesson was 

 still called 'six o'clock lesson.' Breakfast was 

 at 9. School began again at n, and ended at 

 12. Afternoon school began at 3 and ended at 

 5. The Vlth and Vth forms seem to have 

 begun work at 8 o'clock only, but went on in 

 the afternoon to 6. It is amazing to find that 

 in construing Homer, which was done on Mon- 

 day morning, the Vlth form still construed it, not 

 into English, but into Latin verse, about thirty- 

 five lines at a time, while the Vth did it into 



143 Etoniana, July 1906. The original belongs to 

 the present Chief Commissioner of Works, the Rt. 

 Hon. L. Vernon Harcourt. 



144 Annals of Eton, 204. 



English, about fourteen lines at a time. In 

 reading Cicero, Middleton's Cicero was used, 

 which the boys were supposed to read by them- 

 selves out of school, with Roman and Greek 

 history, Milton, Pope, 'and all other books 

 necessary towards making a compleat scholar.' 

 An immense amount of repetition was done. 

 Monday was ushered in with twenty verses of 

 Greek Testament by heart ; the other days 

 thirty lines of Epigrammatum delectus or Selecta 

 ex Tullio, &c., and, in the summer, Horace's 

 Odes, at the rate of seven or eight a day. 

 Theocritus was read on Thursday, and on 

 Saturday Greek plays, including Aristophanes, 

 and Thucydides. But no author was read as a 

 whole, only in selections. There was a great 

 quantity of Latin prose and verse done. Every 

 Monday a theme ' on some good subject from 

 the Spectator or Tatler or Guardian,' for about 

 twenty lines of prose was done, and at 3 p.m. 

 an extempore epigram of four lines, with a joke 

 in it, had to be made. The writer actually 

 thinks it necessary to say that ' if the boys are 

 not able to cut a joke on the theme, they ought 

 by no means to be punished.' Subjects for 

 ' Longs and Shorts,' or Elegiacs, were given out 

 on Monday, and twenty to twenty-six lines sent 

 in on Thursday. Alcaics or other irregular 

 metres were done for 'Third Exercise.' One 

 Greek Exercise a week was done, a translation 

 from Latin into Greek. A month before the 

 end of term, Declamations were spoken every 

 Saturday and likewise speeches. English litera- 

 ture, it will be seen, was by no means wholly 

 neglected, and was probably the better appre- 

 ciated by being not a regular subject taught in 

 school, but read in leisure time and chiefly with 

 a view to illustrate the classics. 



At this time there were, besides the head 

 master and the usher, now called the lower 

 master, ten assistant masters and three writing 

 masters. A French master taught out of school, 

 as did the drawing master ; the latter was Henry 

 Angelo, and his family long remained at Eton. 

 The masters, except one of the writing masters, 

 Evans, did not keep the boarding houses, which, 

 as in Malim's day, were kept chiefly by ' Dames,' 

 though there were three 'domines.' College 

 contained only 52 boys. It had become a very 

 rough and undesirable place, and remained so 

 until it was thrown open to competitive exami- 

 nation, nearly a century later. Oppidans would 

 hardly consort with the ' tugs,' as collegers were 

 called, who were largely drawn from the lower 

 ranks, noble lords getting, it was said, their 

 butlers' and other poor dependants' sons into it. 

 Hence it was seldom if ever full. 



It seems strange to read in the Nugae Etonenses, 

 written about this same year, that the games 

 played included battledores, peg-top, hop-scotch, 

 marbles, hoops, trapball, puss in the corner, 

 chuck [farthing], and hunt the hare. Cricket 



200 



