52 Timehri. 



naivete with which nicknames were turned into titles of honour so that 

 the descendants of Richard the strong bowman and Raymond the poor, 

 with no sense of the ludicrous, bore quite tauntingly the proud appella- 

 tion of Strongbow or Power, is sufficient indication of the uncouth 

 humour of the Conquest. 



One can easily imagine how little the secular learning of the most 

 cultured people of the island they had conquered would appeal to the 

 lusty ruffians. The literature and music of Wales and Ireland, the 

 manners gentle and refined of the princes and chiefs, to whom they found 

 themselves superior in the only values they recognised — those of armour 

 ami warlike equipment, of which they had learned the use in France — 

 were, by ihe uncultivated Norman, not at all appreciated. Instead he 

 applied himself vigorously, according to his lights, to grasp by the strong- 

 hand such things as he had use for and to destroy all else the appreciation 

 of which was beyond him. 



On the other hand his scarcely depaganised superstition induced 

 him to stand in awe before the learning of the priests, when by chance 

 they possessed any, who accompanied the Normans banner blessed by 

 the Pope of Rome. It was in that age that the tendency of learning was 

 fixed, and the lines laid down upon which polite culture would, for ages, 

 run. When bye-and-bye kings took to founding Universities it was for 

 churchman's learning they were endowed and it is not difficult in the 

 cloistered atmosphere of Oxford and Cambridge to trace still the tone of 

 mediaeval seclusion from worldly interests and practical life directly born 

 of the clerical scholarship for which those seats of learning were con- 

 ceived. Nor would it be other than a loss in some senses if the tradition 

 of meditative repose in these places should give way to the bustling 

 methods of training needful to equip fighting men in Norman days or 

 men of affairs of the present time. In a huge and very rich community 

 like the England of to-day there are numbers upon whom there presses 

 neither necessity nor inclination to enter the lists. Be their fathers 

 barons or brewers does not much matter, a cloistered refuge has a clien- 

 tele, just as it had of old. Under present social conditions all sorts of 

 men have their use and possibly some may be spared for cloistered 

 scholarship. That is the only sound argument I know of for the con- 

 servation of the ancient university ideal and. curiously, I have never seen 

 it put. 



I have made this brief excursion into the origins of learning in 

 England because our view of things to-day is largely dominated by its 

 history. By a curious confusion of incidents with principles, the con- 

 servative school of educationist quotes the Greek method of culture in 

 support of their ideal, and imagines even that his ideas of pedagogy are 

 on lines similar to those which built up Athens and Corinth. The merest 

 glance at the considerations above given will show how utterly astray is 

 this notion. Greek education, as it is usually understood, was the educa- 

 tion of an aristocratic guild and had the very definite and practical aim 



