ΧΙ ARNOLD THE ADVOCATE OF LIBERAL THEOLOGY HE name of Dr. Arnold is a household THE word in England, not only as the great typical Christian schoolmaster, but as the leader of modern Liberal or Broad Church theology. Much that is called Liberal or Broad Church at the present time would be utterly abhorrent to his mind; but he was certainly a pioneer of freedom of thought in the Church of England, within the limits of the New Testament. Thomas Arnold, seventh child and youngest son of William Arnold and his wife Martha Delafield, was born on June 13th, 1795, at West Cowes, Isle of Wight, five years before Dr. Pusey. His family had lived there for two generations, but had migrated from Suffolk. His father was a collector of customs, and died (as Dr. Arnold afterwards died) from spasm of the heart, on March 3rd, 1801. Little Tom, a dearly cherished favourite in the family, was prepared for school by his aunt, Miss Delafield. At Cowes he learned to delight in the sea, to know the flags of the many Continental ships that floated in the Solent during the great war, and was roused to a sense of the greatness of history by the mighty events that were happening. His intense love of local association received its first stimulus and creation from his father's grounds at Slatwoods, Cowes. In 1803 he went to Dr. Griffiths' preparatory school at Warminster, Wilts. At the age of three he had been presented by his father with Smollett's History of England as a reward for accuracy in going through the stories about the portraits and pictures which illustrated the reigns; he was also notably quick with his games of geographical cards. A Warminster schoolfellow writes of him: "Arnold's delight was in preparing for some part of the siege of Troy with a stick in his right hand, and the cover of a tin box or any flat piece of wood tied upon his left arm, he would come forth to the battle, and from Pope's Homer would pour forth fluently the challenge or the reproach. His whole soul seemed full of the exploits both of Greeks and Trojans, and his memory amply stored with the poet's verse. Every book he had was easily recognised as his property by helmets and shields, and Hector and Achilles, on all the blank leaves; many of mine had some token of his graphic love of those heroes." In 1807 he entered as a commoner at Winchester, afterwards becoming scholar of the college. He was successively under Dr. Goddard, who had great tact in managing boys, and Dr. Gabell, famous for skill in imparting scholarship. Dean Stanley says that he was then, as always, of a shy and retiring disposition; but his manner as a child, and till his entrance at Oxford, was marked by a stiffness and formality the very reverse of the joyousness and simplicity of his later years. His family and schoolfellows both remembered him as unlike those of his own age, and with peculiar pursuits of his own; and the tone and style of his early letters, which have been for the most part preserved, were such as might naturally have been produced by living chiefly in the company of his elders, and reading, or hearing read to him before he could read himself, books suited to a more advanced age. Both as a boy and as a young man, says his biographer, he was remarkable for a tendency to indolence, amounting almost to a constitutional infirmity; and though his after-life showed how completely this was overcome by habit, yet he often said that early rising was a daily effort to him, and that in this instance he never found the truth of the usual rule of all things being made easy by custom. With this, however, was always united great occasional energy; and one of his schoolfellows gave it as his impression of him that he was stiff in his opinions, and utterly immovable by force or fraud, when he had made up his mind, whether right or wrong. 66 un He did not like the Winchester custom of reciting with action. He thought it commonly useless." "What use can it be of," he wrote, "to be able to get up and spout like an Actor? If we were all designed for the Stage, I should think such lessons very necessary; but as Gentlemen, I do think the whole totally useless. For the only three sorts of Eloquence in Practice in this country are those of the Senate, the Law, and the Pulpit. The Pulpit only requires simple reading, and I apprehend that a person will be but little qualified for the Senate or the Law by having learnt at school to spout Milton and Gray, accompanied with action which is frequently ridiculous. If they would teach their scholars to read, they would be of some service to them; as it is my firm belief there are not above thirty fellows in this school that can read tolerably. Indeed, I think that this neglect of teaching Boys to read is the Reason that we so often see Clergymen in the Pulpit whose reading would disgrace a Child of seven years old." He was evidently somewhat confident in his boyish opinions. About reading he was clearly right; as to the principles of rhetoric and declamation, it is generally acknowledged that they are of real importance in the three professions he names. The audience was Officers, Prebend[arie]s, the Warden, Fellows, Masters, Tutors, and I don't know who besides." "I was drest as follows: Breeches (cords), with their strings tied in my very best manner (bad, I am sure, is the best, you will say), white cotton stockings, clean shoes, my best blue Waistcoat and best Gown, a clean neckcloth and Band, and hands washed as white as ever Lydia's are!" 66 At Warminster he had read Priestley's Lectures on History; at Winchester, Russell's Modern |