Scholar on Horseback

In very recent years, some valuable contributions to the study of liberal learning have been published in America. A number, like those of Dr. Arthur Bestor and Canon B. I. Bell and Mr. Mortimer Smith, have dealt with the theory and mechanics of sound instruction; others, like Professor Culler’s The Imperial Intellect, have examined the thought of great educators. Professor Fletcher’s big, handsome volume is an important work in this latter category. Dr. Fletcher, who has labored thirty years in the study of Milton, leaves to a forthcoming second volume the examination of Milton at Christ College, Cambridge; the present book is concerned with the boy Milton (as yet giving few indications of genius) under his tutors and at St. Paul’s School.

This constitutes a most painstaking and ingenious task of historical and philosophical reconstruction; for, as Professor Fletcher writes, “At the end of the grammar school period, or in 1625, the figure of the young Milton is today elusive if not evasive. We possess not a word of any consequence from Milton himself on himself as a boy.” The author is compelled, accordingly, to treat of Milton’s tutors and of the course of studies Milton undertook. But this makes Mr. Fletcher’s book all the more valuable: it becomes an analysis of formal education in seventeenthcentury England, with some illuminating references to the ancient and medieval origins of that schooling.

RK

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Russell Kirk

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In very recent years, some valuable contributions to the study of liberal learning have been published in America. A number, like those of Dr. Arthur Bestor and Canon B. I. Bell and Mr. Mortimer Smith, have dealt with the theory and mechanics of sound instruction; others, like Professor Culler’s The Imperial Intellect, have examined the thought of great educators. Professor Fletcher’s big, handsome volume is an important work in this latter category. Dr. Fletcher, who has labored thirty years in the study of Milton, leaves to a forthcoming second volume the examination of Milton at Christ College, Cambridge; the present book is concerned with the boy Milton (as yet giving few indications of genius) under his tutors and at St. Paul’s School.

This constitutes a most painstaking and ingenious task of historical and philosophical reconstruction; for, as Professor Fletcher writes, “At the end of the grammar school period, or in 1625, the figure of the young Milton is today elusive if not evasive. We possess not a word of any consequence from Milton himself on himself as a boy.” The author is compelled, accordingly, to treat of Milton’s tutors and of the course of studies Milton undertook. But this makes Mr. Fletcher’s book all the more valuable: it becomes an analysis of formal education in seventeenthcentury England, with some illuminating references to the ancient and medieval origins of that schooling.