The place of popular education in Wordsworth’s social philosophy

137 Pages·06.715 MB·English

by  Brunell, John William

THE PLACE OP POPULAR EDUCATION IN
WORDSWORTH'S SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY
A Thesis
Presented to
the Faculty of the Department of English
University of Southern California
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
by
John William Brunell
August 1950
UMI Number: EP44274
All rights reserved
INFORMATION TO ALL USERS
The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted.
In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript
and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed,
a note will indicate the deletion.
Dissertation Publishing
UMI EP44274
Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author.
Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC.
All rights reserved. This work is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code
ProQuest LLC.
789 East Eisenhower Parkway
P.O. Box 1346
Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346
$ > tr / i3Fet?
This thesis, written by
.........JOM..WIL|fI#l-BRUNELL.........
under the guidance of h.^-3... Faculty Committee,
and approved by all its members, has been
presented to and accepted by the Council on
Graduate Study and Research in partial fulfill­
ment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OP ARTS
n„f, August 1950
Faculty Committee
fl.AA.lLn.ft* < » »*■
« Chairman
kk&
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION .......................................... iii
PART ONE
I. BACKGROUND OF POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND . . 1
II. NATURE AND TUITION: WORDSWORTH’S
EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY ...................... 13
III. THE PREL U DE .................................. 27
PART TWO
IV. LETTER TO THE BISHOP OF LLANDAFF, 1793 . . . . 40
V. THE YEARS 1793 TO 1798 ........................ 52
VI. THE EXCURSION................................ 62
VII. LETTER TO FRANCIS WRANGHAM, 1808 ............. 69
VIII. THE TRACT CONCERNING THE CONVENTION OF CINTRA. 77
IX. THE YEARS l8lO TO 1825 ...................... 87
X . THE YEARS OF THE REFORM B I L L........... 92
XI. THE FINAL . Y E A R S .................... 109
XII. CONCLUSION...................................... 121
BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................... 126
INTRODUCTION
William Wordsworth has been much maligned and mis­
understood for his stand on social problems during the
second half of his life. His critics have found him
especially vulnerable in the field of politics and education
where they have contrasted isolated statements and remarks
from the time of his youth and from the time of his late
maturity to the disadvantage of the latter. But what
appears to be obvious on the surface is far less apparent
under more scrupulous examination: Wordsworth was far too
"English" to change an opinion easily.
Before one is justified in delineating Wordsworth as
a "democrat" or "reactionary," he must take into account
the personality of the man. It was not his nature to favor
the extreme point of view in any controversy and, with the
exception of a short and youthful revolutionary period, he
adhered to a liberal middle course throughout his life. He
was a sage, fascinated by the machinery of human relations
and by the spiritual qualities of the human mind. There
was not a man In the England of his day who was more aware
of the complexity of both organisms, nor was there another
man who gave more serious thought to the improvement of his
fellow beings.
It is the purpose of this thesis to center attention
iv
around one aspect of his general philosophy, that of his
attitude toward the education of the people, and to trace
the course of his convictions on the subject of popular
education from the beginning of his mature years to the end
of his life. A good deal will be borrowed from other areas
of his social philosophy in order to show more vividly
trends and, occasionally, vicissitudes. It is hoped that
this study will make some contribution to the school of
scholarly opinion that is anxious to rectify the injustice
that has been done to the defenseless poet.
By "popular" education is meant the education of all
the people; by "national" education is meant a governmental
system of education to embrace the whole country. Words­
worth distinguished between the education of the upper and
lower classes in the matter of content but not in the matter
of method— that is to say, he recognized the futility of
forcing classical knowledge on all Englishmen without regard
to prospects and abilities, but he believed that knowledge,
whatever be its quality, is learned more thoroughly through
natural experience or, as .he preferred to put it, through
nature.
The paper is divided into two parts: the first is
comprised of three chapters of background material against
which the second, a chronological account of correspondency
speeches, and miscellaneous remarks, is made more
V
understandable. It will- be noted that there Is a time gap
between the fifth and sixth chapters into which the third
A*
chapter, The Prelude, might logically fit, since that poem
is a record of reflection in the first years of the nine­
teenth century. But, as The Prelude is more significant
as the very foundation of his educational philosophy, it
was thought wiser to include it as background material.
The second and larger part of the paper has taken
the historical approach: accompanied by the editorial
comment of the writer of the thesis, the poet explains in
his own words the social evolution of his mind. It is
hoped that the reader will agree with the writer in his
conclusion that, even as the mind grew with time, it did
not fundamentally change in basic principles.
P A R T O N E
CHAPTER I
BACKGROUND OF POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND
Although the history of popular education in England
is too vast a subject to be treated adequately in a paper
of this sort, a few comments are necessary if the numerous
quotations taken from Wordsworth are to be fairly inter­
preted. The world into which the poet was born and the
world from which he departed were different from each other
and immeasurably different from the world of today. When
he chose to deliberate upon any controversial matter,
Wordsworth spoke in terms of his experience— that is to
say, within the bounds of what he knew from reading his
predecessors and contemporaries and what he observed in the
physical world about him.
There is the danger that the reader will make no
attempt to transcend the massive barrier of time that
stands between Wordsworth and the present and that he will
judge the hapless poet on twentieth century standards. In
that case, there can be no real understanding of Words­
worth1 s social philosophy. One rather severe critic of
the poet's later years, George McLean Harper, was neverthe­
less careful to point out the difference between worlds
separated by one hundred and fifty years:
2
It Is probable that even the most reactionary man
now living would be shocked, if he were to awake
some morning in the last decade of the l8th century
In England, by the oppressiveness of the social
atmosphere. The law favoured the owners of property,
particularly landed property. It was still bar­
barously severe. The debtor, the poacher, the
seditious person, were punished out of all propor­
tion to their offences while political corruption
and vice in the upper classes were winked at. Not
only was there no systematic provision for enabling
the poor to get even an elementary education, but
the very idea of their desiring an education was
considered dangerous. Dissenters were excluded
from the universities, and their participation in
politics was restricted.1
Conditions were quite as discouraging, if not actually
worse, In the first half of the nineteenth century, for
although some gains were made through social legislation,
the improvement was offset by an increase in factories and
the concomitant enslavement of laborers. In such a world
a man who would propose a system of national education for
England (as Wordsworth did) was one of a radical minority
and a man who would recommend caution in the introduction
of social reform (as Wordsworth did) was not a reactionary.
And yet both in theory and practice popular education
was not born of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Long before the birth of Christ, Athenian emigrants to
Southern Italy constructed a state-supported educational
1 William Wordsworth. His Life. Works. and Influence
(London: John Murray, 1916), II, 15-I0.