Note 51 — VIII. MULCASTER. (1531(?)-1611.)

I wish some good author would write a book on Unpopular Truths, and show how, on some subjects, wise men go on saying the same thing in all ages and nobody listens to them. Plato said “In every work the beginning is the most important part, especially in dealing with anything young and tender.” (Rep., bk. ii, 377; Davies and Vaughan, p. 65.) And the complaints about “bad grounding” prove our common neglect of what Mulcaster urged three centuries ago: “For the Elementarie because good scholars will not abase themselves to it, it is left to the meanest, and therefore to the worst. For that the first grounding would be handled by the best, and his reward would be greatest, because both his pains and his judgment should be with the greatest. And it would easily allure sufficient men to come down so low, if they might perceive that reward would rise up. No man of judgment will contrary this point, neither can any ignorant be blamed for the contrary: the one seeth the thing to be but low in order, the other knoweth the ground to be great in laying, not only for the matter which the child doth learn: which is very small in show though great for process: but also for the manner of handling his wit, to hearten him for afterward, which is of great moment. The first master can deal but with a few, the next with more, and so still upward as reason groweth on and receives without forcing. It is the foundation well and soundly laid, which makes all the upper building muster, with countenance and continuance. If I were to strike the stroke, as I am but to give counsel, the first pains truly taken should in good truth be most liberally recompensed; and less allowed still upward, as the pains diminish and the ease increaseth. Whereat no master hath cause to repine, so he may have his children well grounded in the Elementarie. Whose imperfection at this day doth marvellously trouble both masters and scholars, so that we can hardly do any good, nay, scantly tell how to place the too too raw boys in any certain form, with hope to go forward orderly, the ground-work of their entry being so rotten underneath.” (PP., pp. 233, 4.)