Leach

“ Prescribe to other, as each other's leech"
(Timon of Athens, v. 4) —
[Footnote: The same word as the worm leech, from an Anglo-Saxon word for healer.]
and the poor parson. Le surgien and le fisicien were once common surnames, but the former is almost swallowed up by Sargent, and the latter seems to have died out. The name Leach has been reinforced by the dialect lache, a bog, whence also the compounds Blackleach, Depledge. Loosely attached to the church is the Pardoner, with his wallet—
"Bret-ful of pardon, comen from Rome al hoot." ”

“ At last the rector's eyes were opened, and when a narrow-minded man's eyes are once opened he usually becomes stony at heart.
Stephen Leach left England, and before he landed in America his father had departed on a longer journey. The ne'er-do-well had the good grace to send back the little sums of money saved by his mother in her widowhood, and gradually his letters ceased. It was known that he was in Chili, and there was war going on there, and yet the good old lady's faith never wavered.
“He will come, Joyce,” she would say; “he will surely come.” ”

“ But the one chief sobriquet for the medical craft, and the one which, excepting our ‘Barbers,’ has made the deepest indenture upon our nomenclature, was that of ‘Leech’—was, I say, for saving in our cow-leeches it is now, professionally speaking, obsolete. In our many ‘Leeches,’ ‘Leaches,’ and ‘Leachmans,’ however, its reputation is not likely soon to be forgotten. ”

“ Naturally, the workers are perfectly free; the manufacturer does not force them to take his materials and his cards, but he says to them what Leach translates into plain English with the words: “If you don’t like to be frizzled in my frying-pan, you p. ”

“ The man tried it, and it seemed to him that the head wanted more ballast, and after a little while he allowed the club to be gathered to his fine collection of idle relics, saying to himself consolingly, “What suits one man does not suit another.” ”

“ It is like throwing a non-swimmer into seven feet of water with only a thin piece of rope round his middle. He very soon invents a way of making greater security and comfort for himself. Stay at North Berwick long enough, and it may affect your style for life. ”

“ I am told that the Victorian school has had paramount influence in America.
VII
Of the links we know, those by the sea, to which do we return for the tenth or the twentieth time joyously as to a delightful friend in a charming home? Instantly we murmur the name of dear North Berwick. The [139] old player has conviction in this immediate choice by instinct, though the question is not one which he answers lightly. In his heart he has corners for many old loves, and as he brings each one up for contemplation and counts her many charms, he thinks that surely she is the fairest of them all. ”

“ At York the 1307 edition of the statutes says “the collection (i.e. appointment of masters) to song schools belongs to the singer,” now called preceptor, “and cases affecting them ought to be heard and decided by him, though execution belongs to the chapter” (Leach, Early Yorks. Schools, i. 12) . At St Paul’s there was no preceptor till the 13th century and there is no mention of choristers till 1263, though school-boys (pueri scolarum) appear as witnessing a deed between 1142 and 1148 and receiving 4d. ”

“ And never a man more honest, more deservedly popular, and loved by all his contemporaries than he, as witness the fact that when, alas! he went to the links of Valhalla before he reached the age of sixty, the company mourned for him as golfers had never mourned before. They met at a special meeting and dinner in the most solemn mourning, with the Captain in the chair and Sir James Stirling, Baronet, Lord Provost of the City of Edinburgh, beside him, and drank to Balfour’s memory in the most solemn of toasts. ”

“ Porthcawl is a place that rests the man and gives [142] balm to his troubled spirit. There is a fine links and the open Atlantic, and the Cymric spell is cast upon the sojourner—the feeling that one has relapsed from the severity of complicated civilisation for a little while to the peace and the simplicity of old Gwalia, the land of the real Briton. One day I was turning the pages of a small guide-book to South Wales, when I noticed that the topographer, in writing of Porthcawl, said somewhat complainingly that the coast round about there was “extremely desolate.” ”

“ There will be a fine picture of a man of noble countenance, a wig upon his head and robes around him, as he is seated in his chair with his hand upon a table where rests a mace. This is Duncan Forbes of Culloden, Lord President of the Court of Session, and first captain of the Gentlemen Golfers—now going by the name of the Honourable Company—in 1744. A great man was Duncan Forbes, and he played for the Silver Club. ”

“ Leland's contributions are all in Latin; those of “Udallus,” which form the chief part, are mostly in English, the speeches being each spoken by a “child,” at Cornhill beside Leadenhall, “at the Conducte in Cornhill” and “at the little Conducte in Cheepe.” ”

“ Throughout the thirteen centuries which intervened between Dionysius Thrax and Dr Kennedy, Dionysius’s grammar was the standard work and the foundation, directly or indirectly, of all other grammars, while the grammar school has always meant, and, in the hands of the better class of teachers, has always been, not a gerund-grinding machine, but a place for the training and exercise of the mind by the study of literature. ”

“ At the Glen View Country Club they have a special autumn festival also which has a character of its own. The motto of Glen View is "Laigh and lang"—low and long—which is a good variation on the monotonous "far and sure." And about Glen View there is a Scottish flavour; in manners and customs for a very brief season in the golden days of the fall there is wafted from the far distant Highlands a breath of Scotland. Here they call their festival the "Twa Days," and it is carried through with a fine spirit. ”

“ Cicero learned to declaim both in Greek and Latin, and the Gracchi had studied rhetoric under Greek teachers. Neither the gymnasium or palaestra, nor the music school, flourished at Rome. As at Athens, so at Rome the boys were sent to school in charge of a slave, a pedagogus, comes or custos. But it would seem that at Rome the pedagogus, generally a Greek slave, often himself gave elementary instruction. ”

“ No one who ever handled a brush or a pencil has been so successful as Leech in conveying the action of wind on every object, and never did he succeed more completely than in an “Awful Scene on the Chain Pier at Brighton,” which is, no doubt, somewhat farcical; but how intensely funny! Master Charley has gone, and his ma’s parasol has accompanied him. The horror-struck nursemaid is almost blown off her feet; and Charley’s brother, also terror-stricken, will be down on his back in a moment; whilst his little 53 sister maintains her equilibrium with great difficulty. ”

“ Leech was tall, with an elegant figure, over six feet in height, graceful and gentlemanly in manner, with a fine head and a handsome face. In action he was nimble, vigorous, and yet gentle, capable of the heartiest mirth, and yet generally quiet. He was singularly modest, both as a man and an artist. The perpetual going to nature kept him humble as well as made him rich. ”

“ For a true conception of the history of secondary schools it cannot be repeated too often and too emphatically that to this day the true title of the greatest English “public schools” is grammar school. Winchester and Eton are the grammar schools of the colleges of the Blessed Mary of Winchester and of Eton respectively, and Westminster is the grammar school of the collegiate church of St Peter, Westminster. ”

“ On the 30th of October 1356 Wykeham was appointed during pleasure surveyor (supervisor) of the king’s works in the castle of Windsor, for the same purposes as at Henley, with power to take workmen everywhere, except in the fee of the church or those employed in the king’s works at Westminster, the Tower of Dartford, at the same wages as Robert of Bernham, probably Burnham, Bucks, who had been appointed in 1353, used to have, viz. 1s. a day and 3s. a week for his clerk. ”

“ SCHOOLS. As is the case with so many of the institutions of modern civilization, so with schools; the name, the thing, the matter, the method have been derived from Greece through Rome. A strange fortune has converted the Greek word σχολή, which originally meant leisure, particularly the “retired leisure that in trim gardens takes his pleasure” of men, into the proper term for the modern school. ”

“ Only one man in the whole village appeared absolutely out of humor over the stir and preparations, and that was Leech. The plan which he and Still had laid down to prevent the assembly having failed, Leech determined to break it up, at all hazards. Still was in constant, if secret, conference with him. They had told Sherwood and Moses that they could prevent it. If it were held in spite of them, it would prove that they were less powerful than they pretended to be. ”

“ The important thing for the schools was that the university movement made the cathedral schoolmasters devote themselves to theology and to grown-up students, to the exclusion of grammar and arts, and left the grammar school entirely for boys and youths to be instructed in classical literature, rhetoric and the elements of logic, preparatory for the university. Moreover, the movement for university colleges perhaps caused a new crop of collegiate churches to spring up, of which grammar schools formed an integral and important part. ”

“ How cosy all the Briggs party seem in their drawing-room, Briggs reading a treatise on dog-breaking by a lamp, mamma and grannie with their respective needlework, the children clustering round a big book of prints—a great book of prints such as this before us, at this season, must make thousands of children happy by as many firesides! The inner life of all these people is represented. Leech draws them as naturally as Teniers depicts Dutch boors, or Morland pigs and stables. ”

“ The year 1846 gave birth to the first fruit from a field in which Leech found such a bountiful harvest. The racecourse gave opportunities for the exhibition of life and character of which the great artist took advantage in numberless delightful examples. Pen and pencil record adventures by road and rail. Whether the excursionist is going to the Derby or returning from it, whether he is high or low, a Duke or a costermonger, that unerring hand is ready to note his follies or his excesses, always with a kindly touch, or to point a moral if a graver opportunity presents itself. ”

“ He had not been asleep a great while when there was again a sound of horses trampling. Leech sprang up once more, in an agony of terror. He heard a challenge from above—“Halt, there!”—from some one who seemed to be a guard, and then a colloquy, in which he could distinguish his name; and then his guard seemed to yield. After a short interval he heard the footsteps of several men coming down the stair that led to his door, and there was a short consultation outside. He heard someone say, “This is the place Steve said he is in; I know it.” ”

“ Another and less fortunate feature may be observed in the frequent attempt to make the grammar schools do double work, and supply the loss caused by the suppression of the song schools, by doing duty also as elementary schools to teach the three R’s. It is an attempt which is being continually renewed and always results in failure; generally ending in degrading the secondary school while not making the elementary school efficient. ”

“ Leech draws the backgrounds of his little pictures. The homely landscape, the sea, the winter road by which the huntsmen ride, the light and clouds, the birds floating overhead, are indicated by a few strokes which show the artist's untiring watchfulness and love of Nature. He is a natural truth-teller, as Hogarth was before him, and indulges in no flights of fancy. He speaks his mind out quite honestly like a thorough Briton. He loves horses, dogs, river and field sports. He loves home and children—that you can see. He holds Frenchmen in light esteem. ”

“ School exercises in Greek at Winchester under Edward VI. are preserved, but Sir Thomas Pope says it had been dropped at Eton under Mary. There is no evidence of it at St Paul’s before Elizabeth’s reign. At the time of the meeting of the Reformation parliament in 1535 there were between 300 and 400 grammar schools in England, the majority of which were free schools, charging no fees for teaching. ”

“ Illegitimates were theoretically excluded from the priesthood, but the papal registers are crammed with indulgences to scholars who were illegitimate for admission to holy orders. As to the upper class, an erroneous inference that gentlemen's sons were not sent to school has been drawn from the passage of Higden above quoted, because, after saying that children in grammar schools learnt no French now, he adds that neither did gentlemen teach their sons French. ”

“ Tobias, who died bishop of Rochester in 726, is also described as “a most learned man, for he was a pupil of Theodore and Hadrian, and so, together with a knowledge of literature ecclesiastical and general, Greek and Latin were as familiar to him as his native tongue.” We may therefore credit Rochester with its school at least as early as Toby’s episcopate. ”

“ He often introduced in the pages of Punch the barrel-organ nuisance. The public, however, at that time had no idea what these sketches from real life cost the artist. In 1864, Leech was ordered to take a holiday on the Continent. Upon his return to his London home in the autumn of the same year, although better in health, he was still strangely susceptible to noise. He spoke with more than his usual earnestness about the sufferings which the street organs gave him, and about the smallness of the sympathy which he received from people who had no weakness in the same direction. ”