Youth_ Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene - G. Stanley Hall

work is analytic, while life is synthetic, and how the narrowness of the school
enclosure prompts many youth in the wayward age to jump fences and seek new
and more alluring pastures. According to school standards, many were dull and
indolent, but their nature was too large or their ideals too high to be satisfied
with it. Wagner at the Nikolaischule at Leipzig was relegated to the third form,
having already attained to the second at Dresden, which so embittered him that
he lost all taste for philology and, in his own words, "became lazy and slovenly."
Priestley never improved by any systematic course of study. W.H. Gibson was
very slow and was rebuked for wasting his time in sketching. James Russell
Lowell was reprimanded, at first privately and then publicly, in his sophomore
year "for general negligence in themes, forensics, and recitations," and finally
suspended in 1838 "on account of continued neglect of his college duties." In
early life Goldsmith's teacher thought him the dullest boy she had ever taught.
His tutor called him ignorant and stupid. Irving says that a lad "whose passions
are not strong enough in youth to mislead him from that path of science which
his tutors, and not his inclinations, have chalked out, by four or five years'
perseverance, will probably obtain every advantage and honor his college can
bestow. I would compare the man whose youth has been thus passed in the
tranquility of dispassionate prudence, to liquors that never ferment, and,
consequently, continue always muddy." Huxley detested writing till past twenty.
His schooling was very brief, and he declared that those set over him "cared
about as much for his intellectual and moral welfare as if they were baby
farmers." Humphry Davy was faithful but showed no talent in school, having
"the reputation of being an idle boy, with a gift for making verses, but with no
aptitude for studies of a graver sort." Later in life he considered it fortunate that
he was left so much to himself. Byron was so poor a scholar that he only stood at
the head of the class when, as was the custom, it was inverted, and the bantering
master repeatedly said to him, "Now, George, man, let me see how soon you'll
be at the foot." Schiller's negligence and lack of alertness called for repeated
reproof, and his final school thesis was unsatisfactory. Hegel was a poor scholar,
and at the university it was stated "that he was of middling industry and
knowledge but especially deficient in philosophy." John Hunter nearly became a
cabinetmaker. Lyell had excessive aversion to work. George Combe wondered
why he was so inferior to other boys in arithmetic. Heine agreed with the monks
that Greek was the invention of the devil. "God knows what misery I suffered
with it." He hated French meters, and his teacher vowed he had no soul for
poetry. He idled away his time at Bonn, and was "horribly bored" by the
"odious, stiff, cut-and-dried tone" of the leathery professors. Humboldt was
feeble as a child and "had less facility in his studies than most children." "Until I