notes to chapter 4 227
Nineteenth-Century England; Vincent, Literacy and Popular Culture; Heathorn, For
Home, Country, and Race; John M. Mackenzie, “Imperialism and the School Text-
book.” On Matthew Arnold and educational theory, see Wallcott The Origins of Cul-
ture and Anarchy: Matthew Arnold and Popular Education in England; J. Dover Wil-
son, introduction, Culture and Anarchy; Connell, The Educational Thought and
Influence of Matthew Arnold.
- Jakob Schipper published a similar account of English rhythm in 1882, Englische
Metrik but it was not translated into English until 1910 as A History of English Versifi-
cation, where, rather than comparison with Skeat’s 1882 reprint of Guest (which it
resembled) it was compared with George Saintsbury’s three volume History of English
Prosody, which derided any theory based solely on accent. The tension between “Teu-
tonic” or “Saxon” theories of accent-based English rhythm and Anglo-Norman or hy-
brid theories markedly increased in the years leading up to the First World War. - Cf. Briggs, “Saxons, Normans, and Victorians,” 215–35, and Parker, England’s
Darling : The Victorian Cult of Alfred the Great. What Hugh A. MacDougall calls the
“racial myth” of origins in English literature (Racial Myth in English History: Trojans,
Teutons, and Anglo-Saxons) is traced by Clare Simmons to the educational discourse
of both Thomas Arnold and John Petherton. Arnold asserted that despite repeated
invasions, English history began “with the coming over of the Saxons. We this great
English nation, whose race and language are now overrunning the earth from one end
of it to the other, — we were born when the white horse of the Saxons had established
his dominion from the Tweed to the Tamar. . . . So far our national identity extends, so
far history is modern, for it treats of a life which was then, and is not yet extinguished”
(Arnold, Modern History, 30; Simmons, 72); and in an overview of Anglo-Saxon stud-
ies published in 1840, John Petheram expressed a hope that “the Anglo-Saxon tongue
will, within a few years, form an essential part of a liberal education” (Petheram,
Anglo-Saxon Literature, 180; in Simmons, 71). Even Charles Dickens, in his popular
A Child’s History of England, evokes the “law, and industry, and safety for life and
property, and all great results of steady perseverance” of “the Saxon Blood” (III,
Tanchevitz, 1853, 148–49); quoted in Philip Collins, Dickens and Education, 60.
Both Thomas Arnold and James Kay-Shuttleworth believed that the lower classes
were more likely to understand Saxon vocabulary. Arnold wrote that the distinction
between rich and poor was marked in the use of French and Saxon words: “the lan-
guage of the rich, which is of course that of books also, being so full of French words
derived from their Norman ancestors, while that of the poor still retains the pure
Saxon character inherited from their Saxon forefathers” (“The Social Condition of the
Operative Classes,” [1832], Miscellaneous Works of Thomas Arnold, 407), quoted in
Simmons, 71; Kay-Shuttleworth wrote “those who have had close intercourse with the
labouring classes well know with what difficulty thy comprehend words not of a Saxon
origin, and how frequently addresses to them are unintelligible from the continual use
of terms of a Latin or Greek derivation; yet the daily language of the middle and upper
classes abounds with such words” (115). Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth on Popular Edu-
cation; from “First Report on the Training School at Battersea,” 1841. - Heathorn, For Home, Country, and Race, 402.
- Cf. Patmore, “English Metrical Critics,” chapter 3, part 5.
- Pound, Pisan Cantos (written in military detention).
- Report of the Commission on the State of Popular Education, 1861, Vol. 1, 120.
- Baldick, The Social Mission of English Studies 1848–1932, 43.