To much the same point is what Samuel Taylor Coleridge remembers having learned from his schoolmaster: I learnt from him, that Poetry, even that of the loftiest and, seemingly, that of the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more, and more fugitive causes.
Golding ended up, of course, as an extraordinary schoolteacher: at the height of his fame, he would opine: "To go on being a schoolmaster so that I should have time to write novels was a tactic I employed in the struggle of life.
In the novella "Scott-King's Modern Europe" (1947), Waugh's pessimism about the future is in the schoolmaster's admonition: "I think it would be very wicked, indeed, to do anything to fit a boy for the modern world".
"Have I, thy schoolmaster, made thee more profit / Than other princess' can, that have more time / For vainer hours, and tutors not so careful," he says.
I hope the schoolmaster goes underneath.
"I pay the schoolmaster," Emerson wrote, "but 'tis the schoolboys that educate my son".
Douglas Dunn has a poem, published 30-odd years ago, called "Dominies", where a dead Scottish schoolmaster, commending Horace and Livy, declares: "I am already historical".
"I heard from the schoolmaster that girls perform consistently better than boys in terms of academic achievements…while boys…they cannot resist external temptations such as drinking or being preoccupied with PlayStations or games…that kind of thing.
Back in the day, I can remember upsetting schoolmasters by wearing a floppy hat in the outfield, copying my hero Alan Knott.
Also, if I am to be a schoolmaster it will help impress the urchins with my age.
The schoolmaster's bad enough in the schoolroom; I prefer to keep him out of my bookshelf.
