Charles Lyell and Modern Geology. Bonney Thomas George
of prison by comparison, especially to me, accustomed to liberty in such a wild place as the New Forest." One can sympathise with his feelings, for a procession of schoolboys, walking two and two along the streets of a town, is a dreary spectacle.
But an occasional holiday brought some comfort, for then they were sent on a longer excursion. The favourite one was to the curious earthworks of Old Sarum, then in its glory as a "rotten borough," one alehouse, with its tea-gardens attached, sending two members to Parliament. On these excursions more liberty seems to have been permitted. The boys broke up the large flints that lay all about the ground, to find in them cavities lined with chalcedony or drusy crystals of quartz. But the chief interest centred around a mysterious excavation in the earthwork, "a deep, long subterranean tunnel, said to have been used by the garrison to get water from a river in the plain below." To this all new-comers were taken to listen to the tale of its enormous depth and subterranean pool. Then, when duly overawed, they felt their hats fly off their heads and saw them rolling out of sight down the tunnel. An interval followed of blank dismay, embittered, no doubt, by dismal anticipations of what would probably happen when they got back to the school-house. Then one of the older boys volunteered to act the sybil and lead the way to the nether world. Of course they "regained their felt and felt what they regained" – literally, for the hole was dark enough, though we may set down the "many hundred yards" (which Lyell says that he descended before he recovered his lost hat) as an instance of the permanent effect of a boyish illusion on even a scientific mind.
But the restrictions of Salisbury made the liberty of the New Forest yet more dear. Bartley was an ideal home for boys. It was surrounded by meadows and park-like timber. A two-mile walk brought the lads to Rufus Stone, and on the wilder parts of the Forest. There they could ramble over undulating moors, covered with heath and fern, diversified by marshy tracts, sweet with bog-myrtle, or by patches of furze, golden in season with flowers; or they could wander beneath the shadows of its great woods of oak and beech, over the rustling leaves, among the flickering lights and shadows, winding here and there among tufts of holly scrub, always led on by the hope of some novelty – a rare insect fluttering by, a lizard or a snake gliding into the fern, strange birds circling in the air, a pheasant or even a woodcock springing up almost under the feet. The rabbits scampered to their holes among the furze; a fox now and again stole silently away to cover, or a stag – for the deer had not yet been destroyed – was espied among the tall brake. Those, too, it must be remembered, were the days when boys got their holidays in the prime of the summer, at the season of haymaking and of ripe strawberries. They were not kept stewing in hot school-rooms all through July, until the flowers are nearly over and the bright green of the foliage is dulled, until the romance of the summer's youth has given place to the dulness of its middle age. In these days it is our pleasure to do the right thing in the wrong place – a truly national characteristic. We all – young and old – toil through the heat and the long days, and take holiday when the autumn is drawing nigh and Nature writes "Ichabod" on the beauty of the waning year.
At Salisbury, Lyell had two new experiences – the sorrows of the Latin Grammar and the joys of a bolster-fight. But his health was not good; a severe attack of measles in the first year was followed in the second by a general "breakdown," with symptoms of weakness of the lungs. So he was taken home for three months to recruit. This was at first a welcome change from the restrictions of Salisbury; but, as his lessons necessarily were light, he began to mope for want of occupation; for, as he says, "I was always most exceedingly miserable if unemployed, though I had an excessive aversion to work unless forced to it." So he began to collect insects – a pursuit which, as he remarks, exactly suited him, for it was rather desultory, gave employment to both mind and body, and gratified the "collecting" instinct, which is strong in most boys. He began with the lepidoptera, but before long took an interest in other insects, especially the aquatic. Fortunately his father had been for a time a collector, and possessed some good books on entomology, from the pictures in which Charles named his captures. This was, of course, an unscientific method, but it taught him to recognise the species and to know their habits. There are few better localities for lepidoptera, as every collector knows, than the New Forest, and some of the schoolboy's "finds" afterwards proved welcome to so well known an entomologist as Curtis. But when Charles returned to school he had to lay aside, for a season, the new hobby; for in those days a schoolboy's interest in natural history did not extend beyond birds'-nesting, and his little world was not less, perhaps even more frank and demonstrative than now, in its criticism of any innovation or peculiarity on the part of one of its members.
The school at Salisbury appears to have been a preparatory one, so before very long another had to be sought. Mr. Lyell wished to send his two boys to Winchester, but found to his disappointment that there would not be a vacancy for a couple of years; so after instructing them at home for six months, he contented himself with the Grammar School at Midhurst, in Sussex, at the head of which was one Dr. Bayley, formerly an under-master at Winchester. Charles, now in his thirteenth year, found this, at first, a great change. The school contained about seventy boys, big as well as little, and its general system resembled that of one of the great public schools. He remarks of this period of his life: "Whatever some may say or sing of the happy recollections of their schooldays, I believe the generality, if they told the truth, would not like to have them over again, or would consider them as less happy than those which follow." He was not the kind of boy to find the life of a public school very congenial. Evidently he was a quietly-disposed lad, caring more for a country ramble than for games; perhaps a little old-fashioned in his ways; not pugnacious, but preferring a quiet life to the trouble of self-assertion. So, in his second half-year, when he was left to shift entirely for himself, his life was "not a happy one," for a good deal of the primeval savage lingers in the boys of a civilised race. It required, as he said, a good deal to work him up to the point of defending his independence; thus he was deemed incapable of resistance and was plagued accordingly. But at last he turned upon a tormentor, and a fight was the result. It was of Homeric proportions, for it lasted two days, during five or six hours on each, the combatants being pretty evenly matched; for though Lyell's adversary was rather the smaller and weaker, he knew better how to use his fists. Strength at the end prevailed over science, though both parties were about equally damaged. The vanquished pugilist was put to bed, being sorely bruised in the visible parts. Lyell, whose hurts were mostly hidden, made light of them, by the advice of friends, but he owns that he ached in every bone for a week, and was black and blue all over his body. Still he had not fought in vain, for, though the combat won him little honour, it delivered him from sundry tormentors.
The educational system of the school stimulated his ambition to rise in the classes. "By this feeling," he says, "much of my natural antipathy to work, and extreme absence of mind, was conquered in a great measure, and I acquired habits of attention which, however, were very painful to me, and only sustained when I had an object in view." There was an annual speech-day, and Charles, on the first occasion, obtained a prize for his performance. "Every year afterwards," he continues, "I received invariably a prize for speaking, until high enough to carry off the prizes for Latin and English original composition. My inventive talents were not quick, but to have any is so rare a qualification that it is sure to obtain a boy at our great schools (and afterwards as an author) some distinction." Evidently he gave proofs of originality beyond his fellows; since he won a prize for English verse, though he had written in the metre of the "Lady of the Lake" instead of the ordinary ten-syllabic rhyme. On another occasion he commemorated, in his weekly Latin copy, the destruction of the rats in a neighbouring pond, writing in mock heroics, after the style of Homer's battle of the frogs and mice.
The school, like all other collections of boys, had its epidemic hobbies. The game of draughts, coupled unfortunately with gambling on a small scale, was followed by chess, and that by music. To each of these Charles was more or less a victim, and his progress up the school was not thereby accelerated. Birds'-nesting also had a turn in its season. His love for natural history made him so keen in this pursuit that he became an expert climber of trees. But his schooldays on the whole were uneventful, and he went to Oxford at a rather early age, his brother Tom having already left Midhurst in order to enter the Navy.
CHAPTER II.
UNDERGRADUATE DAYS
Lyell matriculated at Exeter College, and appears to have begun residence in January, 1816 – that is, soon after