Education A Tribute to the Memory of my good Schoolmaster— William Sanderson

Education
A Tribute to the Memory of my good Schoolmaster—
William Sanderson.
(Rudby School - Hutton Rudby)

I do not know one holier work on earth
Than that of training up the rising race
In health alike of body and of mind.
It is the safest polity for States;
The truest proof of love parents can give, 5
The noblest outcome of philanthropy;
And without it Religion would become
But Superstition to bind all in chains
To every sort of hateful tyranny.
Some six-score years have now pass’d o’er the world 10
Since a true poet sang in noble strains:—
“Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot,
To pour the fresh instruction o’er the mind,
To breathe the enlivening spirit, and to fix 15
The generous purpose in the glowing breast!”[1]
A noble thought, utter’d in words of fire
Which Ignorance can ne’er extinguish, though
We yet have feeble intellect which fain
For this would ridicule dear Thomson’s name. 20
The car of Progress has run swiftly on
Since so he sang, and his melodious lyre
Silenced on earth, but its sweet echoes still
Stir human hearts, though we are only now
Just rising to the level of his thoughts: 25
For your true Poet is not one who can
Merely bedeck in decent verse what all
His fellows feel or know: but it is his
To lead the van in bravely marching on
From height to height, despite all earthly foes; 30
And those who ridicule the Teacher’s art,
Or look on it as drudgery, have ne’er,
Whate’er their bookcram, gain’d the mental light
Required of all true Teachers: unto them
’T would be indeed as hard a task as that 35
Which Jupiter enjoin’d on Sisyphus.

332
I had three Schoolmasters: but the former two ne’er gain’d
The least affection from the boys they sought
To teach in their own harsh mistaken way,
And to us all their deaths had been relief, 40
Instead of causing one to shed a tear.
In looking back upon the years I spent
Under their tyranny, which I forgive,
But never can forget, I cannot yield
Those days with that bright halo that endears 45
Our boyhood to us in declining years.[2]
But I shall treasure, to my dying day,
The love I bore to William Sanderson.
He was my last Schoolmaster, and my best,
Yea worth a thousand of the other two,[3]— 50
For he unlike to them, knew how to teach.
He had all learning at his fingers’ ends;
And best of all, was skill’d in teaching too.
A man may be in scholarship most rife,
Yet quite unfit to teach a tithe he knows. 55
Oh! that I longer could have profited
By my good Mentor! More that fifty years
Of varied trials I have waded through,
Since the necessity of earning bread
Forced me to leave him, when my anxious mind 60
Was just beginning to show healthy growth
Under his culture. But I never ceased
To love him whilst he lived, and since his death
None could have treasured more his memory.
“God rest his soul!” I can devoutly say; 65
For he was fitted whilst on earth for heaven:
Not by a bigot’s creed, or cant too oft
Mistaken for true piety; but a life
Of Christian virtue. Too mild to wrestle
In competition for a living here 70
With brutal men, his purse through life was poor;
But he had riches they can ne’er possess.


333
Euclid, Algebra, and the languages,
Hebrew, Greek, Latin, like our mother-tongue,
Were truly his. Had I remain’d with him 75
I too would have been a scholar deeply read
In lore which has been seal’d to me for aye.
How he delighted to encourage all
My boyish studies of antiquity
And of the maxims which should govern States 80
To make the peoples happy! Meekest man
I ever knew childlike simplicity
Wedded to wisdom gave the lie in him
To those who fancy knowledge puffeth up
With vile conceit those who have made it theirs. 85
Oh, much I owe to him, to be repaid
Only with gratitude! My evening hours
Were spent in his congenial company
After the studies of the school were done.
If fine, we wander’d forth in frost or sheen 90
Along the pleasant footpaths; if confined
By weather to his parlour, he to me
Read Greek and Latin Classics, Englishing
Each sentence as he read, as easily
As I could converse in my mother-tongue. 95
This was my baptism to communion
With the wise sages both of Greece and Rome,
Homer and Virgil both have seem’d to me
As friends I knew since then; Demosthenes
And Cicero through him spoke just to me 100
As plainly as to those who had of yore
Listen’d unto their marvellous eloquence,
And this most mild of men was stricken down
When he was rising in prosperity;
Robb’d of his bread, and exiled the town 105
Where he was teaching as few other could,
By Whitby Tories, because he quietly
Voted for Moorsholm when that post became
A parliamentary borough. Not the man
To canvass or make speeches, or i’ the press 110
To rouse the people with a Cobbett’s pen,
Or hate those who might not think like himself,





334
Yet he felt bound to be to conscience true,
And simply gave his vote. It was enough—
The ballot then affording such no shield, 115
But being call’d un-English, cowardly,
And something that must lead to ruin, by
The cravens who all used it in their clubs.
Methinks I see their shuddering souls when they
First met him in that Spirit Land where all 120
Our sins on earth are plainly seen as though
An open book contain’d the register.
’T is this, and such as this, which forms the Hell
Which blundering bigots would persuade mankind
Is sulphurous fire which ever burns 125
To torture with far greater pains than man
Or woman ever felt on earth—pangs which
When millions of years had o’er them pass’d
Would be no nearer to their end than when
They first began—God’s thoughtless erring ones. 130
And there are simple folks still hold this creed,
Most gloomy and blasphemous as it is,
Making our Heavenly Father more unkind
To his poor children than the basest man
Who ever practised horrid cruelties. 135
One master as to mine, teaching true wisdom
Calmly all his years; living its precepts;
Content with simplest necessities when
He could obtain them; but aspiring not
Even when forced to bear ills none should know 140
In any State call’d civilised; does more
For helping on the progress of our race
Than many brawlers; and I thank my God
That I in early life had such a friend
And teacher as good William Sanderson. 145


335
His life was one of spotless purity:
He had compassion for all living things,
And anger never raged in his calm mind.
In all my march through life, I never met
A man more Christlike, no forms or creeds 150
Held his as a professor before men,
And he never mix’d in their assemblies.
He made his heart the temple of the Lord,
And there he offer’d up incense more sweet
Than from a priestly censor rose. 155
Though in the flesh we never more can meet,
His spirit often seems to visit me
In a divine communion of soul;
And I look forward with a fervent faith
To meeting him again to part no more, 160
Where all our souls are purified like him
From those deep failings which prevent our earth
From being but a counterpart of heaven.

George Markham Tweddell

Blank verse [in M/S], pp. 71-79.
[1] From the Scottish poet, James Thompson (1700-1748), in ‘Spring’ from ‘The
Seasons’ (1726). “Six-score years” this would make the date of GMT’s poem
about 1846. [see:
<www.luminarium.org/eightlit/thomson/bio.php>
[2] Alternative to this line:
“Our boyhood to us as death dreweth near”[3] One of these will have been Richard
Baker, mentioned in Pigot’s Yorkshire Directory for 1829.

More background here -
http://georgemarkhamtweddell.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/rudby-school-hutton-rudby-john-jackson.html

John Dunning

John Dunning
[Freemason and mayor of Middlesbrough 1875, †1885, from
www.middlesbroughfreemasons.org.uk/SockettsBook.pdf]

Hail to thee, Dunning! I have watched thee long,—
At first with some suspicion; for I heard
Thy name oft utter’d in a scornful mood
By men who might have known thy actions well,
And who, for aught I knew, judged thee aright. 5
A public servant thou, I knew full well
It was impossible thou couldst procure
The praise of all men, live where’er thou would,
And whatever thou might feel to be
The just and true. Yet I at times had doubt 10
Within my myself if thou wert the right man
In the right place. We met, and when I saw
Thy open countenance, I felt this man
May make mistakes, as men are prone to do,
And will be while they wear ‘this mortal coil’, 15
As Hamlet terms it; but he who owns that face
And cheery voice, is not the worst of men,
For there is not alone intelligence
To raise him from a humble sphere of Life,
But his the heart to feel another’s woe, 20
Like a true Mason; one into whose ear
The burden’d heart can pour its sufferings,
And not find mere relief, but sympathy.
And I rejoice, dear Brother of the Craft
We both do love, although it be not mine 25
To rise to wealth and honours, that for thou,
And such as thee, at times there is a road,
With patient plodding from the miller’s cart
Even to the civic chair. Thou art no fool,
Therefore can look with thankfulness, not pride, 30
Back on the gradual steps by which thou won
Thy present honours: and we value most
Those honours that our neighbours can confer,—
They who have known us from our infancy;
They who have play’d with us in boyish games;


330
They who in manhood have stood foot to foot
With us, or e’en against us, in the fight
For daily bread and other wants,
And who at last may bear us to the tomb.
Train’d in the peaceful principles of Friends, 40
With the pure precepts of Freemasonry,
With justice thou will mingle Mercy too,
Or thou art false to both.
To love thy friends
Is just; but so would any man who lives,
Not wholly base. To love and help thy foes, 45
This is still higher wisdom: yet wilt thou them
Accomplish it, or I mistake my man.
Prove, honest John! that thou canst bear the load
Of wealth and honours,—harder far to bear
Than poverty in humblest English cot. 50
Show that to friend and foe thou art the same
In thy strict justice and thy boundless love,
And men will ask, Is this the man we once
So far mistook? And evermore they may
Judge others with more justice.
Not to please 55
John Dunning’s ears pen I my simple lay,
But to encourage others from his rise
To droop not in despair, though men at times
May seem to do them wrong: for Nemesis,
Or soon or late, will make the rugged smooth, 60
Punish all guilt, reward all actions good,
And show the wrongs we have to bear in life
Are blessings in disguise, for some wise end,
Though we perceive it not when most we smart.
Thy life, John Dunning, will cheer many a one 65
To struggle on, through tempest and through sheen,
When thou and I repose beneath the sod.
Hence I rejoice to see the civic chair
Reach’d by a “Brother of the Mystic Tie,”
To whom the golden precepts of the Craft 70
Are nor merely random words, just learnt by rote,
A parrot could rehearse:* but things to do
To benefit mankind. So mote it be!
* “Words learnt by rote a parrot could rehearse,
But talking is not always to converse.” Cowper.

George Markham Tweddell
Blank verse [in M/S], pp. 67-70.

Poem written in London, Reflecting on Cleveland

Sonnets
Completed on the Monument in London when alone
there.













I
Upon the Monument this summer day,

With London’s ceaseless commerce all around,
How, at this height, there comes a murmuring sound,
As of the waves of ocean in their play
Along our Cleveland coast. Domes, towers, and spires 5
Of numerous churches crowd upon the scene,
Innumerable chimneys smoke between
Here and the neighbouring hills,—most of their fires
Fed from our northern coalfields. Father Thames
Bears on his bosom goods of every land. 10
How pleasant ’t is to calmly take one’s stand
And view yon busy crowd, whose very names
In a few years will mostly be forgot:
They lived—they died! such is the common lot.


II
I blame not those, but give them honest praise, 15
Who strive with industry of hand or brain
To earn all needful comforts. I would fain

Banish both Want and Crime; have sought to raise
Mankind to truest manhood. I can ne’er
Rest in content with such a state of things 20
As Earth has ever known since first the wings
Of Time flew o’er it. We need never fear
That we shall fail in bringing forth, to bless
Our children’s children, bright and happy days,
If we walk steadfastly in Virtue’s ways, 25
And learn that to ensure true happiness
We must aspire beyond mere worldly toys,
And seek in Light and Goodness all our joys


III
Here every virtue exalts mankind,
Here every sin that stains the soul, is found; 30
Knowledge and ignorance alike abound;
Here numbers roll in wealth; and here we find
In pinching poverty too many pine:
Her every art and science flourishes;
Here stolid Ignorance ever nourishes 35
Its baneful brood, who readily combine
In evil actions. These surely is a cause
For every deviation from the right;
And ’t is our duty manfully to fight
To bring all men obedient to the laws 40
Of the Most High: and London then will be
From ignorance, want, and crime, entirely free.

George Markham Tweddell
pp. 66, 67 & 68 [in Miscellaneous Sonnets]

The Late Learned John Oxlee

The Late Learned John Oxlee.

OXLEE, we wonder how a single brain,
During the few short years of life allow’d
For man to study here, could ever crowd
So much of learning there: or how to sustain
The load of languages when it was got. 5
Pliny, with wonder, told the Pontus’ king,
In twenty-two lands languages conversing;
Both Mithradates as well-nigh forgot;
Our Cleveland Walton’s name is dim by thine:
What was Bologna’s Cardinal to thee, 10
Who knew more books than other linguists see?*
Thy name o’er Mezzofanti’s e’en shall shine;
And, as the love of learning grows ’mongst men,
Thy fame it will increase beyond all mortal ken.
[Also Sonnet No. 5 in Cleveland Sonnets, Fifth Series Tractates
No. 38]
The above Sonnet originally appeared in the (London) Masonic
Magazine, edited by the late Rev. A. F. A. Woodford, M. A.,
Rector of Swillington, near Leeds, from 1847 to 1872, Past
Grand Chaplain to the Grand Lodge of England, and one of the
most sterling Freemasons I ever met: and the following
Footnote accompanied it:—“I have already noticed in the
Masonic Magazine the splendid library of this learned divine,
now in the possession of his son, my dear friend, the Rector of
Cowesby, in the North Riding of Yorkshire: a library too
valuable ever to be dispersed, and which ought to be secured
for the nation”

George Markham Tweddell

..................

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Oxlee (Where you can Read more)

John Oxlee, son of a well-to-do farmer in Yorkshire, was born at Guisborough in Cleveland, Yorkshire, on 25 September 1779, and was educated at Sunderland. After devoting himself to business for a short time he studied mathematics and Latin, and made such rapid progress in Latin that in 1842 Dr. Vicesimus Knox appointed him second master at Tunbridge grammar school. While at Tunbridge he lost, through inflammation, the use of an eye, yet commenced studying Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac.

In 1805 he was ordained to the curacy of Egton, near Whitby. In 1811 he removed to the curacy of Stonegrave, from 1815 to 1826 he held the rectory of Scawton, and in 1836 the archbishop of York presented him to the rectory of Molesworth in Huntingdonshire.

Oxlee's power of acquiring languages, considering that he was self-educated, has rarely been excelled. He obtained a knowledge more or less extensive of 120 languages and dialects. In prosecuting his studies he was often obliged to form his own grammar and dictionary. He left among his numerous unpublished writings a work entitled "One hundred and more Vocabularies of such Words as form the Stamina of Human Speech, commencing with the Hungarian and terminating with the Yoruba", 1837–40. A large portion of his time he spent in making himself thoroughly conversant with the Hebrew law and in studying the Talmud. His only recreation was pedestrian exercise, and he at times walked fifty miles to procure a book in Hebrew or other oriental language. He was a contributor to the Anti-Jacobin Review, Valpy's Classical Journal, the Christian Remembrancer, the Voice of Jacob, the Voice of Israel, the Jewish Chronicle, the Jewish Repository, the Yorkshireman, and Sermons for Sundays and Festivals.

He died at Molesworth rectory on 30 January 1854, leaving two children by his wife, a daughter of John R. A. Worsop of Howden Hall, Yorkshire: John Oxlee (d. 1892), vicar of Over Silton 1848, rector of Cowesby 1863 (both in Yorkshire), and an unmarried daughter, Mary Anna Oxlee.

The Moors

The Moors.

I have no wish to live on the wild Moors,
Far from the dwelling of my fellow-men,
With none whom I could ever aid, for then
I should not be a hand to lend those powers
The poorest all possess to bless mankind. 5
Yet dearly do I love with some choice friend
Among the Moors for miles our way to wend,—
One who to Nature’s beauty is not blind.
But when the purple heather is in bloom,
And the bees murmur music all around— 10
And far and wide if heard no other sound
Save the sweet songs of birds—when whin and broom
Glow with their fires of gold both far and near—
A day on the wide Moors is joy for many a year.

George Markham Tweddell
[Sonnets on Trees and Flowers, p. 45]

Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare.)

Tansy
(Tanacetum vulgare.)

To gather Tansy calls up once again

My boyish rambles threescore years ago,
When in my native Cleveland I did go
Strolling by the bosky beck, down rustic lane,
On flower-deckt footpath, where my fingers fain 5
Would fill themselves with those delightful things
To youth, which Flora in her bounty flings
To all—alas! to most adults in vain.
E’en now I love the fragrant vermifuge; to me
Its golden buttons yet are beautiful; 10
And in old age I well delight to pull
And hand it to my grandbairns, and to see
Them prize it too: for whate’er gives them pleasure,
To my poor simple mind seems something I would treasure.

George Markham Tweddell
[Sonnets on Trees and Flowers, p. 61]
207

To Castillo (John Castillo - Bard of the Dales)

To Castillo
(John Castillo The Bard of the Dales)
Although our creeds might vary, Castillo,

And our amusements might not be the same,
(For thou wouldst look with horror on my love
Of the fine dramas with which Sophocles,
Euripides, and Terrence moved the souls 5
Of Greeks and Romans in the days of old;
And those of Marlow, Shakspere, and the rest
Of England’s noblest dramatists, would scorn
To dance around the Maypole with a maid
Fair as the lily and as spotless too; 10
Yet as thou loved my Cleveland’s hills and dales,
And had compassion for her people’s souls,
And strove to gain them from their wicked ways;
Though thou too oft might in confusion blend
Mere innocent enjoyments with their abuse; 15
I love thee, noble if mistaken soul!
And would much rather err with Puritans—
Earnest, thou much too solemn—than defile
My spirit in the brutalizing pools
Of sensual debasements. And I would fain 20
Pay thee such honour as thou merited,
Among our Cleveland poets, though thy rank
Be not the highest: thou hast gained the hearts
Of numbers whom no other bard has won;
And as the vocal songsters of the grove 25
Vary in compass and in melody,

Yet all are welcome to the naturalist,
So in our poesy: not Homer’s strains,
Not Dante’s visits to the nether realms,
Nor Milton soaring to eternal day, 30
Are for all readers. Humble lays like thine
Solace the lab’ring dalesman in his toil,
Help him to bear the numerous ills of life,
And teach his soul to look from earth to heaven.

‘Peter Proletarius.’ (George Markham Tweddell)
[Castillo’s Dialect Poems ed. Geo. M. Tweddell (1878)]

Tweddell published Castillo's work in 1878 after the poet's death and in the Cleveland Dialect. He also wrote about him in The Bards and Authors of Cleveland and South Durham in 1872. John Castillo was well published though with a number of anthologies out.

Lealholm Bridge

From Wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Castillo


John Castillo (1792 – 16 April 1845), often referred to as the "Bard of the Dales", from his first published book - "The Bard of the Dales - Poems by John Castillo" was a poet who lived for much of his life in the village of Lealholm. Castillo's work is treasured as having recorded the ancient language of the dales from oblivion.

John's father, a traveller, met his spouse in Eskdale and they both returned to Ireland where John was born in 1792 near the small village of Rathfarnham, close to Dublin, today a suburb of the city. At the age of two, the family decided to return to Lealholm and moved to the site that now bears the name Poet's Corner. At the age of 12 he moved to Lincolnshire and began work as a servant on a country estate and soon became note for his talent as a poet, singer / song-writer.

Later returning to Eskdale, he began work as a farm hand, and soon turned his skills to stonemasonry. Methodism was popular across the Dales, and John converted from Catholicism in 1818. Following thoughts of suicide he became a lay preacher, but continued his stone work and poetry. He often wrote using local dialect and is most well known for the poems "Aud Isaac" and "The Steeplechase" although he also used standard English. Very few of his works have been published since the early 1900s.

He died in the town of Pickering aged 53, and is buried at the Methodist Chapel in Hungate. His gravestone reads an epitaph of his own creation.

Sonnet Written in York Castle

Sonnet Written in York Castle

During an arbitrary Incarceration of Forty Days, in the autumn of
1846 for “Contempt of Court”

Think not, because a prison’s massive wall
Deprives my body of its liberty,
That stones, and locks, and iron bars call thrall
The scaring mind, which, mounting over all,
Can freely roam o’er each declivity, 5
And mountain-steep through groves, o’er verdant plains,
Visiting scenes of pleasures past or pains;
For tyrants ne’er can keep the soul in chains.
The heart that’s nobly learn’d to soar above
Mere worldly wealth, and rank, and lawless power, 10
Of human life,—the heart that in its love
And all the sensual play-things of the hour
Can comprehend the meanest things that crawls,
Defies all terror of your castle-walls!

George Tweddell
[To be found in the Special Collection, Brotherton library,
Leeds University and included here with kind permission.]

York Castle Prison
http://www.yorkcastleprison.org.uk/york-castle-prison.html