A Student of old books

In Psalm 143, the Psalmist says “I remember the days of old, I meditate upon your works, I muse on the works of your hand”. Jeremiah 6:16 says “Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; Then you will find rest for your souls.”

The 20th century philosopher, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn said “Once things old were preferred. Everything old had lasted longer. Chronologically they came nearer to eternity. Old people were nearer to the grave and therefore nearer to God. Today the accent is on Youth.” It is a trait of our modern age that we have come to look with skepticism or disinterest upon old things, and that we treat as reactionaries those who reject new and young in preference of old.

This question regarding appropriate valuation of traditions, of “old paths”, of “days of old”, of classical literature, of ancestors, of old conversations and old ideas - this has enormous bearing for education. G.K. Chesterton said that education is one generation passing on a way of life to another. In Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis acknowledges that by rejecting traditions, each former generation completely alters life for the following, inevitably making them lesser and weaker.

So, what traditions are we rejecting that we ought not? What truths have we forgotten that we ought to remember? This is ultimately the question on the minds of classical Christian educators today. In his description of a prominent humanities program at Kansas State University in the 1970s, Fr. Francis Bethel says, “The main issue at KU was not that brainwashing was taking place at IHP (Integrated Humanities Program) and its students were being tricked…as the accusations leveled against the program would have it. Rather, the issue was that the truths these students were learning had been forgotten - or rejected - by the faculty at KU locally, by Western academia, and even by Western culture in general.” Like many classical education programs today, IHP was immersing its students in the time-tested literature of the Western past, from Homer to Chaucer, from Virgil to Cervantes, and from Augustine to Newton, - and these students remembered, such that in less than a decade the secular university shut the program down.

In Tales of a Wayside Inn, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow describes several guests gathered around the fireside at an Inn. Among these is a student:

“A youth was there, of quiet ways,
A Student of old books and days,
To whom all tongues and lands were known,
And yet a lover of his own;
With many a social virtue graced,
And yet a friend of solitude;
A man of such a genial mood
The heart of all things he embraced,
And yet of such fastidious taste,
He never found the best too good.
Books were his passion and delight,
And in his upper room at home
Stood many a rare and sumptuous tome,
In vellum bound, with gold bedight,
Great volumes garmented in white,
Recalling Florence, Pisa, Rome.
He loved the twilight that surrounds
The border-land of old romance;
Where glitter hauberk, helm, and lance,
And banner waves, and trumpet sounds,
And ladies ride with hawk on wrist,
And mighty warriors sweep along,
Magnified by the purple mist,
The dusk of centuries and of song.
The chronicles of Charlemagne,
Of Merlin and the Mort d’Arthure,
Mingled together in his brain
With tales of Flores and Blanchefleur,
Sir Ferumbras, Sir Eglamour
Sir Lancelot, Sir Morgadour,
Sir Guy, Sir Bevis, Sir Gawain.” 

This was clearly no modern student. Longfellow’s description here is poetically beautiful and an apt portrait of a graduate for a classical school. This “student of old books and days” is quiet and yet sociable; he’s comfortable with himself in a crowd as he is comfortable with himself alone in his studies. Through old books he has been deeply cultivated in history and folklore such that his tastes and loves are formed by and along with those of his heroes. He embraced the heart of all things and yet had well-formed tastes. He does not chase fads, nor covet what he does not have, yet his life seems to have a noble longing, like that of the knights of old about whom he reads - the longing that compels an energetic young man to a chivalrous life of duty, love, and sacrifice.

We are blessed to stand on the shoulders of many giants in Western culture. Even in this most immediate stream, the classical Christian education movement in which we participate, we are blessed with many models of love and discernment and of passion for old books and days and for remembering the old paths - for passing on to future generations perennial traditions and truths so that in this increasingly frantic and ominous time, they might be strong and find rest for their souls.