THE TOURIST AND THE TUTOR
that natural authority and that personal dignity, which command attention and obedience. A grave and good man will watch over the morals and the religion of his pupil; both which, according to the present modes of conducting travel, are commonly shaken from the basis, and levelled with the dust, before the end of the peregrination. In their place succeed universal scepticism and unbounded libertinism."[1] Now and then, in view of the steady demand for tutors of high character and ability, the ideal was realized. Some men of real eminence and many of respectable attainments were secured as traveling tutors. Scholars of this sort were far from being the shallow dolts often satirized by critics of the grand tour. No less a man than John Locke spent a year in Paris with an English pupil, and even set out with him for Rome, though the prudent philosopher did not venture to cross the Alps in the late autumn. Only a few years earlier the eminent naturalist John Ray had "declined, owing to poor health, an offer to travel abroad with three young noblemen."[2] The well-known Francis Misson, whose guide-book served two generations of travelers in Italy, journeyed in 1687 and 1688 across Europe to Italy with the grandson of the first Duke of Ormonde. John Breval, who had more than one tilt with Pope and was not altogether above criticism, traveled on the Continent with George, Lord Viscount Malpas. Whatever may be said of Breval on other grounds, he was a thoroughly competent traveling tutor. More famous is Home Tooke, who made two educational tours on the Continent, each time in charge of a pupil. He represented a type of instructor not seldom to be met at Paris and other great centers, and in his gay suits of blue and silver and scarlet and silver, to say nothing of other colors, he was as unclerical in appearance as clothing could make him.
The average tutor was, indeed, a dull-witted, mediocre scholar, with little influence over his pupil. He was commonly not over-ambitious, or if he was, he did not continue as tutor. Wretchedly paid, as was too often the case, and hourly humiliated by the insubordination of the young
120
- ↑ "On Foreign Travel," in Liberal Education, ii, 305.
- ↑ Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Ray.
