William Johnson Cory
William Johnson Cory (* as William Johnson on January 9, 1823 in Great Torrington , Devon , † June 11, 1892 in Hampstead ) was a British poet and educator at Eton College .
His name was initially William Johnson and in 1872 he changed his last name to Cory.
Life
William Johnson attended Eton College and studied at King's College of Cambridge University , where he became known for his Latin verses. For an English poem in Plato, he received the University Chancellor's Medal in 1843 and the Craven Scholarship in 1844. He then became an assistant tutor and from 1845 a master's in Eton, where he enjoyed an excellent reputation. He valued personal relationships between teacher and student (similar to that in ancient Greece) and his students included high-ranking politicians. His close relationship with his students also led to his dismissal in 1872 when a student's parents complained about a letter from Cory to him. The exact cause of his dismissal is controversial (ranging from the allegation of pederasty to the assumption that he was a thorn in the side of the school administration as a liberal reformer and independent spirit). He retired to Halston and changed his last name to Cory. In 1878 he moved to Madeira for health reasons , where he married and had a son. In 1882 he returned to England and lived in Hampstead, where he is also buried.
He is known for poetry on ancient subjects, particularly Ionica and Heraclitus (a Callimachus style elegy about Heraclitus of Halicarnassus : They told me Heraclitus, they told me you were dead ).
Quote
There is a well-known quote from him that extols the merits of high school education (and whose arguments are sometimes quoted for teaching Latin).
At school, one is less preoccupied with acquiring knowledge than with making mental exertions under critical supervision. Although one can actually acquire a certain amount of knowledge with average skills, which one also retains, one needs the spent hours on much that one has forgotten, but not to regret, because the shadow of lost knowledge at least protects against many illusions. You go to an excellent school less for knowledge than for the acquisition of skills such as concentration, the art of expression, the ability to quickly adopt a new intellectual position, the art of quickly adapting to someone else, adapting to censorship and rejection the art of gradually announcing approval or rejection, for the ability to perceive the smallest facets, for the art to assess what one can achieve in a given time, for taste, discernment, courage and objectivity in the spirit.
At school you are engaged not so much in acquiring knowledge as in making mental efforts under criticism. A certain amount of knowledge you can indeed acquire with average faculties so as to retain; nor need you regret the hours you spent on much that is forgotten, for the shadow of lost knowledge at least protects you from many illusions. But you go to a great school not so much for knowledge as for arts and habits; for the habit of attention, for the art of expression, for the art of assuming at a moment's notice a new intellectual position, for the art of entering quickly into another person's thoughts, for the habit of submitting to censure and refutation, for the art of indicating assent or dissent in graduated terms, for the habit of regarding minute points of accuracy, for the art of working out what is possible in a given time, for taste, for discrimination, for mental courage, and for mental soberness.
Fonts
- Ionica, Smith & Elder 1858
- Ionica II, Cambridge University Press 1877
- Ionica, George Allen 1891 (poems from the two older volumes, with some omissions, and new poems)
- AC Benson (Ed.): Ionica, George Allen 1905 (collection of his Ionica poems, not complete), Archives
literature
- Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy: The public school phenomenon, Penguin 1979
- Reginald Brett, 2nd Viscount Esher : Ionicus, 1924 (book dedicated to him by a student)
- Tim Card: William Johnson Cory, Dictionary of National Biography 2004
Web links
- Michael Matthew Kaylor, Secreted Desires: The Major Uranians: Hopkins, Pater and Wilde, 2006 (on Cory z. BS XVII)
Individual evidence
- ^ Text by Heraclitus
- ^ William Johnson Cory, Eton College . The quote is from his Eton Reform II, adapted by George Lyttleton in a letter to Rupert Hart-Davis.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Cory, William Johnson |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Johnson, William (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British poet and educator at Eton College |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 9, 1823 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Great Torrington |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 11, 1892 |
| Place of death | Hampstead |