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diff --git a/38017-h/38017-h.htm b/38017-h/38017-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..98e93e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/38017-h/38017-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,7812 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + Schools, School-Books and Schoolmasters, by W. Carew Hazlitt—A Project Gutenberg eBook + </title> + + <style type="text/css"> + + p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;} + + body {margin-left: 12%; margin-right: 12%;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right; font-style: normal;} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; clear: both;} + + hr {width: 33%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; clear: both;} + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + .giant {font-size: 200%} + .huge {font-size: 150%} + .large {font-size: 125%} + + .blockquot {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .poem {margin-left: 15%;} + .note {margin-left: 21%; margin-right: 21%;} + .hang {margin-left: 2em; text-indent: -2em;} + .index {margin-left: 20%;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .smcaplc {text-transform: lowercase; font-variant: small-caps;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + a:link {color:#0000ff; text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:#6633cc; text-decoration:none} + + .spacer {padding-left: 1em; padding-right: 1em;} + .spacer2 {padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em;} + + .verts {margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%;} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Schools, School-Books and Schoolmasters, by +W. Carew Hazlitt + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Schools, School-Books and Schoolmasters + +Author: W. Carew Hazlitt + +Release Date: November 15, 2011 [EBook #38017] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SCHOOLS, SCHOOL-BOOKS *** + + + + +Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images +generously made available by The Internet Archive.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<div class="verts"> +<p class="center">A SELECT LIST<br /> +<small>OF</small><br /> +<span class="large"><strong>Works or Editions</strong></span></p> +<p class="center"><small>BY</small></p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge">WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT</span><br /> +<small>OF THE INNER TEMPLE</small></p> +<p class="center"><i>CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED</i><br /> +<i>1860-1888</i>.</p> + + +<p class="hang">1. <b>History of the Venetian Republic</b>; Its Rise, its Greatness, and its +Civilisation. With Maps and Illustrations. 4 vols. 8vo. <i>Smith, Elder & +Co.</i> 1860.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">A new edition, entirely recast, with important additions, in 3 vols. crown +8vo, is in readiness for the press.</p> + +<p class="hang">2. <b>Old English Jest-Books, 1525-1639.</b> Edited with Introductions and Notes. +<i>Facsimiles.</i> 3 vols. 12mo. 1864.</p> + +<p class="hang">3. <b>Remains of the Early Popular Poetry of England.</b> With Introductions and +Notes. 4 vols. 12mo. <i>Woodcuts.</i> 1864-66.</p> + +<p class="hang">4. <b>Handbook to the Early Popular, Poetical, and</b> Dramatic Literature of +Great Britain. Demy 8vo. 1867. Pp. 714, in two columns.</p> + +<p class="hang">5. <b>Bibliographical Collections and Notes.</b> 1867-76. Medium 8vo. 1876.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">This volume comprises a full description of about 6000 Early English +books from the books themselves. It is a sequel and companion to No. 4. See also No. 6 <i>infrâ</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">6. <b>Bibliographical Collections and Notes.</b> <span class="smcap">Second Series.</span> 1876-82. Medium +8vo. 1882.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Uniform with First Series. About 10,000 titles on the same principle +as before.</p> + +<p>“Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s second series of <i>Bibliographical Collections and +Notes</i> (Quaritch) is the result of many years’ searches among rare +books, tracts, ballads, and broadsides by a man whose specialty is +bibliography, and who has thus produced a volume of high value. If +any one will read through the fifty-four closely printed columns +relating to Charles I., or the ten and a half columns given to +‘London’ from 1541 to 1794, and recollect that these are only a +supplement to twelve columns in Hazlitt’s <i>Handbook</i> and five and a +half in his first <i>Collections</i>, he will get an idea of the work +involved in this book. Other like entries are ‘James I.,’ ‘Ireland,’ +‘France,’ ‘England,’ ‘Elizabeth,’ ‘Scotland’ (which has twenty-one and +a half columns), and so on. As to the curiosity and rarity of the +works that Mr. Hazlitt has catalogued, any one who has been for even +twenty or thirty years among old books will acknowledge that the +strangers to him are far more numerous than the acquaintances and +friends. This second series of <i>Collections</i> will add to Mr. Hazlitt’s +well-earned reputation as a bibliographer, and should be in every real +library through the English-speaking world. The only thing we +desiderate in it is more of his welcome marks and names, B. M., +Britwell, Lambeth, &c., to show where all the books approaching rarity +are. The service that these have done in Mr. Hazlitt’s former books to +editors for the Early-English Text, New Shakspere, Spenser, Hunterian, +and other societies, has been so great that we hope he will always say +where he has seen the rare books that he makes entries +of.”—<i>Academy</i>, August 26, 1882.</p></div> + +<p class="hang">7. <b>Bibliographical Collections and Notes.</b> <span class="smcap">A Third and Final Series.</span> 1886. +8vo.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">Uniform with the First and Second Series. This volume contains upwards +of 3000 articles. All three are now on sale by Mr. Quaritch.</p> + +<p class="hang">8. <b>Memoirs of William Hazlitt.</b> With Portions of his Correspondence. +<i>Portraits after miniatures by John Hazlitt.</i> 2 vols. 8vo. 1867.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">During the last twenty years the Author has been indefatigable in +collecting additional information for the <i>Life of Hazlitt</i>, 1867, in +correcting errors, and in securing all the unpublished letters which +have come into the market, some of great interest, with a view to a new and improved edition.</p> + +<p class="hang">9. <b>Inedited Tracts.</b> Illustrating the Manners, Opinions, and Occupations of +Englishmen during the 16th and 17th Centuries. 1586-1618. With an +Introduction and Notes. <i>Facsimiles.</i> 4to. 1868.</p> + +<p class="hang">10. <b>The Works of Charles Lamb.</b> Now first collected, and entirely +rearranged. With Notes. 4 vols. 8vo. <i>E. Moxon & Co.</i> 1868-69.</p> + +<p class="hang">11. <b>Letters of Charles Lamb.</b> With some Account of the Writer, his Friends +and Correspondents, and Explanatory Notes. By the late Sir Thomas Noon +Talfourd, D.C.L., one of his Executors. An entirely new edition, carefully +revised and greatly enlarged by W. Carew Hazlitt. 2 vols. 1886. Post 8vo.</p> + +<p class="hang">11a. <b>Mary and Charles Lamb.</b> New Facts and Inedited Remains. 8vo. <i>Woodcuts +and Facsimiles.</i> 1874.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">The groundwork of this volume was an Essay by the writer in <i>Macmillan’s Magazine</i>.</p> + +<p class="hang">12. <b>English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases.</b> Arranged alphabetically and +annotated. Medium 8vo. 1869. Second Edition, corrected and greatly +enlarged, crown 8vo. 1882.</p> + +<p class="hang">13. <b>Narrative of the Journey of an Irish Gentleman</b> through England in +1751. From a MS. With Notes. 8vo. 1869.</p> + +<p class="hang">14. <b>The English Drama and Stage, under the Tudor</b> and Stuart Princes. +1547-1664. With an Introduction and Notes. 8vo. 1869.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">A series of reprinted Documents and Treatises.</p> + +<p class="hang">15. <b>Popular Antiquities of Great Britain.</b> I. The Calendar. II. Customs and +Ceremonies. III. Superstitions. 3 vols. Medium 8vo. 1870.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">Brand’s <i>Popular Antiquities</i>, by Ellis, 1813, taken to pieces, recast, and enormously augmented.</p> + +<p class="hang">16. <b>Inedited Poetical Miscellanies.</b> 1584-1700. Thick 8vo. With Notes and +Facsimiles. 50 copies privately printed. 1870.</p> + +<p class="hang">17. <b>Warton’s History of English Poetry.</b> An entirely new edition, with +Notes by Sir F. Madden, T. Wright, F. J. Furnivall, R. Morris, and others, +and by the Editor. 4 vols. Medium 8vo. 1871.</p> + +<p class="hang">18. <b>The Feudal Period.</b> Illustrated by a Series of Tales (from Le Grand). +12mo. 1874.</p> + +<p class="hang">19. <b>Prefaces, Dedications, and Epistles.</b> Prefixed to Early English Books. +1540-1701. 8vo. 1874.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">50 copies privately printed.</p> + +<p class="hang">20. <b>Blount’s Jocular Tenures.</b> Tenures of Land and Customs of Manors. +Originally published by Thomas Blount of the Inner Temple in 1679. An +entirely new and greatly enlarged edition by W. Carew Hazlitt, of that +Ilk. Medium 8vo. 1874.</p> + +<p class="hang">21. <b>Dodsley’s Select Collection of Old Plays.</b> A new edition, greatly +enlarged, corrected throughout, and entirely rearranged. With a Glossary +by Dr. Richard Morris. 15 vols. 8vo. 1874-76.</p> + +<p class="hang">22. <b>Fairy Tales, Legends, and Romances.</b> Illustrating Shakespear and other +Early English Writers. 12mo. 1875.</p> + +<p class="hang">23. <b>Shakespear’s Library:</b> A Collection of the Novels, Plays, and other +Material supposed to have been used by Shakespear. An entirely new +edition. 6 vols. 12mo. 1875.</p> + +<p class="hang">24. <b>Fugitive Tracts (written in verse) which illustrate</b> the Condition of +Religious and Political Feeling in England, and the State of Society +there, during two centuries. 1493-1700. 2 vols. 4to. 50 copies privately +printed. 1875.</p> + +<p class="hang">25. <b>Poetical Recreations.</b> By W. C. Hazlitt. 50 copies printed. 12mo. 1877.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">A new edition, revised and very greatly enlarged, is in preparation.</p> + +<p class="hang">26. <b>The Baron’s Daughter.</b> A Ballad. 75 copies printed. 4to. 1877.</p> + +<p class="hang">27. <b>The Essays Of Montaigne.</b> Translated by C. Cotton. An entirely new +edition, collated with the best French text. With a Memoir, and all the +extant Letters. <i>Portrait and Illustrations.</i> 3 vols. 8vo. 1877.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">The only library edition.</p> + +<p class="hang">28. <b>Catalogue of the Huth Library.</b> [English portion.] 5 vols. Large 8vo. +1880. 200 copies printed.</p> + +<p class="hang">29. <b>Offspring of Thought in Solitude.</b> Modern Essays. 1884. 8vo, pp. 384.</p> + +<p class="blockquot">Some of these Papers were originally contributed to <i>All the Year Round</i>, &c.</p> + +<p class="hang">30. <b>Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine.</b> 12mo. 1886.</p> + +<p class="hang">31. <b>An Address to the Electors of Mid-Surrey, among</b> whom I Live. In +Rejoinder to Mr. Gladstone’s Manifesto. 1886. 8vo, pp. 32.</p> + +<p class="poem">“Who would not grieve, if such a man there be?<br /> +Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?”—<span class="smcap">Pope.</span></p> + +<p class="hang">32. <b>Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.</b> 12mo. 1887.</p> + +<p class="hang">33. <b>Schools, School-books, and Schoolmasters.</b> A Contribution to the +History of Educational Development. 12mo. 1888.</p> + +<p class="hang">34. <b>Studies in Jocular and Anecdotal Literature.</b> 12mo. <i>In January next.</i></p></div> + + +<p> </p><p> </p><p> </p> +<h1>SCHOOLS, SCHOOL-BOOKS,<br />AND<br />SCHOOLMASTERS.</h1> + +<p> </p><p> </p><p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center"> +<span class="giant"><span class="smcap">Schools<br /> +School-books</span></span><br /> +<small>AND</small><br /> +<span class="giant"><span class="smcap">Schoolmasters</span></span></p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">A Contribution to the history of Educational<br />Development in Great Britain</p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><small>BY</small><br /><span class="large">W. CAREW HAZLITT</span></p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">LONDON<br />J. W. JARVIS & SON<br />KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND<br />1888</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p> +<h2>PREFACE.</h2> + +<p>Although the commencing section has been thrown into the introductory +form, it has seemed to me necessary to annex a few lines by way of +preface, in order to explain that the following pages do not pretend to +deal exhaustively with the subject of which they treat, but offer to +public consideration a series of representative types and selected +specimens. To have barely enumerated all the authors and works on British +education would fill a volume much larger than that in the hands of the +reader.</p> + +<p>My main object has been to trace the sources and rise of our educational +system, and to present a general view of the principles on which the +groundwork of this system was laid. So<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span> far as I am capable of judging, +the narrative will be found to embody a good deal that is new and a good +deal that ought to be interesting.</p> + +<p>The bias of the volume is literary, not bibliographical; but its +production has involved a very considerable amount of research, not only +among books which proved serviceable, but among those which yielded me no +contribution to my object.</p> + +<p><br /><span style="margin-left: 2em;">W. C. H.</span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Barnes Common, Surrey</span>,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>November 1887</i>.</span></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center"><span class="giant">SCHOOLS, SCHOOL-BOOKS,<br />AND<br />SCHOOLMASTERS.</span></p> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/banner.jpg" alt="" /></div> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><span class="huge">SCHOOLS, SCHOOL-BOOKS,<br />AND<br />SCHOOLMASTERS.</span></p> +<p> </p> + +<h2>I.</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang">Introductory survey of the old system of teaching—Salutary influence +of the Church—Education of Englishmen in their own homes and on the +Continent—Severity of early discipline—Dr. Busby.</p></div> + + +<p><br />I. A fair body of authentic evidence has been collected, and is here +before us, exhibiting and illustrating the origin and progress of the +educational movement, and the opportunities which our ancestors acquired +and improved for mental cultivation and literary development.</p> + +<p>An attentive consideration of the ensuing pages may bring us to the +conclusion that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> English and Scots, at all events, of former days were +not ill provided with facilities for mastering the rudiments of learning, +and that the qualifications necessary and sufficient for ordinary persons +and careers were within the reach of all men, and, as time went on, women, +of moderate intelligence and resources.</p> + +<p>Moreover, when the taste for a more elaborate and extended system of +training, and for a circle of accomplishments, set in with the Stuarts, +the appliances of every kind for gratifying and promoting it were +superabundant; and London and other cities swarmed with experts, who +either attached themselves to academies or worked on their own account, +waiting on their clients or receiving them at their own places of +business. The youth of family who had passed from the grammar-school or +the tutor to the University, enjoyed, from the moment when professors +began to flock hither from France, Italy, and Germany as to the best +market, greatly increased facilities for completing themselves in special +departments of science, as well as in such exercises as were thought to +belong to gentlemen.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> As our intercourse with the Continent became more +regular and general, its fashions and sentiments were gradually +communicated to us, and we began to overcome our old insular prejudices. A +familiarity with other languages and literatures than our own, and with +the pursuits and amusements of countries which a narrow strip of sea +separated, was the beneficial consequence of the French and Italian +sympathies which the union of the crowns, after the death of the last of +the Tudors, introduced into England.</p> + +<p>We are scarcely entitled to plume ourselves on the elevation from which it +is our privilege to look back on obsolete educational theories and +principles. The change which we witness is of recent date and of political +origin. It is within an easily measurable number of years that the +democratic wave has loosened and shaken the direct clerical jurisdiction +over our schools and our studies. What more significant fact can there be, +in proof of the conservative bigotry of those who so long exercised +control in schoolroom and college, that a primer compiled in the first +quarter of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> sixteenth century was still substantially the standard +authority less than a hundred years since?</p> + +<p>When we regard a History of English Literature, and the works which either +constitute its principal strength and glory, or even such as, rather from +the circumstances connected with them than their own intrinsic importance, +lend to it a certain incidental or special value, it becomes natural to +inquire by what process or course of training the men and women whose +names compose the roll of fame became, or were aided at least in becoming, +what they were and remain?</p> + +<p>As for the women, they followed their studies at home under governesses +and professors; and Ballard’s volume on Learned Ladies will shew what was +capable of accomplishment in a few isolated and conspicuous cases, before +any scheme for the higher education of the sex had been broached. But it +is with the men that I have more particularly to deal.</p> + +<p>Every eminent Englishman who has done more or less to augment and enrich +our literary stores, and an infinitely greater number who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> have adopted +other vocations, passed of course through the scholastic ordeal. They were +sent to school, and perhaps to college; and they had books put into their +hands, as our boys have books put into theirs—books written by the +scholars of the time up to the knowledge and opinion of the time.</p> + +<p>With the fewest exceptions, the boy was the father of the man, and what he +had himself acquired he was content to see his children acquire. There +were centuries during which the lines of instruction and the scope of +culture varied little.</p> + +<p>The greater part of our early English teachers came across the sea, or had +been educated there; our best books were modelled on those of French or +Roman grammarians, and the improvement in our system was due, when it +came, to the <i>gymnasia</i> and academies of the Continent.</p> + + +<p><br />II. We all know that the Church in early times, before it became a +conflicting and mischievous influence, did much valuable work toward the +development and progress of literature<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> and art, and was instrumental in +preserving many monuments of ancient learning and genius, which might +otherwise have perished. But the strong clerical element in the old social +system operated beneficially on our English civilisation in another +equally important way.</p> + +<p>For a vast length of time the schools attached to the monasteries were not +only the best, but almost the sole seminaries where an education of the +higher class could be obtained. They were, in point of fact, the +precursors of the similar establishments subsequently attached to some of +the colleges; and it is further to be remarked, that, besides the ordinary +features of a mediæval scholastic <i>curriculum</i>, they taught music for the +sake of keeping a constant succession of candidates for the choir of the +chapel. It was through the monks and through an ecclesiastical channel +that we derived both our most ancient schools of music and our primitive +educational machinery, the two alike destined to become sensible, in +course of time, of a potent secular influence, scarcely imaginable by +their monastic institutors.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>Bishop Percy says that the system of instruction appears to have consisted +of learning the Psalms, probably by heart, and acquiring the principles of +music, singing, arithmetic, and grammar. Some of the boys, he adds, who +had made the art of music their profession, assisted in later life at the +religious services on special occasions, while others relinquished their +original callings, and sought their fortune as minstrels and instrumental +players.</p> + +<p>Altogether, it is evident that music and other branches of a liberal +training were primarily indebted at the outset, and long subsequently, for +their encouragement and diffusion to the only class which was at the +period capable of undertaking tuition. We have to seek in the Church of +the Middle Ages the source of all our scholastic erudition and refinement, +and of all the humanising influence which music, in all its forms, has +exerted over society.</p> + + +<p><br />III. Carlisle, in his well-known work on the Endowed Schools, supplies us +with some very desirable facts touching the cathedral institutions which +preceded the lay seminaries, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> over which the bishop of the diocese +presided <i>ex officio</i>. The pupils in these institutions were termed the +scholastics of the diocese; and one of the latest survivals of the system +was, perhaps, the old St. Paul’s, which Colet’s endowment eventually +superseded. The preponderant element here was, of course, clerical; the +boys were, as a rule, educated with a view to ecclesiastical preferment; +and those studies which lay outside the requirements of the early Church +were naturally omitted. It was a narrow and warping course of discipline, +which lasted, nevertheless, from the days of Alfred to the age of the +Tudors.</p> + +<p>But these cathedral schools themselves had grown out of the antecedent +conventual establishments, of which hundreds must have at one time existed +among us, and consequently the former represented a forward movement and a +certain disposition to relax the severity and exclusiveness of purely +religious education. As we see that subsequently it was the practice to +attach to a college a preparatory school, as at Magdalen, Oxford, so in +the mediæval time almost every monastic house had its special<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> educational +machinery for training aspirants to the various orders. This point does +not really come within my immediate scope; but I thought it well to shew +briefly how, as the lay schools evolved from the cathedral schools, so the +latter were an outcome from the conventual. There seems, however, to have +been one marked difference between the monastic or conventual and the +cathedral programmes, that in the latter the sciences of law and medicine, +having become independent professions, were abandoned in favour of the +academies, where youths on quitting school were specially inducted into a +knowledge of those Faculties.</p> + +<p>Prior to the institution of colleges and schools of a better class, the +nobility and gentry often sent their children to the monasteries and +convents to be initiated in the elements or first principles of learning. +The sort of education obtained here must have been of the most meagre +character; the course was restricted to grammar, philosophy of the cast +then in vogue, and divinity; the classics were treated with comparative +neglect, and a study of the living languages was still more remote from +their design.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>Even so late as the Tudor time, those who could afford to send their +children abroad found the education better, and probably cheaper; some +distinguished Englishmen, driven from their country by political or +religious differences, brought up their families whitherever they fled as +a matter of necessity.</p> + +<p>Sir Thomas Bodley, in the account of his life written by himself in 1609, +acquaints us with the fact that when his father was living at Geneva, the +great centre of the Protestant refugees, and he was a boy of twelve, he +was sufficiently advanced in learning, through his father’s care, to +attend the lectures delivered at that University in Hebrew, Greek, and +divinity, in which last his teachers were Calvin and Beza; and besides +these studies he had private tutors in the house of the gentleman with +whom he boarded, including Robertus Constantinus, the lexicographer, who +read Homer to him. On the return of the Bodleys to England upon the +accession of Elizabeth, the member of the family who was destined to +immortalise their name was sent to Oxford.</p> + +<p>Bishop Waynflete appears to have been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> among the earliest men who +perceived the necessity, at all events, of grounding boys more thoroughly +in grammar, and he was the prime mover in the establishment of schools at +Waynflete, Brackley, and Oxford, where the Accidence and Syntax were +taught on an improved plan. The last-named seminary was within the +precincts of Magdalen College, and became by far the most important and +most famous of the three, in consequence of its good fortune in having +among its masters men like Anniquil and Stanbridge, who took a real +interest in their profession, and bred scholars capable of diffusing and +developing the love of acquiring knowledge and the art of communicating +it.</p> + +<p>As Knight observes, grammar was the main object; but then the method was a +great advance on the old monastic plan. Even Jesus College, Cambridge, was +merely erected and endowed for a master and six fellows, and a certain +number of scholars to be instructed in grammar.</p> + +<p>At the time of the Civil War, John Allibone, a Buckinghamshire man, and +author of that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> rather well-known Latin description of the University as +reformed by the Republicans in 1648, was head-master of Magdalen School.</p> + +<p>In the English <i>Ship of Fools</i>, 1509, which is a good deal more than a +translation, Barclay ridicules the archaic system of teaching, and Skelton +does the same in his poetical satires. It was by the indefatigable +exposure of the inefficiency and unsoundness of the prevailing modes of +instruction that reforms were gradually conceded and accomplished. In all +political and social movements the caricaturist plays his part.</p> + +<p>It is not surprising to find Ascham in his turn, fifty years later on, +taking exception to the school-teaching and teachers which had educated, +and more or less satisfied, so many anterior generations.</p> + +<p>We naturally encounter in much of the literary work of the seventeenth +century advice and information in matters relating to scholastic and +academical culture wholly unhelpful to an inquiry into the training of the +middle class. In the section of a well-known book, entitled <i>The +Gentleman’s Calling</i>, 8vo, 1660,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> dedicated to our immediate subject, the +anonymous author observes: “Scarce any that owns the name of a +<i>Gentleman</i>, but will commit his Son to the care of some Tutor, either at +home or abroad, who at first instils those Rudiments, proper to their +tenderer years, and as Age matures their parts, so advances his Lectures, +till he have led them into those spacious fields of learning, which will +afford them both Exercise and Delight. This is that <i>Tree of Knowledge</i> +upon which there is no interdict....”</p> + +<p>The preceding extract points to a sphere of life which was wont to +conclude its preparatory stage with the Grand Tour and an initiation into +the profligacy of all the capitals of Europe; but we see that it deals +with a case in which a tutor took a youth almost, as it were, from his +nurse’s apron-strings, and does not merely indicate a finishing course. +The volume from which the passage comes has a promising title, and might +have been intensely interesting and truly important; but it was written by +some dry and pedantic scribbler, and, like Osborne’s <i>Advice to a Son</i>, +1656, and many other treatises of a cognate character, is a tissue of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>dulness and inanity. It is characteristic of the whole that portraits of +Jeremiah and Zedekiah are selected as appropriate graphic embellishments.</p> + +<p>From a woodcut on the back of the title-page of a <i>Grammatica Initialis</i>, +or Elementary Grammar, 1509, we form a conclusion as to the ancient +Continental method of instruction. This engraving portrays the interior of +a school, apparently situated in a crypt; the master is seated at his desk +with a book open before him, and above it a double inkstand and a pen, +both of primitive fabric. The teacher is evidently reading aloud to his +four scholars, who sit in front of him, a passage from the volume, and +they repeat after him, parson-and-clerk-wise. They learn by rote. They +have no books before them. They represent a stage in the teaching process +before the science of reading from print or MS. had been acquired by the +scholar, and copies of school-books were multiplied by the press. There +was no preparation of work. The quarter wage included no charge for books +supplied. The teaching was purely oral. So it was probably throughout. It +was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> thus that Stanbridge, Whittinton, Lily, and their followers conducted +their schools, long after the cradle at Magdalen had been reinforced by +other seminaries all over the country.</p> + +<p>There is no written record of this fashion of communicating information +from the master to the pupil, so diametrically opposed to modern ideas, +but conformable to an era of general illiteracy; it is a sister-art, which +lends us a helping hand in this case by admitting us to what may be viewed +as an interior coeval with Erasmus and More.</p> + +<p>The modern school-holidays appear to have been formerly unknown. In the +rules for the management of St. Paul’s and Merchant Taylors’, for +instance, where a vacation is called a <i>remedy</i>, no such indulgence was +permitted save in cases of illness; and it is curious that in the account +which Fitzstephen gives of the three seminaries already established in +London in the reign of Henry II. the boys are represented as spending the +holy days (rather than holidays) in logical or rhetorical exercises and +disputations.</p> + +<p>In all the public schools, indeed, holidays<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> were at first intimately +associated with the recurrence of saints’ anniversaries and with festivals +of the Church, and were restricted to them. The modern vacation was not +understood; and the first step toward it, and the earliest symptom of a +revolt against the absence of any such intervals for diversion from +studies and attendance at special services, was an appeal made in 1644 to +the Court of the Company by the scholars of Merchant Taylors “for +play-days instead of holy-days.”</p> + +<p>The object of this petition was to procure a truce with work and an +opportunity for exercise and sport, in lieu of a system under which the +boys, from their point of view, merely substituted one kind of task for +another; but the time had not yet arrived for reform in this matter; our +elders clang tenaciously to the stern and monotonous routine which they +found established, and in which they had been bred; and the feeling in +favour of relaxing the tension by regular intervals of complete repose is +an incidence of modern thought, which betrays a tendency at the present +moment to gravitate too far to the opposite extreme.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>A quite recent report of one of the great schools in the United +States—the West Point School—manifests a survival of the old-fashioned +ideas upon this subject, carried out by the Pilgrim Fathers to the +American Plantations; and whereas in the mother country the original +release from work in order to attend religious services has resolved +itself into the latter-day vacation or holiday, the modern educational +system beyond the Atlantic seems to withdraw the boys from the church, not +in favour of the playground or the country, but as a means of lengthening +the hours of study.</p> + + +<p><br />IV. Ingulphus, who lived in the reign of Edward the Confessor (<span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> +1041-66), furnishes us with the earliest actual testimony of a schoolboy’s +experiences. “I was born,” he tells us, “in the beautiful city of London; +educated in my tender years at Westminster: from whence I was afterwards +sent to the <i>Study of Oxford</i>, where I made greater progress in the +Aristotelian philosophy than many of my contemporaries, and became very +well acquainted with the Rhetoric of Cicero.” It is very interesting to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> +learn further that, when he was at school at Westminster, and used to +visit his father at the Court of Edward, he was often examined, both on +the Latin language and on logic, by the Queen herself.</p> + +<p>Insights of this kind at so early a period are naturally rare, and indeed +we have to cross over to the Tudor time and the infancy of Eton before we +meet with another such personal trait on English ground.</p> + +<p>Thomas Tusser, author of the <i>Points of Good Husbandry</i>, admits us in his +metrical autobiography to an acquaintance with the severity of treatment +which awaited pupils in his time at public schools, and which, in fact, +lingered, as part of the gross and ignorant system, down to within the +last generation. We have all heard of the renowned Dr. Busby; but that +celebrated character was merely a type which has happened from special +circumstances to be selected for commemoration. Tusser, describing his +course of training, says:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“From Paul’s I went, to Eton sent,<br /> +To learn straightways the Latin phrase;<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>Where fifty-three stripes given to me<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">At once I had.</span><br /> +For fault but small, or none at all,<br /> +It came to pass that beat I was:<br /> +See, Udall, see the mercy of thee<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">To me, poor lad!”</span></p> + +<p>But this kind of experience was too common; and it had its advocates even +outside the professional pale: for Lord Burleigh, as we learn from Ascham, +was on the side of the disciplinarians.</p> + +<p>Sir Richard Sackville, Ascham’s particular friend, on the contrary, +bitterly deplored the hindrance and injury which he had suffered as a boy +from the harshness of his teacher; and Udall himself carried his +oppression so far as to offend his employers and procure his dismissal.</p> + +<p>Nash, in <i>Summer’s Last Will and Testament</i>, 1600, makes Summer +say:—“Here, before all this company, I profess myself an open enemy to +ink and paper. I’ll make it good upon the accidence, body of me! that in +speech is the devil’s paternoster. Nouns and pronouns, I pronounce you as +traitors to boys’ buttocks; syntaxis and prosodia, you are tormentors of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> +wit, and good for nothing, but to get a schoolmaster twopence a week!”</p> + +<p>In a French sculpture of the end of the fourteenth century we have +probably as early a glimpse as we are likely to get anywhere graphically +of a scene in a school, where a mistress is administering castigation to +one of her pupils laid across her knees, the others looking on. But it +soon became a favourite subject for the illustrator and caricaturist.</p> + +<p>The strictness of scholastic discipline existed in an aggravated form, no +doubt, in early days, and formed part of a more barbarous system of +retribution for wrong done or suffered. The principle of wholesale and +indiscriminate flagellation for offences against the laws of the school or +for neglect of studies marched hand in hand with the vindictive +legislation of bygone days; and doubtless, from the first, the rod often +supplied a vent for the temper or caprice of the pedagogue.</p> + +<p>At Merchant Taylors’ in my time the cane was freely used, and the forms of +chastisement were the <i>cut on the hand</i> and <i>the bender</i>, for which the +culprit had to stoop.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>The <i>régime</i> of the once redoubtable Dr. Busby at Westminster was a kind +of survival of the Draconic rule of Udall at Eton when poor Tusser was +there; and it is exceedingly probable that in the time of Charles II. +notions of what was salutary for youth in the shape of <i>unguentum +baculinum</i>, or stick-ointment, had undergone very slight alteration since +the previous century. Busby, of whom there is a strange-looking portrait +in Nichols’ <i>Anecdotes</i>, was the most sublime of coxcombical Dons, and +within his own pale an autocrat second to none of the Cæsars. Smaller +luminaries in the same sphere paid him homage in dedicatory epistles.</p> + +<p>Everybody must remember the traditional anecdote of the visit of Charles +II. to Westminster, and of the King, with his hat under his arm, walking +complacently behind Busby through the school, the latter covered; and of +the head-master, when his Majesty and himself (<i>Ego et rex meus</i> over +again) were beyond observation, bowing respectfully to Charles, +trencher-cap in hand, and explaining that if the boys had any idea that +there was a greater man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> in England than him, his authority would be at an +end.</p> + +<p>But there is a second story of Busby and a luckless Frenchman who threw a +stone by accident through one of the windows while the lessons were in +progress and the principal was hearing a class. Busby sent for the +offender, thinking it was one of the boys in the playground; but when the +stranger was introduced, it was “Take him up,” and a flogging was +inflicted before the whole assembly. The Frenchman went away in a fury, +and at once sent a challenge to Busby by a messenger. The Doctor reads the +cartel, and cries, “Take him up,” and the envoy shares the fate of his +employer. He, too, enraged at the treatment, returns, and demands +compensation from Monsieur; but the latter shrugs his shoulders, and can +only say, “Ah, me! he be the vipping man; he vip me, he vip you, he vip +all the world.”</p> + +<p>It was of Busby that some one said how fortunate it was for the Seraphim +and Cherubim that they had no nether extremities, or when he joined them, +he would have “taken them up,” as the Red Indian in his happy +hunting-grounds<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> still pursues his favourite occupation on earth.</p> + +<p>Charles Burney, one of a famous and accomplished family, kept school at +one time at Greenwich. He subsequently removed to Chiswick. There are +still persons living who recollect him and his oddities. He was a great +martinet—a miniature Busby; but a singular point about him was his habit +of inserting in the quarterly accounts sent to the parents a charge for +the birch-rods bought in the course of the term, and applied for the +benefit of his pupils. This was a novel and ingenious method, a treatment +of the question from a financier’s point of view; and if black draughts +and blue pills were recognised as legitimate items in the school-bill, why +not the materials for external application?</p> + +<p>The condition of the schoolmaster himself, on the other hand, and of his +allies, the tutor and the usher, was as far removed from our present ideas +as the code which he enforced and the books which he expounded. The freer +diffusion of knowledge and an advanced civilisation have tended to +liberate the schoolboy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> from the barbarous despotism of his teachers, the +majority of whom were latter-day survivals of a decadent type, and to +raise the latter in the social scale. The rod is broken, and Busbyism is +extinct. But the successors of that renowned personage enjoy a higher rank +and enlarged opportunities, and may maintain both if they keep pace with +the progress of thought and opinion.</p> + +<p>The schoolmaster has set his house in order at the eleventh hour, in +obedience to external pressure, coming from men who have revolted against +the associations and prejudices of early days, and inaugurated a new +educational Hegira; and the evolutions of this modern platform are by no +means fully manifest.</p> + +<p>The propensity of the class to adhere to ancient traditions in regard to +the application of corporal punishment was, of course, to be checked only +by the force of public opinion. Had it not been that the latter was +gradually directed against the evil, the probability is that this would +have ranked among those popular antiquities which time has not seriously +or generally touched. But so early as 1669 a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>representation on the +subject was actually laid before Parliament in a document called “The +Children’s Petition: Or, A modest remonstrance of that intolerable +grievance our youth lie under in the accustomed severities of the +school-discipline of this nation.” This protest was printed, and facing +the title-page there meets the eye a notice to this effect: “It is humbly +desired this book may be delivered from one hand to another, and that +gentleman who shall first propose the motion to the House, the book is +his, together with the prayers of posterity,”—in which last phrase a +double sense may or may not lurk.</p> + +<p>It required many attacks on such a stronghold as the united influence and +prejudice of the teaching profession to produce an effect, and probably no +effect was produced at first; for in 1698 another endeavour was made to +obtain parliamentary relief, and in this instance the address humbly +sought “an Act to remedy the foul abuse of children at schools, especially +in the great schools of this nation.”</p> + +<p>These preparatory movements indicated the direction in which sentiment and +taste were beginning to stir, not so much at the outset,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> perhaps, from +any persuasion that greater clemency was conducive to progress, but from a +natural disposition on the part of parents to revolt against the senseless +ill-usage of their boys by capricious martinets.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p> +<h2>II.</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang">The Foundations—Vocabularies, Glossaries, and <i>Nominalia</i>—Their +manifold utility—Colloquy of Archbishop Alfric (tenth century)—Anglo-Gallic treatise of Alexander Neckam on utensils +(twelfth century)—Works of Johannes de Garlandia—His Dictionary (thirteenth century) and its pleasant treatment—The Pictorial +Vocabulary—Anglo-Gallic Dictionary of Walter de Biblesworth (late thirteenth century).</p></div> + + +<p><br />I. The origin and history of a class of documents which may be viewed as +the basis and starting-point of our educational literature have first to +be considered. I refer to the vocabularies, glossaries, and <i>nominalia</i>, +which afford examples of the method of instruction pursued in this country +from the Middle Ages to the invention of printing.</p> + +<p>Such of these manuals as we fortunately still possess represent the +surviving residue of a much larger number; and from the perishable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> +material on which they were written and their constant employment in +tuition, it becomes a source of agreeable surprise that so many specimens +remain to throw light on the mode in which elementary learning was +acquired in England in the infancy of a taste for letters and knowledge.</p> + +<p>In the small volumes on <i>Cookery and Gardening</i> by the present writer, he +has, as a matter of course, called into requisition these early +philological relics to illustrate both those subjects; and this fact +testifies to the multiplicity of purposes for which such relics can be +rendered serviceable. There is hardly, indeed, any aspect or line of +mediæval life which these productions do not assist very powerfully in +making more luminous and familiar. But their original design and +destination were obviously educational. They were rude and imperfect +vehicles, contrived by men of narrow culture and limited experience for +the instruction of the young; and they were advisedly thrown, as far as +possible, into an interlocutory form—the form most apt to impress +circumstances and names on the memories of pupils. Some of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> these, which I +shall presently describe a little more at large, were constructed on the +interlinear principle, not, as among ourselves, for the edification of the +learner, but, as Mr. Wright points out, for the preceptor’s guidance in +days when the latter was often a person of very mediocre attainments, and +was incapable of dispensing with occasional assistance to his +recollection. In other words, the majority of schoolmasters and ushers +were merely the mechanical medium for conveying to the boys the lessons +which they found set down in treatises prepared by persons of superior +skill and erudition.</p> + +<p>These primitive schoolbooks are, as a rule, easily susceptible of +classification under the heads of Vocabularies, Dictionaries, Colloquies, +and Narrative or descriptive texts, of which the two latter divisions are +usually interlinear, either in part or throughout. Some of these terms, +again, were formerly understood in acceptations different from our own; +for a Vocabulary was what we should rather call a Dictionary, and a +Dictionary was what we should rather call a Phrase-Book.</p> + + +<p><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>II. The most ancient item in the collection before me belongs to that +century of which King Alfred just lived to witness the opening, the +Colloquy of Archbishop Alfric, in Anglo-Saxon and Latin, and known only +from an enlarged copy or transcript made by the writer’s disciple and +namesake. The original is supposed to have been compiled while Alfric was +a monk at Winchester. He succeeded to the archbishopric in 995, and his +pupil and editor died about the middle of the following century. The +professed object of the undertaking was the acquisition of the Latin +language by the Anglo-Saxon youth in the intervals of leisure from other +pursuits or duties; and the process of instruction is conducted on the +plan of a dialogue in Latin between a master and boys, with an interlinear +Saxon gloss. It is significant of the harsh discipline which prevailed in +those days that one of the foremost points of inquiry is in relation to +flogging. The teacher asks if the boys choose to be flogged at their +lessons, and the answer is that they would rather be flogged and taught +than be ignorant, but that they rely on his clemency and unwillingness to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> +punish them, unless he is obliged. The entire work deals with the matters +which were most familiar to the student and came nearest home to their +everyday life and sympathies; and this feature constitutes for us its +special value and beauty. The Latin itself is indifferent enough, and +bespeaks the acquisition of the tongue by Alfric and his follower from the +earlier monkish authors, rather than from classical models. Many curious +points might be elicited from the present composition and others of an +allied character printed with it,—I mean such passages as those where the +shepherd speaks of the danger from wolves, and the herdsman of the +depredations of cattle-lifters. There was probably no occupation of the +period which is not brought before us, and its particular specialities +bilingually set out.</p> + +<p>The <span class="smcap">Vocabulary</span>, of approximately the same date, is in reality a Latin and +Anglo-Saxon word-book. Like the <i>Colloquy</i>, it received subsequent +additions—perhaps by the same hand; but they are in the form of a +separate Appendix. Each section has its independent alphabet, and the +articles which fall under it do not observe any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> apparent order. The same +is to be said of all the works of this class belonging to the mediæval +era.</p> + +<p>The Anglo-Gallic treatise of Alexander Neckam <i>De Utensilibus</i> (twelfth +century) is differently constructed from the Alfric Vocabulary, not as +regards the text itself, which is also in Latin, but in having an +interlinear gloss in Old French, and in following a descriptive form. It +takes the various parts of a dwelling <i>seriatim</i>, the several occupations +and callings of men, the mode of laying out a garden, and of building a +castle.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the book by Neckam and the Dictionary of Johannes de Garlandia +constitute together the most comprehensive and remarkable body of +information in our literature respecting the life and habits of the +Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Normans.</p> + +<p>Johannes de Garlandia, whose work is common in MS. and who is also known +as the author of other productions of a philological cast, commences his +Dictionary by defining what a dictionary is. “Dictionarius,” says he, +“dicitur libellus iste a dictionibus magis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> necessariis, quas tenetur +quilibet scolaris, non tantum in scrinio de linguis facto, sed in cordis +armariolo firmiter retinere, ut ad faciliorem oracionis constructionem +perveniat. Primo igitur sciat vulgaria nominare. Placet igitur a membris +humani corporis incoare....”</p> + +<p>This phrase or word book, which was probably composed about 1220, enters +into the most minute particulars under all the heads which it comprises, +and is unquestionably of the highest value and interest as taking us back +so far into the life of the past, and making us in a manner the +contemporary of an Englishman who flourished six or seven centuries ago, +and domiciled himself in France, chiefly at Paris, where he gives us an +account of his house and garden, with all their appointments and +incidence.</p> + +<p>There is a very curious passage in one of the glosses, where Johannes +explains the derivation of <i>Pes</i>, which he traces from the Greek <i>pos</i> +[<i>sic</i>], adding that thence the dwellers of the other world or hemisphere, +<i>if it be true that there are any</i>, are termed Antipodes. As this was +written nearly 300 years before Columbus, it might have supplied a note +and a point to Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> Beamish in his volume on the <i>Discovery of America by +the Northmen in the Tenth Century</i>, 1841.</p> + +<p>The old dictionary-maker brings us so near to him by his pleasant +colloquial method and familiar way of putting everything, and expects us +to become acquainted into the bargain with his friends and neighbours, who +resided at Paris under Philip Augustus, as if one might go there and find +some of them still living. In other words, there was belonging to this man +a natural simplicity of style and a communicativeness which together have +rendered his treatise a work of art and a cyclopædia of information. He +even leaves his house to go into the market with you and shew what his +neighbour William has on sale there! How unspeakably more luminous and +understandable the gone ages might have been if we had had more such!</p> + + +<p><br />III. Passing from him, his pleasant book, and its pleasant associations +with cordial regret, I just notice the other and latter-day word-books, +which are really, in the main, of the same type as those of which a +description has gone before.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> One only differs markedly from the rest in +possessing graphic embellishments of a rude and quaint character; among +the rest the portrait of a woe-begone gallant, and by his side an +arrow-pierced heart. Some of the representations are, of course, happier +than others; assuredly those of animals are pre-Landseerian. They are many +degrees below the stamp of such artistic essays as one finds in the books +of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, <i>as a rule</i>, both in England +and abroad. Criticism lays down its arms.</p> + +<p>But I must dwell rather longer on one of the tracts in this series—the +Anglo-Gallic Dictionary or <i>Phraseologia</i> of Walter de Biblesworth. It is +the most ancient monument of its particular kind of which I am aware, and +is ascribed to the close of the thirteenth century, in other words, to the +period embraced by the later years of the reign of Edward I. The +orthography, which naturally strikes a modern French student as strange +and uncouth, may be accepted as a key to the ancient pronunciation of the +language, at all events in England, if not even among the French +themselves; but the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>language, apart from the spelling, is remarkable for +its plentiful use of expressions which have fallen into desuetude, and +some of which, as <i>io</i> for <i>je</i>, bespeak a Pyrenæan origin.</p> + +<p>This production is intituled “Le treytyz ke moun sire Gauter de +Bibelesworthe fist à ma dame Dyonisie de Mounchensy, pur aprise de +langwage, ço est à saver, du primer temps ke homme nestra, ouweke trestut +le langwage pur saver nurture en sa juvente, &c.” The text is in short +rhyming couplets, and takes the child from its birth through all the +duties, occupations, and incidents of life. To select a passage which will +give a fair idea of the whole is not altogether easy; but here is an +extract which is capable of puzzling an average French scholar of our +day:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Homme et femme unt la peel,<br /> +De morte beste quyr jo apel.<br /> +Le clerk soune le dreyne apel,<br /> +Le prestre fat a Roume apel.<br /> +Ore avet ço ke pent à cors,<br /> +Dedens ausy et deors.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Vestet vos dras, me chers enfauns,</span><br /> +Chaucez vos bras, soulers, e gauns;<br /> +Mettet le chaperoun, coverz le chef,<br /> +Tachet vos botouns, e pus derechef<br /> +De une coreye vus ceynet.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>This didactic treatise is additionally interesting to the English student +from its relationship, in the way of likely literary ancestry, to the +subsequent compilations of a cognate sort by Lydgate and others. The +diction is obscure enough, and has the air of having been the work of a +man of imperfect culture, from the presence of such forms as <i>dreyne</i> for +<i>derreniere</i> or <i>derniere</i> and the abundance of false syntax, which ought +not to have been so conspicuous, even at this remote date, in a +composition professedly educational. Yet, after all deductions, the work +is of singular curiosity and fascination, not only for its own sake, but +as the best philological standard which we seem to have to put side by +side with its successors in the same important direction.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p> +<h2>III.</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang">Earliest printed works of instruction—Publications of Bishop +Perottus—His <i>Grammatical Rules</i>—Johannes Sulpicius and his <i>Opus +Grammaticum</i>—Some account of the book—Importance and influence of +these foreign Manuals in England—The <i>Carmen Juvenile</i> or <i>Stans Puer +ad Mensam</i>—Alexander Gallus or De Villâ Dei and his <i>Doctrinale</i>—The +<i>Doctrinale</i> one of the earliest productions of the Dutch press—Ælius +Donatus—His immense popularity and weight both at home and +abroad—Selections or abridgments of his Grammar used in English schools.</p></div> + + +<p><br />I. The most ancient published books of instruction for Englishmen in +scholastic and academical culture emanated from a foreign country and +press. When the Vocabularies, Grammars, and other Manuals ceased to +circulate in a manuscript form, or to be written and multiplied by +teachers for the use of their own pupils, the early Parisian printers +supplied the market with the works, which it had been theretofore<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> +possible to procure only to a very limited extent, in transcripts executed +by the authors themselves or by professional copyists.</p> + +<p>The educational writings of some of the men, whose influence for good in +this direction had of course been greatly circumscribed by the ignorance +of typography, found their way into print. But one of the foremost persons +who addressed himself to the task of diffusing a knowledge of elementary +learning and of teaching English by Latin was <span class="smcap">Nicholaus Perottus, Bishop +of Sipontum</span>, whose <i>Grammatical Rules</i> first appeared, so far as I know, +in 1486.<a name='fna_1' id='fna_1' href='#f_1'><small>[1]</small></a></p> + +<p>The examples of fifteenth-century English, which make in our eyes its +chief value, were of course introduced as casual illustrations.</p> + +<p>The lexicographical and grammatical works of this noted prelate +undoubtedly exercised a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> very powerful and beneficial influence at, and +long after, the period of their composition; and I am disposed to think +that this was particularly the case with his <i>Rudimenta Grammatices</i>, +1476, and his <i>Cornucopia Linguæ Latinæ</i>, 1490. The former was not only +imported into this country for sale, but was reprinted here in 1512, and +the <i>Cornucopia</i> forms part of the groundwork of our own <i>Ortus +Vocabulorum</i>, 1500.</p> + + +<p><br />II. Next in succession to Bishop Perrot, whose publications, however, +cannot be said to belong to the present category in more than an +incidental degree, was <span class="smcap">Johannes Sulpicius Verulanus</span>, who is perhaps to be +viewed as the leader of the movement for spreading, not only in France, +but in England, a fuller and more scholarly acquaintance with the laws of +grammar. Nearly the first book which proceeded from the press of Richard +Pynson was his <i>Opus Grammaticum</i>, 4to, 1494.</p> + +<p>Almost every successive impression seems to differ in the contents or +their distribution, owing, as I apprehend, to the circumstance that the +volume was compounded of separate tracts, of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> which some were occasionally +added or omitted at pleasure, or variously placed.</p> + +<p>The edition of 1505 comprises the undermentioned pieces:—</p> + +<p class="blockquot">Sulpitii Verulani examen de 8 partibus orationis.<br /> +De declinatione nominum.<br /> +De preteritis & supinis.<br /> +Carmen iuuenile de moribus mensæ.<br /> +Vocabulorum interpretatio.<br /> +Iod. Badii Ascensii De regimine dictionum.<br /> +Sulp. Verul. De regimine & constructione.<br /> +De componendis ordinandisq. epistolis.<br /> +De carminibus.</p> + +<p>The title-leaf presents the woodcut, often employed by Pynson in his later +performances, of a person, probably a schoolmaster, seated at a <i>plutus</i> +or reading-desk, holding a paper in one hand, and reading from a book +which lies open before him.</p> + +<p>Whatever may now be thought of them, the philological labours of +Sulpicius, which were subsequently edited and glossed by Badius Ascensius, +were long extremely popular and successful, and a very large number of +copies must have been in English hands during the reigns of Henry the +Seventh and his son. Of these, as I have said, some proceeded from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> the +London press, while others were imported from Paris.</p> + +<p>The <i>fasciculi</i> in one of 1511 are as follow:—</p> + +<p class="blockquot">Sulpitii Examen de octo partibus orationis.<br /> +Carmen Iuuenile.<br /> +De declinatione nominum orthoclitorum.<br /> +—————————— heteroclitorum.<br /> +De nominibus heteroclitis.<br /> +De generibus nominum.<br /> +De verbis defectiuis.<br /> +De præteritis verborum.<br /> +De supinis —————.<br /> +De regimine et constructione dictionum Libellus.<br /> +De componendis ornandisq; epistolis.<br /> +De Carminibus.<br /> +De quantitate syllabarum.<br /> +De A, E, &c. in primis syllabis.<br /> +—————— mediis ——.<br /> +De ultimis syllabis.<br /> +De Carminibus decoro [<i>sic</i>] &c.<br /> +Donati de figuris opusculum.<br /> +De latinarum dictionum recta scriptura.<br /> +De grecarum dictionum orthographia.<br /> +De ratione dipthongangi.<br /> +Ascensii de orthographia carmina.<br /> +Vocabulorum interpretatio.</p> + +<p>The <i>Carmen Juvenile</i>, inserted here and in the antecedent issues, is the +poem better known as <i>Stans Puer ad Mensam</i>, and in its English dress by +Lydgate. Mr. Blades tells us that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> <i>editio princeps</i> of the Latin poem +appeared in 1483, and that Caxton printed Lydgate’s English one at an +anterior date. Lydgate, however, had been dead many years when his +production saw the light in type, and as he could scarcely have translated +the piece from Sulpicius, the probability seems to be that both resorted +to a pre-existent original, which the Englishman rendered into his own +tongue, and the foreign grammarian adopted or modernised. A comparison of +the English text with that given in the work of Sulpicius shews +considerable variations; the latter version is here and there more +outspoken and blunt in its language than the paraphrase of the good Monk +of Bury St. Edmunds. It is accompanied by a running gloss by the learned +Ascensius; and although the book was ostensibly designed for the use of +students, the contractions are unusually troublesome, and many of the +proper names are exhibited in an orthography at any rate rather peculiar. +The god whose special province was the management of the solar orb is +introduced as <i>formosus appollo</i>. His substitution of <i>Vergilius</i> as the +name of the Latin poet is so far<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> not remarkable, inasmuch as Polydore +Vergil of Urbino appears always to have spelled his name so, and in the +edition of Virgil by Aldus, 1501, the author is called <i>Vergilius</i>. I am +afraid that if I were to furnish a specimen of the contractions, a modern +typographer would be puzzled to reproduce it with the desirable +exactitude.</p> + + +<p><br />III. When one turns over the leaves of a volume of this kind, and sees the +way in which the avenue to learning and knowledge was hampered by pedantic +and ignorant instructors, it seems marvellous, not that the spread of +education was so slow and partial, but that so many scholars should have +emerged from such a process.</p> + +<p>A more obscure and repellent series of grammatical dissertations can +hardly be imagined; yet Sulpicius holds a high rank among the promoters of +modern education, as the precursor of all those, such as Robert +Whittinton, John Stanbridge, and William Lily, who, after the revival of +learning and the institution of the printing-press, prepared the way for +improved methods and more enlightened preceptors. His followers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> naturally +went beyond him; but Sulpicius was doubtless as much in advance of his +forerunners as Richard Morris is in advance of Lindley Murray.</p> + +<p>After the restoration of letters, Sulpicius seems to have been the pioneer +in re-erecting grammar into a science, and formulating its rules and +principles on a systematic basis.</p> + +<p>In enumerating the aids to learning which the English received from the +Continent, we must not overlook Alexander Gallus, or Alexander de Villâ +Dei, a French Minorite and school-teacher of the thirteenth century, who +reduced the system of Priscian to a new metrical plan, doubtless for the +use of his own pupils, as well as his personal convenience and +satisfaction.</p> + +<p>The <i>Doctrinale</i> of Alexander, which is in leonine verse, circulated more +or less in MS. during his life, and was one of the earliest books +committed to the press, as a fragment on vellum with the types of Laurence +Coster of Haarlem establishes. It was repeatedly published abroad, but +does not really seem to have ever gained a strong footing among ourselves, +since three editions of it are all that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> I can trace as having come from +London presses, and of these the first was in 1503. It did not, in fact, +command attention till we were on the eve of a great reform in our +school-books; and while in France, if not elsewhere abroad, it preserved +its popularity during two or three centuries, till it was supplanted by +the Grammar and Syntax of Despauterius about 1515, here in a dozen years +it had run its course, and scarcely left even the marks of its influence +behind.</p> + + +<p><br />IV. But the prototype of all the grammatical writers and teachers of early +times in this as well as other countries was <span class="smcap">Ælius Donatus</span>, a Roman +professor of the fourth century, who probably acquired his experience from +Priscian and the other works published under the Empire upon his favourite +science, and who had the honour to number Saint Jerome among his +disciples.</p> + +<p>Donatus is the author of a System of Grammar in three parts, and of a +series of Prefaces and Scholia to Terence; and his reputation became so +great and was so widely diffused, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> a <i>Donatus</i> or <i>Donet</i> was a +well-understood synonym for a Primer, and John of Basing even christens +his Greek Grammar, compiled about 1240, <i>Donatus Græcorum</i>. Langland, in +his <i>Vision concerning Piers Ploughman</i>, written a century later, says—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Thaune drowe I me amonges draperes my donet to lerne;”</p> + +<p>and the <i>Testament of Love</i> alludes to the work in similar terms. “In the +statutes of Winchester College [written about 1386],” says Warton, “a +grammar is called <i>Antiquus Donatus</i>, i.e. the Old Donat, or the name of a +system of grammar at that time in vogue, and long before. The French have +a book entitled ‘Le Donnet, traitè de grammaire.... Among Rawlinson’s MSS. +at Oxford I have seen <i>Donatus opitimus noviter compilatus</i>, a manuscript +on vellum, given to Saint Albans by John Stoke, Abbot in 1450. In the +introduction, or <i>lytell Proheme</i>, to Dean Colet’s <i>Grammatices +Rudimenta</i>, we find mention made of ‘certayne introducyons into latyn +speche called Donates, &c. ... Cotgrave ... quotes an old French proverb: +‘Les diables<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> etoient encores a leur Donat’—The devils were but yet in +their grammar.”</p> + +<p>In common with Æsop, the <i>Dialogus Creaturarum</i>, and other peculiarly +popular works, Donatus lent his name to productions which really had no +connection with his own, and we find such titles as <i>Donatus Moralizatus</i>, +<i>Donatus Christianatus</i>, adopted by writers of a different class in order +to attract attention and gain acceptance.</p> + +<p>In England, however, the Works of Donatus do not appear to have obtained +the same broad footing which they probably did in Italy. The modern +edition by Lindemann, taken from a manuscript at Berlin, exhibits the +entire system divided into three sections or books. But all that we know +to have passed the press, at all events in this country, are two pieces +evidently prepared for petty schools—the <i>Donatus Minor</i> and the <i>Donatus +pro pueris</i>, both published at the end of the fifteenth or beginning of +the sixteenth century.</p> + +<p>The former has on the title-page a large woodcut, representing a +schoolmaster in a sort of thronal chair, with the instrument of +correction<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> in his hand, and three pupils kneeling in front of him. Both +the teacher and his scholars wear the long hair of the period and plain +close caps. It is curious that the pupils should not be uncovered, but the +engraving could not, perhaps, be altered.</p> + +<p>“The work begins with the title ‘De Nomine.’ Almost every page has a +distinct running title descriptive of the subject below treated of. +Herbert properly adds: ‘In this book the declension of some of the +pronouns is very remarkable, viz. N. Ego. G. mei vel mis. N. Tu. G. tui +vel tis. N. Quis vel qui, que vel qua, Quod vel quid. Pl. D. & Ab. quis +vel quibus. Also Nostras and Vestras are declined throughout without the +neuter gender.’”</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p> +<h2>IV.</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang">Rise of native teachers—Magdalen College School, Oxford—John +Annaquil, its first master, and his grammatical handbooks—The +<i>Compendium Grammatices</i> with the <i>Vulgaria</i> of Terence annexed—The +<i>Parvulorum Institutio</i>—Personal allusions in the examples +given—<span class="smcap">John Stanbridge</span>—Account of his works, with extracts of +interesting passages—<span class="smcap">Robert Whittinton</span>—His sectional series of Grammars.</p></div> + + +<p><br />I. The influence of Donatus was both widespread and of prolonged duration, +and we must regard the ancient capital of the civilised world as the focus +and cradle of all modern grammatical literature. Upon the great revival of +culture, many Englishmen repaired to Rome to undergo a formal training for +the scholastic profession under the masters who arose there, among whom +were Sulpicius, author, as we have seen, of several educational tracts, +which obtained considerable currency here, and Johannes Balbus, who +compiled the famous <i>Catholicon</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>The <span class="smcap">Lexicon</span> +and <span class="smcap">Dictionary</span> naturally followed the Primer; and our earliest +productions of this kind were formed out of the Vocabularies composed and +printed abroad—not in Italy, but in Germany, as a rule. But while in many +instances we are made acquainted with the writers or editors of the +smaller treatises, the names of those laborious men who undertook the +compilation of the first type of glossographical Manual are scarcely +known.</p> + +<p>But the time soon arrived when a native school of tuition was formed in +England, and its original seat seems to have been at the Free School +immediately adjacent to Magdalen College, Oxford.</p> + +<p>We find John Annaquil mentioned as the master of this seminary in the time +of Henry the Seventh, and it is the most ancient record of it that has +been apparently recovered. Annaquil, of whom our knowledge is extremely +scanty, wrote, for the use more immediately of his own pupils, <i>Compendium +Grammatices</i>, with an Anglo-Latin version of the <i>Vulgaria</i> of Terence +annexed. This volume was printed at Oxford by Theodore Rood about 1484; +and an edition of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> the work entitled <i>Parvulorum Institutio</i>, ascribed to +the same press, was doubtless prepared by Annaquil, or under his +direction, for the benefit of his school. Such fragments as have been +recovered of this book exhibit variations from the later copies, into +which subsequent editors purposely introduced improvements and +corrections. There are some familiar allusions here, such as, had they +been more numerous, might have rendered these ancient educational tracts +more attractive and precious even than they are. I mean such entries as, +“I go to Oxford: <i>Eo Oxonium</i> or <i>Ad Oxonium</i>.” “I shall go to London: +<i>Ibo Londinum</i>.”</p> + +<p>Knight explains these references in his Life of Dean Colet: “It may not be +amiss to remark that many of the examples in the Latin Grammar pointed to +the then juncture of public affairs; viz., the prosecution of Empson and +Dudley in the beginning of Henry VIII.’s reign: as <i>Regum est tueri leges: +Refert omnium animadverti in malos</i>. And this humour was the reason why, +in the following editions of the Syntax, there were examples accommodated +to the respective years of the impressions; as, <i>Audito regem<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> Doroberniam +proficisci</i>; <i>Imperator</i> [Maximilian] <i>meruit sub rege</i>, &c. There were +likewise in that edition of Erasmus several examples referring to Dean +Colet, as <i>Vixit Romæ</i>, <i>studuit Oxonii</i>, <i>natus est Londini</i>, <i>discessit +Londini</i>, &c.”</p> + +<p>Annaquil is supposed to have died about 1488, and was succeeded in his +work by John Stanbridge, who is much better known as a grammarian than his +predecessor. Stanbridge was a native of Northamptonshire, according to +Wood, and received his education at Winchester. In 1481 he was admitted to +New College, Oxford, after two years’ probation, and remained there five +years, at the end of which he was appointed first usher under Annaquil of +the Free School aforesaid, and after his principal’s death took his place. +The exact period of his death is not determined; but he probably lived +into the reign of Henry the Eighth.</p> + + +<p><br />II. The writings of Stanbridge are divisible into two sections—those +which he published in his own lifetime, and those which appeared after his +death in the form either of reimpressions or selections by his pupil +Whittinton and others. The former category embraces:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> 1. <span class="smcap">Accidence</span>; 2. +<span class="smcap">Vocabula</span>; 3. <span class="smcap">Vulgaria</span>. In the latter I include: 1. <span class="smcap">Accidentia ex +Stanbrigiana Editione recognita</span> limâ Roberti Whittintoni; 2. <span class="smcap">Parvulorum +Institutio ex Stanbrigiana Collectione</span>. The first of these productions, +not strictly to be regarded as proceeding from the pen of Stanbridge, +bears the name of Whittinton; the second I merely apprehend to have been +his. But the line of distinction between the publications of Stanbridge +himself and posthumous, or at any rate not personally superintended +reprints, is one which ought to be drawn.</p> + +<p>There is an edition of Stanbridge’s <i>Accidence</i>, printed at the end of the +sixteenth century by Caxton’s successor at Westminster. The variations +between it and the collections which were modelled upon it, probably by +John Holt, whom I shall again mention, are thus explained and stated by +the author of the <i>Typographical Antiquities</i>:—</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“This treats of the eight parts of reason; but they differ in several +respects as to the manner of treating of them; this treating largely of +the degrees of comparison, which the other (<i>Accidentia ex Stanbrigiana +Collectione</i>) does not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> so much as mention. That gives the moods and +tenses of the 4. conjugations at large, both active and passive, whereas +this gives only a few short rules to know them by. Again, this shews the +concords of grammar, which the other has not.”</p> + +<p>There are at least three issues of the <i>Accidence</i> from London presses, +and a fourth in an abridged shape from an Antwerp one, presumably for the +convenience of English residents in the Low Countries. The tide had by +this time begun to a certain extent to flow in an opposite direction, as +it were, and not only introductions to our own language were executed here +and reproduced abroad, but Latin authors were beginning to find competent +native interpreters, among whom John Annaquil was perhaps the foremost.</p> + +<p>Next to the <i>Accidence</i> of Stanbridge I shall consider briefly his +<i>Vocabula</i>, which was, on the whole, the most popular of his works, and +continued for the greatest length of time in vogue, as I record editions +of it as late as the period of the Civil War (1647). I have not, on the +other hand, met with any anterior to 1510. Annexed is a specimen:—</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><i>De naui et eius pertinentibus.</i></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td align="center">The formost parte<br />of the shyppe<br /><strong>Prora nauis</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td colspan="3" align="center">The hynder parte<br />of the shyppe<br /><strong>Puppis rostrum</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">The saylewarde<br /><strong>antenna</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">the bottom of the<br />shyppe<br /><strong>carina</strong></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">The takelynge<br /><strong>Armamenta</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">the mast<br /><strong>malus</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">The cable<br /><strong>rudens simul</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">an anker<br /><strong>anchora</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">the stern<br /><strong>clauus</strong></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">The hatches<br /><strong>foci</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">the pompe<br /><strong>sentina cum</strong></td> + <td colspan="3" align="center">the water pompe<br /><strong>nautea nausea</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">the hatches<br /><strong>transtra</strong></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">The sayle cloth<br /><strong>carbalus</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">idem<br /><strong>et belum</strong></td> + <td colspan="3" align="center">the maste of the shyppe<br /><strong>nauergus</strong></td> + <td align="center">to sayle<br /><strong>et nauigo</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">a shypman<br /><strong>nauta</strong></td></tr> +<tr><td colspan="3" align="center">Qui nauem regit<br /><strong>nauicularius</strong></td> + <td colspan="3" align="center">idem<br /><strong>et nauclerus</strong></td> + <td colspan="3" align="center">i. nauis<br /><strong>nauigiumq</strong>;</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">P̄tinēs ad nauē<br /><strong>naualis</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">to rowe<br /><strong>remigio</strong></td> + <td colspan="2" align="center">qui remigat<br /><strong>remus</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">the dockes<br /><strong>naualia</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">an ore<br /><strong>remex</strong></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">P̄tinens ad nauē<br /><strong>nauticus et</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td colspan="3" align="center">qui fregit nauem<br /><strong>naufragus naufragium</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">the see<br /><strong>ac mare</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">a wawe<br /><strong>fretū</strong></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">To carry ouer<br /><strong>Trajitio</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td colspan="3" align="center">to dryue<br /><strong>appello</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">to carry ouer<br /><strong>transporto</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">the toll, or the custome<br /><strong>portarjumq</strong>;</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">A fery man<br /><strong>Portitor</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">a fery barge<br /><strong>hyppago</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">idem<br /><strong>ponto</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">a cokbote<br /><strong>Iynter quoq</strong>;</td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">a bottom<br /><strong>cymba</strong></td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>This extract is highly edifying. In the concluding line <i>ponto</i>, a +ferry-barge, is the modern <i>punt</i>, and <i>lynter</i>, a cock-boat, is the early +Venetian <i>lintra</i>, to which I refer in <i>Venice before the Stones</i> as +antecedent to the gondola.</p> + + +<p><br />III. The remaining contribution of Stanbridge to this class of literature +is his <i>Vulgaria</i>, which I take to be the least known. Dibdin describes it +somewhat at large, and it may be worth while to transfer a specimen +hither:—</p> + +<p class="center">“<i>Sinciput, et vertex, caput, occiput, et coma, crinis.</i></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td><strong>hoc sinciput, is</strong>,</td><td>the fore parte of the heed</td></tr> +<tr><td><strong>hic vertex, cis</strong>,</td><td>for the crowne of the heed</td></tr> +<tr><td><strong>hoc caput, is</strong>,</td><td>for a heed</td></tr> +<tr><td><strong>hoc occiput, is</strong>,</td><td>the hynder parte of the heed</td></tr> +<tr><td><strong>hec coma, e</strong>,</td><td>for a brisshe</td></tr> +<tr><td><strong>hic crinis, nis</strong>,</td><td>for a heer</td></tr></table> + +<p class="center"><strong><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></strong></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td align="center">A garment<br /><strong>Hic indumentum</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">a clothe<br /><strong>vestis</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">idem<br /><strong>vestitus</strong></td> + <td><span class="spacer"> </span></td> + <td align="center">apparayle<br /><strong>amictus</strong></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">idem<br /><strong>Ornatus</strong></td> + <td colspan="3" align="center">idem<br /><strong>simul apparatus</strong></td> + <td colspan="3" align="center">idem<br /><strong>amiculus idem</strong></td></tr> +<tr><td colspan="3" align="center">a cappe<br /><strong>Ista caput gestat apex</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">agat: e<br /><strong>caliptra</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">idem<br /><strong>galerus</strong></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">a cappe<br /><strong>Biretum</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">idem<br /><strong>pilius</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">an hood<br /><strong>cuculus</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center">idem<br /><strong>capitiumq</strong>;</td></tr></table> + +<p class="center"><strong><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span><span class="spacer">·</span></strong></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p> +<p class="center"><i>Vulgaria quedā cū suis vernaculis compilata iuxta<br />consuetudinem ludi litterarij diui Pauli.</i></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>Good morowe. <strong>Bonū tibi huius diei sit primordiū.</strong><br /> +Good nyght. <strong>Bona nox, tranquilla nox, optata requies, &c.</strong><br /> +<br /> +Scolers must lyue hardly at Oxford,<br /> +<strong>Scolasticos Oxonii parce viuere oportet.</strong><br /> +<br /> +My fader hath had a greate losse on the see.<br /> +<strong>Pater meus magnā p naufragiū iacturā habuit.</strong><br /> +<br /> +Wysshers and wolders be small housholders.<br /> +<strong>Affectatibus diuitias modicā hospitalitatē obseruant.</strong>”</td></tr></table> + +<p>The abridgments of Stanbridge’s <i>Accidence</i> led, I presume, to the +distinction of the original text as the <i>Long Accidence</i>, although I have +not personally met with more than a single edition of the work under such +a title. Dibdin, however, has a story that John Bagford had heard of one +printed at Tavistock, for which the said John “would have stuck at no +price.”</p> + +<p>The chief of these adaptations of the <i>Accidence</i> is the <i>Parvulorum +Institutio</i>, which I have described as probably emanating, in the first +place, from the earliest press for the use of the earliest known school at +Oxford. But it was reprinted with alterations by Stanbridge, and perhaps +by John Holt. In Dibdin’s account of one of these recensions he +observes:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>“The work begins immediately on sign. A ij:-‘What is to be done whan an +englysshe is gyuen to be made in latyn? Fyrst the verbe must be loked out, +and yf there be moo verbes than one in a reason, I must loke out the +pryncypall verbe and aske this questyon who or what, and that word that +answereth to the questyon shall be the nomynatyve case to the verbe. +Except it be a verbe Impersonell the whiche wyll haue no nomynative case.’</p> + +<p>“On the last leaf but one we have as follows:—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td><strong><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Indignus dignus obscenus fedus<br />acerbus.</span></strong></td> + <td><span class="spacer"> </span></td> + <td>Cice. qq hecauditu<br />acerba sunt.</td></tr> +<tr><td><strong><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rarus iucundus absurdus turpe<br />saluber.</span></strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td>Terē. turpe<br />dictū.</td></tr> +<tr><td><strong><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mirandus mirus pulchrum sit<br />periculosus.</span></strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td>Qui. multa<br />dictu visuq; miranda.</td></tr> +<tr><td><strong><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whan there cometh a verbe<br />after sum es fui without a relatyve<br /> +or a coniunccyon yf it be of the<br />actyue sygnyfycacyon it shall be<br /> +put in a partycyple of the fyrst<br />sutertens yf he be of the passyue<br /> +synyfacoōn he shall be put in the<br />partycyple of the latter sutertens,<br /> +except exulo, vapulo, veneo, fio.</span></strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td>Terētius. quidnā<br />incepturus es.<br /><br /> +Tere. uxor tibi<br />ducenda est pāphyle<br />Te oro vt<br />nuptie que fuerant<br />future fiant.</td></tr></table> +</div> + +<p><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>IV. Robert Whittinton, whose name is probably more familiar to the +ordinary student than that of the man from whom he derived his knowledge +and tastes, was a native of Warwickshire, and was born at Lichfield about +1480—perhaps a little before. He received his education, as I have +stated, at the Free School at Oxford, and is supposed to have gained +admission to one of the colleges; but of this there is no certainty. He +subsequently acquired, however, the distinction of being decorated with +the laurel wreath by the University of Oxford for his proficiency in +grammar and rhetoric, with leave to read publicly any of the logical +writings of Aristotle; and he assumed the title of Protovates Angliæ, and +the credit of having been the first Englishman who was laureated.</p> + +<p>It is certain that Whittinton became a teacher like his master Stanbridge, +and among his scholars he counted William Lily, the eminent grammarian; +but where he so established himself is not so clear, nor do we know the +circumstances or date of his decease.</p> + +<p>I am going to do my best to lay before the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> reader of these pages a clear +bibliographical outline of Whittinton’s literary performances; and it +seems to amount to this, that he has left to us, apart from a few +miscellaneous effusions, eleven distinct treatises on the parts of +grammar, all doubtless more or less based on the researches and consonant +with the doctrines of his immediate master Anniquil and the foreign +professors of the same art, whose works had found their way into England, +and had even, as in the case of Sulpicius and Perottus, been adopted by +the English press.</p> + +<p>I will first give the titles of the several pieces succinctly, and then +proceed to furnish a slight description of each:—</p> + +<p class="blockquot"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">1. De Nominum Generibis.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: .5em;">2. Declinationes Nominum.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: .5em;">3. De Syllabarum Quantitate, &c.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: .5em;">4. Verborum Præterita et Supina.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: .5em;">6. De Octo Partibus Orationis.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: .5em;">7. De Heteroclitis Nominibus.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: .5em;">8. De Concinnitate Grammatices et Constructione.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: .5em;">9. Syntaxis. [A recension of No. 8.]</span><br /> +10. Vulgaria.<br /> +11. Lucubrationes.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>These eleven <i>fasciculi</i> actually form altogether one system, and some of +them have their order of succession in the author’s arrangement indicated; +as, for instance, the <i>Verborum Præterita et Supina</i>, which is called the +Fifth Book of the First Part; but others are deficient in this clue, so +that if one classes them, it must be in one’s own way.</p> + + +<p><br />V. The treatise on the <i>Kinds of Nouns</i>, in one of the numerous editions +of it at least, is designated <i>Primæ Partis Liber Primus</i>, which seems an +inducement to yield it the foremost place in the series. But it will be +presently observed that, although the collection in a complete state is +susceptible of a consecutive arrangement, the pieces composing it did not, +so far as we can tell, follow each other originally in strict order of +time.</p> + +<p>Of the tract on the <i>Declensions of Nouns</i>, which stands second in order, +Dibdin supplies us with a specimen:—</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p> +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>De ntō singu-<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">lari prime</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">declina-</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">tionis.</span></td> + <td><span class="spacer2"> </span></td> + <td><strong>Anchise et Ve-</strong><br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><strong>neris filius,</strong></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><strong>as, ut Aeneas</strong></span></td> + <td> </td> + <td colspan="2"><strong>Capis filius</strong><br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><strong>es, ut An-</strong></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><strong>chises.</strong></span></td> + <td><strong>Qui fingit elegan-</strong><br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><strong>tia carmina, a,</strong></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><strong>ut poeta.</strong></span></td></tr> +<tr><td colspan="2"> </td> + <td colspan="6">Rectus as, es, a; simul am dat flexio prima.</td></tr> +<tr><td colspan="3"> </td> + <td align="center"><strong>Aeneæ</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center"><strong>Aeneæ</strong></td></tr> +<tr><td colspan="2"> </td> + <td align="center"><strong>ut huius</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center"><strong>huic</strong></td></tr> +<tr><td colspan="3"> </td> + <td align="center"><strong>musæ</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center"><strong>musæ</strong></td></tr> +<tr><td rowspan="4">De gtō et dtō<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">singularibus</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">et ntō et vetō</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">pluralibū.</span></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td> + <td colspan="6">Ac dat dipthongum genitiuus sic que datiuus</td></tr> +<tr><td colspan="3"> </td> + <td align="center"><strong>hi poete</strong></td> + <td align="center"><strong>o poete</strong></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td> + <td colspan="6">Singularis, sic pluralis primus quoque quintus</td></tr> +<tr><td colspan="3"> </td> + <td align="center"><strong>familie et</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center"><strong>aulai pro aulae</strong></td></tr> + <tr><td colspan="2"> </td> + <td align="center"><strong>vt huius</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center"><strong>huic</strong></td></tr> +<tr><td colspan="3"> </td> + <td align="center"><strong>familias</strong></td> + <td> </td> + <td align="center"><strong>pictai pro pictæ.</strong></td></tr> +<tr><td colspan="2"> </td> + <td colspan="6">Olim rectus in a, genito dedit as simul ai.<br /> +<strong>vt hic Judas, huius Jude, vel Juda</strong><br /> +Ex Judas Juda aut Judæ dat pagina sacra<br /> +<strong>vt hic Adam. huius Adam. huic Adam, &c.</strong><br /> +Barbara in am propria aut a recto non variantur.</td></tr></table> + +<p>We must now pass to the treatise <i>De Syllabarum Quantitate</i>, which, in a +chronological respect, ranks first among Whittinton’s works, as there was +an edition of it as early as 1513.</p> + +<p>This tripartite volume, 1. <i>On the Quantity of Syllables</i>; 2. <i>On Accent</i>; +and 3. <i>On the Roman Magistrates</i>, is noteworthy on two accounts. The +second portion embraces the earliest specimen in any English book of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> +poems of Horace, and the concluding section is a kind of rudimentary +Lemprière. Subjoined is a sample of the lines upon accents, from Dibdin:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“<strong>Accentus tonus est per quē fit syllaba quevis<br /> +Cognita: quādo acui debet, vel qū gravari<br /> +Accentus triplex; fit acutus vel gravis, inde<br /> +Est circūflexus: qui nunc fit rarus in vsu.<br /> +Syllaba cum tendit sursum est accentus acutus<br /> +Est gravis accentus sed syllaba pressa deorsum<br /> +Fit circūflexus gravis in prima: sed in altum<br /> +Attollit mediam, postrema gravis reciditque.</strong>”</p> + +<p>This metrical exposition, which will not be mistaken for the language of +Horace, is followed by a commentary in prose.</p> + +<p>The next three divisions do not call for any particular criticism. They +treat of the <i>Eight Parts of Speech</i>, the <i>Irregular Nouns</i>, and the <i>Laws +of Grammatical Construction</i>, of which the last is the first cast of the +<i>Syntax</i>.</p> + +<p>There remain the <i>Vulgaria</i> and the <i>Lucubrations</i>, which are far more +important and interesting, and of which there were numerous editions. The +subjoined samples will shew the principle on which the <i>Vulgaria</i> was +compiled:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>“Befe and motton is so dere, that a peny worth of meet wyll scant suffyse +a boy at a meale.</p> + +<p>“Whan I was a scholler of Oxforthe I lyued competently with vii. pens +commens wekely.</p> + +<p>“Be of good chere man for I sawe ryght nowe a rodde made of wythye for +the, garnysshed with knottes, it wolde do a boy good to loke vpon it.</p> + +<p>“A busshell of whete was holde at xii. pens.</p> + +<p>“A gallon of swete wyne is at viii. pens in London.</p> + +<p>“A gallon of ale is at a peny and ferdynge.</p> + +<p>“I warne the fro hens forthe medle not with my bokes. Thou blurrest and +blottest them, as thou were a bletchy sowter.”</p></div> + +<p>Such bits as these were decidedly worth extracting, yet Dibdin, with the +very copy of the book from which they are derived before him, let them +pass. In this volume Whittinton takes occasion to speak in eulogistic +terms of Sir Thomas More.</p> + +<p>Of the <i>Lucubrations</i> the most interesting portion to an English reader +will be the Synonyms:—</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table"> +<tr><td>“<i>To arraye or</i></td><td><span class="spacer"> </span></td> + <td><i>To backbyte.</i></td><td><span class="spacer"> </span></td> + <td>The goute.</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center"><i>to dyght.</i></td><td> </td> + <td>Detraho</td><td> </td> + <td>Arthesis</td></tr> +<tr><td>Orno</td><td> </td> + <td>Detracto</td><td> </td> + <td>Arthtica passio</td></tr> +<tr><td>Vestio</td><td> </td> + <td>Obtrecto</td><td> </td> + <td>Morbus articularis</td></tr> +<tr><td>Amicio</td><td> </td> + <td>Maledico</td><td> </td> + <td>Chiragra</td></tr> +<tr><td>Induo</td><td> </td> + <td>Carpo</td><td> </td> + <td>Podagra</td></tr> +<tr><td>Como</td><td> </td> + <td>&c. &c. &c.</td></tr> +<tr><td>Colo</td></tr> + +<tr><td> </td></tr> + +<tr><td><i>An alyen or</i></td><td> </td> + <td><i>To playe the</i></td><td> </td> + <td><i>To be wode.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td><i>outlandysshe.</i></td><td> </td> + <td align="center"><i>brothell.</i></td><td> </td> + <td>Seuio</td></tr> +<tr><td>Alienagena</td><td> </td> + <td>Scortari</td><td> </td> + <td>Furio</td></tr> +<tr><td>Peregrinus</td><td> </td> + <td>Prostitui</td><td> </td> + <td>Insanio</td></tr> +<tr><td>Aduena</td><td> </td> + <td>Fornicari</td><td> </td> + <td>Excandeseor</td></tr> +<tr><td>Alienus</td><td> </td> + <td>Merere</td><td> </td> + <td>Bacchor</td></tr> +<tr><td>Exterus</td><td> </td> + <td>Struprari</td><td> </td> + <td><span style="margin-left: .5em;"><i>Wodnesse or</i></span></td></tr> +<tr><td>Externus</td><td> </td> + <td>Adulterari</td><td> </td> + <td><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>madnesse.</i></span></td></tr> +<tr><td>Barbarus</td><td> </td> + <td>Cohire</td><td> </td> + <td>Insania</td></tr> +<tr><td>Extraneus</td><td> </td> + <td>Concumbere</td><td> </td> + <td>Seviciæ</td></tr> +<tr><td> </td><td> </td> + <td>&c. &c.</td><td> </td> + <td>Furor.”</td></tr></table> + +<p>The copious storehouse of equivalent phrases in Latin composition shews us +in what wide vogue that language was in England at this period, as there +is no corresponding facility offered for persons desirous of enlarging +their English vocabulary. The influence of the scholars of France, Italy, +Holland, and Germany long kept our vernacular in the background, and +retarded the study of English by Englishmen; but the uprise of a taste for +the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> French and Italian probably gave the first serious blow to the +supremacy of the dead tongues, as they are called, and it became by +degrees as fashionable for gentlemen and ladies to read and speak the +languages in which Molière and Tasso wrote as the hybrid dialect in which +erudite foreigners had been used to correspond and compose.</p> + +<p>Whittinton styles himself on the title-pages of several of his pieces +<i>laureatus</i> and <i>protovates Angliæ</i>. In one place he speaks of being +“primus in Angliâ lauri coronam gestans,” and elsewhere he professes to be +<i>magister grammatices</i>. As Warton and others have speculated a good deal +on the real nature and import of the dignity which this early scholar +claimed in regard to the laurel crown or wreath, it may be worth noting +that Wood furnishes the annexed explanation of the point:—</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“In the beginning of the year 1513, he supplicated the venerable +congregation of regents under the name and title of Robert Whittington, a +secular chaplain and a scholar of the art of rhetoric: that, whereas he +had spent fourteen years in the study of the said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> art, and twelve years +in the informing of boys, it might be sufficient for him that he might be +laureated. This supplication being granted, he was, after he had composed +an hundred verses, which were stuck up in public places, especially on the +door or doors of St. Mary’s Church [Oxford], very solemnly crowned, or his +temples adorned with a wreath of laurel, that is, decorated in the arts of +grammar and rhetoric, 4 July the same year.”</p> + +<p>The biographer of Colet is undoubtedly correct in supposing that the +ancient poet-laureatship was nothing more than an academical degree, and +that in this sense, and in no other, Skelton bore that designation, as +well as Bernardus Andreas, who was tutor to Prince Arthur, elder brother +of Henry VIII.</p> + +<p>It also appears from the account of the decoration of Whittinton that he +had commenced his qualification for a schoolmaster as far back as 1499, +which is reconcilable with the date assigned to his birth (1480).</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p> +<h2>V.</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang">Educational tracts produced by other writers—<i>Parvula</i>—Holt’s <i>Milk +for Children</i>—Horman’s <i>Vulgaria</i> and its singular curiosity and +value—The author’s literary quarrel with Whittinton—The contemporary +foreign teachers—Specimen of the Grammar of Guarini of Verona +(1470)—Vestiges of the literature current at Oxford in the beginning +of the sixteenth century—The printed works of Johannes de Garlandia.</p></div> + + +<p><br />I. Of independent tracts intended for the use of our early schools, there +were several either anonymous or written by persons whom we do not +recognise as writers of more than a single production.</p> + +<p>In the former category is placeable the small piece published three or +four times by Wynkyn de Worde about 1509, under the title of <i>Parvula</i> or +<i>Longe Parvula</i>. It is a series of rules for translation and other +exercises in the form of question and answer, thus:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>“Q. What shall thou do whan thou hast an englysshe to make in latyn?</p> + +<p>“A. I shal reherse myne englysshe ones, twyes, or thryes, and loke out my +pryncypal, & aske ȳ questyon, who or what.”</p></div> + +<p>A second publication is the <i>Milk for Children</i> of John Holt, of Magdalen +College, Oxford, who had the honour of numbering among his pupils Sir +Thomas More. One of the most interesting points about the little book to +us nowadays is that it is accompanied by some Latin hexameters and +pentameters and an epigram in the same language by More. The latter has +the air of having been sent to Holt, and inserted by him with the heading +which occurs before it, where the future Chancellor is termed “disertus +adolescentulus.”</p> + +<p>A decided singularity of this volume is the quaint device of the author +for impressing his precepts on those who read his pages or attended his +academy by arranging the cases and declensions on woodcuts in the shape of +outstretched hands.</p> + +<p>Besides his <i>Milk for Children</i> and the <i>Parvulorum Institutio</i>, to the +latter of which I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> already referred, Holt appears to me the most +likely person to have compiled the tract called <i>Accidentia ex +Stanbrigiana Collectione</i>, a small grammatical manual based on that of his +predecessor or even colleague at Magdalen School; and this may be the work +to which Knight points where he says that Holt put forth an Accidence and +Grammar concurrently with his other tract, though the biographer of Dean +Colet errs in placing Stanbridge after Holt in chronological sequence.</p> + +<p>Another of the miscellaneous unofficial pieces, answering very nearly to +the mediæval <i>Nominale</i>, has no other title than <i>Os, Facies, mentum</i>, and +is a Latin poem descriptive of the human form, first printed in 1508, with +an interlinear English gloss. It begins thus:—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td align="center">a mouthe</td><td><span class="spacer2"> </span></td> + <td align="center">a face</td><td><span class="spacer2"> </span></td> + <td align="center">a chyne</td><td><span class="spacer2"> </span></td> + <td align="center">a toth</td><td><span class="spacer2"> </span></td> + <td align="center">a throot</td><td><span class="spacer2"> </span></td> + <td align="center">a tonge</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">Os</td><td> </td> + <td align="center">facies</td><td> </td> + <td align="center">mentū</td><td> </td> + <td align="center">dens</td><td> </td> + <td align="center">guttur</td><td> </td> + <td align="center">lingua</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">a berde</td><td> </td> + <td align="center">a browe</td><td> </td> + <td align="center">abrye</td><td> </td> + <td align="center">a forhede</td><td> </td> + <td align="center">tēples</td><td> </td> + <td align="center">a lype</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">Barba</td><td> </td> + <td align="center">supercilium</td><td> </td> + <td align="center">ciliū</td><td> </td> + <td align="center">frons</td><td> </td> + <td align="center">tēpora</td><td> </td> + <td align="center">labrū</td></tr> +<tr><td colspan="4"> </td><td colspan="3" align="center">roffe of the mouth</td></tr> +<tr><td colspan="4"> </td><td colspan="3" align="center">palatum</td></tr></table> + +<p>There is nothing, of course, on the one hand, recondite, or, on the other, +very edifying in this; but it is a sample of the method pursued in these +little ephemerides nearly four centuries ago.</p> + + +<p><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>II. The comparative study of Latin and English acquired increased +prominence under the Tudors; and in addition to the regular text-books +compiled by such men as Stanbridge and Whittinton, there is quite a small +library of pieces designed for educational purposes, and framed on a +similar model. Doubtless these were in many cases accepted in the schools +on an equal footing with the productions of the masters themselves, or the +latter may have had a hand, very possibly, in those which we have to treat +as anonymous.</p> + +<p>Between the commencement and middle of the sixteenth century, during the +reigns of the first and second Tudors, there were several of these +unclaimed and unidentified compilations, such as the <i>Grammatica +Latino-Anglica, Tractatus de octo orationis partibus</i>, and <i>Brief Rules of +the Regiment or construction of the Eight Parts of Speech, in English and +Latin</i>, 1537.</p> + +<p>The <i>Introductorium linguæ Latinæ</i> by W. H. may perhaps be ascribed to +William Horman, of whom we shall have more to say; and there are also in +the category of works which had no particular width or duration of +currency the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> <i>Gradus Comparationum</i> of Johannes Bellomayus, and the +<i>Regulæ Informationis</i> of John Barchby.</p> + +<p>These, and others, again, of which all trace has at present disappeared, +were employed in common with the regular series, constantly kept in print, +of Whittinton and Stanbridge, prior to the rise of the great public +seminaries, many of which, as it will be my business to shew, took into +use certain compilations supposed to be specially adapted to their +requirements.</p> + +<p>William Horman, who is presumed to have been the author of the +<i>Introductorium</i> above mentioned, was schoolmaster and Fellow of Eton +College; in 1477 he became a perpetual Fellow of New College, Oxford, and +he was eventually chosen Vice-Provost of Eton. He survived till 1535. From +an epigram appended to the volume it is to be gleaned that Horman was a +pupil of Dr. Caius, poet-laureate to Edward the Fourth.</p> + +<p>Of the <i>Gradus Comparationum</i> the subjoined may be received as a +specimen:—</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“What nownes make comparyson? All <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>adiectyues welnere ȳ betoken a +thynge that maye be made more or lesse: as fayre: fayrer: fayrest: black, +blacker, blackest. How many degrees of comparacyon ben there? iij. the +positiue ȳ comparatiue & the superlatyue. How knowe ye the posityue +gēdre? For he is the groūde and the begynner of all other degrees of +cōparyson. How knowe ye the comparatyue degre? for he passeth his +posityue with this englysshe more, or his englysshe endeth in r, as more +wyse or wyser. How knowe ye the superlatyue degre? for he passeth his +posityue with engysshe moost: or his englisshe endeth in est: as moost +fayre or fayrest, moost whyte or whytest.”</p> + + +<p><br />III. The <i>Vulgaria</i> of William Horman, 1519, is perhaps one of the most +intrinsically curious and valuable publications in the entire range of our +early philological literature. It would be easy to fill such a slender +volume as that in the hands of the reader with samples of the contents +without exhausting the store, but I must content myself with such extracts +as seem most entertaining and instructive:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>“Physicians, that be all sette to wynne money, bye and sylle our lyues: +and so oftē tymes we bye deth with a great and a sore pryce. <i>Animas +nostras æruscatores medici negociantur, &c.</i></p> + +<p>“Papyre fyrste was made of a certeyne stuffe like the pythe of a bulrushe +in Ægypt: and syth it is made of lynnen clothe soked in water, stāpte +or grūde pressed and smothed. <i>Chartæ seu papyri, &c.</i></p> + +<p>“The greattest and hyest of pryce: is papyre imperyall. <i>Augustissimum +papyrum, &c.</i></p> + +<p>“The prynters haue founde a crafte to make bokis by brasen letters sette +in ordre by a frame. <i>Calcographi artē, &c.</i></p> + +<p>“Pryntynge hathe almooste vndone scryueners crafte. <i>Chalcographia +librariorū q̄stū pene exhavsit.</i></p> + +<p>“Yf the prynters take more hede to the hastynge: than to the true settynge +of theyr moldis: the warke is vtterly marred. <i>Si qui libros, &c.</i>”</p></div> + +<p>The rest are given without the Latin equivalents, which have no particular +interest.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>“Scryueners write with blacke, redde, purple, gren, blewe, or byce: and +suche other.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>Parchement leues be wonte to be ruled: that there may be a comly +margēt: also streyte lynes of equal distaunce be drawe withyn: that the +wryttyng may shewe fayre.</p> + +<p>Olde or doting chourles can not suffre yōge children to be mery.</p> + +<p>I haue lefte my boke in the tennys playe.</p> + +<p>This ynke is no better than blatche.</p> + +<p>Frobeynes prynt is called better than Aldus: but yet Aldus is neuer the +lesse thanke worthy: for he began the fynest waye: and left saūple by +the whiche other were lyghtly provoked and taughte to deuyse better.</p> + +<p>There is come a scoolle of fysshe.</p> + +<p>The tems is frosne ouer with yse.</p> + +<p>The trompettours blowe a fytte or a motte.</p> + +<p>Vitelars thryue: by getherynge of good felowes that haue swete mouthes.</p> + +<p>The mōkis of charter-house: neuer ete fleshe mete.</p> + +<p>We shall drynke methe or metheglen.</p> + +<p>We shall haue a iuncket after dyner.</p> + +<p>Serue me with pochyd eggis.</p> + +<p>He kepeth rere suppers tyll mydnyght.</p> + +<p>Se that I lacke nat by my beddes syde a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> chayer of easement: with a vessel +vnder: and an vrinall bye.</p> + +<p>Women couette to sytte on lowe or pote stolys: men upon twyse so hye.</p> + +<p>It is cōuenyent that a man haue one seueral place in his house to +hymselfe fro cōbrance of womē.</p> + +<p>Women muste haue one place to themselfe to tyffil themselfe and kepe theyr +apparell.</p> + +<p>They whyte theyr face, necke and pappis with cerusse: and theyr lyppis and +ruddis with purpurisse.</p> + +<p>Tumblers, houndes, that can goo on huntynge by them selfe: brynge home +theyr praye.</p> + +<p>Lytel popies, that serueth for ladies, were sūtyme bellis: sūtyme +colers ful of prickkis for theyr defēce.</p> + +<p>I haue layde many gynnys, pottis, and other: for to take fisshe.</p> + +<p>Some fisshe scatre at the nette.</p> + +<p>Poules steple is a mighty great thyng / and so hye that vneth a man may +discerne the wether cocke.</p> + +<p>It is an olde duty / and an auncyent custume / that the Mayre of London +with his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> bretherne shall offer at Poules certayne dayes in the yere.</p> + +<p>In London be. lij. parysshe chyrches.</p> + +<p>Two or. iij. neses be holsome: one is a shrowed tokē.”</p></div> + +<p>These selected extracts will convey some notion of the unusual curiosity +of the <i>Vulgaria</i> of Horman, of which a second edition came out in 1530; +it is so far rather surprising that it did not prove more popular. But it +had to enter into competition with books of a similar title and cast by +Stanbridge and Whittinton, who had their established connection to assist +the sale of their publications.</p> + +<p>The concluding item in this list of educational performances is also a +curious philological relic, and a factor in the illustration of the +imperfect mastery of English by foreigners of all periods and almost all +countries. I allude to an edition of the <i>Declensions</i> of the learned +Parisian printer Ascensius with an English gloss. The tract was evidently +printed abroad; and I am tempted to transcribe the paragraph on +Punctuation, as it may afford an idea of the nature of the publication and +of the English of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> that day as written by a foreigner. It will be observed +that the author seems to confound the comma and the colon:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="center">“<i>Of the craft of poynting.</i></p> + +<p>“Therbe fiue maner poyntys / and diuisiōs most vside with cunnyng men: +the whiche if they be wel vsid: make the sentens very light / and esy to +vnderstōd both to the reder & the herer. & they be these: virgil / come +/ parēthesis / playne poynt / and interrogatif. A virgil is a +sclēder stryke: lenynge forwarde thiswyse / be tokynynge a lytyl / +short rest without any perfetnes yet of sentens: as betwene the fiue +poyntis a fore rehersid. A come is with tway titils thiswyse: betokynyng a +lenger rest: and the sētens yet ether is vnperfet: or els if it be +perfet: ther cūmith more after / lōgyng to it: the which more +comynly can not be perfect by itself without at the lest sūmat of it: +that gothe a fore. A parenthesis is with tway crokyd virgils: as an olde +mone / & a neu bely to bely: the whiche be set theron afore the begynyng / +and thetother after the latyr ende of a clause: comyng within<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> an other +clause: that may be perfet: thof the clause / so cōmyng betwene: wer +awey and therfore it is sowndyde comynly a note lower: than the vtter +clause. yf the sētens cannot be perfet without the ynner clause: then +stede of the first crokyde virgil a streght virgil wol do very wel: and +stede of the latyr must nedis be a come. A playne point is with won tittil +thiswyse. & it cūmith after the ende of al the whole sētens +betokinyng a lōge rest. An īterrogatif is with tway titils: the +vppir rysyng this wyse? & it cūmith after the ende of a whole reason: +wheryn ther is sum question axside. the whiche ende of the reson / tariyng +as it were for an answare: risyth vpwarde. we haue made these rulis in +englisshe: by cause they be as profitable / and necessary to be kepte in +euery moder tuge / as ī latin. ¶ Sethyn we (as we wolde to god: euery +precher [? techer] wolde do) haue kepte owre rulis bothe in owre englisshe +/ and latyn: what nede we / sethyn owre own be sufficient ynogh: to put +any other exemplis.”</p></div> + + +<p><br />VI. It is perhaps fruitless to offer any vague conjecture as to the +authorship of the <i>Ascensian<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> Declensions</i>. Many Englishmen resident in +Paris, Antwerp, and Germany might have edited such a book. The orthography +and punctuation are alike peculiar, and suspiciously redolent, it may be +considered, of a foreign parentage; but one of our countrymen who had long +resided abroad, or who had even been educated out of England, might very +well have been guilty of such slips as we find here. A Thomas Robertson of +York, of whom I shall have more presently to say, was a few years later in +communication with the printers and publishers of Switzerland, and became +the editor of a text of Lily the grammarian. Robertson, as a Northern man, +was apt, in writing English, to introduce certain provincialisms; and I +put it, though merely as a guess, that he might have executed this +commission, as he did the other, for Bebelius of Basle.</p> + +<p>Two years subsequently to the appearance of his <i>Vulgaria</i>, Horman +involved himself in a literary controversy with Whittinton in consequence +of an attack which he had made on the laureate’s grammatical productions +in a printed Epistle to Lily; it was the beginning of a movement<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> for +reforming or remodelling the current educational literature, and Horman +himself was a man of superior character and literary training, as we are +able to judge from the way in which he acquitted himself of his own +contribution to this class of work.</p> + +<p>A curious and very interesting account of the dispute between Lily and +Horman, in which Robert Whittinton and a fourth grammarian named Aldrich +became involved, is given by Maitland in his Notices of the Lambeth Palace +Library. I elsewhere refer to the warm altercation between Sir John Cheke +and Bishop Gardiner on the pronunciation of Greek. Both these matters have +to be added to a new edition of Disraeli’s <i>Quarrels of Authors</i>.</p> + +<p>The Salernitan gentleman (Andrea Guarna) who set the Noun and the Verb +together by the ears in his <i>Grammar War</i>, acted, no doubt, more +discreetly, since he reserved to himself the power to terminate the fray +which he had commenced.</p> + + +<p><br />VII. Generally speaking, it is the case that the men who compiled the +curious and highly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> valuable Manuals of Instruction during the Middle Ages +were superseded and effaced by others following in their track and +profiting by their experience. The bulk of these more ancient treatises, +such as I have described, still remained in MS. till of recent years, like +the college text-books, which are yet sometimes left unprinted from +choice; and after the introduction of typography the teaching and learning +public accorded a preference to those scholars who constructed their +system on more modern lines, and whose method was at once more +intelligible and more efficient.</p> + +<p>Of all the names with which we have become familiar, the only one which +seems to have survived is Johannes de Garlandia; and it is remarkable, +again, that the two works from his pen which passed the London press, the +<i>Verborum Explicatio</i> and the <i>Synonyma</i>, are by no means comparable in +merit or in interest to the Dictionary already noticed. Subsequently to +the rise of the English Grammatical School the reputation and popularity +of Garlandia evidently suffered a permanent decline, and we hear <i>and +feel</i> no more of him.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>A new generation, trained in foreign schools or under foreign tutors, set +themselves the task of forming educational centres, and of introducing the +people of England to a conversance with the foundations of learning and +culture by more expeditious and effectual methods; and as from Scrooby in +Lincolnshire a small knot of resolute men went forth in the <i>May Flower</i> +to lay the first stone of that immense constitutional edifice, the United +States of America, so from an humble school at Oxford sprang the pioneers +of all English grammatical lore—Anniquil; his usher, Stanbridge; +Stanbridge’s pupil, Whittinton; and Whittinton’s pupil, Lily.</p> + +<p>It is not too much to say that during three hundred years all our great +men, all our nobility, all our princes, owed to this hereditary dynasty, +as it were, the elementary portion of their scholastic and academical +breeding, and that no section of our literature can boast of so long a +celebrity and utility as the Grammatical Summary which is best known as +Lily’s <i>Short Introduction</i>, and which in most of its essentials +corresponds with the system employed by those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> who preceded him and those +who followed him almost within the recollection of our grandfathers. It +was reserved for scholars of a very different temper and type to overthrow +his ancient empire, and establish one of their own; and this is a +revolution which dates from yesterday.</p> + +<p>At the period when the school at Magdalen was established by Bishop +Waynflete, the teachers in our own country and on the Continent were +working on nearly parallel lines, just as the religious service-books +printed at Paris and Rouen were made, by a few subsidiary alterations, to +answer the English use; and indeed in the case of the grammatical system +of Sulpicius an impression was executed at Paris in 1511 for Wynkyn de +Worde, and imported hither for sale, without any differences or variations +from the text employed in the Parisian gymnasium and elsewhere through the +French dominions. It was not till the English element in these books +gained the ascendancy, having been introduced by furtive degrees and by +way of occasional or incidental illustration, that a marked native +character was stamped on our school-books.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> Ultimately, as we know, the +Latin proportion sensibly diminished, and even a preponderant share of +space was accorded to the vernacular.</p> + +<p>I have spoken of Ælius Donatus as an author whose Grammar enjoyed a long +celebrity and an enormously wide acceptance, down from his own age to the +date of the revival of learning. It was used throughout the Continent, in +England, and in Scotland.</p> + +<p>But prior to our earliest race of native grammarians and philologists, +there were several labourers in this great and fruitful field, who began, +towards the latter end of the fifteenth century, to cast off the trammels +of the Roman professor, and to set up little systems of their own, of +course more or less built upon Donatus.</p> + +<p>Such an one was Guarini of Verona, whose <i>Regulæ Grammaticales</i> were +originally published at Venice in 1470, and are regarded as one of the +earliest specimens of her prolific press. These rules were frequently +reissued, and I have before me an edition of 1494.</p> + +<p>The book, which consists only of twenty-two leaves or forty-four pages, +begins with describing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> the parts of speech, then takes the various sorts +of verbs, and follows with the adverbs, participles, and so forth. There +is a set of verses on the irregular nouns, and a second headed <i>Versus +differentiales</i> or synonyms; and some of the illustrations are given in +Italian. The section on diphthongs forms an Appendix.</p> + +<p>I merely adduce a cursory notice of Guarini to keep the student in mind of +the collateral progress of this class of learning abroad, while our own +men were developing it among us with the occasional assistance of +foreigners. Perhaps I may just copy out the following small specimen, +where the glosses are in the writer’s vernacular:—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>“Largior</td><td><span class="spacer2"> </span></td> + <td>ris</td><td><span class="spacer2"> </span></td> + <td>per donare e p̱ essere donato</td></tr> +<tr><td>Experior</td><td> </td> + <td>ris</td><td> </td> + <td>per p̱uare e per essere p̱uato</td></tr> +<tr><td>Ueneror</td><td> </td> + <td>ris</td><td> </td> + <td>per honorare e p̱ essere honorato</td></tr> +<tr><td>Moror</td><td> </td> + <td>ris</td><td> </td> + <td>per aspectare e p̱ eēre aspectato</td></tr> +<tr><td>Osculor</td><td> </td> + <td>ris</td><td> </td> + <td>per basare e p̱ essere basiato.”</td></tr></table> + +<p>In connection with Magdalen School, we see in the account-book of John +Dorne, Oxford bookseller, for 1520, the class and range of literature +which a dealer in those days found saleable. Among the strictly +grammatical books<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> occur the <i>A. B. C.</i> and the <i>Boys’ Primer</i>; the +productions, with which we are already familiar, of Whittinton, +Stanbridge, Erasmus, Cicero, Terence, and Lucian, interspersed with some +of the Fathers, service-books of the Church, classical authors of a less +popular type, such as Lucan, Cornelius Nepos, and Pomponius Mela; and more +or less abstruse treatises on logic, rhetoric, and theology. On the other +hand, we have prognostications in English, almanacs, <i>Robin Hood</i>, the +<i>Nutbrown Maid</i>, the <i>Squire of Low Degree</i>, <i>Sir Isumbras</i>, <i>Robert the +Devil</i>, and ballads. There are, besides, the <i>Sermon of the Boy-Bishop</i>, +the <i>Book of Cookery</i>, the <i>Book of Carving</i>, and an Anglo-French +vocabulary.</p> + +<p>But I do not enter into these details. It was merely my intention to peep +in at the shop, and see what a bookseller at one of the Universities +nearly four centuries ago had in the way of school-literature. Perhaps +next to the <i>A. B. C.</i> and the primers, the educational works of Erasmus +were in greatest demand.</p> + +<p>This old ledger has a sort of living value, inasmuch as it carries us back +with it to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> very Oxford of the first race of teachers and grammarians, +about whom I write. All of them, except perchance Anniquil, must have +known Dorne and had transactions with him; and here is his ledger, upon +which the eyes of some of them may have rested, still preserved, with its +record of stock in hand—new copies damp from the printer, or remainders +of former purchases, now scarcely extant, or, if so, shorn of their coeval +glory by the schoolboy’s thumb or the binder’s knife.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p> +<h2>VI.</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang">Auxiliary books—<i>Vulgaria</i> of Terence—His Comedies printed in +1497—Some of them popular in schools—<span class="smcap">Horace</span>—<span class="smcap">Cicero</span>—His <i>Offices</i> +and <i>Old Age</i> translated by Whittinton—<span class="smcap">Virgil</span>—<span class="smcap">Ovid</span>—Specimens of +Whittinton’s Cicero—The school Cato—Notices of other works designed or employed for educational purposes.</p></div> + + +<p><br />I. There is a class of books which, while they were not strictly intended +for use in the preparation of the ordinary course of lessons, were most +undoubtedly brought into constant requisition, at least by the higher +forms or divisions, as aids to a familiarity with the dead languages, and +eventually those of the Continent.</p> + +<p>The earliest and one of the most influential of these was the <i>Vulgaria</i> +of Terence. As far back as the reign of Edward IV., I find it annexed to +the <i>Compendium Grammaticæ</i> of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> Johannes Anniquil, printed at Oxford about +1483; and at least three other editions of it exist. It is on the +interlinear plan, as the following extract will serve to indicate:—</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“Here must I abyde allone this ij dayes<br /> +<strong>Biduus hic manendū; est mihi soli.</strong><br /> +<br /> +Though I may not touch it yet I may see<br /> +<strong>Si non tangendi copia ē videndi tā; erit.</strong><br /> +<br /> +The dede selfe scheweth or telleth<br /> +<strong>Res ipsa indicat.</strong><br /> +<br /> +If I had tarayed a lytill while I hadd not found hym at home<br /> +<strong>Paululū si cessassē eū domi nō offendissē.</strong>”</p> + +<p>No one will be astonished or displeased to hear that Terence soon acquired +great popularity among school-boys and a permanent rank as a text-book. In +1497 Pynson printed all the Comedies, and a few years later selections +were given with marginal glosses. In 1533 the celebrated Nicholas Udall, +many years before he gave to the world the admirable comedy of <i>Ralph +Roister Doister</i>, edited portions of the Latin poet with an English +translation, doubtless for the benefit of the scholars<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> at Eton; it was a +volume which long continued a favourite, and passed through several +impressions, both during the author’s life and after his death.</p> + +<p>In 1598, a century subsequent to the appearance of the first, came a +second complete version of the Comedies, from the pen of Richard Bernard +of Axholme in Lincolnshire, and being more contemporary in its language +and treatment, drove out of fashion the old Pynson. Bernard’s remained in +demand till the middle of the next century, and concurrently with it +renderings of separate plays occasionally presented themselves.</p> + +<p>In 1588 the <i>Andria</i> was brought out by Maurice Kyffin with marginal +notes, his professed object being twofold, namely, to further the +attainment of Latin by novices and the recovery of it by such as had +forgotten the language. In 1627, Thomas Newman, apparently one of the +masters of St. Paul’s, prepared for the special behoof of students +generally the <i>Eunuch</i> and the <i>Andria</i>, dedicating his performance to the +scholars of Paul’s, to whom he wished increase in grace and learning. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> +treatment of these two favourite dramas was influenced, as we are +expressly informed, by the idea and ambition of adapting them for +theatrical exhibition at a school.</p> + +<p>But they were, at the same time, considered by our forefathers +particularly well suited as vehicles for instruction, as well perhaps as +for amusement. In the early days of Charles I., Dr. Webbe brought out an +edition of them, both on a novel, principle of his own, which he had taken +the precaution to patent. The safeguard proved superfluous, however, for +the book never went into a second edition.</p> + + +<p><br />For the sake of grouping conveniently together the entire Anglo-Terentian +literature, I shall conclude with a mention of the version, executed in +1667 by Charles Hoole of six of the plays. It is in English and Latin, +“for the use of young scholars,” and was most probably done with a special +view to Hoole’s own school, which at this time was “near Lothbury Garden, +London.” He kept for a long series of years one of the leading proprietary +establishments in the metropolis; but he was originally the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> principal of +one at Rotherham in Yorkshire. We last hear of him as carrying on the same +business in Goldsmith’s Alley. This was in 1675. His career as a teacher +must have extended over some thirty years.</p> + + +<p><br />II. Leaving Terence, we may pass to Virgil, whose <i>Bucolics</i> were +published in 1512 with a dull Latin commentary, illustrating the +construction of the verse and other critical points.</p> + +<p>No ancient English edition of Horace exists, either in the original +language or a translation. But Whittinton admitted selections from him +into his <i>Syntax</i>. In 1534 he translated Cicero’s <i>Offices</i> for the use of +schools, printing the Latin and English face to face; and the treatise of +<i>Old Age</i> closely followed.</p> + +<p>In these attempts to draw the classics into use for educational purposes, +the fine musical numbers of the ancient poet and the noble composition of +the writer in prose offer a powerful contrast to the barbarous jargon and +dissonant pedantry of the scholiast and editor, whose Latin exposition +certainly tended in no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> way to assist the learner, either from the point +of view of an interpreter or a model. For it must have been, in the +absence of some one to expound the exposition, fully as puzzling to pupils +as the most difficult passages of the Roman poets, while it was eminently +mischievous in its influence on the formation of a Latin style.</p> + +<p>The teacher in all ages has been a prosaic and unimaginative being; and if +the one who directed the studies of Virgil himself had glossed the works +of those authors who lived before the Augustan era, he would have probably +transmitted to us a labour as dry and unfruitful as those which make part +of the reference library of English boys in the olden time.</p> + +<p>Except in a prose translation, which bears no mark of having been intended +for boys, the <i>Æneid</i> was not introduced among us for a very long period +subsequently to the revival of learning, nor were the <i>Georgics</i>. A +selection from Ovid’s <i>Art of Love</i> appeared in 1513; perhaps the whole +was deemed too fescennine for the juvenile peruser.</p> + +<p>I shall add Cæsar, whose <i>Commentaries</i> were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> printed in 1530, not because +this invaluable book was intended as a medium for instruction in the +seminaries and colleges, but just by the way, as the only other classic +rendered into our tongue so early, on account of its probable interest in +relation to France and to military science, and, once more, on account of +the person who translated it, John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, an +accomplished nobleman, who filled at one time a professorial chair in the +University of Padua.</p> + +<p>The Cæsar, in fact, occupies an analogous position to the English editions +of Cicero and the prose paraphrase of the <i>Æneid</i> published by Caxton, and +was intended for the use of those few cultivated minds which had imbibed +in Italy and France a taste for elegant and refined studies.</p> + + +<p><br />III. I have before me a copy of Whittinton’s versions of the <i>Offices</i> and +<i>Old Age</i> of Cicero, and I may take the opportunity to present to the +reader a specimen of his performance. It is taken from the first book of +the <i>Offices</i>:—</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p> +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td align="center">De Officiis Servandis in eos qui<br />intulerunt nobis iniuriam.</td><td><span class="spacer2"> </span></td> + <td align="center">Of offyces to be obserued agayne<br />suche as haue done vs wronge</td></tr> +<tr><td valign="top">Svnt autem quædam officia<br /> +etiam aduersus eos seruāda à<br /> +quibus iniuriam acceperis. Est<br /> +enim ulciscendi & puniendi<br /> +modus. Atq; haud scio an satis<br /> +sit eum, qui lacessierit, iniuriæ<br /> +suæ pœnitere, ut & ipse ne quid<br /> +tale posthac committat, & cæteri<br /> +sint ad iniuriam tardiores.</td><td> </td> +<td>There be also certayne offyces<br /> +to be kepte agayne suche / of<br /> +whom a mā hath taken wrong.<br /> +For there is a maner of reuengynge<br /> +and punysshyng, and<br /> +I can not tell whether it be suffycient<br /> +for hym that hath done<br /> +wronge to be sory of his wronge /<br /> +and that he offende no more so<br /> +after that. Also other shall be<br /> +the more lothe to do wronge.</td></tr></table> + +<p>There are few English renderings of ancient literature which it is +possible to regard as completely satisfactory; and it must be recollected, +on the behalf of Whittinton, that he was among the pioneers in this +laborious field. Let me conclude with a sample of his essay on the <i>De +Senectute</i>—a <i>chef d’œuvre</i>, which it is a sin to read in any idiom +but its own.</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td valign="top">Sequitur tertia vituperatio senectutis,<br /> +quod eam carere dicunt<br /> +voluptatibus. O præclarum munus<br /> +ætatis, siquidem id aufert<br /> +nobis, quod est in adolescentia<br /> +vitiosissimum. Accipite suim<br /> +optimi adolescentes, ueterem<br /> +orationem Archytæ Tarentini,<br /> +magni in primis, et præclari viri,<br /> +quæ mihi tradita est cum essem<br /> +adolescens Tarenti cum Q. Maximo.<br /> +Nullā capitaliorē pestē<br /> +quam corporis uoluptatē hominibus<br /> +dicebat à natura datā....</td><td><span class="spacer2"> </span></td> +<td>The thyrde accusacion of olde<br /> +age foloweth. By cause it must<br /> +forgo pleasures. O that excellent<br /> +benefyte of olde age: yf it<br /> +take away from vs that thynge /<br /> +whiche in youth is moost vicious.<br /> +Therfore ye gentyll yonge men<br /> +heare the olde sentence of Archytas<br /> +a Tarentyne / a great and<br /> +a famous man amonges all other<br /> +/ which was taught vnto me whan<br /> +I was a yonge man in the citye<br /> +of Tarentū with Quintus Maximus.<br /> +He sayd that there was<br /> +not a more deedly poyson gyuen<br /> +to man by nature / than sensuall<br /> +pleasure of body....</td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>These two passages afford a fair idea of the capability of Whittinton for +his task, and of the means which the English student of those days enjoyed +for profiting by the lessons of antiquity and holding intercourse with the +greatest minds of former ages, at the same time that it led the way to the +purification of the current Latinity from mediæval barbarism and the +heresies of the Dutch school.</p> + +<p>To be hypercritical in the judgment of these experimental, and of course +imperfect, attempts to impart to the educational system in this island a +better tone and to place it on an improved footing, would be ungracious +and improper. The introduction of the Roman writers in prose and verse +into our schools and universities was an important step in the right +direction, and tended to counteract the monastic temper and element in our +method of training.</p> + + +<p><br />V. Outside the pale of the schoolroom, but still clearly designed for +learners, one finds such literary fossils as the <i>Book of Cato</i>, the <i>Cato +for Boys</i>, the <i>Eclogues</i> of Mantuan, of which Bale speaks as popular in +his day, and which <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>Holofernes mentions in <i>Love’s Labour’s Lost</i>; various +abridgments of the <i>Colloquia</i> of Erasmus and his <i>Little Book of Good +Manners for Children</i> (another monument of the industry and scholarship of +Whittinton); and, lastly, such elementary guides to mythology and history +as Lydgate’s <i>Interpretation of the Natures of Gods and Goddesses</i>, and +the <i>Chronicle of all the Kings’ Names that have reigned in England</i>, +1530. With these I should perhaps couple the Latin <i>Æsop</i> of 1502, with a +commentary in the same language, and the later edition of which, in 1535, +includes the <i>Fables</i> of Poggius.</p> + +<p>Considering the state of our population and the restrictions on learning, +it cannot be said that the market for works of reference and instruction +was poorly supplied, and the remains which have descended to us of books +published in England, many wholly or partly in that language, for the use +of the young, certainly bespeak and establish an eager and wide demand on +the part of our public and private seminaries in the fifteenth and +following centuries.</p> + +<p>I take occasion to shew the beneficial share<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> which Erasmus had in the +promotion of culture in England in various ways, and the interest which he +evinced in the establishment and success of St. Paul’s School. Not only +were his own works translated into English, and received with favour among +the book-lovers of that age, but he ventured so far as to turn several of +the <i>Dialogues</i> of Lucian into Latin, encouraged by the proficiency which +he had acquired during his first visit to England, in the original +language, added perhaps to the satisfactory result of his later +experiments as a teacher of Greek at Cambridge.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p> +<h2>VII.</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang">Influence of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More—Visits of the former to this +country—His friendship with Dean Colet—Establishment of various +schools in England—Foundation of St. Paul’s by Colet—Statutes—Books +used in the school—Narrow lines—Notice of the old Cathedral School.</p></div> + + +<p><br />I. We must not attempt, in fact, to consider the educational question in +early England without studying very sedulously the Lives of Erasmus and +Colet by Samuel Knight. The influence of Erasmus on our scholastic +literature I believe to have been very great indeed. He came over to this +country, it appears, in 1497, and spent a good deal of time at Oxford, +where he acquired a knowledge of Greek. “While Erasmus remained at +Oxford,” says his biographer, “he became very intimate with all those who +were of any Note for Learning; accounting them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> always his best friends, +by whom he was most profited in his studies. And as he owns M. Colet did +first engage him in the Study of Theology, so it is also well known that +he embraced the favourable Opportunity he now had of learning the Greek +Tongue, under the most Skilful Masters (viz.) William Grocyn, Thomas +Linacre, and William Latimer. Grocyn is said by one who lived about this +Time to have been the first Professor, or Publick Teacher of Greek in +Oxford to a full Assembly of Young Students.”</p> + +<p>Knight affords an interesting and tolerably copious account of Linacre, as +well as of Grocyn; and in connection with the former he relates an +anecdote, on the authority of Erasmus, about Bernard Andreas, tutor to +Prince Arthur, son of Henry VII. But I shall not enter into these matters, +as Linacre, though a great promoter of Greek authors, scarcely comes +within my plan. Yet I may mention that among the friends whom the learned +Hollander made here was Cuthbert Tunstall, afterwards Bishop of Durham, +and author of the first book on arithmetic published in this country, and +Richard<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> Pace, who succeeded Colet in the Deanery of St. Paul’s.</p> + +<p>There is, however, a passage which I may be suffered to transcribe, where, +speaking of the time when Erasmus was contemplating a departure homeward, +Knight observes:—</p> + +<p>“Before Erasmus left England, he laid the plan of his useful Tract <i>de +conscribendis epistolis</i>, for the Service, and at the Suggestion of his +noble Pupil the Lord William Montjoy, who had complained that there were +no good Rules, or Examples of that kind, to which he could conform +himself. Erasmus took the hint very kindly, and making his just +Reflections, upon the emptiness of Franciscus Niger, and Marius +Phalelfus,<a name='fna_2' id='fna_2' href='#f_2'><small>[2]</small></a> whose Books upon that Argument were read in the common +Schools, he seems resolv’d at his first leisure, to give a New Essay of +that kind; and accordingly upon his first return to Paris he fell upon it, +and finished it within twenty Days.”</p> + +<p>So we see that, prior to the visit of Erasmus to us at the end of the +fifteenth century, there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> were already polite letter-writers current, and +current, too, as school-books. Erasmus came to the conclusion that he had +done his own work too hastily, and the appearance of an edition of it in +England about thirty years later, and likewise of a counterfeit, induced +him to revise the undertaking, which was finally published at Basle in +1545 in a volume with other analogous tracts by various writers.</p> + +<p>A story which Knight relates about his author’s literary enterprise in the +epistolary line is too amusing to be overlooked:—</p> + +<p>“In that Essay of the way of writing Epistles, Erasmus had put in two +sorts of Declamations, one in the praise, the other in dispraise, of +Matrimony, and asking his young Pupil L<sup>d.</sup> Montjoy how he lik’d that of +the first sort. ‘Oh sir,’ says he, ‘I like it so well, that you have made +me resolve to marry quickly.’ ‘Ay!’ but says Erasmus, ‘you have read only +one side, stay and read the other.’ ‘No,’ replies L<sup>d.</sup> Montjoy, ‘that +side pleases me; take you the other!’” The subject is an obvious one for +humorous controversy; but there is a similar idea in Rabelais, who makes +his two chief <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>characters debate the advantages and drawbacks of wedlock.</p> + +<p>Altogether, Erasmus must have done very much toward the advancement of a +taste for Hellenic culture in our country, and his biographer apprises us +that he exhorted the physicians of his time to study that language as more +necessary to their profession than to any other. Yet the knowledge of the +tongue was very sparingly diffused in England at and long after that time; +and Turner, in the dedication of his Herbal to Queen Elizabeth in 1568, +complains of the ignorance of the apothecaries of his day even of the +Latin names of the herbs which they employed in their pharmacopœia. The +illustrious and erudite Dutchman did, doubtless, what he could, and made +several of the classics more familiar and intelligible by new editions, +with some of which he connected the names of English scholars and +prelates; but the time had not arrived for any general movement.</p> + + +<p><br />II. Knight, in his Life of Dean Colet, enumerates several of the schools +which were founded shortly before the Reformation. “This noble<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> impulse of +Christian charity,” says he, “in the founding of grammar schools, was one +of the providential ways and means for bringing about the blessed +reformation; and it is therefore observable, that, within thirty years +before it, there were more grammar schools erected and endowed in England +than had been in three hundred years preceding: one at Chichester by Dr. +Edward Scory, bishop of that see, who left a farther benefaction to it by +his last will, dated 8th December, 1502: another at Manchester by Hugh +Oldham, Bishop of Exeter, who died 1519: another at Binton in +Somersetshire, by Dr. Fitzjames, Bishop of London, and his brother, Sir +John Fitzjames, lord chief justice of England: a fourth at Cirencester in +Gloucestershire, by Thomas Ruthall, Bishop of Durham: a fifth at Roulston +in Staffordshire, by Dr. Robert Sherborne, bishop of St. David’s, +predecessor to Dr. Colet in the deanery of St. Paul’s: a sixth at +Kingston-upon-Hull, by John Alcock, Bishop of Ely: a seventh at Sutton +Colfield in Warwickshire, by Dr. Simon Harman (<i>alias</i> Veysey), bishop of +Exeter: an eighth at Farnworth in Lancashire, by Dr. William Smith, Bishop +of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> Lincoln, born there: a ninth at Appleby in Westmoreland, by Stephen +Langton, bishop of Winchester: a tenth at Ipswich in Suffolk by cardinal +Wolsey: another at Wymbourn in Dorsetshire, by Margaret, countess of +Richmond: another at Wolverhampton in Staffordshire, by Sir Stephen +Jennings, mayor of London: another at Macclesfield, by Sir John Percival, +mayor of London: as also another by the lady Thomasine his wife at St. +Mary Wike in Devonshire, where she was born: and another at Walthamstow in +Essex by George Monnox, mayor of London, 1515: besides several other +schools in other parts of the kingdom.”</p> + +<p>Knight concludes by saying that “the piety and charity of Protestants ran +so fast in this channel, that in the next age there wanted rather a +regulation of grammar schools than an increase of them.”</p> + +<p>George Lily, son of the grammarian and schoolmaster, and canon of St. +Paul’s, refers doubtless to these benefactions when, in his <i>Chronicle</i>, +he speaks of the encouragement of learning by the princes and nobility of +England, and goes on to say that their good example was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> followed by Dr. +John Colet, ... “who about this time (1510) erected a public school in +London of an elegant structure, and endowed it with a large estate, for +teaching gratis the sons of his fellow-citizens for ever.”</p> + +<p>The foundation was for one hundred and seventy-three scholars—a number +selected in remembrance of the miracle of the fishes.</p> + + +<p><br />III. Colet drew up, or had drawn up, for the regulation of his new school +the subjoined Rules and Orders, to be read to the parents before their +children were admitted, and to be accepted by them:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>“If youre chylde can rede and wryte Latyn and Englyshe suffycyently, so +that he be able to rede and wryte his own lessons, then he shal be +admitted into the schole for a scholar.</p> + +<p>“If youre chylde, after reasonable reason proved, be founde here unapte +and unable to lernynge, than ye warned therof shal take hym awaye, that he +occupye not oure rowme in vayne.</p> + +<p>“If he be apt to lerne, ye shal be contente that he continue here tyl he +have competent literature.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>“If he absente vi dayes, and in that mean seeson ye shew not cause +reasonable, (resonable cause is only sekenes) than his rowme to be voyde, +without he be admitted agayne, and pay iiijd.</p> + +<p>“Also after cause shewed, if he contenewe to absente tyl the weke of +admyssion in the next quarter, and then ye shew not the contenuance of the +sekenes, then his rowme to be voyde, and he none of the schole tyl he be +admytted agayne, and paye iiijd. for wryting his name.</p> + +<p>“Also if he fall thryse into absence, he shal be admytted no more.</p> + +<p>“Your chylde shal, on Chyldermas daye, wayte vpon the boy byshop at +Powles, and offer there.</p> + +<p>“Also ye shal fynde him waxe in winter.</p> + +<p>“Also ye shal fynde him convenyent bokes to his lernynge.</p> + +<p>“If the offerer be content with these articles, than let his childe be +admytted.”</p></div> + +<p>The founder of St. Paul’s, in his statutes, 1518, prescribed what Latin +authors he would have read in the school. He recites, in the first place, +the Latin version by Erasmus of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> his <i>Precepts</i> and the <i>Copia Verborum</i> +of the same Dutch scholar. He then proceeds to enumerate some of the early +Christian writers, whose piety was superior to their Latinity, Lactantius, +Prudentius, and others. But while he does not say that Virgil, Cicero, +Sallust, and Terence are to be used, he utterly eschews and forbids such +classics as Juvenal and Persius, whom he evidently indicates when he +speaks of “Laten adulterate which ignorant, blinde foles brought into this +worlde, and with the same hath dystained and poysonyd the olde Laten +speche and the veray Romayne tongue which in the tyme of Tully and Salust, +and Virgill, and Terence, was usid,”—which is so far reasonable from his +standard; but he adds incongruously enough: “whiche also sainte Jerome, +and sainte Ambrose, and saint Austen, and many holy doctors lernid in +theyre tymes.” Whereby we are left at liberty to infer that these holy +doctors were on a par with Virgil and Sallust, Cicero and Terence.</p> + +<p>What sort of Latin would be current now if all the great writers had +perished, and we had had only the works of the Fathers as text-books?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> We +all have pretty similar beginnings, as the <i>prima stamina</i> of a man and +any other vertebrate are said to be undistinguishable to a certain point; +and as St. Jerome learned his accidence of Donatus, so Virgil got his +rudiments. But much as we owe to St. Jerome, it was a mischievous error to +adopt him or such authors as Lactantius in a public school, where the real +object was to instil a knowledge of the Latin language in its integrity +and purity. It was a mischievous error, and it was, at the same time, a +perfectly natural one. We are not to blame Colet and his coadjutors for +having been so narrow and so biassed; but it must always be a matter of +regret and surprise that St. Paul’s, and all our other training +institutions, public and proprietary, should, down to the present era, +have been under the sway and management of men whose intellectual vision +was as contracted and oblique as that of Colet, without the excuse which +it is so easy to find for him.</p> + +<p>The rules for St. Paul’s, which are set out at large by Knight, were +unquestionably of a very austere character, though in harmony with the +feeling of the time; and Knight, in his Life of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> the founder, ascribes the +apparent harshness of the discipline enforced under his direction to the +laudable motive of preparing boys for the troubles of the world, and +inuring them to hardship. But Erasmus was not on the side of the +martinets. For he explicitly condemns an undeserving strictness of +discipline, which made no allowance for the difference in the tempers of +boys; and another point with which he quarrelled was the horse-in-a-mill +system and the way of learning by rote, which had begun to find favour +both in his own country and with us.</p> + +<p>It is vain, however, to expect that there should have been many converts +to such a man’s opinions on educational questions at that period. Even in +the small circle of his English friends and correspondents there was a +wide diversity of sentiment. Sir Thomas More might agree with him mainly; +but, on the other hand, Colet was clerical in his leaning and Spartan in +his notions of scholastic life; and he deemed it good, as I have above +said, to work on the tenderness of youth before it acquired corruption or +prejudice, that “the new wine of Christ might be put into new bottles.”</p> + + +<p><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>IV. There can be no desire to deprive Colet of any portion of the honour +which we owe to him for promoting the cause of education in London; but it +would at the same time be an error to conclude that the good Dean was the +first who established a school in the metropolis. The foundation which he +established about 1510 consolidated and centralised the system, which down +to that time had been weakly and loosely organised. Hear what Knight +says:—</p> + +<p>“The state of schools in London before Dean Colet’s foundation was to this +effect: the Chancellor of Paul’s (as in all the ancient cathedral +churches) was master of the schools (<i>magister scholarum</i>), having the +direction and government of literature, not only within the church, but +within the whole city, so that all the masters and teachers of grammar +depended on him, and were subject to him; particularly he was to find a +fit master for the school of St. Paul, and present him to the Dean and +Chapter, and then to give him possession, and at his own cost and charges +to repair the houses and buildings belonging to the school. This master of +the grammar school was to be a sober, honest man, of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> good and laudable +learning.... He was in all intents the true vice-chancellor of the church, +and was sometimes so called; and this was the original meaning of +chancellors and vice-chancellors in the two universities or great schools +of the kingdom.”</p> + +<p>The same writer traces back St. Paul’s school to Henry the First’s reign, +when the Bishop of London granted the schoolmaster for the time being a +residence in the bell-tower, and bestowed on him the custody of the +library of the church. A successor of this person had the monopoly of +teaching school in London conferred on him by the Bishop of Winchester, +saving the rights only of the schoolmasters of St. Mary-le-Bow and St. +Martin-le-Grand.</p> + +<p>The old cathedral school, which that of Colet doubtless gradually +extinguished, lay to the south of his, and appears curiously enough not to +have occupied the basement, but to have been, as we should say, on the +first floor, four shops being beneath it. It was close to Watling Street. +A passage in the <i>Monumenta Franciscana</i> shews that the site of Colet’s +original school, which perished in the Great Fire, had been in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> +possession of bookbinders, and in the immediate neighbourhood was the sign +of the Black Eagle, which, as we learn from documentary testimony, was +still there in 1550.</p> + +<p>At the epoch to which I am referring, the vocation of a bookbinder was, I +think, invariably joined with that of a printer, and I apprehend that +these shops formed part of a printing establishment.</p> + +<p>The <i>Black Eagle</i> was an emporium for the sale of books, and it is to be +recollected that in early days, where the typographical part was done in +some more or less unfrequented quarter of the city, it was a common +practice to have the volume on sale in a more public thoroughfare.</p> + +<p>St. Paul’s Churchyard, in the days of Colet and in the infancy of his +valuable endowment, was beyond question not only a place of great resort, +but a favourite seat of the booksellers. For in the imprint to an edition +of the <i>Hours of the Virgin</i>, printed at Paris, the copies are said to be +on sale at London “apud bibliopolas in cimiterio sancti Pauli 1514;” and +of this fact I could readily bring forward numerous other evidences.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>Besides the vendors of literature, however, the site soon became one of +the places of settlement of the teachers of languages, to whom the +immediate proximity of St. Paul’s served as an useful introduction and +advertisement; and in the time of Elizabeth a French school was +established here, for the benefit of the general public, of course, but +more especially, doubtless, with a view to such Paulines as might desire +an extension of their studies.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p> +<h2>VIII.</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang">Thomas Linacre prepares his Rudiments of Latin Grammar for the use of +the Princess Mary (1522)—Probably the earliest digest of the +kind—Cardinal Wolsey’s edition of Lily’s Grammar for the use of +Ipswich School (1529)—Inquiry into the priority of the Ipswich and +St. Paul’s Grammars—First National Primer (1540)—Lily’s <i>Short +Introduction of Grammar</i> (1548)—Its re-issue by Queen Elizabeth +(1566-7)—Some account of its contents—Its failure.</p></div> + + +<p><br />I. Thomas Linacre, physician to four successive sovereigns and tutor to +the Princess Mary, is understood to have prepared for the service of his +august pupil certain Rudiments of Grammar, doubtless in Latin, at the same +time that Giles Du Wes or Dewes wrote for her his <i>Introductory</i> to the +French language. The biographer of Dean Colet informs his readers that the +production of Linacre was translated into Latin by George Buchanan for +Gilbert,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> Earl of Cassilis, whose studies he directed; but the book as +printed is in that language, and bears no indication of a second hand in +it. The undertaking, however, was deemed by Queen Catherine too obscure, +and Ludovicus Vives was accordingly engaged to draw up something more +simple and intelligible, which was the origin of his little book <i>De +ratione studii puerilis</i>, where, from delicacy, he made a point of +commending the labours of Linacre and the abridgment of the <i>Rudiments</i> by +Erasmus.</p> + +<p>The volume, edited by Linacre about 1522, appears, anyhow, to be entitled +to rank as the earliest effort in the way of a grammatical digest; and, +apart from its special destination, it was calculated to supply a want, +and to find patrons beyond the range of the court.</p> + +<p>Except its utilisation by Buchanan for Lord Cassilis, we hear little or +nothing of it, nevertheless, after its original publication by the royal +printer. Perhaps it did not compete successfully with the editions of +Lily, as they received from time to time improvements at the hands of +professional experts, and united within certain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> limits the advantages of +consolidation and completeness. The prestige of Lily had grown +considerable, and in the case of a technical book it has always been +difficult or impossible for an amateur to hold his ground against a +specialist.</p> + + +<p><br />II. Allowing for the possibility of editions of which we have no present +knowledge having formerly existed, if they do not yet do so, it may be +that Dean Colet caused some text-book to be prepared for the use of the +scholars at St. Paul’s; and I shall by and by adduce some evidence in +favour of such an hypothesis. But, at any rate, in 1529 Cardinal Wolsey +gave his sanction, and wrote a preface, to an impression of Lily’s +<i>Rudiments</i> with certain alterations, more especially for the use of his +school at Ipswich, but also, as the terms of the title state, for the +benefit of all other similar institutions in the country.</p> + +<p>The Cardinal’s preface is dated August 1, 1528. It is followed by the +<i>Docendi Methodus</i>, the <i>Rules</i>, the <i>Articles of Faith</i>, <i>Precepts of +Living</i>, <i>Apostles’ Creed</i>, <i>Decalogue</i>, &c.; and the rest of the book is +occupied by the <i>Introduction of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> Eight Parts of Speech</i> and the +<i>Rudiments of Grammar</i>.</p> + +<p>Of this collection there was no exact reprint, but portions of the +contents appear in the Antwerp impressions of 1535 and 1536, designed for +the English learners in Flanders; and Lily’s <i>Rudiments</i>, with and without +the other accessories, were periodically republished even later than the +so-called Oxford Grammar of 1709.</p> + +<p>Now, as St. Paul’s was the more ancient foundation, it is allowable, at +all events, to suspect that the book issued nominally for the Ipswich +school was borrowed by the Cardinal or the person employed by him from one +drawn up by Lily in his lifetime for Colet. St. Paul’s had been +established in 1510; the Dean survived till 1519; and surely so many years +would hardly have elapsed without witnessing the preparation of some +Pauline text-book on lines parallel to those of the Ipswich one of 1529, +more particularly when we see that in the Preface to his 1534 <i>Rudiments</i> +he speaks of the “new school of Paul’s,” and that in 1518 Erasmus had +executed a Latin metrical version of the <i>Lord’s Prayer</i> and <i>Precepts of +Good Living</i> for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> school under the title of <i>Christiani hominis +Institutum</i>.</p> + +<p>The short paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer in English by Colet, which I +have found at present only in an edition of the Salisbury Primer, 1532, +was made for his own scholars, and had, of course, been in existence prior +to 1519; so that we find ourselves groping in the dark a little in the +inquiry which deals with such a fugitive and perishable description of +literature, and have to do the best that we can with the fragmentary +relics which survive or have been so far recovered.</p> + +<p>The <i>Coleti æditio</i>, &c., of 1534 had much in common with Wolsey’s book; +but the Dean of St. Paul’s claims the honour of having adapted some +portions of the Delectus to what he considered to be the special +requirements of his own institution. For he says in the Proem:—</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“Al be it many have wryten, and have made certayne introducyons into Latyn +speche, called <i>Donates</i> and <i>Accidens</i>, in Latyn tongue and in Englysshe, +in suche plenty that it shoulde seme to suffyse; yet never the lesse, for +the love and zele that I have to the newe schole of Powles,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> and to the +children of the same, somwhat have I also compyled of the mater; and of +the viii. partes of grammer have made this lytell boke; ... in whiche +lytell warke if any new thynges be of me, it is alonely that I have put +these partes in a more clere ordre, and have made them a lytell more easy +to yonge wyttes, than (me thynketh) they were before.”</p> + +<p>The passage here quoted may be taken to supply a sort of testimony to the +original publication of the Dean’s alleged recension of the accepted text +of Lily’s <i>Introduction</i> (including the <i>Rudiments</i>) not very long, if at +all, posterior to 1510, as in 1534 St. Paul’s had been founded a quarter +of a century. The modification of the Grammar for Pauline use was almost +unquestionably due to Lily, and merely the Proem the Dean’s own.</p> + + +<p><br />III. The St. Paul’s book has, on the whole, a strong claim to precedence +over that of 1529. But under any circumstances, in or before the +last-named date, we possessed an uniform Grammar in lieu of the archaic +sectional series of Stanbridge and Whittinton.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>But even that of Wolsey went no farther than to recommend itself to +general acceptance. It had no official character. Nor was it till late in +the protracted reign of Henry VIII. that a general Primer for the whole +country was prepared and published. In 1540 a volume in two parts appeared +under the royal authority, without any clue to the editor, reducing the +text to a more convenient method and compass. This book is anonymous; but +Thomas Hayne says in 1640 that it was done by sundry learned men, among +whom he had heard that one was Dr. Leonard Cox, tutor to Prince Edward. +Another probable coadjutor was John Palsgrave, author of the +<i>Eclaircissement</i>.</p> + +<p>The Address to the Reader before the first part proceeded, no doubt, from +the compiler’s pen, and contains an energetic eulogy of Prince Edward, to +whom “the tender babes of England” are exhorted to look up as a model and +example. This portion includes the <i>Parts of Speech</i> and other rudiments +in English, while the second part contains a digested recension of the +Latin series under the title of <i>A Compendious Institution of the whole +Grammar</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>This bipartite manual formed, of course, an improvement on the system +formerly in vogue, which must have been very puzzling to boys. But it +seems very doubtful indeed if this Primer of 1540 was practically +recognised, or whether the Government took any measures to enforce what +purported to have been done under its immediate sanction.</p> + +<p>Whoever they were who arranged for publication the Primer had probably a +hand in the <i>Alphabetum Latino-Anglicum</i> of 1543, which is here +incidentally noticed, and which is more than it professes to be. For it +comprises, in addition to a series of alphabets, the Lord’s Prayer, the +Salutation of the Virgin, the Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, and a few +prayers, in Latin and English. It was, in fact, a supplement to the Primer +itself.</p> + + +<p><br />IV. In January 1547, Henry was succeeded by his son, and the change is +marked by the substitution of <i>A Short Introduction of Grammar generally +to be used</i>, in two parts, the English followed by the Latin, for the +original Primer of 1540. A complaint appears to have arisen at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> the same +time that the large book was inconvenient for beginners; and we are told +that Fox the martyrologist was commissioned to prepare <i>Tables of Grammar</i> +for the use, probably, of the lower forms in schools. But we know nothing +farther of them; and the <i>Introduction</i>, to which they were designed as a +companion, was not reprinted more than once in Edward’s life. Nor is there +any vestige of it till we arrive quite at the close of the rule of Mary, +when the Paris press produced an edition under some circumstances not at +present explainable, yet, of course, with the peculiarity of being +entirely unofficial. So that when we sum up, it amounts to this, that the +first and second types of the so-named universal Grammar, as settled in +1540 and 1548 respectively, reached four impressions in seventeen years, +not including that of 1557, which lies outside the series.</p> + +<p>Making due allowance for the far scantier population and the momentous +difference of social conditions, this remains a strange phenomenon, if we +reflect that, in addition to the public and private schools previously in +existence, the Government of Edward had planted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> throughout the country +the endowments of which Christ’s Hospital is the most familiar type.</p> + +<p>But even when there was a change in the Administration in 1558, and the +authority of Elizabeth was established in Church and State, the interest +in educational development led to no revival of the <i>Introduction</i>, and, +unless all intervening copies have perished, there was a clear lapse of +ten years before the new Protestant <i>regime</i> took steps to re-issue the +book.</p> + +<p>This was in 1567. In the Preface very just stress is laid on the mischief +proceeding from what is termed “a diversity of Grammars,” and from +different schoolmasters adopting different methods and books. The +proclamation attached expresses at large the objects and advantages of the +publication, while it certainly seems to claim for the Queen’s father more +credit than, looking at the circumstances, he deserved. For the Primer of +1540 had been preceded by those of Linacre and Wolsey, just as the <i>Short +Introduction</i> of 1548 and 1567 was, in the main, a reproduction of Henry’s +book. But the same unqualified encomium is pronounced on Henry by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> John +Palsgrave, the celebrated lexicographer and teacher of languages, in the +prolix and fulsome dedication to his English <i>Acolastus</i>, 1540, which must +have been written and in type when the copies of the Primer had scarcely +left the binder’s hands. Palsgrave does not intimate here any personal +concern in the undertaking.</p> + +<p>The Preface of 1567 is followed by the Latin letters, the vowels and +consonants, and the Greek letters; after which comes a prayer, “O Almighty +God and merciful Father,” which is still retained at some of our public +schools. The <i>Introduction of the Eight Parts of Speech</i> constitutes the +body and remainder of the English part.</p> + +<p>There are six forms of grace before meat, and six others of grace after +meat.</p> + +<p>The Latin section opens with the Greek alphabet, and proceeds to the parts +of grammar, concluding with Erasmus’s <i>De Ratione</i>. But, as I have stated +more than once, this later text-book does not substantially vary from that +of 1548. The royal proclamation granted the monopoly of printing to +Reginald Wolfe, and forbad the employment of any other Grammar throughout<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> +her Highness’s dominions. The document declares that Henry VIII., in the +midst of weighty affairs belonging to his office, had not forgotten nor +neglected the tender youth of his realm, but had, from a fervent zeal for +the godly bringing up of the said youth, and a special desire that they +might learn the Latin tongue more easily, instituted a new uniform +Grammar; which was so far really the case, inasmuch as the 1540 volume was +the first official one, and also at the date of its promulgation the most +complete and satisfactory.</p> + + +<p><br />V. But in examining this general Grammar for all England and the dominions +annexed, one at once misses the graphic and amusing illustrations which +present themselves in many of the earlier books which we have been +studying. The examples, instead of being drawn from the occupations and +various phases of everyday life, are almost without exception purely +technical and commonplace. There is no allusion which one would welcome as +casting an incidental light on contemporary history or manners. It is +mostly a dead level. The learned men have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> done this! It makes us +cheerful, amid the habitual dearth of something to leaven the text, to +stumble upon a few of the little touches in the older books retained as an +exception, such as: “Vivo in Anglia. Veni per Galliam in Italiam,” or +“Vixit Londini: Studuit Oxoniæ.”</p> + +<p>How differently Horman in his <i>Vulgaria</i>, 1519, handled his subject, and +his pages were intended for schoolboys and students too!</p> + +<p>The frequency with which the Primer was henceforth reprinted, contrasted +with the very limited call for copies from 1540 to 1566, seems to furnish +an indication that the book and the system were at last gaining ground, +and beginning to meet with more general acceptance.</p> + +<p>But the irreconcilable diversity of opinions, which has always prevailed, +respecting etymology, syntax, pronunciation, and other cardinal points, +militated against the success on any very grand scale of an official +Primer; and the Tudors, arbitrary and absolute as they were in all +questions of political significance, were not prompted by the feeling of +the time to resort in such a case as this to penal and peremptory<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> +legislation. The eighteenth century saw Lily’s Grammar still more or less +in vogue under the name of the original author, not to speak of the +obligations of its successors to it; but the Tudor book, constructed in +some measure out of it, and ushered into existence under the most +auspicious and powerful patronage, sank after a not very robust or +influential life of six decades (1540-1600) into complete oblivion.</p> + +<p>Our great Elizabeth has been dead near three hundred years, and no genuine +popular demand for mental improvement has yet come from the people. In the +sixteenth century—in the Queen’s time and in her father’s—the spirit +which promoted education was based either on political or commercial +motives.</p> + +<p>The universities and schools reared a succession of preceptors who +deserted the monastic traditions, and to whom learning was a mere +vocation. One large class of the English community sought to acquire the +accomplishments which might be serviceable in the Government and at court; +another limited its ambition to those which would enable them to prosper +in trade or in the wars.</p> + + +<p><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>V. A class of school-book destined for special use, besides those +enumerated in another place, presents itself in the shape of grammatical +works dedicated by their authors, not to particular institutions, but to +particular localities or parts of the Empire. Edward Buries, who kept +school at East Acton in Cromwell’s day, accommodated his plan to the +requirements of adults, but at the same time announces that it is printed +for the advantage of the schools in the counties of Middlesex and +Hertford, which strikes us as at once a curious limitation and a sanguine +proposal, unless Buries was a Hertfordshire man. This was in 1652.</p> + +<p>A later writer was more catholic and ambitious in his flight; for in 1712 +John Brightland projected a Grammar of the English tongue “for the use of +the schools of Great Britain <i>and Ireland</i>,”—a fact more particularly +noticeable, because it is the first hint of any scheme comprehending the +Emerald Isle. I allude elsewhere to the early Accidence drawn up for +Scotland by Alexander Hume; and in 1647 the interests of the rising +generation in Wales were specially considered by the unnamed introducer of +a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>simplified Latin Primer <i>in usum juventutis Cambro-Britannicæ</i>, which +aimed at a monopoly of the Principality without prejudice to persons +beyond the border.</p> + +<p>Besides the Grammar itself, certain Manuals purported to be, not for +general educational purposes, but for a given school, and even for a +specified class in it. Such was the <i>English Introduction to the Latin +Tongue</i> for the use of the lower forms in Westminster School; and at +Magdalen School, Oxford, they had, at least as far back as 1623, a small +text-book on the declensions and conjugations. I take another opportunity +to speak of a Latin phrase-book designed for Manchester in 1660, and of +the printed examination papers, exhibiting the lines laid down at Merchant +Taylors’ about the same time. In a few cases a more elaborate compilation +was framed, at all events originally, with the same restricted scope, like +the <i>Roman Antiquities</i> of Prideaux, in 1614, for Abingdon.</p> + +<p>Perhaps, however, the most conspicuous example of this localisation was +the <i>Outlines of Rhetoric</i> for St. Paul’s, of which we meet with a third +edition in 1659; and which must have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> been in connection with some new and +temporary effort to enlarge the range of studies during the Protectorate, +partly under the stimulus of the promoters of the famous <i>Musæum Minervæ</i> +and the commencing taste for a more complex platform. For such subjects do +not seem to have made part of the ordinary course of training anywhere +since the mediæval period, when the Aristotelian system was paramount at +our Universities; although, at the same time, among more advanced students +philosophical treatises never ceased to possess interest and attract +perusers. But the relevance of the handbook for St Paul’s lies in its +professed destination for the young.</p> + +<p>It is questionable whether, outside the Universities and the +establishments affiliated upon them, the sciences were acquirable as part +of the normal routine. At Oxford, in the reign of Henry VIII., they taught +what was then termed Judicial Astronomy, which was a mere burlesque on the +true study of the planetary bodies; and Logic was on the list of +accomplishments within the reach of boys, who were sent up either to +college or to school; for in <i>A Hundred Merry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> Tales</i>, 1526, the son of +the rich franklin comes back home for the holidays, and declares, as the +fruit of the time and money expended on his education at Oxford school, +whither his indulgent father had sent him for two or three years, his +conversance with subtleties and ability to prove the two chickens on the +supper-table to be sophistically three.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p> +<h2>IX.</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang">Merchant Taylors’ School founded in 1561—Its limited scope and +stationary condition during two centuries and a half—The writer’s +recollections of it from 1842 to 1850—William Dugard and his troubles.</p></div> + + +<p><br />I. I cannot enter very well, in a general view of the subject, into the +history of all the civic foundations which rose up one by one subsequently +to St. Paul’s, such as the City of London School, the Mercers’ and the +Skinners’, beyond the incidental notices which I have taken occasion to +introduce of such institutions, as well as of the system of public grammar +schools endowed by Edward VI. But I may be allowed to speak of one with +which I enjoyed personal associations between the years 1842 and 1850, and +to mention that in the third chapter of his <i>Autobiography</i> Leigh Hunt +sheds some interesting light on the condition of Christ’s Hospital<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> when +Lamb, Coleridge, and himself were there in the last years of the last +century.</p> + +<p>Christ’s Hospital has produced some very eminent men, but whether by +virtue of its system or in spite of it, I hardly venture to say. The +biographer of the author of <i>Elia</i> tells us what books his distinguished +friend read at school; how little he learned, Lamb himself seems to +suggest in that paper on “The Old and the New Schoolmaster.”</p> + +<p>The origin of Merchant Taylors’ School is thus described by Wilson:—</p> + +<p>“Towards the close of the year 1560, or early in the following spring, the +Merchant Taylors’ Company conceived the laudable design of founding a +grammar school; and part of the manor of the Rose, in the parish of St. +Lawrence-Pountney (a mansion which had successively belonged to the Duke +of Buckingham, the Marquis of Exeter, and the Earls of Sussex), seeming +eligible for the purpose, Mr. Richard Hills, a leading member of the +court, generously contributed the sum of five hundred pounds towards the +purchase of it; but the institution was not thoroughly organised till the +24th <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>September 1561, on which day the statutes were framed and a +schoolmaster chosen.”</p> + +<p>With the statutes I have no farther concern than with the clause which +directs that the two hundred and fifty scholars, to which the school was +limited, were “to be taught in manner & forme as is afore devised & +appointed. But first see that they can the catechisme in English or Latyn, +& that every of the said two hundred & fifty schollers can read perfectly +& write competently, or els lett them not be admitted in no wise.”</p> + +<p>It is rather curious that the hours of attendance were originally from +seven till eleven <span class="smcaplc">A.M.</span> and from one till five <span class="smcaplc">P.M.</span>, and that in winter the +boys were to bring no candles of tallow, but candles of wax. This was +following the statutes of Dean Colet. Thrice in the day there were +prayers; but instead of one of the sixth form saying them for the rest, as +was subsequently customary, each boy seems at first to have prayed for +himself.</p> + +<p>The printed form usually employed was brief enough, and not, like the +Manual prepared by Bishop Ken for Winchester, adapted for the use of “all +other devout Christians.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>The staff consisted at the outset of a head-master and three ushers, whose +united emoluments were forty pounds a year, and the first chief teacher of +the school was Richard Mulcaster. It appears that the earliest +Probation-Day, as it was termed, was in November 1564, when Dean Nowell +and others examined the ushers and the boys with a very gratifying result. +These appositions were renewed in 1565, and probably still continue from +year to year. They commenced in 1564 at eight o’clock in the morning, and +so they did in my time. The practice of visitation by the Court on this +day seems to have ceased in 1606.</p> + +<p>Alderman Sir Thomas White, some time subsequently to the foundation of the +school by the Company, augmented the endowment, so as to enable the +institution to develop itself, and enlarge its sphere of utility in +connection with Oxford University and in other ways. White was a member of +the Court when the scheme was adopted, but he was not, strictly speaking, +as he has been usually termed and considered, the founder of Merchant +Taylors’.</p> + +<p>We do not arrive, meanwhile, at any clear<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> or complete notion of the books +which were used at the school, but it is to be inferred that Lily’s +Grammar was the Latin text-book. In the rules made for Probation-Day in +1606-7, I find Æsop’s <i>Fables</i> in Greek, Tully’s <i>Epistles</i>, and the +<i>Dialogues</i> of Corderius named as works in which the boys were to be +tested. The subjects taken on this day were Greek, Latin, and dictation, +writing being necessarily included. Neither Hebrew, nor arithmetic, nor +the mathematics are enumerated; there are the six forms, but no monitors +or prompters.</p> + +<p>The <i>School’s Probation</i> presents itself for the first time as a printed +production, or at least as something compiled in book form, under the date +of 1608. It is printed entire by Wilson; but he does not state, nor do I +know, what original, whether printed or not, he employed.</p> + + +<p><br />II. Probation-Day still continued in my time to be an important event—a +sort of red-letter day in our calendar. The hour for assembling was eight +o’clock, instead of nine; it had been half-past six while the school was +exclusively composed of residents within a limited radius;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> but the +enlarged time was a sore trial in the winter where one had to travel from +a suburb, as I did from Old Brompton. They supplied breakfast at the +place, not gratuitously, but at a fixed tariff. It would not have been +much for a wealthy Company to provide an entertainment once or twice a +year for two or three hundred lads at a shilling or so a head; but the +Merchant Taylors, I think, have always been notorious for parsimony. Very +little was accomplished before the meal, and after its completion we had +to set to work, the old room upstairs being as ill-adapted for the purpose +of an examination as can well be imagined, the boys having to use the +forms as desks and to kneel in front of them. We were a very short +distance from the Middle Ages. Matters were not much changed since the +time of the original establishment of the charity. Indeed, it appears from +Dugard’s <i>School’s Probation</i>, 1652, that in the seventeenth century the +Company paid for some kind of collation:—</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“There shall be paid unto the Master of the School, for beer, ale, and new +manchet-bread, with a dish of sweet butter, which hee shall have ready in +the morning, with two fine glasses set<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> upon the Table, and covered with +two fair napkins, and two fine trenchers, with a knife laid upon each +trencher, to the end that such as please may take part, to staie their +stomachs until the end of the examination ... ijs.”</p> + +<p>The number of boys was in 1652 comparatively limited; but of course +without a revival of the ancient miracle two shillings’ worth of victuals +would not have gone far in allaying the hunger of a far smaller gathering, +and this allowance must have simply been for such as had missed their meal +at home, or desired additional refreshment.</p> + +<p>The old examination itself presents numerous points of curiosity, as we +look at it through the present medium. Considerable stress seems to have +been laid on dictation. The master opened, on the sudden, Cicero, the +Greek Testament, Æsop’s <i>Fables</i> in Greek, and read a passage, which the +boys of a particular form had to take down, and then turn into some other +language, or into verse, or make verses upon it—a pretty piece of +trifling, much like the nonsense-verses which we used to have to compose +in my day, and as profitable.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>Some of the English sentences to be turned into Latin are odd enough: +“Bacchus and Apollo send for Homer;” “I went to Colchester to eat +oysters;” “My Uncle went to Oxford to buie gloves;” “The Atheist went to +Amsterdam to chuse his religion.” Others might have been autobiographical: +“Marie was my sister, she dwelt at London;” “Elisabeth was my Aunt, she +dwelt at York;” “Anna was my Grandmother, she dwelt at Worcester.”</p> + +<p>In another place, under <i>Sententiæ Varietas</i>, there are five-and-twenty +ways of describing in a sentence the great qualities of Cicero.</p> + +<p>Greek was certainly studied with a good deal of attention here in the +early time, judging from the space which is devoted to it in the scheme of +Dugard, in whose small volume the questions and theses in that language +occupy twenty pages. Erasmus had, doubtless, had a large share in +popularising among us the cultivation of Hellenic grammar and letters.</p> + +<p>Even when the present writer was at the school, Hebrew was by no means +assiduously or scientifically followed, nor do I believe that on the staff +of masters there was any one who properly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> understood the language. But it +was part of the programme, and the late Sir Moses Montefiore, who usually +attended on Speech and Prize Day, was the annual donor of a Hebrew medal.</p> + +<p>Speech-Day at Merchant Taylors’ was the sole occasion on which the large +schoolroom in Suffolk Lane was ever honoured by the presence of the fair +sex. The lower end of the room was converted into an extempore stage, and +the monitors and prompters took part in some recitation, or select scene +from the Latin or Greek dramatists. At a later period French themes were +introduced.</p> + +<p>As far back as the reign of Charles I., the large contribution which the +ladies and other friends of the scholars made to the audience, and their +imperfect acquaintance with the dead languages, rendered it a subject of +regret and complaint that the entertainment was not given in the +vernacular, and the writer of a small volume called <i>Ludus Ludi +Litterarii</i>, 1672, purporting to report a series of speeches delivered at +various breakings-up, states that the majority of them were in English on +this very account. As early as the time of Henry VIII., the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>practice of +exhibiting some dramatic performance at the close of the term, and usually +at Christmas, was in vogue; but these spectacles were, it is to be +suspected, almost uniformly in the original language of the classic +author, or in the scholastic Latin of the period.</p> + +<p>A feeling in favour of a reform in these arrangements had, as has been +mentioned, arisen when Hawkins wrote for the free school at Hadleigh in +Suffolk his play entitled <i>Apollo Shroving</i>, 1627, where one of the +characters desires the Prologue to speak what he has to say in honest +English, for all their sakes, and describes the predilection for employing +Latin as more appropriate to the University.</p> + +<p>Occasionally, instead of plays, there were musical entertainments; and the +custom of signalising the termination of the school-work seems to have +been followed by the private academies.</p> + +<p>But the antipathy to change and the temptation to a display of erudition +have always proved too strong an obstacle to improvement; and when the +writer was last present at this anniversary, the ancient precedent was +still in force, and the Court of the Merchant Taylors and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> general company +listened in respectful silence to interlocutions or monologues as +mysterious to them as the Writing on the Wall.</p> + + +<p><br />III. William Dugard, head-master from 1646 to 1660, so far as his light +and information were capable of carrying him, did, no doubt, good service +to the Company and institution with which he was during so many years +associated. But, on the ground of misconduct and negligence, his employers +thought proper, on the 27th December 1660, to discharge him from the place +of chief schoolmaster, giving him, however, till the following Midsummer +to find another appointment.</p> + +<p>Dugard states in <i>An humble Remonstrance Presented to the Right +Worshipfull Company of Merchant-Tailors, Maii 15, 1661</i>, that the Company +assigned no cause for their proceeding; but he says at the same time: “It +is alleged in your Order, <i>That many Complaints have been frequently from +time to time made to the Master and Wardens of the Company, and to the +Court, by the parents and friends of the young Scholars, of the neglect of +the chief-Master’s dutie in that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> School, and of the breach of the +Companie’s Orders and Ordinances thereof</i>.”</p> + +<p>To this Dugard replies that he had never heard of any complaints in all +the seventeen years he had filled the post, and he declared his readiness +to submit in silence if any parent could prove aught against him. He had +been in the profession, he said, thirty-three years, and “in all places +wherever I came, I have had ample testimonials of my faithfulness and +diligence, and my scholars’ proficiency.”</p> + +<p>The writer attributes his fall to the presence among the members of the +Court of persons unjustly hostile to him, who had represented that the +school was suffering from his administration, and would go down unless +some timely remedy was adopted.</p> + +<p>But Dugard averred that the decline of the school and the shrinkage of its +numbers were due to the Company’s order of March 16, 1659, which forbad +him to admit any scholar who had not a warrant from the Master and +Wardens, and the consequence was that parents, not caring to go to the +Court, took their sons elsewhere. As many as sixty boys had been lost in +this way<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> within a twelvemonth, he maintains. “True it is,” he pleads, +“that an hundred years ago, when it was an hard matter to get a Scholar to +read Greek, there was such an Order made, that no Scholar should be taught +in the School, unless first admitted by the Company. But afterward there +was found a necessity to dispense with that Order, and so it was with my +Predecessors; which I can prove for above threescore years bygone. They +(and my self too from them, untill the last year) had such an indulgence +that did not limit or restrain them to admit quarterly-Scholars, who did +not immediately depend on the Charity of the Company: and the Motto +engraven on the School speaks as much; <i>Nulli præcludor, Tibi pateo</i>.”</p> + +<p>The <i>Remonstrance</i> did not please the Merchant Taylors, and in a second +document, dated June 12, 1661, Dugard tried to soften what he had said; +for his language, it must be allowed, was rather energetic, considering +that he was in the hands of those who had the power to act as they judged +fit.</p> + +<p>Whatever the precise result was, there are two or three curious points +brought out in the course<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> of the head-master’s vindication, and one can +hardly avoid a conclusion that the main cause of the discontent of the +Court was not even so much the application of a portion of his time to +literary pursuits, as the abuse of the permission to set up a +printing-press by employing the machinery, intended only for the +production of school text-books, for political publications of a +republican stamp. This fact does not transpire in the tract itself, but is +ascertained from the imprints to books; and moreover, in 1650, at the end +of a periodical publication, he had announced himself as <i>Printer to the +Council of State</i>; so that altogether the Merchant Taylors might be +naturally afraid of incurring the displeasure of the new masters of +England by retaining the holder of opinions hostile to the Stuarts.</p> + +<p>He had sold the press at the desire of the Company for £300 less than the +cost; and this was by no means the full extent of his sacrifices and +misfortunes. For he gives his principals to understand that he had grown +lean by the observance of fast-days in accordance with their recent order; +and, moreover, that during his nineteen years’ term of office he had lost +£800<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> by unpaid quarter wages, thus making it seem probable that he was +directly responsible for the fees.</p> + +<p>Altogether, nothing worse than indiscretion, perhaps, was chargeable to +Dugard. “I bless God for it,” he expressly says, “I know the Divel himself +cannot justly accuse me of any notorious or scandalous Crime.”</p> + +<p>Probably not; but there are seasons when indiscretion is criminal, and +besides his proclamation of his appointment at the time to the +Commonwealth as their official printer, in 1657 there came from his press +the reply of Milton to Salmasius, an anti-royalist manifesto not +calculated to be palatable to the restored dynasty or to the civic +feeling, and certainly, so far as one can form a judgment, an encroachment +on the special objects and <i>raison d’être</i> of Dugard’s collateral +occupation.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p> +<h2>X.</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang">Successors of Lily—Thomas Robertson of York—Cultivation of the +living languages—Numerous works published in England upon them—Their +various uses—The Vocabularies for travellers and merchants—Rival +authors of Grammars—Different text-books employed at +schools—Milton’s <i>Accidence</i> (1669)—Old mode of advertising private establishments.</p></div> + + +<p><br />I. After the death of Lily his work was carried on and developed by other +men, who gradually achieved the task of consolidating, or reducing into a +more compact form, the rather perplexing series of elementary treatises +edited by Whittinton. Among these followers of the Master of St. Paul’s +was a schoolmaster at Oxford, the Thomas Robertson of York whom I had +lately occasion to name in connection with Ascensius, and who at all +events produced in 1532 at Basle an edition of Lily’s Grammar with a +Preface and Notes.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>Robertson applauds, in his dedication to Dr. Longlond, Bishop of Lincoln, +himself a man of letters, the system of Lily, and testifies to the +excellent way in which the boys at Oxford prospered under his educational +<i>regimen</i>. But, nevertheless, he does not conceal his notion and +expectation of improving on his master; and indeed there is no doubt that +we have here the earliest clear approach to our modern grammar-book, +although the whole is in Latin, except certain quotations and names in +Greek, as he compares the practice of the Greek poets with that of the +Romans, much as Robert Etienne a little later pointed out the conformity +of the French with the Greek. Philological parallels had become +fashionable.</p> + +<p>In his section on <i>Derivatives</i> Robertson has some matter, as to which the +modern etymologist may form his own conclusions. This is a specimen:—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>“Vox uocis, à voco.</td><td><span class="spacer"> </span></td> + <td>Iucundus à iuuo.</td></tr> +<tr><td>Lex legis, à lego.</td><td> </td> + <td>Iunior à iuuenis.</td></tr> +<tr><td>Rex regis, à rego.</td><td> </td> + <td>Mobilis à moueo.</td></tr> +<tr><td>Sedes à sedeo.</td><td> </td> + <td>Humanus ab homo.</td></tr> +<tr><td>Iumentum à iuuo.</td><td> </td> + <td>Vomer à uomo.</td></tr> +<tr><td>Fomes à foueo.</td><td> </td> + <td>Pedor à pede.”</td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>Of the miscellaneous labourers in this field Robertson was one of the most +conspicuous; nor did his name and work die with him, for his tables of +<i>Irregular Verbs and Nouns</i> were printed with Lily’s <i>Rules</i> at least as +late as the reign of James I.</p> + +<p>It is out of my power to cross the boundary-line of conjecture when I +offer the opinion that the Oxford employment of Robertson was on the old +Magdalen staff.</p> + + +<p><br />II. But there was no lack of instruments for carrying out the scheme of +education in England, whatever the imperfections of it might be. There +were, besides the ordinary pedagogue, whose accomplishments did not, +perhaps, extend beyond the language of his own country, writing, and +arithmetic, professors for French, Italian, and Dutch, and men whose +training at college qualified them more or less to give instruction in +Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The German, Spanish, and Portuguese do not seem +to have been much cultivated down to a comparatively recent date, which is +the more extraordinary since our intercourse with all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> those countries was +constant from the earliest period.</p> + +<p>There were certainly English versions of the Spanish grammars of Anthonio +de Corro and Cesare Oudin made in the times of Elizabeth and her +successor, as well as the original production by Lewis Owen, entitled, +<i>The Key into the Spanish Tongue</i>. But these were assuredly never used as +ordinary school-books, and were rather designed as manuals for travellers +and literary students; and the same is predicable, I apprehend, of the +anonymous Portuguese Dictionary and Grammar of 1701, which is framed on a +scale hardly adapted for the requirements of the young.</p> + +<p>Yet at the same time these, and many more like the <i>Dutch Tutor</i>, the +<i>Nether-Dutch Academy</i>, and so forth, were of eminent service in private +tuition and select classes, where a pupil was placed with a coach for some +special object, or to complete the studies which were not included in the +school programmes.</p> + +<p>Moreover, it is not to be overlooked that in the polyglot vocabulary and +phrase-book the student, either with or without the aid of a tutor,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> +possessed in former times a very valuable machinery for gaining a +knowledge of languages for conversational and commercial purposes; and +these works sometimes comprised the German, as well as the more usual +tongues employed in correspondence and intercourse. The title-page of one +of them, published at Antwerp in 1576, expressly intimates its utility to +all merchants; and a second of rather earlier date (1548) is specified as +a book highly necessary to everybody desirous of learning the languages +embraced in it, which are English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Flemish, +German, and Latin—a remarkable complement, as very few are more than +hexaglot.</p> + +<p>But these helps were of course outside the schoolroom, and were called +into requisition chiefly by individuals whose vocations took them abroad, +or rendered an acquaintance with foreign terms more or less imperative; +and undoubtedly our extensive mercantile and diplomatic relations with all +parts of the world made this class of supplementary instruction a +livelihood for a very numerous body of teachers.</p> + +<p>Perhaps of all the philological undertakings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> of the kind, the most +singular was that of Augustine Spalding, a merchant of London, who in 1614 +published a translation of some dialogues in the Malay dialect, from a +book compiled by Arthusius of Dantzic in Latin, Malayan, and Malagassy; +and he informs us that his object was to serve those who might have +occasion to travel to the East Indies.</p> + + +<p><br />II. Shakespear, in his conception of <span class="smcap">Holofernes</span> in “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” +is supposed to have taken hints from one of the foreigners who settled in +London in his time as teachers of languages, the celebrated <span class="smcap">John Florio</span>, +who is best known as the first English translator of Montaigne, but who +produced a good deal of useful professional work, and became intimate with +many of the literary men of his day. We cannot be absolutely sure that +Florio sat for Holofernes; but at any rate the dramatist has depicted in +that character in a most inimitable style the priggish mannerist, as he +knew and saw him.</p> + +<p>The City of London itself, with all its great industrial benefactions, +abounded with private schools and with tutors for special objects.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> Some +of them were authors, not only of school-books for the use of their own +pupils, but of translations from the classics and from foreign writers; +and they had their quarters in localities long since abandoned to other +occupations, such as Bow Lane, Mugwell or Monkwell Street, Lothbury +Garden, and St. Paul’s Churchyard, where accommodation was once readily +procurable at rents commensurate with their resources. Some of these men +had originally presided over similar establishments in the provinces, and +had come up to town, no doubt, from ambitious motives.</p> + +<p>Two of them, in Primers which they published in 1682 and 1688, when such +distinctions were important, call their volumes the <i>Protestant School</i> +and the <i>Protestant Schoolmaster</i>, in order to reassure parents, who +distrusted Papists and Jacobites. A few years before, Nathaniel Strong, +dating from the Hand and Pen, in Red-Cross Alley, on Great Tower Hill, +launched what he somewhat unguardedly christened <i>The Perfect +Schoolmaster</i>. This part of the metropolis was at that time rather thickly +sown with teachers of all kinds; as you drew nearer to Wapping, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> +schools of geography and navigation became more conspicuous. It was about +the period when Mr. Secretary Pepys was residing in Hart Street.</p> + +<p>In connection with these private schools on the east side of London, for +the special advantage of those who desired to embark on a sea-faring, +naval, military, or other technical career, there is a very characteristic +and suggestive advertisement by one John Holwell at the end of an +astrological tract published by him in 1683, where he states that he +professes and teaches at his house on the east side of Spitalfields, +opposite Dorset Street, next door to a glazier’s, not merely such matters +as arithmetic, geography, trigonometry, navigation, astronomy, dialling, +gauging, surveying, fortification, and gunnery, but <span class="smcap">Astrology</span> <i>in all its +parts</i>; which appears to be an uncustomary combination, and to bespeak a +separate class or department.</p> + +<p>Astrology, which was a sort of outgrowth and development from the judicial +astronomy of the early Oxford schoolmen, had been a source of controversy +since the time of Elizabeth, but had gained a footing in the following +century through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> the exertions of several indefatigable advocates and +writers, of whom William Lilly, John Partridge, and John Gadbury were the +most eminent and influential. Lilly, during the Civil War, is said to have +been consulted by both political parties; and he published a small library +of pamphlets professing to see into futurity.</p> + + +<p><br />III. There was a host of rival authors, some bringing general treatises in +their hand, others special branches of the subject handled in a new +fashion, from all parts of the kingdom to the London publishing firms. Dr. +Walker, head-master of King Edward the Sixth’s Grammar School at Louth in +Lincolnshire, completed his monograph on Particles in 1655; it is the only +work by which he is at present remembered; and it occasioned the joke that +his epitaph should be: <i>Here lie Walker’s Particles</i>.</p> + +<p>But even <span class="smcap">Milton</span> could not desist from entering into the competition, and, +two years after the appearance of <i>Paradise Lost</i>, when the writer was, of +course, sufficiently well known both as a political controversialist and a +poet, yet scarcely so famous as he became and remains, came out a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> little +volume called <i>Accidence Commenc’d Grammar</i>, of which the main object was +to reduce into an English digest the Latin <i>Accidence and Grammar</i>, by +which the illustrious writer declared and complained that ten years of an +ordinary life were consumed.</p> + +<p>But advocates of particular theories had a very slender chance of success, +even where their promoters were persons so distinguished as Ben Jonson and +Milton, unless they possessed some adventitious interest or appealed to +popular sentiment.</p> + +<p><i>A Little Book for Little Children</i>, by Thomas White, minister of the +Gospel, had an astonishing run, for instance; there were at least a dozen +editions; but it was embellished with choice woodcuts of the Catnach +school, and enlivened by a string of stories which, if they are not vapid +and silly, are simply outrageous and revolting. The sole redeeming feature +is, that among the alphabets occurs what is sometimes called “Tom Thumb’s +Alphabet,”—“A was an Archer, and shot at a Frog,”—which is not found in +the earlier primers, so far as I know, and may have been specially written +by White or for him.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>But the numerous experimental essays of ambitious schoolmasters and other +friends to the cause of learning which found their way into type at +various times, were, as a rule, speedily consigned to oblivion; the +production of a successful school-book was a task demanding a rare union +of tact in structure with influence in initiative quarters; and Lily’s +Primer, itself based on the labours of his predecessors, was generally +adopted by the endowed schools throughout England, Wales and Scotland at +first, and indeed till somewhere in the early years of the eighteenth +century, with some modifications of detail and spelling, but at last in +the form of the Eton or the Westminster Grammar, which Carlisle reports in +1818 as in almost universal use in this country. The exceptions which he +names were then very few, and we see that they were nearly always in +favour of some text-book introduced by local agency.</p> + +<p>This was the case at Reading, where it appears that the system of teaching +was founded on those of Westminster, Eton, and Winchester. At Aylesbury, +Owen’s <i>Latin Grammar</i> and the Eton Greek Grammar used to be employed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> At +Bodmin, Valpy’s <i>Greek Grammar</i>, and at Faversham, Lily’s <i>Latin Primer</i>, +edited by Ward, were preferred. At some minor schools, where a boy was +intended for any of the great foundations, special books were placed in +his hands to facilitate preparation.</p> + +<p>But the course of instruction at some of these institutions, outside the +elementary stage, was remarkably liberal and extensive, and enabled a boy +of ability to ground himself, at all events, very fairly in the Greek and +Roman classics. This was, it must be borne in mind, however, the dawn of a +new era—the first quarter of the nineteenth century.</p> + +<p>A class of men who influentially helped to carry on the succession of +school-books and the slower process of amendment were the private tutors +in noble or distinguished families, who, when their services were no +longer required, if they did not obtain immediate preferment, received +pupils or opened proprietary establishments. They were, for the most part, +university graduates and persons of fair attainments, who were glad enough +to introduce into print, with a double eye to their own scholars and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> +public, the system or theory with which they had started, and which in +their hands underwent, perhaps, certain modifications.</p> + +<p>Matthias Prideaux, of Exeter College, Oxford, and A. Lane, M.A., were at +the outset of their careers retainers of this kind in the great Devonshire +family of Reynell. The former signalised himself by the <i>Introduction to +History</i>, which, whatever our verdict upon it may be, was a highly +successful venture, and, after serving its original purpose as a +class-book for his private pupils, the sons of Sir Thomas Reynell, was +printed and held the market for many years. Lane, who was a man of ability +and intelligence, makes his patron, Sir Richard Reynell, Lord Chief +Justice of Ireland, share with him the credit of his <i>Rational and Speedy +Method of attaining to the Latin Tongue</i>, 1695, which he had been +encouraged by Sir Richard to pursue with young Reynell, a boy of eight, +and which formed, no doubt, the basis of his system when he embarked on +tuition as a career. He presided at first over the free school at +Leominster, but subsequently set up for himself at Mile End Green, where +he would be at fuller liberty to follow his own bent.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>Lane desires us to believe that the progress made by his young pupil, +while he was under his charge, was little less than miraculous; but an +earlier writer, Christopher Syms, in his <i>Introduction to the Art of +Teaching the Latin Speech</i>, 1634, gives hope to the dullest boy that, by +the use of his method, he may acquire it in four years.</p> + +<p>From the sixteenth century downward, there seems to have been a succession +of competitors to public favour and support in this, as in every other, +department of activity; and among the whole crowd of aspirants there was +not one who succeeded in discovering the true principles of the art till +our own time.</p> + + +<p><br />IV. The absence of newspapers or other ready means of communication +necessitated a resort to a system of advertising educational +establishments through the medium of broadsides, in which were set forth +the advantages of particular institutions and the branches of knowledge in +which instruction was to be had there. As early as 1562, Humphrey Baker, +of London, published an arithmetical work entitled <i>The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> Wellspring of +Sciences</i>, which was frequently reprinted both in his lifetime and after +his decease; but he was a teacher of the art, as well as a writer upon it, +and there is a printed sheet announcing his arrangements for receiving +pupils, and giving lessons in that and various other subjects. For, as the +terms of the document, herewith annexed, shew, Baker had in his employment +other gentlemen, who assisted him in his scholastic labours:—</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“Such as are desirous, eyther themselves to learne, or to have theyr +children or servants instructed in any of these Arts and Faculties heere +under named: It may please them to repayre unto the house of <i>Humfry +Baker</i>, dwelling on the North side of the Royall Exchange, next adjoyning +to the signe of the shippe. Where they shall fynde the Professors of the +said Artes, &c. Readie to doe their diligent endevours for a reasonable +consideration. Also if any be minded to have their children boorded at the +said house, for the speedier expedition of their learning, they shall be +well and reasonably used, to theyr contentation.... The Arts and Faculties +to be taught are these, ... God save the Queene.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>The case of Baker merely stands alone because we do not happen to be in +possession of any similar contemporary testimony. But schoolmasters who +resided at their own private houses found it, of course, indispensable to +adopt some method or other of making their professional whereabouts known, +as we find Peter Bales, the Elizabethan calligraphist, and author of the +<i>Writing School-master</i>, 1590, notifying, at the foot of the title to his +book, that it was to be sold at his house in the upper end of the Old +Bailey, “where he teacheth the said Arts.” Bales probably rented the +house, and underlet such portions as he did not require; for at the end of +Ripley’s <i>Compound of Alchemy</i>, 1591, Rabbards, the translator, asks those +who had any corrections to suggest in the text to send them to him at the +house of Peter Bales.</p> + +<p>Preceptors naturally congregated near the centre of mercantile life.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p> +<h2>XI.</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang">Proposed University of London in 1647—The <i>Museum Minervæ</i> at Bethnal +Green—Its catholic character and liberal +programme—Calligraphy—Shorthand—Bright’s system patented in +1588—Education in the provinces—The old school at +Manchester—Shakespear’s <i>Sir Hugh Evans</i> and <i>Holofernes</i>—William +Hazlitt’s account of his Shropshire school in 1788.</p></div> + + +<p><br />I. It is a fact, probably within the knowledge of very few, that two +hundred years and more before the actual establishment of the University +of London, a project for such an institution was mooted by an anonymous +pamphleteer, who may be considered as a kind of pioneer, preceding the +Benthams and Broughams.</p> + +<p>I hold in my hand <i>Motives Grounded upon the Word of God, and upon Honour, +Profit, and Pleasure for the present Founding an University in the +Metropolis, London</i>, 1647. It purports to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> be the work of “a true Lover of +his Nation, and especially of the said City.”</p> + +<p>The lines and object in this piece are purely clerical. The author +maintains the insufficiency of the two existing Universities and the +College in Ireland to rear as many “sons of the Prophets”—an euphemism +for parsons—to attend upon the spiritual needs of the English and the +Londoners.</p> + +<p>He puts down on paper statistics of the number of scholars at Oxford and +Cambridge, and he argues that if the total were much larger—10,000 +instead of 5900—there would be no means of raising the 20,000 preachers +necessary in his view to carry on the business of religion. He pleads the +fall of Episcopacy in support of his scheme, as “we cannot hope,” he says, +“that so many will apply their studies to Divinity, and therefore have the +greater need to maintain the more poor scholars at our Universities,” or, +in other words, the absence of the prizes in the lottery had taken the +best men out of the market. In fact, the writer himself does not shrink +altogether from presenting the commercial side of the question, for he +observes:—“Without injury<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> unto any, an University in London would +increase London’s Trading, and inrich London, as the Scholars do Cambridge +and Oxford, where how many poor people also are benefited by the Colleges, +yea, the countries round about them.”</p> + +<p>So far, so good; but he, in the very next paragraph, strikes a chord which +jars upon the ear. We see that he is a partisan of that theory which +flourished here down to our own day, and which contributed so powerfully +to retard and cripple our scholastic and academical studies. Hear what he +says: “If here in London there be a College, in which <i>nothing but Latin</i> +shall be spoken, and your children put into it, and from ten years old to +twelve hear no other Language, in those two years they will be able to +speak as good Latin as they do English, and as readily. The Roman children +learned Latin as ours do English...;” and so he goes on as to Greek, +Hebrew, Italian, French, and Spanish.</p> + +<p>The sole point here, in our modern estimation, is the admission of the +three living languages into the curriculum, in order to qualify the +students in later life to make themselves understood abroad either as +merchants or as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> diplomatists. But here he was before his time. Nothing of +the kind was to be attempted in England for generations. For generations +Englishmen were to be instructed only in the dead tongues, and were to +have not an English, but a Latin Grammar put into their hands age after +age.</p> + +<p>He talks about the Roman youth learning Latin as we do English; but he +failed, perhaps, to perceive that they did not learn British or Gaulish as +we do Latin. His text is wealthy in Scriptural quotations and parallels; +but whatever one may think of his notions regarding the details and +advantages of such a plan, this unnamed “true Lover of his Nation” is +entitled, at any rate, to the credit and distinction of having been +apparently the first to suggest what we have now before us in the shape of +an accomplished fact.</p> + +<p>It is not too much to assert, probably, that if the appearance of this +tract had been followed by the execution of the ideas enunciated in it, +the force of opinion would by this time have spared very little of the +work of the original promoters.</p> + + +<p><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>II. The <i>Musæum Minervæ</i>, +instituted by Sir Balthazar Gerbier d’Ouvilly at +Bethnal Green in 1635, presents a thorough contrast to those philanthropic +or eleemosynary institutions of which I have lately spoken, inasmuch as it +was a novel and costly apparatus of Continental origin, calculated only +for the children of rich persons and for those who desired to complete +themselves in various accomplishments. Lectures were delivered on several +subjects, and printed afterwards for circulation; but the enterprise did +not succeed, and the outbreak of the Civil War probably sealed its doom. +Yet as late as 1649 the management, or the founder himself, issued a +prospectus of the different branches of learning and culture which were +taught at this establishment. The language of this document, which is +curious enough to append entire, portends the approaching collapse, and +reads like a final appeal to public spirit and patronage:—</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“To all Fathers of NOBLE FAMILIES and Lovers of VERTUE: Sir Balthazar +Gerbier desires once more that the Publique may be pleased to take notice +of his great labours and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> indeavours by the Erection of an Academy on +Bednall Green without Aldgate. To teach <i>Hebrew</i>, <i>Greek</i>, <i>Latine</i>, +<i>French</i>, <i>Italian</i>, <i>Spanish</i>, <i>High Dutch</i>, and <i>Low Dutch</i>, both +Ancient and Modern <i>Histories</i>, joyntly with the Constitutions and +Governments of the most famous <i>Empires</i> and <i>Dominions</i> in the World, the +true Naturall and Experimentall <i>Philosophy</i>, the <i>Mathematicks</i>, +<i>Arithmetick</i>, and the keeping <i>Bookes of Accounts</i> by <i>Creditor</i> and +<i>Debitor</i>. All excellent <i>Handwriting, Geometrie, Cosmography, Geography, +Perspective, Architecture, Secret Motions of Scenes, Fortifications, the +besieging & Defending of Places, Fire-Works, Marches of Armies, Ordering +of Battailes, Fencing, Vaulting, Riding the Great Horse, Musick, Playing +on all sorts of Instruments, Dancing, Drawing, Painting, Limning, and +Carving, &c.</i>”</p> + +<p>It is at once apparent that the programme of the Bethnal Green Academy was +too ambitious and expensive to suit moderate careers and limited +resources. Perhaps if it had been so fortunate as to outlive the +Restoration it might have proved a success, as the range was sufficiently +capacious to accommodate those who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> contented themselves with ordinary +school or college routine; those who preferred a study of the sciences and +arts; and, again, such as desired a special professional training.</p> + +<p>The establishment of the <i>Musæum</i> in 1635 had been inaugurated by a +dramatic performance, which the Court honoured with its presence; and in +the following year the <i>Constitutions</i>, as they are called, were printed.</p> + +<p>These give, but of course with more detail, the particulars which present +themselves in the advertisement just noticed; and they also shew that +there was a preparatory school attached to the <i>Musæum</i>, from which the +pupils might be drafted into the higher one.</p> + +<p>The subjects taught exhibit a diversity of character and a width of +sympathy which are powerfully at variance with the meagre programmes of +the old-fashioned public foundations. They comprised Heraldry, +Conveyancing, Common Law, Antiquities (including Numismatics), +Agriculture, Arithmetic, Architecture, Fortification, Geography, +Languages, and Elocution, with many more matters.</p> + +<p>It is worth remarking that now for the first<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> time the German tongue was +included in the list of those which were recommended and set down for +study, while the Dutch also occurs in the list. Elocution or “the art of +well-speaking,” as it is termed, was also a novel feature; and, in point +of fact, Gerbier, who had travelled much abroad and observed the superior +educational systems of foreign countries, sought to introduce here the +same catholic and liberal spirit, instead of the imperfect and cramped +course of studies with which Englishmen were forced to be contented, and +which had scarcely emerged from mediæval simplicity and crudity.</p> + +<p>The <i>Musæum Minervæ</i>, of which a Shropshire gentleman, Sir Francis +Kinaston, of Oteley, was the first Regent, collapsed about 1650; but its +example and influence survived, and it was the forerunner of a broader and +more enlightened educational policy and of the modern type of training +colleges, into which even those ancient endowed schools which remain have +been compelled by the force of public opinion, one by one, to resolve +themselves.</p> + +<p>These Academies present a very powerful contrast to the archaic school in +the multiplicity of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> acquirements, and in the breadth or variety of +culture which they afforded and encouraged. They betoken a development of +social wants and refinements, and the force of influences received from +surrounding countries. It was a supply which responded to a demand; and it +helped to create or extend a field of literary industry in the form of +technical publications dealing with the principal subjects, which the +<i>Musæum Minervæ</i> and other analogous institutions included in their +scheme. To the treatises on Riding, Swimming, Drawing, Writing, and a few +other arts were added Manuals for the use of those who studied, at the +College or under private instructors, the sciences of Fencing, Vaulting, +Small Sword Exercise, Fortification, and the accomplishments specified in +the programme of the Minerva Museum. A constant succession of text-books +for pupils in nearly all these branches of a polite education kept the +makers and the vendors of them busy from the age of Elizabeth downward; +and long lists might be furnished of contributions to every department, +both by professional experts and by amateurs of practical experience.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>Ladies, who desired to learn anything special in excess of the narrow +educational routine then deemed sufficient for the call of their sex, +depended on private tutors, who usually waited upon them at their own +homes. Thomas Greeting taught Mrs. Pepys the flageolet, for example, and +the same lady had lessons in drawing from Alexander Browne, who made the +diarist angry at first, because he was asked by Mrs. Pepys to stay dinner +sometimes, and to sit at table with her husband.</p> + +<p>The importance of calligraphy was recognised long before the date of any +literary monuments of its development. The earliest professor of the art +who appeared in print among us was a Frenchman, Jean de Beauchesne, who +resided in Blackfriars, and published in 1570 his writing-book, in which +he affords specimens of all the usual hands, English and French secretary, +Italian, Chancery, and Court. Even the extant productions of this class, +including those of the immortal Cocker, would fill a considerable space in +a bookcase; and many belonged to the calling without the parade of +authorship, while of such fugitive performances the remains are apt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> to be +incomplete, and to present us with a list of names far from exhaustive.</p> + +<p>In his “Pen’s Triumph,” 1660, Cocker, who is better remembered as an +author on arithmetic, perhaps for no farther reason than the force of the +adage, but who was also a lexicographer and a voluminous producer of +writing-books, instructs his pupils and the public not merely in all the +hands at that time employed for various objects, but how “to write with +gold,” which was, of course, no novelty, but had been more in vogue on the +Continent than here.</p> + +<p>Entire works were executed in autograph MS. by experts, both in England +and abroad, for the purpose of presentation to noble or royal personages; +and Ballard gives a copious account of a lady, named Esther Inglis, who, +in the early portion of the seventeenth century, signalised her talent and +ingenuity in this way. Her work was remarkable for the minuteness and +exquisite delicacy of its characters; but nearly all the professional +writing-masters introduced into their copybooks bold and intricate +designs, and figures of animals, for the sake of rendering the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> volumes +more attractive, and illustrating the capabilities of the goose-quill.</p> + +<p>Among our foremost literary celebrities, Shakespear wrote the Court hand, +judging from his signature, and Bacon and Ben Jonson the Italian.</p> + +<p>Charactery, or the art of shorthand, was introduced into the Nonconformist +schools as a taught subject for the sake of enabling youths or others to +take notes of sermons and lectures; and some of the discourses from the +pulpit in the time of Elizabeth purport to have been printed from +shorthand notes. Dr. Bright, who was the writer of a work on Melancholy +long antecedent to Burton’s, procured an exclusive right in 1588 to +publish a system which he had invented for this purpose, and which we find +described by him as “an art of short, swift, and secret writing.” He set +in motion an idea which met with such numerous imitators and improvers, +that a catalogue of the publications on Tachygraphy down to the present +date forms a volume of respectable dimensions. Bright was nearly a century +before the more celebrated Rich, who flourished about the Restoration of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> +the Stuarts, and whose cypher was adopted by Pepys in the composition of +his diary.</p> + + +<p><br />III. The public schools were not the first in emulating and continuing the +policy which Gerbier had laboured so hard and so long to establish. On a +less expensive and ostentatious scale certain private academies adopted +the idea of supplementing the subjects taught in the great foundations by +some, at least, of the manly or elegant arts which had figured in the old +Bethnal Green prospectus.</p> + +<p>At the end of a Musical Entertainment, prepared in 1676 for recitation by +some school-boys in the presence of certain persons of quality, the master +favours us with some particulars of the subjects which pupils might take +up in his establishment, and it is also inferable that the hours of study +extended to at least five o’clock in the evening. He says in a kind of +postscript to the printed tract:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>“The Arts and Sciences taught and practis’d in the Academy are these.</p> + +<p class="blockquot"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span><i>All sorts of Instruments, Singing and Dancing.<br /> +French and Italian.<br /> +The Mathematicks.<br /> +Grammar, Writing and Arithmetick.<br /> +Painting and Drawing.<br /> +Fencing, Vaulting and Wrastling.</i>”</p></div> + +<p>This was an unusually liberal choice, and the Academy was evidently one +designed more particularly for the children of noble or wealthy people. He +adds:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>“Or any young Gentleman design’d for Travel, there are persons of several +Nations fit to instruct him in any Language.</p> + +<p>“Likewise any one that hath a desire to have any New Songs or Tunes, may +be furnish’d by the same Person that serves his Majesty in the same +Imployment.”</p></div> + +<p>This is altogether worth attention. It is a pity that we cannot arrive at +the name or locality of the college where all these advantages and +temptations (in the way of buying your Songs of the King’s own purveyor) +were held out to the aspiring gentry of two centuries ago.</p> + + +<p><br />IV. In all the great provincial centres there were, of course, educational +institutes supported<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> by local or royal endowment; and in all these the +method of teaching and general policy followed that pursued in the +metropolis, except that, as we shall presently see, some of the +establishments in the country trod in the footsteps of the Academy just +described more promptly and more cordially than St. Paul’s or Merchant +Taylors’, which modified their constitutions only to save themselves from +ruin.</p> + +<p>Of the seventeenth-century school at Manchester we gain an accidental +glimpse and notion from the <i>Delectus of Latin Phrases</i> which was prepared +for use there by a former scholar, Thomas Bracebridge. It is a MS. volume +of no interest or moment, unless it is locally and personally regarded; +but one is apt to cherish every added fraction of light as to the state of +education in the Midlands in former days; and this <i>Delectus</i> carries us +back precisely to the Restoration, so far as its mere date is concerned, +but furnishes a fair idea of the sort of phrase-book which a Manchester +teacher of 1660 thought suitable for the boys of his old school.</p> + +<p>In Sir Hugh Evans, the Welsh parson and schoolmaster, Shakespear has not +improbably<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> preserved to us some fragmentary reminiscences of his own +school-days at Stratford. The probation through which William Page is put +by Sir Hugh at his mother’s instance might very well be a literal or close +transcript from actual experience. With what mingled feelings the poet +must have contemplated a class of men to whom such minds as his have ever +owed so little!</p> + +<p>Both Sir Hugh and the Reverend Doctor Primrose may be accepted as +provincial types of the clerical preceptor, as they seemed to two +excellent observers in their respective centuries. We easily remark the +difference between them and such a creation as Holofernes.</p> + +<p>The course of studies followed in the rural districts of England at a +later period is illustrated by a letter from Hazlitt, the essayist, to his +elder brother, the miniature-painter, when the former was attending a +school at Wem in Shropshire in 1788. He was at that time ten years old. +After stating that he had been learning to draw, he proceeds:—“Next +Monday I shall begin to read Ovid’s <i>Metamorphoses</i> and Eutropius.... I +began to cypher a fortnight after Christmas,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> and shall go into the rule +of three next week.... I shall go through the whole cyphering book this +summer, and then I am to learn Euclid. We go to school at nine every +morning. Three boys begin by reading the Bible. Then I and two others show +our exercises. We then read the Speaker [by Enfield]. Then we all set +about our lessons.... At eleven we write and cypher. In the afternoon we +stand for places at spelling, and I am almost always first.... I shall go +to dancing this month.”</p> + +<p>The glimpse which we here obtain of a small private seminary in a +Shropshire village a hundred years ago affords a not unfavourable notion +of the standard of provincial education. From another letter of Hazlitt a +little later on (1790) it appears that the celebrated Dr. Lempriére, whose +name the lad transformed into Dolounghpryée, was a visitor at the school; +but he had not yet produced his Dictionary, of which the first edition was +in 1792. It was still in use at Merchant Taylors’ in 1850.</p> + +<p>The proprietary establishments for boys, which spread themselves by +degrees over the land, formed a valuable succedaneum to the Edward<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> and +other endowed schools, and useful nurseries for pupils who aimed at more +than elementary learning. But they at the same time proved a source of +emulation and material improvement; and during the last fifty years the +distance between the two systems has sensibly decreased.</p> + +<p>The great charities and other ancient foundations like St. Paul’s, +Merchant Taylors’, Eton, Harrow, have only maintained their relative +superiority by reforming and extending their prospectus; and there is +scarcely a country town at the present moment without one or more private +seminaries, where a better education is given than was within the reach of +our grandfathers at any of the large public schools of the metropolis.</p> + +<p>Even in the time of Carlisle, who wrote in 1818, some of the principal +institutions in the provinces were treading closely on the heels of +Christ’s Hospital and other endowments, and one or two, as at Dorchester, +at Abingdon, and at Witton near Chester, seem to have been on a more +liberal and enlightened footing.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p> +<h2>XII.</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang">Educational condition of <span class="smcap">Scotland</span>—Beneficial influence of Knox and +his supporters—Buchanan and other early writers on grammar—Thomas +Ruddiman and his important contribution to the spread of elementary +teaching—Decline of culture during the Civil War.</p></div> + + +<p><br />I. When we turn to Scotland, we find the compendium of the Grammar of +Ælius Donatus, of which I have already furnished some account, in use +there from time almost immemorial. It appears that the Scotish seminaries +adopted this favourite class-book in common with those of England at least +as far back as the time of Andrew of Wyntown, who was nearly contemporary +with Langland and Chaucer. In his <i>Original Chronicle of Scotland</i> he +speaks of the Barnys (bairns) lering Donate at their beginning of Grammar; +which is a very interesting and important piece of testimony in its way, +since<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> there is so little to enable us to form an opinion of the rise and +growth of elementary learning in North Britain, although there may be just +sufficient light cast incidentally or indirectly on the subject to lead us +to judge that Scotland, if not indeed the North generally, was in this +respect, as in others, far behind the Southern English.</p> + +<p>In Scotland, the influence of Knox and his supporters favoured the early +institution of parochial schools throughout the country, where a class and +range of instruction prevailed which, combined with native religious +tendencies, had the effect of increasing, in comparison with England, the +average of educated intelligence without developing much breadth of +thought or much intellectual refinement.</p> + +<p>The aims of the parish schools are humble, and beyond its limited +possibilities there are its impediments and its snares. In addition to +schools, the friends of education in the North, as early as the reign of +William III., commenced an agitation for the establishment of parochial +libraries even in the Highlands. The movement was set on foot by certain +ministers of the Presbyterian Church, and its basis and scope<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> would have +been narrow enough if the idea had been realised. But nothing beyond a +discussion and some correspondence seems to have resulted at the moment.</p> + +<p>Nor do we, even as time goes on, find much information obtainable on this +part of the subject. But both the systems and the books employed were for +some centuries of foreign origin; and the grammatical publications of an +Aberdeen man, John Vaus, whose name seems to be the earliest on the roll +of native authors, were, so far as we at present know, without exception +published, as well as written, in France, to which Scotland perhaps owed, +among other matters, her adoption of the Continental law of Latin +pronunciation.</p> + +<p>Vaus grounded his <i>Rudiments</i>, printed at Paris repeatedly about 1520, on +the old <i>Doctrinale</i> of Alexander Gallus, which bespeaks a backwardness of +information, since at this date Lily’s Grammar was already in use in the +South, and even the systems of Whittinton and the other disciples of the +Magdalen School method had been almost completely discarded there, except, +perhaps, as occasional auxiliaries.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>At a later period, the eminent Scotsman Buchanan wrote his little work on +Prosody, and two others of his countrymen, Andrew Symson and James +Carmichael, reduced to a simpler plan the principles of elementary +learning and the outlines of etymology.</p> + +<p>The first explicit attempt to produce a grammar in Scotland for the +special use of that country is due, however, to Alexander Hume, who is +known to us not only as an educational reformer, but as a philological +student. His <i>New Grammar for the Use of the Scotish Youth</i>, 1612, was a +popular compendium founded on Lily; it seems to have met with limited and +brief acceptance, and his tract on the <i>Orthography and Congruity of the +British Tongue</i>, which was a literary essay intended rather for the closet +(to use the old-fashioned parlance), remained till lately in MS.</p> + + +<p><br />II. But books of instruction and for employment in schools continued, down +to the days of <span class="smcap">Thomas Ruddiman</span>, to be at once scarce and unsatisfactory, +insomuch that, side by side with these and other unrecovered productions, +it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> found possible and convenient to keep in print the old text-books +of Stanbridge, of which editions continued to be issued at intervals both +here and in England down to the middle of the seventeenth century.</p> + +<p>Ruddiman may be considered as the apostle of scholastic education and +literature in Scotland; and as he was not born till 1674, this amounts to +a proposition that his country was at least two centuries behind England +in knowledge and culture. Even Ruddiman was brought up at the parish +school, and was, moreover, for some time a parochial teacher. But, partly +by force of character and partly by good fortune, he extricated himself +from his early associations, and became the Lily of the North. His +<i>Rudiments of Grammar</i> were published in 1714, when he was already in +middle life; they were little more than the St. Paul’s Primer calculated +for the meridian of Edinburgh; but they proved eminently successful, and +encouraged him to proceed with that more important philological enterprise +the <i>Institutions of Latin Grammar</i>, which, like the disquisition of +Alexander Hume recently <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>mentioned, was an ordinary unprofessional piece +of authorship.</p> + +<p>But, notwithstanding the useful labours of Ruddiman, his country, from +political and other agencies, remained yet for a considerable length of +time in a very stagnant condition, nor had any sensible improvement been +achieved in the educational machinery of that portion of the empire within +the recollection of those still living. Mental training and culture, as +they are now understood, are the growth of the last half century. But the +cost of such accomplishments as were taught at Glasgow, Aberdeen, and St. +Andrews was lower than in England, and the standard higher than in +Ireland; and from both countries pupils were often sent in former days to +complete their education, where their parents could not have afforded the +means to maintain them at Oxford or Cambridge. From a hundred to a hundred +and thirty years since, the fees at Glasgow University did not exceed £20 +a year, and a frugal lad found seven or eight shillings a week sufficient +for his board and lodging.</p> + + +<p><br />III. Many causes contributed, toward the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> middle of the seventeenth +century, to favour the disorganisation and decay of scholastic learning; +but, above all, the outbreak of the Civil War, and the consequent +disorder, depression, and inquietude, seem to have reduced the educational +standard, and to have thrown the task of instruction, in a great number of +cases, into the hands of the clergy, from the want of funds or the lack of +inclination to support the former lay-teachers. The acute political +crisis, which lasted without interruption from 1640 to the commencement of +the Protectorate in 1653, affected even the ancient academical and civic +endowments; and the two Universities, the noble foundations of Edward VI., +and the public seminaries instituted in London and other great centres by +private munificence, suffered a common paralysis.</p> + +<p>The alliance between the Church and the schools was one formed or +developed at a period of exceptional difficulty and pressure; but even +when the immediate necessity for such a bond existed no longer, and +affairs in England had returned to their normal state, the clergy saw too +clearly the importance of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> the hold which they had gained on the national +training and thought to allow education to pass back, farther than was +avoidable, under lay control.</p> + +<p>In the time of the Commonwealth, and when Cromwell assumed the supreme +authority, there were all over the country, throughout England and Wales, +men in holy orders and in the enjoyment of benefices who combined with +their sacerdotal functions, as many do still, the duties of schoolmasters +and lecturers. Doubtless, among them there were some fairly qualified for +the trust which they received and undertook; but the majority is alleged, +in an authentic official document before me of 1654, to have been far +otherwise. This State-paper is called “An Ordinance for the Ejection of +Scandalous, Ignorant, and Insufficient Ministers and Schoolmasters,” and +was published in the autumn of the year above named.</p> + +<p>Two singular features it unquestionably possesses: the intimate +association between the parson and the pedagogue, and the striking picture +which it presents to our view of the lax and profligate condition of the +class which Cromwell<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> and his advisers saw thus clothed with the twofold +responsibility of mental and spiritual tuition.</p> + +<p>The points on which the Commissioners of the Protectoral Government were +authorised to inform themselves, and to exercise the discretion vested in +them by the ordinance, reveal a very unsatisfactory and corrupt state of +things, and the existence of abuses for which neither the Civil War nor +the Republican administration can be thought to have been answerable. +There is scarcely a vice or irregularity which is not named or implied in +the instructions delivered to the Commission; and the encouragement of +“Whitson-ales, Wakes, Morris-Dances, Maypoles, Stage-plays, or such like +licentious practices,” strikes one as relatively a very venial offence +against good morals and professional decorum. But the antipathy to sports +and dramatic exhibitions was an inheritance from the more rigid Puritans, +and the Articles of Inquiry in the archidiaconal visitations of this +period never forgot such profane infringements of clerical morality.</p> + +<p>The persons who were selected to sit on these committees for the several +urban and provincial districts included many God-fearers of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>prevailing type; but at the same time the choice was evidently made with +some judgment and impartiality, and the printed lists exhibit a notable +proportion of divines and others not likely to sanction or recommend too +violent a course.</p> + +<p>In fact, so considerate was the temper of the Administration itself, that +an express proviso was inserted in the ejecting ordinance, by which some +of the stipend of the cure was to be set apart, where the minister and +schoolmaster was judged incompetent, for the support of his family.</p> + +<p>Samuel Harmar, in his <i>Vox Populi, or Gloucestershire’s Desire</i>, 1642, +represents the want of proper maintenance for teachers, although many +persons of moderate resources were willing to contribute liberally to the +object; to the burden on families by reason of the gratuitous instruction +of children, who, if they were but in the way of earning even twopence a +day, might help themselves and their parents, whereas they wasted their +time in playing about the streets, and acquired the habit of swearing and +other immoral practices. The restriction of educational management, for +the most part, to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> clergy accounts for the dearth of literature +shedding real and valuable light on the condition of the young and the +state of schools in very early days; and Harmar’s pamphlet is principally +occupied with vapid theological ineptitudes. His main proposal was +excellent; it declared for the establishment of schoolmasters in every +parish throughout the country; but even this was merely what Knox and his +supporters had long before advocated, and partly accomplished, in +Scotland.</p> + +<p>There is a little volume by Richard Croft, Vicar of Stratford-on-Avon, +being a sermon preached by him at the opening of the Free School of +Feckenham in 1696, throughout the sixty-eight pages of which there is not +an iota worthy of citation, nor a hint serviceable to my inquiry. How +different it might have been, had a layman been the writer!</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p> +<h2>XIII.</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang">Female education—Women of quality taught at home—General illiteracy +of the sex—Strong clerical control—Ignorance of the rudiments of +knowledge among girls—Shakespear’s daughters—Goldsmith’s <i>Poems for +Young Ladies</i>—Rise of the Ladies’ School—Political importance of the training of women.</p></div> + + +<p><br />I. The neglect of female education in the United Kingdom down to a recent +date proceeded from an absence of any adequate or organisable machinery +for the purpose, and from the complete monopoly of learning by men in +early times. In Scotland this mischief was remedied to a certain extent +much sooner than in England, owing to the institution of Academies, where +both sexes received instruction under one roof from the same masters; and +this circumstance may help to explain the general superiority of the +Scots, within certain limits, to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> Southern Britons in this respect, +the better upbringing of the mother communicating itself to her children.</p> + +<p>Common academies for boys and girls were not wholly unknown in England, +however, but they were of very rare occurrence, and have now become still +rarer, as they barely exist at all except as dame-schools.</p> + +<p>Now-a-days, of course, the most elaborate and costly apparatus is provided +for the mental cultivation and training of girls of all ranks; and the +daughter of a citizen may acquire accomplishments which were long beyond +the reach of daughters of kings. Formerly the lower classes of females +remained as illiterate as the corresponding rank of men, and the studies +of the gentlewoman were superintended by her parents and her tutor or her +governess. But in the Middle Ages, and long after the revival of learning, +the only persons capable of conducting the education of a lady who had +emerged from the nursery and passed the rudimentary stage were +ecclesiastics; and the laymen who gradually qualified themselves for the +task, such as Ascham and Buchanan, were scholars<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> of a scarce type, who +had gained their proficiency in the gymnasia and universities of Italy, +Germany, or France. The Italian influence was doubtless the earliest, but +the German was the most powerful, and has proved the most lasting.</p> + +<p>In France from a very remote period the dame-school appears to have +existed in some measure and form, for a fourteenth-century sculpture, +already mentioned in the remarks on scholastic discipline, depicts an +establishment of this kind—a petty school for boys kept by a woman. If +there was any such thing among us, I have met with no record of it; but +the practice, from the early intimacy between those countries, would be +more apt to find its way first of all from the French into Scotland.</p> + +<p>To such as have had under their eyes the letters and other literary +monuments which reveal to us the condition of the more cultivated section +of the English female community in the old days, it seems superfluous to +insist on the strange ignorance of the <i>principia</i> of knowledge, and on +the fallow state of the intellectual faculties which these evidences +establish. The Paston<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> and Plumpton Correspondence, Mrs. Green’s <i>Letters +of Illustrious Ladies</i>, and Sir Henry Ellis’s three Series of Original +Letters, may perhaps be quoted as affording an insight into the present +aspect of the question before us; and I think that the most striking +proofs of the inattention to female culture in this country are to be +found in documents previous to the Reformation, when the influence brought +to bear on the sex was almost exclusively monastic or clerical.</p> + +<p>The great political and religious movement which Henry VIII. was enabled +by circumstances to carry through undoubtedly imparted a large share of +lay feeling and prejudice to the educational system; and this tendency was +promoted and strengthened during the short reign of Edward VI. by the +foundation of chartered schools throughout the kingdom for the instruction +of youth in grammar and other primordial matters.</p> + + +<p><br />II. But the progress thus made did not sensibly affect the other sex. +Girls still depended, as a rule, on the old methods and channels of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> +learning; the arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic formed the ordinary +routine and limit, unless an acquaintance with French, or even with +Italian, happened to be added as a special accomplishment. Very +occasionally a maiden of studious character was permitted to avail herself +of the tutor maintained at home for her brothers, as was the case of the +Honourable Mrs. North, a younger daughter of Lord North of Kirtling, who +learned Latin and Greek in this manner; and from Margaret Roper to Mrs. +Somerville, or indeed in the cases adduced by Ballard in his <i>Memoirs of +Learned Ladies</i>, there were from time to time even in the old days +splendid exceptions to the prevailing low level of female culture. But +under any circumstances, until the period arrived when ladies were +competent to undertake the tuition of ladies, all these matters +necessarily devolved, in the first place, on the mother, and finally on a +preceptor, who was necessarily a man, and most probably in holy orders. +His contribution to the development of character was exceedingly +preponderant, and was beyond doubt a most important factor in maintaining +and extending the power of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> Church, and indemnifying the clergy for +the direct political influence of which the Reformation dispossessed them.</p> + +<p>The Ladies’ School or College may be considered a product of the acute +political distempers which accompanied the Civil War. Mistress Bathsua +Makins, who had been governess to one of the daughters of Charles I.—the +Princess Elizabeth—set up, after the fall of the King, an establishment +at Putney, to which Evelyn mentions that he paid a visit in company with +some ladies on the 17th May 1649; but I find no reference to this +institution in Lysons. A similar case existed somewhat later at Highgate; +and the admirers of Charles and Mary Lamb, at least, do not require to be +told that in the little volume called “Mrs. Leicester’s School,” 1809, +there are some interesting hints, both historical and autobiographical, in +relation to the old-fashioned seminary at Amwell. But, as a rule, these +agents in our later civilisation and social refinement, important as they +were, have left behind them few, if any, traces of their existence and +management. They bred those who were content to become, in course of +time,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> the wives and mothers of England, and to study the arts of domestic +life. In such are centred the strength and glory of the country; but their +careers, like “the short and simple annals of the poor,” have escaped +literary commemoration.</p> + +<p>“A Gentleman of Cambridge,” as he styles himself on the title of an +English adaptation of the Abbé d’Ancourt’s <i>Lady’s Preceptor</i>, 1743, +defines the qualifications then thought necessary and adequate for a young +gentlewoman. He does not go beyond a thorough knowledge of English, an +acquaintance with French and Italian, a familiarity with arithmetic and +accounts, and the mastery of a good handwriting; and yet how few probably +reached this moderate standard a century and a half ago—nay, how few +reach it now!</p> + +<p>In the time of the early Stuarts, the training of girls in English country +towns, if it is to be augured from that of the Shakespears at Stratford, +even where the parents were in good circumstances and the father a man of +literary tastes and occupations, was still extremely primitive and scanty. +The poet’s elder daughter,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> Susanna, seems to have just contrived to +write, or rather print, her name; but Judith used a mark, and Mrs. Quiney, +whose son became Judith’s husband, did the same.</p> + +<p>Both the Quineys and the Shakespears were persons of substance and of +local consideration; and in this case, at any rate, the explanation seems +to be that such ignorance was usual, and did not prejudicially affect the +position and prospects of a gentlewoman.</p> + +<p>The institution in England of elementary schools for girls only dates back +to the neighbourhood of the Restoration; but the number of establishments +long remained, doubtless, very limited, and the scheme of instruction +equally narrow. The frontispiece to Anthony Huish’s <i>Key to the Grammar +School</i>, 1670, presents us with an interesting interior in the shape of a +girls’ school, where the mistress is seated at a desk surrounded by female +pupils.</p> + +<p>Goldsmith’s <i>Poems for Young Ladies</i>, “Devotional, Moral, and +Entertaining,” 1767, partly arose out of Dr. Fordyce’s <i>Sermons for Young +Women</i>. The editor assures his fair readers that the Muse in this case is +not a syren, but a friend;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> and there is plenty of the religious element +in the volume. But there are, on the other hand, extracts from Pope’s +<i>Homer</i>, stories from Ovid and Virgil, Addison’s <i>Letter from Italy</i>, and +a selection from Collins’s <i>Oriental Eclogues</i>. The source from which it +came was a guarantee that its pages would be agreeably and sensibly +leavened with matters not divine; it surpasses the average intellectual +nutriment provided for women a century ago. Dr. Goldsmith was a decided +improvement on Dr. Watts, and he could scarcely escape from being so, +whether he offered them his own poetical compositions, or, as in the +present case, merely exercised his judgment in selecting from the works of +others. No one can object to Pope’s <i>Messiah</i> or his <i>Universal Prayer</i>, +which constitute the prominent features in the devotional section, when +they are in such excellent company as Gay, Swift, and Thomson. But there +is nothing in this volume to have prevented the editor offering a copy to +either of the vicar’s daughters.</p> + +<p>The universal and unchanging aim of the ecclesiastical authority is +manifestly temporal, and Henry VIII. and his coadjutors, and their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> +immediate successors in the foundation of Protestantism, acted wisely in +making it part of their scheme to furnish the realm with public seminaries +based on an improved footing in the earliest endowed grammar schools, +which set the example to private individuals and corporate bodies.</p> + +<p>These schools, which, as we know, had been preceded—and doubtless +suggested too—by that at Magdalen College, Oxford, and others framed on a +humbler scale or (like the City of London and St. Paul’s) under different +auspices, opened the way to a partial secularisation of teaching +throughout England. The preceptors employed were more often than not +academical, unbeneficed graduates with a certain clerical bent; but the +Statutes laid down rules for the management of the Charity and for the +limitation of the subjects to be taught; and the scheme was assuredly at +the outset, and continued down to the last thirty or forty years—in fact, +within the recollection of the present writer—so narrow and imperfect, +that it supplied what would now be regarded as the mere groundwork of a +genteel education.</p> + + +<p><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>III. But a farther and still more important step toward the emancipation +of scholastic economy and discipline from Church control was taken when, +first in Scotland, and subsequently, and also in a more limited degree, in +England, after the union of the kingdoms, proprietary establishments were +opened for boys or girls only, or for boys and girls, where the religious +instruction, instead of being, as under the archaic conventual and Romish +system, the primary feature, became a mere item on the prospectus, like +Geography or History. This was the commencement of an entrance upon modern +lines, and struck a fatal blow at the monastic and academical ideas of +instruction, by widening the bias and range of studies, and liberating the +intellect from religious trammels.</p> + +<p>The success and multiplication of these new institutions obliged the old +endowments to reform themselves, and to meet the demands of the age; and +the pressure was augmented, of course, by the concurrent rise of large +public gymnasia of a novel stamp, as well as by the development of some of +the already existing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> institutions conformably to the great changes in +political and social life.</p> + +<p>The proprietary system, which had started by adopting, as a rule, the +mixed method, or rather by the reception of pupils of both sexes under the +same roof, was eventually, and, except so far as dame-schools were +concerned, finally modified in favour of the dual plan, and independent +colleges for young gentlemen and for young ladies were the result.</p> + +<p>In these latter the drift is certainly more and more lay; and as knowledge +and culture spread, and the influence and fruits of masculine thought make +themselves more and more appreciable, the Church in England will gradually +loosen its grasp of the national intellect, and will probably owe to the +higher education of women its collapse and downfall.</p> + +<p>The ladies of England have propped up the tottering edifice long enough, +and no one whose opinion is worth entertaining will lament the inevitable +issue. But whether the consequences of this vital movement will be +otherwise beneficial, it has scarcely yet, perhaps, been in active +operation a sufficient time to enable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> us to judge. If it involves the +sacrifice in any important measure of feminine refinement and dependence, +we shall be forced to confess that the help to be rendered by our +daughters and grand-daughters to the cause of intellectual enfranchisement +and victory will have been bought at a cruel price.</p> + +<p>As the old foundations discovered it to be imperative to comply with the +growing philosophical temper in order to enable them to exist side by side +with the improved types of school and teacher, so the successful conduct +of ladies’ colleges will become impossible in the future unless that +liberality of doctrine and sentiment in all matters connected with +theology which breathes around them and us is cordially recognised.</p> + +<p>A spirit of disaffection to clerical guidance and clerical imposts has for +some time shown itself in Great Britain among those who are becoming, in +the natural course of events, husbands, fathers, and ratepayers; the +revolt of the other sex has also commenced; and the wise initiative of the +Board School in excluding the Bible and Catechism from their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> programme +must be ultimately obeyed by every school in the three kingdoms.</p> + +<p>The Bible is for scholars, not for school-folk; and, as Jeremy Bentham +demonstrated nearly a century ago, the Catechism is trash.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p> +<h2>XIV.</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang">The Abacus or A. B. C.—Its construction and use—The printed A. B. +C.—The first Protestant one (1553)—Spelling-books—Anecdotes of the +A. B. C.—<i>Propria quæ Maribus</i> and <i>Johnny quæ Genus</i>—The Catechism and Primer.</p></div> + + +<p><br />I. The manner in which the earliest <i>Abaci</i> were constructed and applied +is precisely one of those points which, in the absence of specimens of +remote date and documentary information as to their form and use, we have +to elucidate, as far as possible, from casual allusions or internal +testimony. The most ancient woodcuts representing a school interior +display the method in which the master and pupils worked together; but +here the latter appear, as I have stated elsewhere, to reiterate what +their teacher reads from a book, or, in other words,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> the scene depicts a +later stage in the educational course.</p> + +<p>In the <i>Jests of Scogin</i>, a popular work of the time of Henry VIII., and +probably reliable as a faithful portraiture of the habits and notions of +the latter half of the fifteenth and opening decades of the following +century, one of the sections relates “How a Husbandman put his son to +school with Scogin.” From the text it is plain that the lad was very +backward in his studies, or had commenced them unusually late, considering +that it was the farmer’s ambition to procure his admission into holy +orders. “The slovenly boy,” we are told, “would begin to learn his A. B. +C. Scogin did give him a lesson of nine of the first letters of A. B. C., +and he was nine days in learning of them; and when he had learned the nine +Christ-cross-row letters, the good scholar said, ‘am ich past the worst +now?’”</p> + +<p>The important feature in this passage is the reference to the +Christ-cross-row, which contained the nine letters of the alphabet from A +to I in the form of the Cross. The time consumed in this particular +instance in the acquisition<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> of a portion of the rudiments is, of course, +ascribable to a pleasant hyperbole, or to the scholar’s phenomenal +density; but the <i>Abacus</i> or Christ-cross-row was, no doubt, the first +step in the ladder, and although it was superseded by the Horn-book and +the Primer, it did not substantially disappear from use in petty schools +till the present century. Its shape and functions, however, underwent a +material change, and instead of being employed as a medium for grounding +children in the Accidence, it became a vehicle for arithmetical purposes, +and resembled a slate in form and dimensions, consisting of a small oblong +wooden frame fitted with rows of balls of wood or bone strung on +transverse wires. To those who, like the present writer, saw this +apparatus in common use to induct the young into the art of counting, its +pedigree was naturally unknown. It was an evolution from the contrivance +which Scogin put into the hands of the country bumpkin whom he was engaged +to prepare for the priesthood, and who, as we learn from subsequent +passages in these Anecdotes, was actually ordained a deacon within a +limited period.</p> + + +<p><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>II. To the Abacus, prior to the Reformation, was added the printed A. B. +C. accompanied by prayers and a metrical version of the Decalogue, and in +1553 appeared the first Protestant A. B. C. and Catechism for the use of +schools and the young. It is after this date and the accession of +Elizabeth that we find a marked and permanent stimulus given to elementary +literature; and the press from 1553 onward teemed with A. B. C.’s of all +sorts; as, for instance, “an a. b. c. for children, with syllables, 1558;” +“an a. b. c. in Latin,” 1559; “the battle of A. B. C.,” 1586; “the horn a. +b. c., 1587;” and even the title itself grew popular, not only for manuals +of other kinds, but for publishers’ signs and ballads. There was “the aged +man’s A. B. C,” the “Virgin’s A. B. C.,” and “the young man’s A. B. C.”</p> + +<p>Subsequently to the A. B. C. of 1553, there seems to be nothing actually +extant of this nature till we come to <i>The Pathway to Reading, or the +newest spelling A. B. C.</i> of Thomas Johnson, 1590, which I have not been +able to inspect, but as to which there was a litigation between two +publishers in the following year,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> seeming to shew its popularity and a +brisk demand for copies.</p> + +<p>A few years later (1610) there is <i>A New Book of Spelling, with +Syllables</i>, a series of alphabets, followed by the vowels, alphabetical +arrangements of syllables, and remarks on vowels, in the course of which +the writer furnishes us with an explanation of the virtue and force of the +final <i>e</i> in such monosyllables as <i>Babe</i>.</p> + +<p>From vowels he proceeds to the diphthong, where he animadverts on the +abuse of the <i>w</i> for the <i>u</i>. He then presents us with the Lord’s Prayer, +the Creed, the Decalogue, &c., as orthographical theses.</p> + +<p>At the end of the Scriptural selections we arrive at this curious heading: +“Certain words devised alphabetically without sense, which whosoever will +take the pains to learn, he may read at the first sight any English book +that is laid before him.” These words are divided into two classes, +dissyllables and words of three and four syllables, and introduced by a +few lines of introduction, in which the words are divided by way of +guidance.</p> + +<p>The spelling-book of 1610 was printed for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> the Stationers’ Company, by +which it had been perhaps taken over; and as the Company did not usually +have assigned to it any stock except old copyrights, there is little doubt +that there were earlier impressions. At any rate, it is a Shakespearian +volume, and, as the only manual for children or illiterate adults except +the Protestant A. B. C. of 1553, it becomes interesting to consider that +the great poet himself may have had a copy in his hands of some edition, +if at least his scholastic researches ever went beyond the Horn-book and +the Abacus.</p> + +<p>The volume may be regarded as a pioneer in the direction of English +orthography and pronunciation; and when the author propounds that you +might proceed from his pages to the Latin tongue, he does nothing more +than follow in the steps of all teachers of that time, as well as of every +other age and country down to almost yesterday.</p> + +<p>While I have the book before me, it may be worth while to transfer to +these pages a specimen of it:—</p> + +<p class="poem">kach, kech, kich, koch, kuch,<br /> +kash, kesh, kish, kosh, kush,<br /> +kath, keth, kith, koth, kuth.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>And so it runs through the alphabet. In the Lord’s Prayer and other +selections the syllables are also divided for the convenience and ease of +the learner.</p> + +<p>The biographer of Dean Colet mentions that Mr. Stephen Penton, Principal +of St. Edmund’s Hall, Oxford, in the days of Charles II., published a +Horn-book or A. B. C. for children. This, which Knight oddly characterises +as a piece of humble condescension on the part of so worthy and noted a +man, I have not yet seen.</p> + +<p>In Russia they have, or had very lately, the <i>stchoti</i>, a kind of Abacus, +a small wooden frame strung with horizontal wires, on which slide a series +of ivory balls, each wire representing a certain value from the kopeck +upwards. This piece of machinery is used in all commercial transactions, +whether they take place in shop, market, counting-house, or bank; and +familiarity and practice enable the parties concerned to calculate the +amount payable or receivable with equal ease and rapidity.</p> + +<p>There is a similar machine in use among the natives of British India, and +also for mercantile purposes, not as a vehicle for acquiring the science +of numbers in the schools.</p> + + +<p><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>III. It is said to have been John Rightwise, second head-master of St. +Paul’s, and son-in-law of Lily, who introduced into his predecessor’s book +the <i>Propria quæ Maribus</i> and <i>As in Præsenti</i>, to which were subsequently +joined the Rules of Heteroclites or Irregular Nouns, probably digested +from Whittinton by Robertson of York. This last section, from the +commencing words, combined perhaps with the Christian name of Rightwise, +was the origin of <i>Johnny quæ Genus</i>.</p> + +<p>But an early authority<a name='fna_3' id='fna_3' href='#f_3'><small>[3]</small></a> claims for Lily himself the honour of having +written the <i>Propria quæ Maribus</i> and <i>As in Præsenti</i>, and informs us +that Rightwise merely published them with a glossary.</p> + +<p>In some of the schools the course seems to have been to commence with the +A. B. C. and Catechism, and then proceed to the Primer. At the end of the +A. B. C. of 1757 are these lines:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“This little Catechism learned<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">by heart (for so it ought),</span><br /> +The <span class="smcap">Primer</span> next commanded is<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">for children to be taught.”</span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>When I speak here of the <i>Primer</i>, I must take care to distinguish between +the Service-book so styled and the Manual for the young. It is singular +enough that the most ancient which has come under my eyes is of the age of +Elizabeth, and includes not only the Catechism, but “the notable fairs in +the Calendar,” as matters “to be taught unto children.”</p> + +<p>This type of Primer is very rare till we arrive at comparatively modern +days. The mission which it was designed to fulfil was one precisely +calculated to hinder its transmission to us.</p> + +<p>The practice of printing children’s books on some more than usually +substantial material is not so modern as may be supposed; for there is an +A. B. C. published at Riga for the use of the German pupils, the German +population preponderating there over the Russian or Polish, on paper +closely resembling linen, and of a singularly durable texture; and this +little volume belongs to the commencement of the last century, several +generations before such a system was adopted in England.</p> + +<p>In the Preface to his <i>New English Grammar</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> 1810, Hazlitt complains of +the want of any undertaking of the kind, and it has not been really +supplied till our own day, when the labours of the Philological and +English Text Societies and the payment of increased attention to Early +English Literature prepared the way to reform in a quarter where reform +was so sadly needed.</p> + +<p>The same writer, while edition upon edition of the famous Grammar of +Lindley Murray was pouring from the press, like Hayley’s <i>Triumphs of +Temper</i> and Moore’s <i>Loves of the Angels</i>, exposed the fallacies of the +system, and lamented the mischief done by such erroneous doctrines. +Murray, of whose lucubrations, now obsolete to petrifaction, sixty issues +were exhausted between 1795 and 1859, aimed not only at popular +instruction, but at literary dignity and scientific eminence; for during a +portion of the time while his star was in the ascendant two parallel +texts, a literary and an elementary one, were kept in print. Looking back +from the vantage-ground which it is our privilege to occupy upon this +phenomenon, we contemplate it not with the awe inspired by a mighty ruin, +of which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> the remaining fragments are a gladdening and proud survival, but +with a feeling of amazement that such a heresy in opinion and taste should +have lived so long, and have been so lately dissipated.</p> + +<p>The hazy ideas of the old-fashioned schoolmaster on this particular part +of his business are brought out in tolerably prominent relief in the reply +to a gentleman who had expressed to Dr. Duncan of the Ciceronian Academy +at Pimlico his wish that his son might learn English in lieu of Latin +Grammar. “Sir,” said the Doctor, “Grammar is Grammar all the world over.”</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p> +<h2>XV.</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang">Ascham’s <i>Schoolmaster</i>—Richard Mulcaster—The earliest Anglo-Latin +Dictionary—Ocland’s <i>Anglorum Prælia</i>.</p></div> + + +<p><br />I. The <i>Schoolmaster</i>, by Roger Ascham, is a work so celebrated and so +classical, and has been so often reprinted, that it seems almost +supererogatory to pass any remark upon its character and merits. It arose, +as we all know, out of a conversation at Windsor in 1563 between Sir +Richard Sackville, Treasurer of the Exchequer, and the author, and it is a +literary treatise rather than a technical one. Ascham did not live to see +it in type, nor was his patron spared to witness its completion in MS.; it +was published in 1570 by the author’s widow, and dedicated to Sir William +Cecil, who was one of the party at Windsor when the idea was first +ventilated. The opening paragraphs of the Preface, where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> Ascham describes +the company at dinner, and Sackvile afterwards drawing him aside, and +leading him to turn his thoughts to the production of such a book, are as +famous and unforgettable as Latimer’s noble and touching narrative to us, +in one of his sermons before the King, of his boyhood and the obligations +under which he lay to his father for sending him to a good school.</p> + +<p>Ascham’s <i>Schoolmaster</i>, 1570, is a volume, as its title perhaps may +import, for the teacher indeed rather than for the learner. It is a manual +of valuable suggestions and counsels for the guidance and use of those +under whose direction the course of school-work was carried out, although +immediately it was designed for the benefit of Mr. Robert Sackville, the +deceased Treasurer’s grandson. The writer confesses his indebtedness to +Sir John Cheke and to Sturmius, among the moderns, and to his old masters, +as he calls them, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero.</p> + +<p>Sir Richard Sackville, who was happily instrumental in persuading Ascham +to undertake the task, told him that he had found the disadvantage in his +own case of an imperfect education;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> “for a fond scholemaster,” quoth he, +“before I was fullie fourtene yeare olde, draue me so, with feare of +beating, from all loue of learninge, as nowe, when I know what difference +it is to haue learninge, and to haue little or none at all, I feele it my +greatest greife, and finde it my greatest hurte, that euer came to me; +that it was my so ill chance to light vpon so lewde a schoolmaster.”</p> + +<p>Ascham was of his friend’s opinion in regard to greater clemency and +patience on the part of teachers, and he also preferred such text-books as +<i>Cicero de Officiis</i> to the Manuals compiled by Horman, Whittinton, and +the rest of the old school of English grammarians. The passage in the +<i>Schoolmaster</i> where the author narrates his interview, before he went on +his travels into Germany, with Lady Jane Grey at her father’s house in +Leicestershire, is familiar enough; it exhibits a converse case, so far as +the severities of school-teachers are concerned; for that amiable and +unfortunate woman found her only compensation for the harshness and rigour +of her parents in a gentle and beloved tutor, “who,” she told Ascham, +“teacheth me so <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>ientlie, so pleasantlie, with such faire allurements to +learning, that I thinke all the tyme nothing whiles I am with him.”</p> + +<p>One sees that Ascham, while loth to say too much on such a topic, did not +cordially relish the old translations into English verse of some of the +classics, even when the translator was such a man as Surrey or Chaucer; +and there I agree with him, and indeed I think that many more are inclined +so to do.</p> + +<p>Richard Mulcaster, first head-master of Merchant Taylors’ School, and for +several years after his retirement from that position principal of St. +Paul’s, was the author of two works of comparatively slight interest and +importance at the present day, whatever estimate may have been formed of +them by some of his learned contemporaries. Of the two “fruits of his +writing,” as he terms them, he dedicated the earlier, “Positions,” 1581, a +kind of introduction to the matter, to Queen Elizabeth, and the other, +“The First Part of the Elementary,” 1582, to Lord Leicester, in two rather +turgid and verbose epistles. But it is a question whether either +production met with much <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>applause on its appearance, though ushered into +notice under such influential auspices; certainly they never grew popular +or reached a second impression. They were both calculated for the guidance +of teachers, like Ascham’s <i>Schoolmaster</i>; but they present a stiff and +didactic frigidity, which is absent in the famous and favourite manual of +his predecessor, who knew how to make us the partakers of his own learning +in a more agreeable manner than the professional pedagogue. I think it +very possible that the very few readers which the publications of +Mulcaster have found have arrived at the conclusion of their labour +without being much wiser than when they embarked in it. But, of the two, I +prefer very decidedly the <i>Positions</i>, which are written in a more natural +style, and contain occasional passages of interest. This gentleman lived +to see the close of the long reign of which he had witnessed the opening, +and to write some dull verses upon the death of the Queen.</p> + + +<p><br />II. The early teacher and his pupils enjoyed, when the typographical art +had been applied<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> to the production of educational works previously +accessible in a limited number of MSS., the considerable advantage of +books of reference for Latin, Greek, French, and eventually Italian and +other tongues. Within a year of each other (1499-1500), the <i>Ortus +Vocabulorum</i> and the <i>Promptorius Parvulorum</i> furnished our schools, so +far as Latin was concerned, with two excellent lexicons, both formed out +of the best compilations of the kind current abroad. These were the +Ainsworth and Riddle of our ancestors, who resorted to them where the +required information was not forthcoming in the Primer or the Delectus.</p> + +<p>Both these phrase-books passed through a series of reprints between the +commencement and middle of the sixteenth century. The former purports to +have been grounded on the <i>Catholicon</i> of Balbus, 1460, the <i>Cornucopia</i> +of Perottus, the <i>Gemma Vocabulorum</i>, and the <i>Medulla Grammatices</i>, with +additions by Ascensius. The <i>Promptorius</i>, or, as it is also called in +some of the issues, <i>Promptuarium</i>, appears to be substantially identical +with the <i>Medulla</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>But the earliest regular Anglo-Latin Dictionary in our literature is that +of Sir Thomas Elyot, first published in 1538, and frequently reprinted +with additions by others from a variety of English and foreign sources, +until it became the bulky folio known as <span class="smcap">Cooper’s Thesaurus</span>. Elyot, the +first compiler, tells us, in the dedication to Henry VIII. prefixed to the +<i>editio princeps</i>, that he had accomplished about half his labour when it +reached the royal ear through Master (subsequently Sir) Anthony Denny that +he had such a project in hand; whereupon the King caused all possible +facilities to be afforded him, and the books in the royal library to be +open to his inspection. It is hard to say how far Elyot flatters his +sovereign when he assures him that, after it was all done, he was so +afraid of his Lexicon being faulty and imperfect, that he felt as if he +could have torn the MS. to pieces, “had not the beames of your royal +maiestie entred into my harte, by remembraunce of the comforte whiche I of +your grace had lately receyued.”</p> + +<p>In the epistle to Henry just referred to, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> author pays a tribute to +the encouragement which he had experienced from Lord Cromwell; and in the +British Museum is the copy presented to the Lord Privy Seal, with a +holograph Latin letter prefixed, in which hardly any form of adulation is +spared, so far as Cromwell’s virtues, magnanimity, culture, and other +cognate qualities are concerned, and nothing is said about him being +secondary to royalty in these matters, as in the printed inscription is +expressed. But much, after all, is to be forgiven to a man of rank who in +those days chose to consume his time, as Elyot did, in the pursuit of +letters.</p> + +<p>The plan of the work is familiar enough, first, through the later +impressions, which are among the commonest volumes in Early English +literature; and, secondly, from the fact that the principle on which it is +constructed is similar to that of Ainsworth and others. The main +difference seems to be where certain Latin words, by an intelligible +survival, continued in Elyot’s day to bear a meaning which subsequently +grew obsolete; as, for instance, in the case of <i>Aviarium</i>, “a thycke +wodde<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> without waye,” although he at the same time adds the ordinary +acceptation.</p> + +<p>Still the credit remains with Elyot, of course, of having supplied a model +for many succeeding lexicographers and phraseologists; and if we turn, for +example, to the <i>Dictionary for Children</i>, by John Withals, 1553, or the +<i>Manipulus Vocabulorum</i> of Levins, 1571, we see that the general plan is +similar. Elyot, in fact, got rid of the tiresome and perplexing +arrangement which renders the books of reference and instruction prior to +his day, like the <i>Promptorius</i> and the <i>Eclaircissement de la langue +Françoise</i>, so uninviting to consult.</p> + +<p>Save in respect to development and extension, there is no substantial +difference, in fact, between the dictionaries of Elyot and Littleton or of +Littleton and Ainsworth. The general plan is the same, whereas in some of +the early lexicons the arrangement is so obscure and defective as to +render them comparatively useless for practical purposes. The old <i>Ortus +Vocabulorum</i>, one of these archaic works of reference, had been largely +formed out of the <i>Cornucopia</i> of Perottus, and Cooper owed very +considerable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> obligations to the Lexicon of Stephanus, which he was +censured by a critic of his day for not properly acknowledging.</p> + +<p>The <i>Short Dictionary for Children</i> by Withals, already specified, +supplied the obvious need for a more portable work than either Elyot or +Cooper. It met with a cordial response from the constituency to which it +appealed, and was reprinted, with large additions and improvements, by +successive editors down to the time of Charles I.</p> + +<p>Littleton, who brought out his Dictionary in 1678, was Rector of Chelsea. +He includes the barbarous Latin for the first time.</p> + +<p>Robert Ainsworth, whose famous Latin Dictionary belongs to the reign of +George II., having been first printed in 1736, planned his enterprise on a +sensible and enduring basis, and earned for himself the reputation of a +classic and a type. He had of course the advantage of all the improvements +of Elyot, Cooper, and Littleton, besides the numerous other minor +lexicographers, of whom he supplies an interesting chronological account +in his preface; but his substantial quarto volume, “designed for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> the use +of the British <i>Nations</i>,” was a clear advance on its precursors. He gives +not only the Latin-English and English-Latin appellatives, the Christian +names of men and women, the proper names of places, the ancient Latin +names of places, and the more modern names, but the Roman calendar, the +Roman coins, weights and measures, and ancient law-terms. Of the preceding +workers in the same field, whom he commemorates, he may very well have +known some personally. The catalogue, enriched with biographical +particulars, begins with the <i>Promptuarium Parvulorum</i>, and closes with +Elisha Coles, embracing a period of nearly two centuries.</p> + + +<p><br />III. The Latin Lexicon was an indispensable <i>vade-mecum</i> where boys had to +translate the classics of that language into English; and the taste for +some of the Roman writers, including Ovid, so far from declining, appears +in the time of Elizabeth to have spread in schools. The authors at whom +the criticism is more particularly aimed may be guessed in the absence of +the names; but the clerical party about 1580,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> being of opinion that these +ancient productions were injurious to morality, availed themselves of a +most singularly fortunate opportunity for substituting a work which should +be to Latin versification what Lily’s Grammar was to English accidence—a +standard and a model.</p> + +<p>A year or two prior to the discovery of this pernicious influence, +Christopher Ocland had printed a metrical narrative in doggerel metre of +the martial achievements of the English people from the time of the +Plantagenets down to that of Elizabeth, whom he places before Zenobia; and +this gentleman or his friends had sufficient influence to procure, through +the Lords Commissioners in Causes Ecclesiastical, letters-patent +prescribing the use of his <i>Anglorum Prælia</i> in all grammar-schools in +England and Wales in lieu of the books of less moral authors. The +privilege, dated May 7, 1582, was accorded in consideration not only of +the freedom of Ocland’s volume from profligacy, but of “the quality of the +verse,”—an encomium quite seriously intended, in whatever degree it may +strike us as ironical.</p> + +<p>This literary gem, which was to supersede<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> Virgil, Ovid, Homer, and the +rest of the heathens, was dedicated to Zenobia by the worthy writer in +some lines which are a fair sample of the “quality of the verse.” They +begin:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Regia Nympha, soli [<i>sic</i>] moderatrix alma Britanni,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Quæ pace et vera religione nites,</span><br /> +Quæ vitæ meritis, morum & candore coruscans,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Zenobiam vincis, siqua vel ante fuit.”</span></p> + +<p>Such was the Oclandian Muse which the Lords Commissioners in Causes +Ecclesiastical accounted preferable to the compositions which were the +glory of their own and the delight of every succeeding age!</p> + +<p>Despite the lofty patronage and auspicious circumstances under which the +<i>Anglorum Prælia</i> was launched on its proud career, the imbecility of the +whole idea appears to have been promptly appreciated; and the “lascivious +poets,” whom it was to have effaced, continued, and to this day continue, +“to corrupt the youth.”</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p> +<h2>XVI.</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang">Ben Jonson and Shirley writers of Grammars—Some account of the +former—Thomas Hayne’s Latin Grammar—A curious anecdote about it.</p></div> + + +<p><br />I. The <i>English Grammar</i> inserted among Ben Jonson’s works in 1640, and +also to be found in the modern editions, is not the production originally +compiled by that eminent writer, but a series of notes and rough material +collected perhaps for a new undertaking after the destruction of Jonson’s +books and MSS. by an accidental fire. It appears that the author had taken +considerable trouble to collect together the literature of this class +already existing in our own and other languages, with a view to comparison +and improvement, and he was probably assisted by friends, as Howell speaks +so early as 1620 of having borrowed for him Davis’s Welsh Grammar, “to add +to those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> many which he already had.” Sir Francis Kinaston cites “his most +learned and celebrated friend, Master Ben Jonson,” as the possessor of a +very ancient grammar written in the Saxon tongue and character, by way of +illustrating what it could scarcely illustrate—the state of our language +in the time of Chaucer. This book doubtless perished with the rest.</p> + +<p>The work in its present state is divided into chapters: <i>Of Grammar and +the Parts</i>; <i>Of Letters and their Powers</i>; <i>Of the Vowels</i>; <i>Of the +Consonants</i>, and so forth. In the third chapter, under Y, the writer +remarks:—“Y is mere vowelish in our tongue, and hath only the power of an +<i>i</i>, even where it obtains the seat of a consonant, as in <i>young</i>, +<i>younker</i>, which the Dutch, whose primitive it is, write <i>junk</i>, <i>junker</i>. +And so might we write <i>iouth</i>, <i>ies</i>, <i>ioke</i>....”</p> + +<p>“C is a letter,” he says, “which our forefathers might very well have +spared in our tongue; but since it hath obtained place both in our writing +and language, we are not now to quarrel with <i>orthography</i> or <i>custom</i>.” +Nor is <i>c</i> the only member of the alphabet with which Jonson considers +that we might have <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>advantageously dispensed; for in a subsequent page he +declares that “<i>q</i> is a letter we might very well have spared in our +<i>alphabet</i>, if we would but use the serviceable <i>k</i> as he should be, and +restore him to the right of reputation he had with our forefathers. For +the English Saxon knew not this halting <i>q</i>, with her waiting woman <i>u</i> +after her, but exprest</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td><i>quail</i>,</td> + <td rowspan="4" valign="middle"><span class="giant">}</span></td> + <td rowspan="4" valign="middle">by</td> + <td rowspan="4" valign="middle"><span class="giant">{</span></td> + <td><i>kuail</i>,</td></tr> +<tr><td><i>quest</i>,</td> + <td><i>kuest</i>,</td></tr> +<tr><td><i>quick</i>,</td> + <td><i>kuick</i>,</td></tr> +<tr><td><i>quill</i>,</td> + <td><i>kuill</i>.”</td></tr></table> + +<p>In other words, Jonson, discarding <i>c</i> and <i>q</i>, was with those who +nowadays ask us to say <i>Kikero</i>, <i>Kelt</i>, <i>Kæsar</i>; and he seems also to be +an advocate for such terminations as <i>st</i> or <i>pt</i> for <i>ed</i> in <i>exprest</i>, +<i>confest</i>, <i>profest</i>, <i>stopt</i>, <i>dropt</i>, <i>cropt</i>, wherein he has a follower +in Mr. Furnivall.</p> + +<p>His demonstration of the manner in which the several letters ought to be +sounded as pronounced is occasionally very amusing. “T,” he informs the +reader, “is sounded with the tongue striking the upper teeth.” “P breaketh +softly through the lips.” “N ringeth somewhat more in the lips and nose.” +But of H he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> remarks: “Whether it be a letter or no, hath been much +examined by the ancients, and by some of the Greek party too much +condemned, and thrown out of the alphabet.”</p> + +<p>This last piece of criticism should have its consoling effect on those +among the moderns who also repudiate it, and may not be aware that they +have the Greek party in Jonson’s day on their side, only that the Greek +party did not offer the deposed letter any substituted position.</p> + +<p>Jonson’s <i>Grammar</i>, as we have it, is a book for scholars and +philologists, however, rather than for the elementary stage of education. +The method is discursive and the style obscure; and it is chiefly prizable +as an evidence of the versatility, the extensive reading, and the +perseverance of the author. He quotes among his examples Sir Thomas More, +Gower, Lidgate, Fox’s <i>Martyrs</i>, Harding’s <i>Chronicle</i>, Chaucer, and Sir +John Cheke.</p> + +<p>It is curious enough that Jonson’s notion as to the superfluities of our +alphabet is supported to some extent by the orthography sanctioned by M. +Vimont in his <i>Relation de la Nouvelle France</i>, 1641, where he puts +<i>Kebeck</i> for <i>Quebec</i>;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> but the change must necessarily influence the +pronunciation.</p> + +<p>Neither of these writers was avowedly an advocate of Phonography; but the +adoption of that principle of spelling would necessarily involve the +dispensation with certain letters which at present form part of the +English A. B. C.</p> + +<p>In the dedication to Lord Herbert of his little book, <span class="smcap">James Shirley</span> refers +to the abundance of such treatises at that time before the public, “by +which some,” he says, “would prophetically imply the decay of learning, as +if the root and foundation of art stood in need of warmth and reparation.” +But he furnishes no information respecting himself or the motives which +led him to write the volume, although it is readily inferable that he did +so to augment the slender income which he derived, after the closing of +the theatres, from school-work in Whitefriars. Some of the illustrations +are in such couplets as the subjoined:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“In <i>di</i>, <i>do</i>, <i>dum</i>, the Gerunds chime and close,<br /> +<i>Um</i>, the first Supine, <i>u</i> the latter shews.”</p> + +<p>As late as 1726, Jenkin Thomas Phillipps reprinted Shirley’s Grammar with +additions.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> On the title-page of this edition it is said to be “for the +use of Prince William.”</p> + +<p>In 1640 Thomas Hayne published his <i>Grammatices Latinæ Compendium</i>. A copy +before me was presented by the author to Charles II. when a boy, and has +an autograph inscription on the blank page before the title to the young +Prince. It also passed through the hands of his brother, James Duke of +York, who has written <i>James Duke of Yorke</i> in a childish hand on the +fly-leaf. During the troubles it seems to have passed out of their hands, +and was bought at Oxford on the 4th October 1647 by a later owner, who +records the fact at the top of another page. It was subsequently at Stowe, +and the fine old blue morocco binding betrays no sign of a schoolboy’s +thumbs.</p> + +<p>Hayne supplies a highly interesting survey of the progress and development +of this branch of literature and learning in former days, and some of the +later attempts made with a view to improve the method, and explains his +own plan, which introduces the English and Latin in parallel columns, and +systematises and tabulates the cases and declensions in a more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> lucid +manner than the prior experiments. If we set it side by side with +Whittinton’s eleven divisions, we see that it is a great advance.</p> + +<p>From the commencement of the seventeenth century an increasing volume of +literature calculated to assist the diffusion of useful and improving +knowledge supplemented the books expressly designed for schools. These +publications, belonging to nearly every department of science and inquiry, +were often reproduced with the same steady regularity as the educational +works themselves; and nothing more triumphantly establishes the unceasing +progress of discovery and reform than the fact that the standard manuals +of one century become the waste paper of the next.</p> + +<p>As one arrests a stray copy of Heylin’s <i>Cosmography</i>, Godwin’s <i>Roman +Antiquities</i>, edited for the use of Abingdon School, Provost Rous’s <i>Attic +Archæology</i>, Prideaux’s <i>Introduction to the Reading of Histories</i>, or any +other book of the same stamp, on its passage from an old collection to the +mill, a not unlikely reflection to arise is that, considering their +straitened opportunities and the force of clerical influence, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> culture +and light of our ancestors were in fair relative proportion to our own.</p> + +<p>The literary thought and bias of the age were naturally affected by these +shallow and meagre repertories of information, which were as far removed +in scholarship from the <i>Roman Antiquities</i> of Adams and the <i>Dictionary</i> +of Lemprière as Adams and Lemprière are removed from Dr. Smith’s series.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p> +<h2>XVII.</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang">Limited acquaintance with the Greek language in England—Erasmus first +learns, and then teaches, Greek at Cambridge—Notices of a few +Philhellenists—Study of the language at Rhodes by Lily—Languid +interest in it among us—Disputes at Cambridge as to the +pronunciation—Remarks on this subject—The tract by John Kay—Few +books in the Greek character printed in England.</p></div> + + +<p><br />I. The few scattered notices, which offer themselves in Warton and other +authorities, of Englishmen of very remote days who entered on the study of +the Greek tongue, tend mainly to illustrate the fact, how sparingly and +imperfectly that noble and precious language was cultivated down to the +age of Elizabeth; and of course this circumstance involves the almost +complete neglect of it in our universities and academies. Warton himself +cites a case in which a scholar travelled from Malmesbury to Canterbury in +order to improve a rudimentary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> acquaintance with Greek which he had +gained through a local monastic seminary.</p> + +<p>The first man who helped at all largely and sensibly to render Greek a +part of the educational system was Lily the grammarian, who spent some +years of his life at Rhodes, and introduced a study of the language into +the routine of St. Paul’s, whence it found its way by degrees to the other +great foundations in London and in the provinces.</p> + +<p>The biographer of Colet has something to say on this subject:—</p> + +<p>“Such was the infelicity of those times, that the Greek tongue was not +taught in any of our grammar-schools; nor was there thought to be any +great need of it in the two Universities by the generality of scholars. It +is worth notice that [John] Standish, who was a bitter enemy to Erasmus, +in his declamation against him styles him <i>Græculus iste</i>; which was a +long time after the phrase for an heretic.”</p> + +<p>“But,” he adds, “Dr. John Fisher ... was of another mind, and very +sensible of this imperfection, which made him desirous to learn Greek in +his declining years.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>The Bishop, however, who through Erasmus was recommended to William +Latymer, one of the foremost Philhellenists of the day, could not persuade +that scholar to enter on the task, as he considered the prelate too old to +acquire the language; and Knight tells us that, in order to escape from +the application, he advised Fisher to send for a professor out of Italy.</p> + +<p>Englishmen, even at a later period than this, occasionally went to +Florence or elsewhere to learn Greek; but Erasmus made himself, with the +assistance of Linacre, tolerably proficient in it, on the contrary, during +his first visit to England in the time of Henry the Seventh (1497-8), and +was sufficiently versed, at all events in the rudiments, to give lessons +to others while he remained at Cambridge. Doubtless he did so in aid of +his expenses.</p> + +<p>“In Cambridge,” observes Knight, “Erasmus was the first who taught the +Greek grammar. And so very low was the state of learning in that +University, that (as he tells a friend) about the year 1485, the beginning +of Henry the Seventh’s reign, there was nothing taught in that public +seminary besides Alexander’s <i>Parva<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> Logicalia</i> (as they called them), the +old axioms of Aristotle, and the questions of John Scotus.”</p> + +<p>Erasmus himself was for some time Greek Reader at Cambridge, and was +contemporary there with Richard Croke, of King’s College, who did valuable +service in promoting the cause of classical learning at that University, +and published several tracts relating to the Greek literature and tongue, +including <i>Introductiones ad Linguam Græcam</i> and <i>Elementa Grammaticæ +Græcæ</i>—the earliest attempts to place before students in a handy form the +alphabet of the subject.</p> + +<p>At Oxford it was an Italian, Cornelius Vitellius, who became the first +Greek professor, and William Grocyne, who with Latymer and Linacre was the +earliest Greek scholar in England, was among his pupils.</p> + +<p>It is to be suspected that, while a man of genius like Erasmus could +scarcely have failed to make something of whatever he seriously undertook, +his conversance with Greek was always comparatively superficial, and it is +merely an additional piece of evidence how little the language was +cultivated at Cambridge at that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> epoch, that he was enabled to earn money +as a teacher of it.</p> + +<p>It was not apparently till 1524 that Greek type was introduced into our +printing-offices. Linacre’s book <i>De Emendata Structura Latini Sermonis</i>, +published in that year, is generally received as containing the first +specimen found in any production of the English press. The Greek alphabet +occurs in the Primer of 1548.</p> + + +<p><br />II. Florence, Rome, Padua, and Rhodes were four great centres whither +foreigners were then accustomed to resort for the study and mastery of +Greek. In the <i>Life of Dean Colet</i> it is shown how he travelled in Italy, +and met with two of his countrymen at Florence, Grocyn and Linacre, and +with a third at Rome, Lily, afterwards the famous grammarian, who, after +learning Greek at Rhodes, had proceeded to Rome to render himself equally +adept in Latin, so that, when he finally settled in London, he had served +a laborious apprenticeship and taken unusual pains to become an instructor +of others.</p> + +<p>Colet himself, it is to be noted, displayed in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> earlier life a bent +towards theology and the Fathers, though he had scanty sympathy with the +survivals whom he found around him, both at home and abroad, of the +monastic schoolmen and expounders of the old divinity.</p> + +<p>“He had observed these schoolmen,” says his biographer indeed, “to be a +heavy set of formal fellows, that might pretend to anything rather than to +wit and sense, for to argue so elaborately about the opinions and the very +words of other men: to snarl in perpetual objections, and to distinguish +and divide into a thousand niceties: this was rather the work of a poor +and barren invention than anything else.”</p> + +<p>Knight preserves a rather diverting anecdote of a preacher who spoke in +his sermon before Henry VIII. against the Greek tongue, and of a +conference which Henry caused to be arranged after the discourse, at which +in his presence the divine and More should take opposite sides, the former +attacking, and the latter vindicating, the language. More did his part, +but the other fell down on his knees and begged the King’s pardon, +alleging that what he did was by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> impulse of the Spirit. “Not the +spirit of Christ,” says the King to him, “but the spirit of infatuation.” +His majesty then asked him whether he had read anything of Erasmus, whom +he assailed from the pulpit. He said “No.” “Why then,” says the King, “you +are a very foolish fellow to censure what you never read.” “I have read,” +says he, “something they call <i>Moria</i>.” “Yes,” says Richard Pace, “may it +please your highness, such a subject is fit for such a reader.”</p> + +<p>The end of it was that the preacher declared himself on reflection more +reconciled to the Greek, because it was derived from the Hebrew, and that +Henry dispensed with his further attendance upon the Court.</p> + +<p>The feeling and taste for Greek culture which Lily, Erasmus, and others +had introduced and encouraged, were promoted by the exertions of Sir John +Cheke and Sir Thomas Smith at Cambridge, and by Dr. Kay or Caius; and a +controversy, almost amounting to a quarrel, which Cheke had with Bishop +Gardiner on Greek pronunciation, stimulated the movement by attracting +public attention to the matter, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> bringing into notice many Greek +authors whose works had not hitherto been read.</p> + +<p>The literary contest between Cheke and Gardiner was printed abroad in +1555, and only eleven years later a paraphrase of the <i>Phœnissæ</i> of +Euripides by George Gascoigne and Francis Kinwelmersh was performed at +Gray’s Inn.</p> + + +<p><br />III. The tract published by the learned John Kay in 1574 on the +pronunciation of Greek and Latin is rather pertinent to the present +movement for varying the old fashion in this respect. Kay instances the +cases of substituting <i>olli</i> for <i>illi</i>, <i>queis</i> for <i>quibus</i>, <i>mareito</i> +for <i>marito</i>, <i>maxumè</i> for <i>maximè</i>; and in Greek words, the ancients, +says he, certainly said <i>Achilles</i>, <i>Tydes</i>, <i>Theses</i>, and <i>Ulisses</i>, not, +as people sometimes now do, <i>Achillews</i>, <i>Tudews</i>, <i>Thesews</i>, and +<i>Ulussews</i>. The author likewise refers to the employment of the aspirate +in orthography, as in <i>hydropisis</i>, <i>thermæ</i>, <i>Bathonia</i>, and <i>Hybernia</i>, +which used to be read <i>ydropisis</i>, <i>termæ</i>, <i>Batonia</i>, and <i>Ivernia</i>. He +was clearly no advocate for the latter-day mode in England of hardening +the <i>g</i> and the <i>c</i> as in <i>Regina</i> and <i>Cicero</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>But the fact is that, where there are no positive <i>data</i> for fixing the +standard or laying down any general principle, there can never be an end +of the conflicting views and theories on this subject, and the best of +them amount to little more than guess-work.</p> + +<p>The modes of pronouncing both the Greek and Latin languages have always +probably varied, as they do yet, in different countries; and the Scots +adhere to the Continental fashion as regards, at all events, the latter.</p> + +<p>Experience and practical observation seem to shew that every locality has +a tendency to adapt its rules for sounding the dead tongues to those in +force for sounding its current vocabulary; as a Roumanian lad, for +instance, in learning Latin, will instinctively follow his native +associations in giving utterance to diphthongs, vowels, and compound +words. The Greek language, in respect to this point of view, occupies an +anomalous position, because it enjoys a partial survivorship in the +Neo-Hellenic dialect; and it has been natural to seek in the method +employed by their modern representatives and descendants a key to that +employed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> by the inhabitants of ancient Hellas in pronouncing words and +particles, and, in short, to the grammatical laws by which their speech +was regulated.</p> + +<p>It appears, however, that philologists have been disappointed in the +results of this test, as the differences between the two idioms are often +so wide and material. Yet, nevertheless, a Greek of the nineteenth century +must be allowed to be a rather important witness in taking evidence on +such a question, as the whole strength of received tradition and a <i>primâ +facie</i> argument are on his side; and when we find that he gives to the +long <span class="smcaplc">E</span> or ητα the force of <span class="smcaplc">A</span>, +and to the diphthong οι that of <span class="smcaplc">E</span>, we grow somewhat sceptical as +to our right to impose on those particles a different function, especially seeing that the Ionic dialect +and the metrical arrangement of the <i>Iliad</i> ostensibly support this +interchange of phonetic values. I need scarcely advert to the favourite +theory that, so far as the Greek long <span class="smcaplc">E</span> is concerned, it had its source in +the vocal intonation of the sheep, which is, after all, far from an +invariable standard.</p> + +<p>The Englishman, in dealing with such themes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> as foreign spelling and +pronunciation, treads upon eggs, so to speak, as he lives within the +knowledge of the whole world in a glass house of his own.</p> + + +<p><br />IV. But scarcely any books in the Greek character were printed in England +until Edward Grant, head-master of Westminster School, brought out his +<i>Græcæ Linguæ Spicilegium</i>, or Greek Delectus, in 1575. It saw only a +single edition, and is still a common book, not having been apparently +successful; and the next attempt of the kind did not even appeal to the +English student, though the work of a native of North Britain; for +Alexander Scot published his <i>Universa Grammatica Græca</i> at Lyons in a +shape calculated to invite a yet more limited circulation than the essay +of Grant.</p> + +<p>Perhaps one of the earliest English publications relative to the study of +Greek poetry was the <i>Progymnasma Scholasticum</i> of John Stockwood, +published in 1596. Stockwood had been master of Tonbridge School, a +foundation established by the Skinners’ Company, and while he was there +brought out one or two professional<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> works. This was avowedly taken from +the <i>Anthology</i> of Stephanus, and presents a Greek-Latin interlinear text.</p> + +<p>Again, in 1631, William Burton, the Leicestershire historian, and a +schoolmaster by profession, delivered at Gloucester Hall, Oxford, an +oration on the origin and progress of Greek, which many years later, when +he had charge of the school at Kingston-on-Thames, was edited by Gerard +Langbaine. It was a scholarly thesis, and of no educational significance, +except that it exhibited the survival of some languid interest in the +topic at the University.</p> + +<p>Very few Greek authors found early translators here beyond the selections +prepared for schools; but it is remarkable that the example in this way +was set by a citizen of London, and a member of the Goldsmiths’ Company, +Thomas Niccols, who in 1550, at the instance of Sir John Cheke, undertook +to put into English the History of Thucydides. This was almost a century +before the version by Hobbes of Malmesbury.</p> + +<p>The partial translation of the <i>Iliad</i> by Arthur Hall of Grantham, 1581, +was taken from the French. But Chapman accomplished the feat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> of rendering +the whole of Homer, as well as the <i>Georgics</i> of Hesiod and the Neo-Greek +<i>Hero and Leander</i>. At a later date, Thomas Grantham, a schoolmaster in +Lothbury, who seems to have been in a state of perpetual warfare with his +critics as to the merits of his fashion of teaching, brought out at his +own expense, and possibly for the use of his own pupils, the first, +second, and third books of the <i>Iliad</i>.</p> + +<p>The grand work of Herodotus was approached in 1584 by an anonymous writer, +who completed only <i>Clio</i> and <i>Euterpe</i>.</p> + +<p>But these intermittent and isolated cases shew how languid the feeling for +Hellenic literature and history long remained in England; nor, when we +regard the unsatisfactory character of the translations from the Greek, +with rare exceptions, down to the present day, is it hard to see that the +want was at least as largely due to incapacity on the part of scholars as +to indifference on that of the public.</p> + +<p>Many of the schools employed a small elementary selection from the Greek +writers, of which a fifth edition was printed in 1771.</p> + +<p>When Charles Lamb was at the Blue Coat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> School (1782-9), the Greek authors +read there appear to have been Lucian and Xenophon, the former in a +Selection from the <i>Dialogues</i>. The present writer, who was at Merchant +Taylors’ School from 1842 to 1850, used Xenophon, Homer, Euripides, +Sophocles, and some volume of <i>Analecta</i>. When the school was founded in +1561, it was difficult to find a boy to read Greek; but in the following +century it enters rather prominently into the prospectus on +Examination-day.</p> + +<p>All the great seminaries differ in their lists; the choice depends on the +personal taste of the masters from time to time; and there is a certain +virtue in traditional names.</p> + +<p>But the truth is that in England, after all, although this language has +continued to be taught in all schools of any standing or pretension, the +critical study and genuine appreciation of it have always been confined to +a narrow circle of scholars; and nowadays there is a growing tendency to +prefer the living languages, as they are called, to the dead.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p> +<h2>XVIII.</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang">Ancient French school-books for English learners—Their historical and +philological interest—Succession of writers and teachers—Hollyband, +Florio, Delamothe, and others—Sketches of their work—Their imperfect +acquaintance with our language—Other publications of an educational cast.</p></div> + + +<p><br />I. Turning to the French language, there is a very singular relic of early +times in the shape of an Anglo-Gallic Vocabulary of the end of the +fifteenth century, in which the spelling of both languages is strikingly +archaic:—</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“Here is a good boke to lerne to speke french.<br /> +Vecy ung bon lievre a apprendre parler fraunchoys.<br /> +In the name of the fader of the sonne.<br /> +En nom du pere et du fils.<br /> +And of the holy goost I will begynne.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>Et du saint esprit ie veuel cōmenchier.<br /> +To lerne to speke frenche.<br /> +A apprendre a parler franchoys.”</p> + +<p>After this exordium follow the numbers, the names of precious stones, +articles of merchandise, fruits, wines, &c. <i>Wine of rochell</i> is rendered +<i>vin de rosele</i>. What we know as <i>Beaune</i> is called <i>byane</i> in French and +<i>beaune</i> in English. On the fourth page, among “Other maner of speche in +frenche,” occur:—</p> + +<p class="blockquot">“Sir god giue you good day.<br /> +Sire dieu vous doint bon iour.<br /> +Sir god giue you good euyn.<br /> +Sire dieu vous doint bon vespere.<br /> +Holde sir here it is.<br /> +Tenez sire le veez ey.”</p> + +<p>The <i>z</i> in <i>tenez</i> seems to have been specially cut, for it is of a +different font or case, and, curiously enough, in the next sentence it is +wrongly inserted in <i>ditez</i> (for <i>dites</i>). The question is asked how much +one man owes another, and the reply is <i>ten shillings</i>, for which the +French equivalent is taken to be <i>dix soulz</i>. But there were no shillings +in England at that time; <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>perhaps the writer was thinking of the skilling, +with which our coin has no more than a nominal affinity.</p> + +<p>The <i>Eclaircissement de la langue Françoise</i>, by John Palsgrave, 1530, and +the <i>Introductory to learn, pronounce, and speak the French tongue</i>, by +Giles Du Wes or Dewes, written some years later for the use of the +Princess Mary in the same way as Linacre’s <i>Latin Grammar</i> had been, are +sufficiently familiar from their reproduction in modern times under the +auspices of the French Government. Dewes was not improbably related to a +person of the same name who acted as preceptor to the son of Cromwell, +Earl of Essex. Both he and Palsgrave were professional teachers; but +Palsgrave was a Londoner, who had completed his studies in the Parisian +Gymnasium; and he at all events was a Latin, no less than a French +scholar. In the dedication of his English version of the <i>Comedy of +Acolastus</i> to Henry VIII. in 1540, he speaks at some length, and in +laudatory terms, of the official Primer issued in that year, and he also +conveys to us the notion of being then advanced in life.</p> + +<p>Nearly, if not quite, contemporary with him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> and Dewes was Pierre du +Ploiche, who in the time of Henry published a very curious little volume +of more general scope, called <i>A Treatise in English and French right +necessary and profitable for all young children</i>. Du Ploiche, when this +work appeared, was residing in Trinity Lane, at the sign of the Rose. He +gives us in parallel columns, the English on the left hand, and the French +equivalent on the right, the <i>Catechism</i>, the <i>Litany and Suffrages</i>, and +a series of <i>Prayers</i>. These occupy three sections; the fourth, fifth, and +sixth sections are devoted to secular and familiar topics: <i>For to speake +at the table</i>, <i>for to aske the way</i>, and <i>for to bie and sell</i>; and the +concluding portion embraces the A. B. C. and Grammar.</p> + +<p>The English is pretty much on a par with that found in educational +treatises produced by foreigners, and the French itself is decidedly of an +archaic cast, though, doubtless, such as was generally recognised and +understood in the sixteenth century. I shall pass over the religious +divisions, and transcribe a few specimens from the three groups of +dialogue on social or personal subjects.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>The third chapter, where the scene at a meal is depicted, affords, of +course, some interesting suggestions and illustrations, yet little that is +very new, except that we seem to get a glimpse of the practice, borrowed +from monastic life, of some one reading aloud while the rest were at their +repast. For one says: “Reade Maynerd, <i>Lisez Maynart</i>,” to which the other +rejoins: “Where shall I reade?” and the first answers: “There where your +fellow lefte yesterday,” so that it was apparently the custom to take +turns. We perceive, too, that the dinner was both ushered in and wound up +with very elaborate graces. In this dialogue, as well as in the next about +asking the way, there is mention of almost every description of utensil, +but no reference to the fork, which was not yet in general use.</p> + +<p>There is a delicate refinement of phraseology here and there, as where +“You ly” is rendered “Vous espargnez la verité;” and Du Ploiche does not +fail to advertise himself and his address, for when one of the +interlocutors demands: “Where go you to schole?” the other is made to +reply: “In trinytie lane at the signe of the Rose.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>The annexed extract from the same chapter may assist in fixing the date of +the publication to 1544:—</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>“And you sir, from whence com you?</td><td><span class="spacer"> </span></td> + <td>“<i>Et vous seigneur, d’ou venez vous?</i></td></tr> +<tr><td>I come from Bulloigne.</td><td> </td> + <td><i>Ie viens de Boulongne.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td>From Englande, from Germany.</td><td> </td> + <td><i>D’Engleterre, d’Allemaigne.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td>What newes?</td><td> </td> + <td><i>Quelle nouuelles?</i></td></tr> +<tr><td>I know none but good.</td><td> </td> + <td><i>Ie ne sçay rien que bien.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td>I harde say</td><td> </td> + <td><i>i’ay ouy dire</i></td></tr> +<tr><td>That the Englishe men</td><td> </td> + <td><i>que les anglois</i></td></tr> +<tr><td>haue kylled many frenche men.</td><td> </td> + <td><i>ont occis beaucoup de François.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td>And where?</td><td> </td> + <td><i>Et ou?</i></td></tr> +<tr><td>Before Bulloigne.</td><td> </td> + <td><i>Deuant Boulongne.</i></td></tr> +<tr><td>When came the newes?</td><td> </td> + <td><i>Quant vinrent tez nouuelle?</i></td></tr> +<tr><td>This morninge by a post.”</td><td> </td> + <td><i>A ce matin par vng poste.</i>”</td></tr></table> + +<p>The portion which yields this matter comprises all the incidents of a long +journey, the arrival at the inn, the call for refreshment, the baiting and +putting up of the horse, the retirement to rest, and the breakfast before +departure in the morning.</p> + +<p>The sixth section, on buying and selling, exhibits no remarkable examples, +or rather nothing that I can, with so large a choice, afford to cite, and +the grammatical part follows the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> usual lines. The present treatise came +to a new edition in 1578, but it does not seem to have been very +successful.</p> + +<p>In point of fact, the taste and demand for such a class of hand-books or +primers had not fully set in. With the reign of Elizabeth the habit of +foreign travel and the consequent value of a conversance with languages, +especially French and Italian, imparted the first marked stimulus and +development to this class of literary enterprise.</p> + + +<p><br />II. Claude Desainliens, who transformed himself into <i>Claudius Holy-Band</i> +or <i>Hollyband</i>, and who seems in his earlier days to have had quarters +over or adjoining the sign of the Lucrece in St. Paul’s Churchyard, became +a voluminous producer of the dictionaries, grammars, and phrase-books so +popular in early times, and included in his range the Italian as well as +the French series. Long after his death his works continued to be in +demand, and were edited with improvements by others. Desainliens began, so +far as I know, with his <i>French Littleton</i> in 1566, and his French +Dictionary was not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> printed till 1593. In 1581 he had moved from the +Lucrece to the Golden Ball, just by.</p> + +<p>Perhaps of all his multifarious performances his <i>French</i> and <i>Italian +Schoolmasters</i> were the two which met with the greatest favour; and the +longer career of the former may perhaps be ascribed to the more general +cultivation of the French language in England. The <i>Italian Schoolmaster</i> +originally appeared in 1575 as an annex to a version of the story of +<i>Arnalte and Lucenda</i>; but in the subsequent impressions of 1597 and 1608 +the philological portion occupies the place of honour, and the story is +made to follow. In the former the rules for pronunciation and such matter +as fell within his knowledge as an Italian may be passed as representing +what was the correct practice and view at the period; it is with the +English illustrations and equivalents that one is apt to be surprised and +amused; and one, moreover, figures the occasional bewilderment even of an +English pupil at the strange unidiomatic forms which Desainliens has +adopted. In other words, instead of translating English into Italian, he +has translated Italian into broken English; as, for instance,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> where in a +dialogue a man is inquiring the way to London, we find at the conclusion +such pure <i>Italicisms</i> as <i>Have me recommended: I am yours: Remaine with +God</i>. Then, again, terms are misapplied, of course, as thus: “Tell me +deere fellowe, is it yet farre to the citie?” And when he has entered his +inn, he calls to the host: “Bring me for to wash my hands and face.” At +the same time the pages of this and similar volumes abound with fruitful +illustrations of all kinds, which we should have been very sorry indeed to +lose; and it is to be recollected that the English gloss was secondary, +and that the bizarre style and texture of this class of book arose from +the aim at enabling the learner to be prepared for all sorts of occasions +and every variety of conversational topic. The author consequently leads +him through the different occupations and incidents of life, and imagines +successive interviews and dialogues with such persons as he would be +likely to encounter. In the parley with a farrier, it comes out that the +charge for shoeing a horse was fivepence a foot; and in the section <i>Per +maritarsi = To be married</i>, Hollyband starts by rendering <i>O bella +giovane</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> “Ho fair maiden.” He urges her to be prompt in her decision by +citing the proverb, “Ladie, whilest the iron is hote, it must be wrought.”</p> + +<p>Much of the matter introduced by Desainliens is highly curious and even +important. I shall transcribe a section or two, as they are brief, for the +sake of the English suggestions:—</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">“<i>To sing and daunce.</i></span></p> + +<p>“O fellowes, I wish that wee shoulde sing a song, and I will take the lute.<br /> +Let vs sing and daunce, when you will.<br /> +Mystres, will it please you to daunce a galliard with me? pray you therefore.<br /> +I cannot daunce after the Italian fashion.<br /> +We shall daunce after the high Dutch.<br /> +Go to, play a galliard vpon the violl.<br /> +I would rather vpon the virginals....</p> + +<p><br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><i>Of the Booke binder.</i></span></p> + +<p>Shew me an Italian, and English bookes and of the best print.<br /> +I have none bound at this present.<br /> +Bind me this with silke and claspes....<br /> +Reach me royall paper to write.<br /> +Neede you any ynke and bombash?<br /> +No, but wast paper, & of that which wee call drinking paper....</p> + +<p><br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><i>Of the Shoemaker.</i></span></p> + +<p>I would you shoulde make mee a paire of bootes, a ierkin, and a paire of shoes, pantofles, mules, and buskins.<br /> +We will make thē sir, & of good leather.<br /> +See this faire shooing.<br /> +Put on those pompes....”</p></div> + +<p>After all, possibly, such publications as that before me are chiefly +valuable for a purpose for which they were not designed—for the bounteous +light which they shed on our old English customs and notions; and I do not +think that they have been hitherto fully brought into employment. It is +obviously impossible for me, however, in the present case to remedy this +shortcoming, more particularly as the quotations suffer by curtailment or +paraphrase.</p> + +<p>The <i>Arnalte and Lucenda</i> takes up the major part of the volume, and must +be said to be freer from grammatical inaccuracies than that division of +the book devoted to grammar. Nor could a man live in London without +catching some of the colloquialisms current among its residents. In his +<i>Italian Phrases</i> we meet on the English side of the page with: “Hee +looketh rather like a cutter or fencer then,” and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> “He goeth accompanied +with Roisters and cutters.”</p> + +<p>The French Dictionary of Desainliens was entirely superseded by that of +Randle Cotgrave in 1611. The latter spared no pains to make his book a +really valuable performance; he invited help from others, and modelled his +labours on a fairly intelligible plan, and it remains to this day in the +enlarged edition by Howell a standard and indispensable work of reference. +It was the only one available for the school-boy and student for a +considerable length of time.</p> + + +<p><br />III. Delamothe and Erondelle were contemporary with Desainliens, and may +have been equally eminent and successful as teachers; but they did not +display the same degree of literary activity. The former indeed produced +nothing but a <i>French Alphabet</i> (1595). Pierre Erondelle was a native of +Normandy; and besides new and improved editions of his predecessor +Desainliens, he brought out in 1605 a quaint book of lessons for the +acquisition of French, which he called <i>The French Garden for English +Ladies and Gentlemen to walk in; Or A Summer day’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> Labour</i>. The volume +mainly consists of thirteen dialogues in French and English, embracing the +various occupations of the day, from the first rising in the morning till +bedtime. Some of the conversations are remarkable for their archaic +<i>naiveté</i> so far as English ideas of decorum in speech are concerned; but +they are nothing more than the plainness of phrase which was once +recognised both here and on the Continent, and the banishment of which +has, at all events, not of itself added to our morality. Sterne, in his +<i>Sentimental Journey</i>, signalises as a French trait the incident of the +lady of quality with whom he drove in her carriage; but he must have been +aware that the tone in the same circles at home was equally pronounced; +and editors of the earlier Georgian literature have to exercise a pruning +hand in dealing with MSS. to be presented now-a-days to public view.</p> + +<p>Another of these foreign professors was Jacques Bellot, who published +several educational works for the instruction of the English in the French +grammar and language. Among these <i>Le Jardin de Vertu et Bonnes Moeurs</i>, +1581, where the English and French are given, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> usual, in parallel +columns, is the most remarkable. There is a Table of <i>Errata</i> for both +languages; but that for the English might, from a native point of view, be +indefinitely extended, as Bellot proves himself as incapable of +comprehending our idiom as the rest of his countrymen. He renders “La +memoire du prodigue est nulle” by “Of the prodigall ther is no memory,” +and “La seulle vertu est la vraye noblesse” by “The only vertue, is the +true nobilitie.”</p> + +<p>The writer trips, as may be conjectured, just in those nice points in +which even an Englishman is not always at home.</p> + +<p>New and improved systems were continually submitted to the public, or +rather, in the language of those days, to the Nobility and Gentry. In +1634, the Grammar of Charles Maupas of Blois, an esteemed and experienced +teacher, who during a career of thirty years numbered among his pupils +many of the young men of family in Holland as well as in England, was +adapted by William Aufield for the use of his countrymen. The original is +still regarded as a standard work, though discarded by the schools. Both +the French and English are of the antique<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> cast, of course, and many of +the examples and much of the phraseology are obsolete; but the book was +written for Frenchmen and translated for Englishmen, to both of whom the +speech of these days would have seemed at least equally strange, and +proved not less embarrassing.</p> + +<p>The pages of Maupas, as he is presented to us in his English dress, +acquire an oddity and an almost humorous side, which are absent from the +French text itself; as, for instance:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">“Of making Stop.</span></p> + +<p>“Holà, ho there, prou well, well, so so; assez enough, enough; +demeure, arreste, stay, stay, budge not.”</p> + + +<p><br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">“Of feeling Pain.</span></p> + +<p>“Aou, haou, aouf, ah, of, alas. The same words will serve in English.”</p> + + +<p><br /><span style="margin-left: 4em;">“Of Joy.</span></p> + +<p>“Gay, deliait, alaigrement, heighday, as a man woud wish, merrily +then.”</p></div> + +<p>Claudius Mauger and Paul Festeau were two other professors at a somewhat +later date, who endeavoured to secure patronage for their methods and +books by throwing special temptations in the way of customers. The former, +who seems to have been resident in London, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>introduced into his pages as +an attractive novelty a series of Dialogues illustrative of English +exploits by land and sea, as well as of contemporary French history, while +Festeau baited his hook with the two scarcely reconcilable assurances that +his plan was the exactest possible for attaining the purity and eloquence +of the French tongue, as it was spoken about 1660 in the Court of France, +and that Blois, his native place, was the city “where the true tone of the +French tongue was found by the unanimous consent of all Frenchmen.”</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p> +<h2>XIX.</h2> + +<p class="center">Foreigners’ English.</p> + + +<p><br />I. A good deal has been incidentally heard of the habitual infelicity of +the natives of other European countries where it has been a question of +the treatment of our language either colloquially or with a literary +object. This was a source of difficulty which must have been generally +appreciated; but no one appears to have essayed to come to the succour of +the distressed, till in 1578 Jacques Bellot, already mentioned, and the +author of a French Grammar printed in 1578, announced in 1580 <i>The English +Schoolmaster, for teaching strangers to pronounce English</i>. That such a +book was published is probable enough, but it is not at present known; and +we have meanwhile to content ourselves with speculating what kind of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> +affair such an undertaking could have been, where the writer was a foreign +teacher so ignorant of our language! But it was not amiss for Bellot to +try his hand in the absence of any other adventurer; nor was it till after +the Restoration that a second experiment was made in the same direction by +James Howell, the tolerably celebrated author of the <i>Familiar Letters</i>, +who brought out in 1662 <i>A New English Grammar, prescribing as certain +rules as the language will bear, for foreigners to learn English</i>. This +was nearly a century after Bellot; and Howell was both a linguist and a +scholar.</p> + +<p>Like many other laudable endeavours, however, the proffered help was not +much appreciated; and although the Germans, Dutch, and Russians have +within the last quarter of a century made remarkable progress in the study +of English, the French and other Continental nations remain unable or +indisposed to conquer their ancient prejudices. Doubtless, the closer +affinity between the languages of Germany and the Low Countries and our +own considerably facilitated the mastery of English by the Teutonic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> +community; and it was principally in Flanders that the earliest attention +was paid to those highly valuable polyglot hand-books for travellers and +students, into which the English, as a rule, was admitted more on account, +probably, of its service to the foreign visitor in England than for the +sake of the Englishman abroad, as had been the case with certain early +vocabularies and primers elsewhere noticed.</p> + +<p>In the old plays the foreigner is invariably introduced making, +consciously or otherwise, the most alarming havoc in our vocabulary and +grammar; but the dramatist seems, as a rule, to have drawn a good deal on +his own fancy instead of borrowing from life; and such is the case, it +must be said, even with Shakespear’s <i>Dr. Caius</i>, who speaks broken +English, but hardly a Frenchman’s broken English. The <i>Duke de Jarmany</i> of +the same writer would probably have had the same nondescript gibberish put +into his mouth had he been brought on the stage; this sort of <i>dramatis +persona</i> was among the comic effects.</p> + +<p>The Mrs. Plawnish of a modern novelist thought that bad English might be +good French;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> but the jargon of Caius is <i>sui generis</i>; he “hacks our +English.” as mine host puts it, but not naturally, although Shakespear +must have had the opportunity of studying such a character from the +original. But he even confers on the French doctor in the <i>Merry Wives</i> +the very name of an actual English one, who was living in his boyhood, and +who was not merely a contributor to literature, but a writer on +philological subjects; so that those who had been acquainted with the real +Caius were apt to feel some mystification at his dramatic presentment, +claiming a nationality which did not belong to him, and murdering a +language which was his own.</p> + +<p>As regards the familiarity of the French and Germans with our idiom, the +position is changed; for while that of the former remains nearly +stationary, that of Germany has grown more accurate and more general.</p> + + +<p><br />II. But the conversance with our language in former times, even among +those who devoted their attention to philology and instruction, was +excessively scanty and inexact. If no more than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> a bare quotation, +example, or equivalent in English is given, the solecisms are sometimes +ludicrous in the extreme; and this branch of the subject is sufficiently +interesting and novel to induce me, before I conclude my inquiry, to shew +somewhat farther than I have done in the account of the foreign professors +of languages settled in London during the sixteenth and seventeenth +centuries, the ignorance of English exhibited by two distinct classes of +writers, namely, by foreigners occupying among us of old the position of +tutors or teachers, and by the authors of publications designed for +employment by ourselves visiting the Continent, or by our neighbours +coming hither.</p> + +<p>The notions entertained by educated professional Frenchmen, and even by +Hollanders and Germans, about our grammar and idiom were from the outset +down nearly to the present century of the vaguest and most puerile +character. Perhaps one of the most edifying monuments of this inveterate +repugnance to the acquisition of so much as the alphabet of our poor +tongue is to be found in a volume printed at Nürnberg so late as 1744 +under the title <i>Representation of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> the High-landers who arrived at the +Camp of the Confederated Army</i>, 1743, where beneath the first of a series +of plates occurs this elucidation: “The Highlanders in their accostumes +clothes and downwards hanging cloak.” The explanatory description of the +next engraving is “A High-lander who puts on his cloak about his +schoulders, when weather is sed to rain.” These solecisms of course arose +from the incompetence of the foreign artist or publisher, or both; but +even where an ignorant typographer in a Continental town was employed to +set up an English book by the author himself, the liability to blunders +was very great, and we are not to be surprised at slips of the press in +such a work as Bishop Hooper’s <i>Declaration of the Commandments</i>, printed +at Zurich in 1549, when at the end the writer apprises us that “the +setters of the print understand not one word of our speech!”</p> + +<p>The most diverting illustrations of the jargon which was intended to pass +for good conversational English abound in the pocket-guides and +dictionaries, of which some went through several editions, and were +evidently in great request<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> by the sections of society to which they +appealed. One of them is an octoglot vocabulary, 1548, and a second a +series of Colloquies in six languages, accompanied by a dictionary, 1576. +The English examples in the latter are highly curious, as affording an +insight into our language as it was spoken at that date by foreign +students and visitors; and, in point of fact, it is hard to choose between +the two, which is the more remarkable. Let us take the Preface to the +earlier publication from an impression of 1631 before me:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">To the Reader.</span></p> + +<p>“Beloved Reader this boocke is so need full and profitable / and the +vsance of the same so necessarie / that his goodnes euen of learned +men / is not fullie to be praised for ther is noman in France / nor in +thes Nederland / nor in Spayne / or in Italie handling in these +Netherlandes which hat not neede of the eight speaches that here in +are writen and declared: Fer whether thad any man doo marchandise / or +that hee do handle in the Court / or that hee fo lowe the warres or +that hee be a trauailling man / hy should neede to haue an +interpretour / for som of theese eight speaches. The which wee +considering have at our great cost and to your great profite / brought +the same speaches here in suchwise to gether / and set them in order / +so that you fromyence fouath shall not neede eny interpretour / but +shalbe able to speake them your self / ....”</p></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>An extract from one of the interlocutions must suffice:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>“<i>D.</i> Peeter / is that your sone?</p> + +<p><i>P.</i> Yea it is my sonne.</p> + +<p><i>D.</i> it is a goodlie childe. God let hun al wayes prosper in virtue.</p> + +<p><i>P.</i> I thancke you coosen.</p> + +<p><i>D.</i> Doth he not go to the scole?</p> + +<p><i>P.</i> Yes / hee learneth to speake French.</p> + +<p><i>D.</i> Doth hee? it is very well done. John / can you well speake French?</p> + +<p><i>J.</i> Not very well coosen, but I learne.</p> + +<p><i>D.</i> Wher go you too schoole?</p> + +<p><i>J.</i> In the Lumbeardes streat.</p> + +<p><i>D.</i> Have you gon long too schoole?</p> + +<p><i>J.</i> About half a yeare.”</p></div> + +<p>So the dialogue goes on, and there is a series of them.</p> + + +<p><br />III. A second exemplification of the superlative obstacles which persons +born out of England have at all periods encountered in the endeavour to +comprehend on their own part, and render intelligible to others, our +insular speech, is taken from the Italian Grammar of Henry Pleunus, +printed at Leghorn at the end of the seventeenth century.</p> + +<p>Now, here, in lieu of the alleged width of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> acceptability, which meets the +eye in the traveller’s pocket-dictionary just described, we get a positive +assurance that the author was a master of the English tongue; and it may +be predicated of him that, compared with the majority of foreigners, he +exhibits a proficiency very considerably above the average, though we +honestly believe it to be grossly improbable that “every one speaks +English at Legorne,” as he says in one of the Anglo-Italian dialogues. +There can be no desire to be hypercritical in judging such a production, +or to lay stress on occasional slips of spelling and prosody; but the +English of Pleunus very often strikes one—nor is it surprising that it +should be so—as Italian literally rendered. He probably never attained an +idiomatic phraseology; and one would have said less about it, had it not +been for that sort of professorial assumption on the title-page.</p> + +<p>Going back in order of time, I shall furnish some specimens of the +tetraglot <i>History of Aurelio and of Isabel Daughter to the King of +Scotland</i>, translated from the Spanish, and printed in 1556 at Antwerp. I +propose to quote a passage where two knights in love with Isabel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> propose +to cast lots for her:—“I fynde none occasion that is so iuste, that by +the same lof you, or you of me maye complayne vs: inasmuch that euery one +of vs by him selfe is ynoughe more bounde vnto the loue, that he beareth +to Isabell, then vnto any other bounde of frendshippe. And therfore I see +not, that I for respecte of you, nor you also for mine to be ought to +withdrawe from the high enterprise alreadie by vs begonne. Nor in likewise +might be called a vertuouse worke, that we both together in one place +sould displane the louingly sailes [<i>voilles amoureuses</i> in the French +column], for that shoulde be to defile, that so great betwene vs and more, +then of brother conioyned frendship.”</p> + +<p>Here it is not so conspicuously the orthography that is at fault, as the +composition and syntax. But up and down this little book, too, there are +some drolleries of spelling. The translator from the Spanish of Juan de +Flores, whoever he was (a Frenchman probably), understood French and +Italian; but surely his conversance with the remaining tongue was on a par +with that of the majority of his Continental<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> fellow-dwellers then, +before, and since; and doubtless his printer has not failed to contribute +to the barbarous unintelligibility of the English text. This is the book +to which Collins the poet mistakenly informed Warton that Shakespear had +resorted for the story of the <i>Tempest</i>.</p> + +<p>But a far stranger monument of orthographical and grammatical heresies +exists in <i>The historijke Pvrtreatvres of the woll<a name='fna_4' id='fna_4' href='#f_4'><small>[4]</small></a> Bible</i>, printed at +Lyons in 1553. It is a series of woodcuts, with a quatrain in English +beneath each picture descriptive of its meaning, and is introduced by an +elaborate epistle by Peter Derendel and an Address from the printer to the +reader. Both, however, probably proceeded from the pen of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> Derendel, who +was doubtless connected with Pierre Erondelle, a well-known preceptor in +London at a somewhat later date.</p> + +<p>The verses which occur throughout the volume are literal translations, +presumably by Erondelle, from the French, and are singular enough, and +might have tempted quotation; but, eccentric as they are, they are +completely thrown into the background by the <i>prolegomena</i>, and more +especially by the preface purporting to come from the printer of the work, +which is the common set of blocks relating to Biblical subjects, made in +the present case to accompany an English letterpress.</p> + +<p>I will transcribe only the commencement of the preface, whoseever it may +be:—“The affection mine all waies towarde the hartlie ernest, louing +reader, being cōtinuallie commaunded of the dutie of mi profession, mai +not but dailie go about to satisfie the in this, withe thow desirest and +lookest for in mi vacation, the withe, to mai please the, I wolde it were +to mi minde so free and licentiouse streched at large, as it is be the +mishappe of the time restrained.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>The discovery of Moses by Pharaoh’s daughter is thus poetically set +forth:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“The kinges daughter fonde him in great pitie<br /> +The russhes amonge, withe to him fauourable,<br /> +As god did please, him to saue thought worthie,<br /> +His owne mother giuing him for noorce able.”</p> + +<p>Once more, the fall of Abimelech in <i>Judges</i> ix. is portrayed after the +ensuing fashion:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“Hauing killed his bretherne on a stone,<br /> +Abimelech was forced ielde the ghoast:<br /> +For besieging with for warre Thebes, anon<br /> +A strocke he had, of a woman with lost.”</p> + +<p>The spelling and the syntax in these examples are equally outrageous; yet +they are possibly not more so than might be expected from persons unversed +in the intricacies and anomalies of our language. But the point is, that +the undertaking was executed for the special behoof, not alone of English +residents abroad, but also of English students of sacred history at home; +for there was nothing of the class at that time in our literature or our +art. It is almost incomprehensible on what ground English was selected, as +French would have been as serviceable to the educated reader here, while +the Anglo-Gallic <i>patois</i> must have proved a puzzle to all alike.</p> + +<p>The early English educational books <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>produced by foreign printers were not +quite invariably so wide of the mark in an idiomatic respect. Some of them +were doubtless read in proof by the English author or editor; and such may +have been the case with a version of the <i>Short Catechisme</i> of Cardinal +Bellarmine published in 1614 at Augsburgh, where the slips do not exceed +an ordinary Table of Errata.</p> + +<p>Now and then, too, the writer himself was alone responsible for the +eccentricities which presented themselves in his book, as where +Stanyhurst, in his version of the <i>Æneid</i>, published at Leyden in 1582, +renders the opening lines of Book the Second thus:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“With tentive list’ning each wight was setled in harckning;<br /> +Then father Æneas chronicled from loftie bed hautie.<br /> +You me bid, O Princesse, too scarrifie a festered old soare,<br /> +How that the Troians wear prest by Grecian armie.”</p> + +<p>Here it was the idiosyncrasy of the Briton which reduced a translation to +a burlesque, and disregarded the canons of his own language, as well as +taste and propriety in diction. For the entire work is cast in a similar +mould, and is heterodox in almost every particular; some passages are too +grossly absurd even for an Irishman who had spent most of his life in +Belgium or Holland.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p> +<h2>XX.</h2> + +<div class="note"><p class="hang">Origin and spirit of Phonography—William Bullokar the earliest +regular advocate of it—Charles Butler—Dr. Jones and his theory examined.</p></div> + + +<p><br />I. The phonetic system of orthography, which may be regarded as empirical +and fallacious, only forms part of such an inquiry as the present by +reason of the presence in our earlier literature of a few books which were +apparently designed, more or less, for educational purposes.</p> + +<p>The fundamental theory of the promoters of this principle, both in former +times and in our own, seems to have been that the sound should govern the +written character, and that all laws of philology and grammar should defer +to popular pronunciation. It is, of course, begging the question, in the +first place; and one of the warmest enthusiasts on the subject admits that +the very pronunciation, which is the product of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> sound, and on which he +relies, differs in different localities.</p> + +<p>The writers on behalf of phonetics possessed, no doubt, their own honest +convictions; but they have at no period succeeded in carrying with them +any appreciable number of disciples. Between 1580 and 1634, William +Bullokar and Charles Butler endeavoured at various dates to establish +their peculiar creed; but it never gained footing or currency, and its +influence has left no trace on our language, except in the literary or +calligraphic essays of persons unable to read and write, or in one or two +isolated cases where the new heresy for the moment infected a man like +Churchyard, the old soldier-poet, for on no other hypothesis can we +explain the uncouth spelling of his little poem on the Irish Rebellion of +1598, which is an orthographical abortion, out of harmony with the usual +style of the author, and surpassing in foolishness the wildest suggestions +of the professed adherents and supporters of the doctrine.</p> + +<p>Bullokar published his large Grammar in 1580, and his Brief one in 1586; +and he also put forth in 1585 a version of Æsop’s Fables,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> the title of +which is a curiosity:—“Æsopz Fablz in Tru Ortography with Grammar-Notz. +Her-vntoo ar also iooined the Short Sentencz of the Wyz Cato: both of +which Autorz are translated out-of Latin intoo English by William +Bullokar.</p> + +<p class="poem">Gev’ God the praiz<br /> +That teacheth all waiz.<br /> +When Truth trieth,<br /> +Erroor flieth.”</p> + +<p>Butler became a convert in later life to the views previously entertained +and promulgated by Bullokar, bringing out a third edition of his <i>History +of Bees</i> in 1634, adapted to the new standard; and in his <i>English +Grammar</i>, published a twelvemonth before, he enunciated the same +orthographical dogmas. He was of Magdalen College, Oxford, and prepared, +as early as 1600, a Latin text-book on Rhetoric for the use of his +College. This was more popular and successful than his phonetic excursus, +and is quoted even still now and again, because it contains a slight +allusion to Shakespear.</p> + +<p>But perhaps the most strenuous and elaborate attempt to reform us in this +particular direction was made by Dr. Jones, who drew up a <i>Practical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> +Phonography</i>, “Or the New Art of Rightly Spelling and Writing Words by the +Sound thereof,” for the use of the Duke of Gloucester, son of Queen Anne, +somewhere before 1701, in which year he communicated the fruit of his +researches to the public. His description of the art as a new one must be +interpreted by his ignorance of the previous labours of Bullokar and +Butler, and as a proof that the proposal had met with no response; and the +fact that the Doctor’s own volume is almost unknown may be capable of a +similar explanation.</p> + +<p>I have no means of judging what kind of reception was accorded to Dr. +Jones at the time; but the tone of that gentleman’s Preface was certainly +not propitiatory or diffident; for he freely speaks of the miserable +ignorance of the world and of his own condescension to the undertaking, in +order to remove or enlighten it; and yet, from another point of view, he +addressed himself to the task of instituting a grammatical code based on +that very ignorance of which he complains. For you have not to travel +beyond the introductory remarks to stumble on the following directions for +the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> pronunciation and <i>ergo</i> the spelling of half-a-dozen familiar words +and proper names:—<i>Aron</i>, <i>baut</i> (bought), <i>Mair</i>, <i>Dixnary</i>, <i>pais</i> +(pays), and <i>Wooster</i>; and at the same time on the very threshold of his +text he allows “that English Speech is the Art of signifying the Mind by +human Voice, as it is commonly used in England, (particularly in London, +the Universities, or at Court).”</p> + +<p>Dr. Jones was a learned and well read medical man, and the monument of his +erudition and scholarship lies before me in the shape of this portentous +volume of 144 pages, which, if the young Duke had not died from another +cause, might have proved fatal to him and to his royal mother’s hopes of a +successor in the Stuart line.</p> + +<p>That our national pronunciation is slovenly and against philological laws, +nobody will probably deny; but it would not be an improvement or a gain to +corrupt our written language by levelling it down to our spoken one.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p> +<h2>INDEX.</h2> + + +<p class="index"> +Abacus, <a href="#Page_209">209-15</a>.<br /> +<br /> +A. B. C., <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209-15</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234-7</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Abingdon School, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Absence from school severely treated, <a href="#Page_108">108-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Academies, private, <a href="#Page_143">143-4</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170-4</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178-83</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Accomplishments taught at the <i>Musæum Minervæ</i>, <a href="#Page_170">170-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— at a private academy in 1676, <a href="#Page_178">178-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Acolastus</i>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Addison’s <i>Letter from Italy</i>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Æsop, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Ainsworth, Robert, <a href="#Page_229">229-30</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Aldus, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Ale, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Alexander de Villâ Dei, <a href="#Page_45">45-6</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Alfric, Archbishop, his <i>Colloquy</i>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Allibone, John, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Alphabet, Jonson’s remarks on our, <a href="#Page_234">234-6</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Alphabetum Latino-Anglicum</i>, 1543, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>.<br /> +<br /> +America, <a href="#Page_33">33-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +American Plantations, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Amwell, <a href="#Page_51">51-3</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Andreas, Bernardus, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Andrew of Wyntown, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Anglo-Gallic dictionary, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— <i>vocabulary</i>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Anglo-Latin literature, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Anniquil, John, schoolmaster and grammarian, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51-3</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Apollo Shroving</i>, 1627, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Apothecaries, early, ignorance of, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Appleby, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Appositions, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Aristotle, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Arithmetic, <a href="#Page_163">163-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Arthur, Prince, son of Henry VII., <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Arthusius, Gotardus, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Ascensius, Jod. Badius, <a href="#Page_78">78-80</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Ascham, Roger, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220-3</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>As in præsenti</i>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Astrology, <a href="#Page_157">157-8</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Astronomy, judicial, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Aufield, W., <a href="#Page_268">268-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Aurelio and Isabel, History of</i>, 1556, <a href="#Page_279">279-81</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Aviarium</i>, <a href="#Page_227">227-8</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Aylesbury, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Bacon, Francis, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Baker, Humphrey, <a href="#Page_163">163-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bailey, Old, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Balbus, Johannes, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bale, Bishop, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bales, Peter, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Barchby, John, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Barclay, Alexander, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Beaune, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bebelius of Basle, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Beer, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bellarmine’s (Cardinal) <i>Catechism</i>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bellomayus, Johannes, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bellot, Jacques, <a href="#Page_267">267-8</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271-2</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Bellum Grammaticale</i>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Berkshire, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bethnal Green, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170-1</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bible, the, in schools, <a href="#Page_205">205-8</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Black Eagle</i> in St. Paul’s Churchyard, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Blue Coat School, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Board Schools, wise policy of the, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bodley, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_10">10-11</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bodmin, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bookbinders, <a href="#Page_114">114-15</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Borde, Andrew, <a href="#Page_210">210-11</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Boulogne, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bow Lane, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Boy-bishop at St. Paul’s, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bracebridge, Thomas, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Brackley, Waynflete’s school at, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bread, manchet, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bright, Timothy, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Brightland, John, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Browne, Alexander, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Buchanan, George, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Buckinghamshire, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Bullokar, William, <a href="#Page_286">286-7</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Burles, Edward, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Burney, Charles, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Busby, Dr., <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21-3</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Buskins, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Butler, Charles, <a href="#Page_286">286-7</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Butter, sweet, in 1652, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Caius, or Kay, John, <a href="#Page_247">247-8</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Calligraphy, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175-6</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cambridge, <a href="#Page_243">243-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Canterbury, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Carmichael, James, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Carving, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cassilis, Gilbert, Earl of, <a href="#Page_117">117-18</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Catechism, the, <a href="#Page_207">207-8</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cathedral schools, <a href="#Page_7">7-9</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Catherine of Aragon, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cato, Dionysius, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Caxton, W., his prose <i>Æneid</i>, <a href="#Page_95">95-6</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cecil, W., Lord Burleigh, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Chancellor of St. Paul’s, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Chapman, George, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Charactery, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Charles II. and Dr. Busby, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Charterhouse, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Chaucer, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cheke, Sir John, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247-8</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Chichester, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Childermass, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Christ’s Hospital, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135-6</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Christ-cross-row, <a href="#Page_210">210-11</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Church, salutary influence of the early, <a href="#Page_5">5</a> <i>et seq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Churchyard, Thomas, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cicero, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141-2</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Ciceronian Academy, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cirencester, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>.<br /> +<br /> +City of London School, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Civil War in Great Britain, influence of the, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Classic authors read in England in 1520, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span><br /> +—— in 1563, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— used at St. Paul’s, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— at Merchant Taylors’, &c., <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— at a provincial school in 1788, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— by ladies, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— attempt to supersede, in 1582, <a href="#Page_231">231-2</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Clerical control over education, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5-7</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190-2</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195-208</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cocker, Edward, <a href="#Page_175">175-6</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Coleridge, S. T., <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Colet, Dean, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108-14</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120-2</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Collation at Merchant Taylors’ on Probation Day, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>.<br /> +<br /> +College education in Scotland, former cost of, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Collins, W., <a href="#Page_281">281</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Collins’s <i>Oriental Eclogues</i>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Columbus, C., <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Comparative study of Latin and English, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Conventual schools, <a href="#Page_6">6-7</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cooper’s <i>Thesaurus</i>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Corderius, M., <a href="#Page_139">139</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cornwall, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Corporal punishment in schools, <a href="#Page_18">18-26</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— petitions to Parliament against it, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Coster, Laurence, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cox, Leonard, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Croft, Richard, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Croke, Richard, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Cromwell, Oliver, <a href="#Page_191">191-2</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— Thomas, Earl of Essex, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Dame-schools, <a href="#Page_196">196-7</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Dancing, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Davies’s Welsh Grammar, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Decalogue, <a href="#Page_120">120-1</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>De Conscribendis Epistolis</i>, by Erasmus, <a href="#Page_103">103-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— an anecdote about the book, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.<br /> +<br /> +De Corro, Anthonio, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>.<br /> +<br /> +De Flores, Juan, <a href="#Page_279">279-81</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Delamothe, G., <a href="#Page_266">266</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Denny, Sir Anthony, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Derendel, Peter, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Desainliens, Claude, <a href="#Page_261">261-6</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Despauterius, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Dialogues of Lucian translated into Latin by Erasmus, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— in English and French, <a href="#Page_258">258-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— in English and Italian, <a href="#Page_263">263-5</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Dickens’s <i>Mrs. Plawnish</i>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Dictionaries, early, <a href="#Page_27">27</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_225">225-30</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Dictionary, definition of a, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— of Johannes de Garlandia, <a href="#Page_32">32-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Discipline, severity of early, <a href="#Page_17">17-26</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108-12</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Doctrinale</i> of Alexander de Villâ Dei, <a href="#Page_45">45-6</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Donatus, Ælius, <a href="#Page_46">46-9</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Dorchester, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Dorne, John, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Dorset Street, Spitalfields, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>.<br /> +<br /> +D’Ouvilly, Sir Balthazar Gerbier, <a href="#Page_170">170-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Drawing, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Dugard, William, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Duncan, Dr., <a href="#Page_219">219</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Du Ploiche, Pierre, <a href="#Page_258">258-61</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Dutch language, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Du Wes or Dewes, Giles, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Dyonisie de Mountchensy, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span><br /> +<br /> +East Indies, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Edward the Confessor, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— I. <a href="#Page_35">35</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— VI., <a href="#Page_123">123-6</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Elizabeth, Queen, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230-2</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Elyot, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_226">226-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Endowed grammar schools of Edward VI., <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.<br /> +<br /> +English school-books printed abroad, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Erasmus, Desiderius, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244-5</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Erondelle, Pierre, <a href="#Page_266">266-7</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281-2</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Eton, <a href="#Page_18">18-19</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— Grammar, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Etymology, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Euripides, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Evans, Sir Hugh, <a href="#Page_180">180-1</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Exchange, Royal, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Farriery, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Faversham, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Feckenham, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Female influence, <a href="#Page_206">206-8</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Festeau, Paul, <a href="#Page_269">269-70</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Fish, <a href="#Page_76">76-7</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Fisher, Bishop, <a href="#Page_242">242-3</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Fitzjames, Bishop, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— Lord Chief Justice, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Fitzstephen, W., <a href="#Page_15">15</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Flageolet, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Flanders, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Florence, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Florio, John, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Foreign influence, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— ignorance of English, <a href="#Page_273">273-84</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Founders of schools at the Reformation, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Fox, John, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Free school at Oxford, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Free school at Feckenham, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>.<br /> +<br /> +French dame-schools, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— influence, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257-62</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266-70</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— <i>Introductory</i>, by G. Du Wes, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— knowledge of English, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a> <i>et seq.</i><br /> +<br /> +—— language, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— orthography, <a href="#Page_35">35-6</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— school in St. Paul’s Churchyard, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Frobenius, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Frorne = frozen, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Gadbury, John, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Gardiner, Bishop, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247-8</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Gascoigne, George, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Gemma Vocabulorum</i>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Geneva, English residents at, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Gentleman’s Calling, The</i>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>.<br /> +<br /> +German influence, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— language, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— population of Riga, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Germany, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Gloucestershire’s Desire</i>, 1642, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Gold, writing with, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Golden Ball in St. Paul’s Churchyard, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Goldsmith’s Alley, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Goldsmith’s <i>Poems for Young Ladies</i>, <a href="#Page_202">202-3</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Gradus comparationum</i>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Grammar schools, endowed, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Grammatica Initialis</i>, 1509, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Grant, Edward, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Grantham, Lincolnshire, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Grantham, Thomas, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Gray’s Inn, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>Greek language, <a href="#Page_241">241-54</a>.<br /> +<br /> +——, study of the, at Oxford, <a href="#Page_101">101-5</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— taught at Cambridge by Erasmus, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243-5</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— taught at public schools, <a href="#Page_141">141-2</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— taught by private tutors, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Greeting, Thomas, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Grey, Lady Jane, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Grocyn, W., <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244-5</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Guarini of Verona, <a href="#Page_86">86-7</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Guarna, Andrea, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Hadleigh, Suffolk, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hall, Arthur, of Grantham, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Harmar, Samuel, <a href="#Page_193">193-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hart Street, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hawkins, William, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hayne, Thomas, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hazlitt, William, <a href="#Page_181">181-2</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— Mr. Registrar, <a href="#Page_281">281, note</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hebrew, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Henry VII., <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— VIII., <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123-4</a> <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226-7</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246-7</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257-8</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hereditary succession of teachers, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Herefordshire, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Hero and Leander</i> of Musæus, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Herodotus, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hertfordshire, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Highgate, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Highlanders, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hills, Richard, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Holidays, ancient school, <a href="#Page_15">15-17</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Holofernes, Shakespear’s, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Holt, John, <a href="#Page_70">70-1</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Holwell, John, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Homer, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hoole, Charles, <a href="#Page_93">93-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hooper, Bishop, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Horace, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Horman, William, <a href="#Page_73">73-8</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— his literary quarrel with Lily and others, <a href="#Page_81">81-2</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— extracts from his <i>Vulgaria</i>, <a href="#Page_74">74-8</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Horn-book, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Hours of the Virgin</i>, 1514, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Howell, James, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hume, Alexander, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Hundred Merry Tales</i>, <a href="#Page_133">133-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Hunt, Leigh, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Illustrated children’s books, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Indian abacus, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Inglis, Esther, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Ingulphus, <a href="#Page_17">17-18</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Ink, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Instruction, mediæval method of, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Ipswich, Wolsey’s school at, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119-20</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Ireland, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Italian influence, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86-7</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242-3</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261-6</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— language, <a href="#Page_152">152</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_261">261-6</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— hand, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Jerome, St., <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110-11</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Jesus College, Cambridge, <a href="#Page_11">11-12</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Johnny Quæ Genus</i>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Johannes de Garlandia, <a href="#Page_32">32-4</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Johnson, Thomas, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Jones, Dr., <a href="#Page_287">287-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Jonson, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233-6</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Julius Cæsar, <a href="#Page_95">95-6</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Ken, Bishop, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Kent, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Kinaston, Sir Francis, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span><br /> +Kingston-upon-Hull, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— Thames, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Kinwelmersh, Francis, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Knox, John, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Kyffin, Maurice, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Ladies, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— colleges for, <a href="#Page_200">200</a> <i>et seq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Ladies’ lapdogs, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lamb, Charles, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— Mary, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lancashire, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lane, A., <a href="#Page_162">162-3</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Languages, living, taught in England, <a href="#Page_152">152</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Latimer, Bishop, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— W., <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Latin language, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162-3</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229-30</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— authors used at St. Paul’s, <a href="#Page_109">109-10</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— barbarous or low, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Laureateship, ancient, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lawrence Pountney, St., <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Leghorn, English at, <a href="#Page_278">278-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lemprière, Dr., <a href="#Page_182">182</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Leominster, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Letter-writing, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Levins, Peter, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lexicons, <a href="#Page_225">225-30</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Libraries, parochial, proposed in Scotland, <a href="#Page_185">185-6</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lichfield, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Life, mediæval, illustrated by ancient school-books, <a href="#Page_31">31-2</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75-8</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— English, of the 16th and 17th centuries illustrated, <a href="#Page_259">259</a> <i>et seq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Lilly, William, the astrologer, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lily, George, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— William, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84-5</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118-22</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150-2</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Linacre, Thomas, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117-18</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244-5</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lincolnshire, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Littleton, Adam, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Logic, <a href="#Page_133">133-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lombard Street, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>.<br /> +<br /> +London, localities of, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77-8</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93-4</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113-16</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164-5</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258-9</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261-2</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— proposed University of, in 1647-8, <a href="#Page_166">166-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Longlond, Dr., Bishop of Lincoln, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lord’s Prayer, <a href="#Page_120">120-1</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lothbury Garden, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Louth, Lincolnshire, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lucian, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Ludus Ludi Litterarii</i>, 1672, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Lydgate, John, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42-3</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Magdalen College School, Oxford, <a href="#Page_11">11-12</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84-5</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Makins, Bathsua, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Malagasy language, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Malayan language, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Malmesbury, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Manchester, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Manchet bread, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mantuan, Eclogues of, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mary, Princess, afterwards Queen, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mauger, Claudius, <a href="#Page_269">269-70</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Maupas, Charles, <a href="#Page_268">268-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>May-Flower</i>, the, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Maypoles, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mayor of London, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Meals, graces at, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— reading at, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Medulla Grammatices</i>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mercers’ School, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Merchant Taylors’ School, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136-42</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144-9</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223-4</a>.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span><br /> +Middlesex, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mile-End Green, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Military science, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Milk for Children</i>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Milton, John, <a href="#Page_158">158-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Miracle of the fishes, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Monastic or conventual schools, <a href="#Page_6">6-7</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Montefiore, Sir Moses, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Monumenta Franciscana</i> quoted, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.<br /> +<br /> +More, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Morris dances, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Morris, Richard, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Motto of Merchant Taylors’ School, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mountjoy, Lord William, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mrs. Leicester’s school, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mugwell or Monkwell Street, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mulcaster, Richard, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Mules, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Murray, Lindley, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218-19</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Musæum Minervæ</i> at Bethnal Green, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Musæus, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Music taught in the conventual schools, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— to ladies by private masters, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Nash, Thomas, quoted, <a href="#Page_19">19-20</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Neckam, Alexander, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Neo-Hellenic, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Netherlands, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Newman, Thomas, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Niger, Franciscus, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Nominale</i>, the, <a href="#Page_27">27</a> <i>et seq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Nonsense-verses, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Norths of Kirtling, the, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Nowell, Alexander, Dean of St. Paul’s, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Ocland, Christopher, <a href="#Page_230">230-2</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Old Brompton, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Oral instruction, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Ortus Vocabulorum</i>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Oudin, Cesare, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Ovid, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Owen, Lewis, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Oxford, Waynflete’s school at, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— ancient educational machinery at, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133-4</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— Grammar of, 1709, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Pace, Richard, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Padua, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Painting, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Palsgrave, John, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pantofles, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Paper, manufacture of, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— different sizes of, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— royal, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— blotting, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Paris under Philip Augustus, <a href="#Page_33">33-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Parish churches in London, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— schools in England, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— —— in Scotland, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— libraries proposed in Scotland, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Partridge, John, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Parvula</i>, <a href="#Page_69">69-70</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Parvulorum Institutio</i>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Penton, Stephen, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pepys, S., <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— Mrs., <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Percy, Bishop, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Perottus, Nicolaus, <a href="#Page_39">39-40</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pes (foot) derived from the Greek, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Phænissæ</i> of Euripides, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Philelphus, Franciscus, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Phonography, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pictorial vocabulary, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span><br /> +Play-days <i>v.</i> holy-days, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pleunus, Henry, <a href="#Page_278">278-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Poggius (Poggio Bracciolini), <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Polyglot vocabularies, <a href="#Page_153">153-4</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276-80</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pope, Alexander, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Popular literature of 1520, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Portraitures of the Bible</i>, 1553, <a href="#Page_281">281-3</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Portuguese language, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Prayers at public schools, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Prices of provisions, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Prideaux, M., <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Primer, National, of 1540, <a href="#Page_123">123</a> <i>et seq.</i><br /> +<br /> +—— Salisbury, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— for children, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Primrose, Dr., Goldsmith’s, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Printing, notices relative to, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Printing-press, private, attached to Merchant Taylors’ School, <a href="#Page_148">148-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Probation-Day, <a href="#Page_139">139-42</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Professors of foreign languages, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Promptorius Parvulorum</i>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pronunciation of Greek and Latin, <a href="#Page_248">248-51</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Propria quæ maribus</i>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Proprietary schools, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195-6</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Protestant refugees at Geneva, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— A. B. C., first, 1553, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Provincial schools, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179-183</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— culture, <a href="#Page_201">201-2</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Pumps, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Punctuation, early, <a href="#Page_79">79-80</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Putney, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Quarter-wages, <a href="#Page_148">148-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Quiney, Mrs., <a href="#Page_202">202</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Rabbards, R., <a href="#Page_165">165</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Rabelais, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Reading, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Reference, early books of, <a href="#Page_239">239-40</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Religious character of early teaching, <a href="#Page_6">6-8</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Remedies or holy-days, <a href="#Page_15">15-17</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Reynell, Sir Richard, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Rhetoric, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Rhodes, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Richmond and Derby, Margaret, Countess of, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Riding the Great Horse, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Riga, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Rightwise, John, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Ripley’s <i>Compound of Alchemy</i>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Robertson, Thomas, of York, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150-2</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Rochelle, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Roman Antiquities</i> of Prideaux, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— of Adams, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— coins, weights, and measures, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Rome, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Rood, Theodore, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Roper, Margaret, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Rose, Manor of the, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— sign of the, <a href="#Page_258">258-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Roulston, Staffordshire, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Ruddiman, Thomas, <a href="#Page_187">187-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Russian abacus, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Sackville, Sir Richard, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220-2</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— Mr. Robert, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Salaries of schoolmasters in 1561, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>.<br /> +<br /> +School children (parish) in 1642, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>.<br /> +<br /> +School of fish, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Schools, monastic or conventual, <a href="#Page_6">6-7</a>.<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span><br /> +——, cathedral, <a href="#Page_7">7-9</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— established in England, 1502-15, <a href="#Page_105">105-8</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— —— by Edward VI., <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Schoolmaster, the old and new, <a href="#Page_23">23-6</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— of Old St. Paul’s, <a href="#Page_113">113-14</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Schoolmasters under the Commonwealth, <a href="#Page_191">191-2</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Scogin, Jests of, <a href="#Page_210">210-11</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Scot, Alexander, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Scotland, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184-9</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Scotus, Joh., <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Scrooby, Lincolnshire, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Secularisation of teaching, <a href="#Page_204">204-8</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Shakespear, W., <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180-1</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201-2</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— his <i>Dr. Caius</i> and <i>Duke de Jarmany</i>, <a href="#Page_273">273-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Ship of Fools</i>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Shirley, James, <a href="#Page_237">237-8</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Shoemaker, dialogue with a, in 1597, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Short Introduction of Grammar</i>, by Lily, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Shropshire, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181-2</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Shropshire school in 1788, <a href="#Page_181">181-2</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Skinners’ school at Tonbridge, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Smith, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Smith’s series of dictionaries, &c., <a href="#Page_240">240</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Sneezing, folklore of, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Somersetshire, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Somerville, Mrs., <a href="#Page_199">199</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Spalding, Augustine, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Spanish language, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Speech-Day at Merchant Taylors’, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Speeches at breaking-up, <a href="#Page_143">143-5</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Spelling A. B. C.</i>, 1590, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Spitalfields, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Staffordshire, <a href="#Page_106">106-7</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Stage-plays in 1654, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Stanbridge, John, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53-9</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Standish, John, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Stans puer ad mensam</i>, <a href="#Page_42">42-3</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Stanyhurst’s Virgil, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Sterne’s <i>Sentimental Journey</i>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>.<br /> +<br /> +St. Martin’s-le-Grand, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.<br /> +<br /> +St. Mary-le-Bow, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.<br /> +<br /> +St. Mary Wike, Devonshire, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.<br /> +<br /> +St. Paul’s Church, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— Churchyard, <a href="#Page_115">115-16</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261-2</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— School (old), <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— —— (Colet’s), <a href="#Page_100">100</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_120">120-2</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132-3</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Stockwood, John, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Stratford-on-Avon, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Strong, Nathaniel, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Studies at the <i>Musæum Minervæ</i>, <a href="#Page_171">171-2</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Sturmius, Johannes, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Subjects taught in mediæval schools, <a href="#Page_9">9-10</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— at St. Paul’s and Merchant Taylors’, <a href="#Page_109">109-10</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141-2</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— at provincial schools, <a href="#Page_181">181-2</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Sulpicius, Johannes, <a href="#Page_40">40-4</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Surrey, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— Lord, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Survival of early English system of holidays in the United States, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Sutton Colfield, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Syms, Christopher, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<i>Tables of Grammar</i>, by John Fox, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Teachers, foreign, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Terence, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>Testament, Greek, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Theology in schools, <a href="#Page_205">205-8</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Thucydides, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Tiptoft, John, Earl of Worcester, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Tom Thumb’s Alphabet, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Tonbridge, Skinners’ School at, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Tree of Knowledge, the, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Trinity Lane, <a href="#Page_258">258-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Tumbler, a dog, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Tunstall, Bishop, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Turner, Dr., <a href="#Page_105">105</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Tusser, Thomas, <a href="#Page_18">18-19</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Tutors, <a href="#Page_161">161-3</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Udall, Nicolas, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Union, educational results of the, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>.<br /> +<br /> +United States, system of holidays in the, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.<br /> +<br /> +University of London, proposed, in 1647-8, <a href="#Page_166">166-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Vacation, modern, not formerly understood, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Valpy’s Greek Grammar, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Vaus, John, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Vergil, Polydore, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Vimont, M., <a href="#Page_236">236</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Virgil, <a href="#Page_43">43-4</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94-5</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110-11</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Vitellius, Cornelius, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Vives, Ludovicus, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Vocabularies, <a href="#Page_27">27</a> <i>et seq.</i><br /> +<br /> +—— polyglot, <a href="#Page_153">153-4</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Wakes, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wales, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Walker, William, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Walter de Biblesworth, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wapping, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Warwickshire, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Watling Street, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wax candles taken by boys to school, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Waynflete, early school at, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— Bishop, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Welsh Grammar, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br /> +<br /> +Wem, Salop, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Westbury, Lord Chancellor, <a href="#Page_281">281, note</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Westminster, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— School, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— Grammar, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>.<br /> +<br /> +West Point School, U.S., <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.<br /> +<br /> +White, Thomas, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Whitsun-ales, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Whittinton, Robert, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60-8</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81-2</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96-9</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— his series of grammatical treatises described, <a href="#Page_60">60-6</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Winchester School, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wines, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Withals, John, <a href="#Page_228">228-9</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Witton School, near Chester, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wolfe, Reginald, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wolsey, Cardinal, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119-20</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Wolverhampton, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Women, education of, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195-208</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— notices of, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.<br /> +<br /> +Word-books, <a href="#Page_27">27</a> <i>et seq.</i><br /> +<br /> +Writing, <a href="#Page_175">175-7</a>.<br /> +<br /> +—— books, abundance of, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Xenophon, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>.<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Zenobia, Queen Elizabeth preferred to, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>.<br /> +</p> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">BALLANTYNE PRESS: EDINBURGH AND LONDON</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><strong>Footnotes:</strong></p> + +<p><a name='f_1' id='f_1' href='#fna_1'>[1]</a> There is some sort of evidence that the Grammar of Perottus was in +demand here in England as a work of reference and instruction; for I find +it in the interesting account-book of John Dorne of Oxford for 1520. It is +bracketed with the <i>Vulgaria</i> of Whittinton and the <i>Vocabula</i> and +<i>Accidence</i> of Stanbridge as having fetched, the four together, 3s. It is +described as being in leather binding, in quarto.</p> + +<p><a name='f_2' id='f_2' href='#fna_2'>[2]</a> Knight refers to the <i>Epistolæ</i> of Franciscus Philelphus, printed at +Milan in 1471.</p> + +<p><a name='f_3' id='f_3' href='#fna_3'>[3]</a> Introduction to Hayne’s <i>Latin Grammar</i>, 1640.</p> + +<p><a name='f_4' id='f_4' href='#fna_4'>[4]</a> It may be worth while to note that the use of <i>woll</i> for <i>whole</i> was +not an unusual type of orthography and pronunciation in early English. +Thus, in the <i>Interlude of the Four Elements</i> (1519), we have:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“For, as I said, they have none iron,<br /> +Whereby they should in the earth mine,<br /> +To search for any <i>wore</i>.”</p> + +<p>And in the <i>Image of Hypocrisy</i>, part 3, Robin Hood is called <i>Robyn +Whode</i>. Lord Chancellor Westbury used to pronounce <i>whole</i> in the same +way, and he would also say <i>whot</i> for <i>hot</i>. When Mr. Registrar Hazlitt +was engaged with him on the Bankruptcy Bill, he remarked more than once: +“I am sick, Hazlitt, of the <i>woll</i> business.”</p> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Schools, School-Books and Schoolmasters, by +W. Carew Hazlitt + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SCHOOLS, SCHOOL-BOOKS *** + +***** This file should be named 38017-h.htm or 38017-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/0/1/38017/ + +Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images +generously made available by The Internet Archive.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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