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diff --git a/38017.txt b/38017.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1a23397 --- /dev/null +++ b/38017.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7536 @@ +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: ASCII + +*** 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.) + + + + + + + + + + A SELECT LIST OF + Works or Editions + BY WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT + OF THE INNER TEMPLE + _CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED + 1860-1888_. + + +1. History of the Venetian Republic; Its Rise, its Greatness, and its +Civilisation. With Maps and Illustrations. 4 vols. 8vo. _Smith, Elder & +Co._ 1860. + +A new edition, entirely recast, with important additions, in 3 vols. crown +8vo, is in readiness for the press. + +2. Old English Jest-Books, 1525-1639. Edited with Introductions and Notes. +_Facsimiles._ 3 vols. 12mo. 1864. + +3. Remains of the Early Popular Poetry of England. With Introductions and +Notes. 4 vols. 12mo. _Woodcuts._ 1864-66. + +4. Handbook to the Early Popular, Poetical, and Dramatic Literature of +Great Britain. Demy 8vo. 1867. Pp. 714, in two columns. + +5. Bibliographical Collections and Notes. 1867-76. Medium 8vo. 1876. + +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 _infra_. + +6. Bibliographical Collections and Notes. SECOND SERIES. 1876-82. Medium +8vo. 1882. + + Uniform with First Series. About 10,000 titles on the same principle + as before. + + "Mr. W. C. Hazlitt's second series of _Bibliographical Collections and + Notes_ (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 _Handbook_ and five and a + half in his first _Collections_, 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 _Collections_ 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."--_Academy_, August 26, 1882. + +7. Bibliographical Collections and Notes. A THIRD AND FINAL SERIES. 1886. +8vo. + + Uniform with the First and Second Series. This volume contains upwards + of 3000 articles. All three are now on sale by Mr. Quaritch. + +8. Memoirs of William Hazlitt. With Portions of his Correspondence. +_Portraits after miniatures by John Hazlitt._ 2 vols. 8vo. 1867. + + During the last twenty years the Author has been indefatigable in + collecting additional information for the _Life of Hazlitt_, 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. + +9. Inedited Tracts. Illustrating the Manners, Opinions, and Occupations of +Englishmen during the 16th and 17th Centuries. 1586-1618. With an +Introduction and Notes. _Facsimiles._ 4to. 1868. + +10. The Works of Charles Lamb. Now first collected, and entirely +rearranged. With Notes. 4 vols. 8vo. _E. Moxon & Co._ 1868-69. + +11. Letters of Charles Lamb. 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. + + +11a. Mary and Charles Lamb. New Facts and Inedited Remains. 8vo. _Woodcuts +and Facsimiles._ 1874. + + The groundwork of this volume was an Essay by the writer in + _Macmillan's Magazine_. + +12. English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases. Arranged alphabetically and +annotated. Medium 8vo. 1869. Second Edition, corrected and greatly +enlarged, crown 8vo. 1882. + +13. Narrative of the Journey of an Irish Gentleman through England in +1751. From a MS. With Notes. 8vo. 1869. + +14. The English Drama and Stage, under the Tudor and Stuart Princes. +1547-1664. With an Introduction and Notes. 8vo. 1869. + + A series of reprinted Documents and Treatises. + +15. Popular Antiquities of Great Britain. I. The Calendar. II. Customs and +Ceremonies. III. Superstitions. 3 vols. Medium 8vo. 1870. + + Brand's _Popular Antiquities_, by Ellis, 1813, taken to pieces, + recast, and enormously augmented. + +16. Inedited Poetical Miscellanies. 1584-1700. Thick 8vo. With Notes and +Facsimiles. 50 copies privately printed. 1870. + +17. Warton's History of English Poetry. 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. + +18. The Feudal Period. Illustrated by a Series of Tales (from Le Grand). +12mo. 1874. + +19. Prefaces, Dedications, and Epistles. Prefixed to Early English Books. +1540-1701. 8vo. 1874. + + 50 copies privately printed. + +20. Blount's Jocular Tenures. 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. + +21. Dodsley's Select Collection of Old Plays. A new edition, greatly +enlarged, corrected throughout, and entirely rearranged. With a Glossary +by Dr. Richard Morris. 15 vols. 8vo. 1874-76. + +22. Fairy Tales, Legends, and Romances. Illustrating Shakespear and other +Early English Writers. 12mo. 1875. + +23. Shakespear's Library: A Collection of the Novels, Plays, and other +Material supposed to have been used by Shakespear. An entirely new +edition. 6 vols. 12mo. 1875. + +24. Fugitive Tracts (written in verse) which illustrate 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. + +25. Poetical Recreations. By W. C. Hazlitt. 50 copies printed. 12mo. 1877. + + A new edition, revised and very greatly enlarged, is in preparation. + +26. The Baron's Daughter. A Ballad. 75 copies printed. 4to. 1877. + +27. The Essays Of Montaigne. Translated by C. Cotton. An entirely new +edition, collated with the best French text. With a Memoir, and all the +extant Letters. _Portrait and Illustrations._ 3 vols. 8vo. 1877. + + The only library edition. + +28. Catalogue of the Huth Library. [English portion.] 5 vols. Large 8vo. +1880. 200 copies printed. + +29. Offspring of Thought in Solitude. Modern Essays. 1884. 8vo, pp. 384. + + Some of these Papers were originally contributed to _All the Year + Round_, &c. + +30. Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine. 12mo. 1886. + +31. An Address to the Electors of Mid-Surrey, among whom I Live. In +Rejoinder to Mr. Gladstone's Manifesto. 1886. 8vo, pp. 32. + + "Who would not grieve, if such a man there be? + Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?"--POPE. + +32. Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 12mo. 1887. + +33. Schools, School-books, and Schoolmasters. A Contribution to the +History of Educational Development. 12mo. 1888. + +34. Studies in Jocular and Anecdotal Literature. 12mo. _In January next._ + + + + +SCHOOLS, SCHOOL-BOOKS, AND SCHOOLMASTERS. + + + + + SCHOOLS SCHOOL-BOOKS AND SCHOOLMASTERS + + A Contribution to the history of Educational + Development in Great Britain + + + BY W. CAREW HAZLITT + + + LONDON + J. W. JARVIS & SON + KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND + 1888 + + + + +PREFACE. + + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +W. C. H. + + BARNES COMMON, SURREY, + _November 1887_. + + + + +SCHOOLS, SCHOOL-BOOKS, AND SCHOOLMASTERS. + + + + +I. + + 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. + + +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. + +An attentive consideration of the ensuing pages may bring us to the +conclusion that the 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. + +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. 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. + +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 sixteenth century was still substantially the standard +authority less than a hundred years since? + +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? + +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. + +Every eminent Englishman who has done more or less to augment and enrich +our literary stores, and an infinitely greater number who 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. + +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. + +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 _gymnasia_ and academies of the Continent. + + +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 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. + +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 mediaeval scholastic _curriculum_, 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. + +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. + +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. + + +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 over which the bishop of the diocese +presided _ex officio_. 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. + +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 mediaeval time almost every monastic house had its special 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Bishop Waynflete appears to have been 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. + +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. + +At the time of the Civil War, John Allibone, a Buckinghamshire man, and +author of that rather well-known Latin description of the University as +reformed by the Republicans in 1648, was head-master of Magdalen School. + +In the English _Ship of Fools_, 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. + +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. + +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 _The +Gentleman's Calling_, 8vo, 1660, dedicated to our immediate subject, the +anonymous author observes: "Scarce any that owns the name of a +_Gentleman_, 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 _Tree of Knowledge_ +upon which there is no interdict...." + +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 _Advice to a Son_, +1656, and many other treatises of a cognate character, is a tissue of +dulness and inanity. It is characteristic of the whole that portraits of +Jeremiah and Zedekiah are selected as appropriate graphic embellishments. + +From a woodcut on the back of the title-page of a _Grammatica Initialis_, +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 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. + +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. + +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 _remedy_, 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. + +In all the public schools, indeed, holidays 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." + +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. + +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. + + +IV. Ingulphus, who lived in the reign of Edward the Confessor (A.D. +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 _Study of Oxford_, 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 +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. + +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. + +Thomas Tusser, author of the _Points of Good Husbandry_, 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:-- + + "From Paul's I went, to Eton sent, + To learn straightways the Latin phrase; + Where fifty-three stripes given to me + At once I had. + For fault but small, or none at all, + It came to pass that beat I was: + See, Udall, see the mercy of thee + To me, poor lad!" + +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. + +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. + +Nash, in _Summer's Last Will and Testament_, 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 +wit, and good for nothing, but to get a schoolmaster twopence a week!" + +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. + +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. + +At Merchant Taylors' in my time the cane was freely used, and the forms of +chastisement were the _cut on the hand_ and _the bender_, for which the +culprit had to stoop. + +The _regime_ 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 _unguentum +baculinum_, or stick-ointment, had undergone very slight alteration since +the previous century. Busby, of whom there is a strange-looking portrait +in Nichols' _Anecdotes_, was the most sublime of coxcombical Dons, and +within his own pale an autocrat second to none of the Caesars. Smaller +luminaries in the same sphere paid him homage in dedicatory epistles. + +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 (_Ego et rex meus_ 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 in England than him, his authority would be at an +end. + +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." + +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 still pursues his favourite occupation on earth. + +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? + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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." + +These preparatory movements indicated the direction in which sentiment and +taste were beginning to stir, not so much at the outset, 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. + + + + +II. + + The Foundations--Vocabularies, Glossaries, and _Nominalia_--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). + + +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 _nominalia_, +which afford examples of the method of instruction pursued in this country +from the Middle Ages to the invention of printing. + +Such of these manuals as we fortunately still possess represent the +surviving residue of a much larger number; and from the perishable +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. + +In the small volumes on _Cookery and Gardening_ 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 +mediaeval 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 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. + +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. + + +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 +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. + +The VOCABULARY, of approximately the same date, is in reality a Latin and +Anglo-Saxon word-book. Like the _Colloquy_, 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 apparent order. The same +is to be said of all the works of this class belonging to the mediaeval +era. + +The Anglo-Gallic treatise of Alexander Neckam _De Utensilibus_ (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 _seriatim_, the several occupations +and callings of men, the mode of laying out a garden, and of building a +castle. + +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. + +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 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...." + +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. + +There is a very curious passage in one of the glosses, where Johannes +explains the derivation of _Pes_, which he traces from the Greek _pos_ +[_sic_], adding that thence the dwellers of the other world or hemisphere, +_if it be true that there are any_, are termed Antipodes. As this was +written nearly 300 years before Columbus, it might have supplied a note +and a point to Mr. Beamish in his volume on the _Discovery of America by +the Northmen in the Tenth Century_, 1841. + +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 cyclopaedia 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! + + +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. 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, _as a rule_, both in England +and abroad. Criticism lays down its arms. + +But I must dwell rather longer on one of the tracts in this series--the +Anglo-Gallic Dictionary or _Phraseologia_ 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 language, apart from the spelling, is remarkable for +its plentiful use of expressions which have fallen into desuetude, and +some of which, as _io_ for _je_, bespeak a Pyrenaean origin. + +This production is intituled "Le treytyz ke moun sire Gauter de +Bibelesworthe fist a ma dame Dyonisie de Mounchensy, pur aprise de +langwage, co est a 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:-- + + "Homme et femme unt la peel, + De morte beste quyr jo apel. + Le clerk soune le dreyne apel, + Le prestre fat a Roume apel. + Ore avet co ke pent a cors, + Dedens ausy et deors. + Vestet vos dras, me chers enfauns, + Chaucez vos bras, soulers, e gauns; + Mettet le chaperoun, coverz le chef, + Tachet vos botouns, e pus derechef + De une coreye vus ceynet." + +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 _dreyne_ for +_derreniere_ or _derniere_ 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. + + + + +III. + + Earliest printed works of instruction--Publications of Bishop + Perottus--His _Grammatical Rules_--Johannes Sulpicius and his _Opus + Grammaticum_--Some account of the book--Importance and influence of + these foreign Manuals in England--The _Carmen Juvenile_ or _Stans Puer + ad Mensam_--Alexander Gallus or De Villa Dei and his _Doctrinale_--The + _Doctrinale_ one of the earliest productions of the Dutch press--AElius + Donatus--His immense popularity and weight both at home and + abroad--Selections or abridgments of his Grammar used in English + schools. + + +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 +possible to procure only to a very limited extent, in transcripts executed +by the authors themselves or by professional copyists. + +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 NICHOLAUS PEROTTUS, BISHOP +OF SIPONTUM, whose _Grammatical Rules_ first appeared, so far as I know, +in 1486.[1] + +The examples of fifteenth-century English, which make in our eyes its +chief value, were of course introduced as casual illustrations. + +The lexicographical and grammatical works of this noted prelate +undoubtedly exercised a 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 _Rudimenta Grammatices_, +1476, and his _Cornucopia Linguae Latinae_, 1490. The former was not only +imported into this country for sale, but was reprinted here in 1512, and +the _Cornucopia_ forms part of the groundwork of our own _Ortus +Vocabulorum_, 1500. + + +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 JOHANNES SULPICIUS VERULANUS, 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 _Opus Grammaticum_, 4to, 1494. + +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 which some were occasionally +added or omitted at pleasure, or variously placed. + +The edition of 1505 comprises the undermentioned pieces:-- + + Sulpitii Verulani examen de 8 partibus orationis. + De declinatione nominum. + De preteritis & supinis. + Carmen iuuenile de moribus mensae. + Vocabulorum interpretatio. + Iod. Badii Ascensii De regimine dictionum. + Sulp. Verul. De regimine & constructione. + De componendis ordinandisq. epistolis. + De carminibus. + +The title-leaf presents the woodcut, often employed by Pynson in his later +performances, of a person, probably a schoolmaster, seated at a _plutus_ +or reading-desk, holding a paper in one hand, and reading from a book +which lies open before him. + +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 the +London press, while others were imported from Paris. + +The _fasciculi_ in one of 1511 are as follow:-- + + Sulpitii Examen de octo partibus orationis. + Carmen Iuuenile. + De declinatione nominum orthoclitorum. + ---------------------- heteroclitorum. + De nominibus heteroclitis. + De generibus nominum. + De verbis defectiuis. + De praeteritis verborum. + De supinis ----------. + De regimine et constructione dictionum Libellus. + De componendis ornandisq; epistolis. + De Carminibus. + De quantitate syllabarum. + De A, E, &c. in primis syllabis. + ---------------- mediis ----. + De ultimis syllabis. + De Carminibus decoro [_sic_] &c. + Donati de figuris opusculum. + De latinarum dictionum recta scriptura. + De grecarum dictionum orthographia. + De ratione dipthongangi. + Ascensii de orthographia carmina. + Vocabulorum interpretatio. + +The _Carmen Juvenile_, inserted here and in the antecedent issues, is the +poem better known as _Stans Puer ad Mensam_, and in its English dress by +Lydgate. Mr. Blades tells us that the _editio princeps_ 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 _formosus appollo_. His substitution of _Vergilius_ as the +name of the Latin poet is so far 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 _Vergilius_. 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. + + +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. + +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 naturally +went beyond him; but Sulpicius was doubtless as much in advance of his +forerunners as Richard Morris is in advance of Lindley Murray. + +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. + +In enumerating the aids to learning which the English received from the +Continent, we must not overlook Alexander Gallus, or Alexander de Villa +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. + +The _Doctrinale_ 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 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. + + +IV. But the prototype of all the grammatical writers and teachers of early +times in this as well as other countries was AELIUS DONATUS, 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. + +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 a _Donatus_ or _Donet_ was a +well-understood synonym for a Primer, and John of Basing even christens +his Greek Grammar, compiled about 1240, _Donatus Graecorum_. Langland, in +his _Vision concerning Piers Ploughman_, written a century later, says-- + + "Thaune drowe I me amonges draperes my donet to lerne;" + +and the _Testament of Love_ alludes to the work in similar terms. "In the +statutes of Winchester College [written about 1386]," says Warton, "a +grammar is called _Antiquus Donatus_, 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, traite de grammaire.... Among Rawlinson's MSS. +at Oxford I have seen _Donatus opitimus noviter compilatus_, a manuscript +on vellum, given to Saint Albans by John Stoke, Abbot in 1450. In the +introduction, or _lytell Proheme_, to Dean Colet's _Grammatices +Rudimenta_, we find mention made of 'certayne introducyons into latyn +speche called Donates, &c. ... Cotgrave ... quotes an old French proverb: +'Les diables etoient encores a leur Donat'--The devils were but yet in +their grammar." + +In common with AEsop, the _Dialogus Creaturarum_, 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 _Donatus Moralizatus_, +_Donatus Christianatus_, adopted by writers of a different class in order +to attract attention and gain acceptance. + +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 _Donatus Minor_ and the _Donatus +pro pueris_, both published at the end of the fifteenth or beginning of +the sixteenth century. + +The former has on the title-page a large woodcut, representing a +schoolmaster in a sort of thronal chair, with the instrument of +correction 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. + +"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.'" + + + + +IV. + + Rise of native teachers--Magdalen College School, Oxford--John + Annaquil, its first master, and his grammatical handbooks--The + _Compendium Grammatices_ with the _Vulgaria_ of Terence annexed--The + _Parvulorum Institutio_--Personal allusions in the examples + given--JOHN STANBRIDGE--Account of his works, with extracts of + interesting passages--ROBERT WHITTINTON--His sectional series of + Grammars. + + +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 _Catholicon_. + +The LEXICON and DICTIONARY 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. + +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. + +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, _Compendium +Grammatices_, with an Anglo-Latin version of the _Vulgaria_ of Terence +annexed. This volume was printed at Oxford by Theodore Rood about 1484; +and an edition of the work entitled _Parvulorum Institutio_, 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: _Eo Oxonium_ or _Ad Oxonium_." "I shall go to London: +_Ibo Londinum_." + +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 _Regum est tueri leges: +Refert omnium animadverti in malos_. 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, _Audito regem Doroberniam +proficisci_; _Imperator_ [Maximilian] _meruit sub rege_, &c. There were +likewise in that edition of Erasmus several examples referring to Dean +Colet, as _Vixit Romae_, _studuit Oxonii_, _natus est Londini_, _discessit +Londini_, &c." + +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. + + +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: 1. ACCIDENCE; 2. +VOCABULA; 3. VULGARIA. In the latter I include: 1. ACCIDENTIA EX +STANBRIGIANA EDITIONE RECOGNITA lima Roberti Whittintoni; 2. PARVULORUM +INSTITUTIO EX STANBRIGIANA COLLECTIONE. 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. + +There is an edition of Stanbridge's _Accidence_, 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 _Typographical Antiquities_:-- + +"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 (_Accidentia ex Stanbrigiana +Collectione_) does not 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." + +There are at least three issues of the _Accidence_ 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. + +Next to the _Accidence_ of Stanbridge I shall consider briefly his +_Vocabula_, 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:-- + + _De naui et eius pertinentibus._ + + The formost parte The hynder parte The saylewarde the bottom of the + of the shyppe of the shyppe =antenna= shyppe + =Prora nauis= =Puppis rostrum= =carina= + + The takelynge the mast The cable an anker the stern + =Armamenta= =malus= =rudens simul= =anchora= =clauus= + + The hatches the pompe the water pompe the hatches + =foci= =sentina cum= =nautea nausea= =transtra= + + The sayle cloth idem the maste of the shyppe to sayle a shypman + =carbalus= =et belum= =nauergus= =et nauigo= =nauta= + + Qui nauem regit idem i. nauis + =nauicularius= =et nauclerus= =nauigiumq=; + + Ptines ad naue to rowe qui remigat the dockes an ore + =naualis= =remigio= =remus= =naualia= =remex= + + Ptinens ad naue qui fregit nauem the see a wawe + =nauticus et= =naufragus naufragium= =ac mare= =fretu= + + To carry ouer to dryue to carry ouer the toll, or the custome + =Trajitio= =appello= =transporto= =portarjumq=; + + A fery man a fery barge idem a cokbote a bottom + =Portitor= =hyppago= =ponto= =Iynter quoq=; =cymba= + +This extract is highly edifying. In the concluding line _ponto_, a +ferry-barge, is the modern _punt_, and _lynter_, a cock-boat, is the early +Venetian _lintra_, to which I refer in _Venice before the Stones_ as +antecedent to the gondola. + + +III. The remaining contribution of Stanbridge to this class of literature +is his _Vulgaria_, 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:-- + + "_Sinciput, et vertex, caput, occiput, et coma, crinis._ + + =hoc sinciput, is=, the fore parte of the heed + =hic vertex, cis=, for the crowne of the heed + =hoc caput, is=, for a heed + =hoc occiput, is=, the hynder parte of the heed + =hec coma, e=, for a brisshe + =hic crinis, nis=, for a heer + + * * * * * + + A garment a clothe idem apparayle + =Hic indumentum= =vestis= =vestitus= =amictus= + idem idem idem + =Ornatus= =simul apparatus= =amiculus idem= + a cappe agat: e idem + =Ista caput gestat apex= =caliptra= =galerus= + a cappe idem an hood idem + =Biretum= =pilius= =cuculus= =capitiumq=; + + * * * * * + + _Vulgaria queda cu suis vernaculis compilata iuxta + consuetudinem ludi litterarij diui Pauli._ + + Good morowe. =Bonu tibi huius diei sit primordiu.= + Good nyght. =Bona nox, tranquilla nox, optata requies, &c.= + + Scolers must lyue hardly at Oxford, + =Scolasticos Oxonii parce viuere oportet.= + + My fader hath had a greate losse on the see. + =Pater meus magna p naufragiu iactura habuit.= + + Wysshers and wolders be small housholders. + =Affectatibus diuitias modica hospitalitate obseruant.=" + +The abridgments of Stanbridge's _Accidence_ led, I presume, to the +distinction of the original text as the _Long Accidence_, 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." + +The chief of these adaptations of the _Accidence_ is the _Parvulorum +Institutio_, 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:-- + +"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.' + +"On the last leaf but one we have as follows:-- + + =Indignus dignus obscenus fedus Cice. qq hecauditu + acerbus.= acerba sunt. + + =Rarus iucundus absurdus turpe Tere. turpe + saluber.= dictu. + + =Mirandus mirus pulchrum sit Qui. multa + periculosus.= dictu visuq; miranda. + + =Whan there cometh a verbe after Teretius. quidna + sum es fui without a relatyve incepturus es. + or a coniunccyon yf it be of the + actyue sygnyfycacyon it shall be Tere. uxor tibi + put in a partycyple of the fyrst ducenda est paphyle + sutertens yf he be of the passyue Te oro vt + synyfacoon he shall be put in the nuptie que fuerant + partycyple of the latter sutertens, future fiant. + except exulo, vapulo, veneo, fio.= + + +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 Angliae, and +the credit of having been the first Englishman who was laureated. + +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. + +I am going to do my best to lay before the 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. + +I will first give the titles of the several pieces succinctly, and then +proceed to furnish a slight description of each:-- + + 1. De Nominum Generibis. + 2. Declinationes Nominum. + 3. De Syllabarum Quantitate, &c. + 4. Verborum Praeterita et Supina. + 6. De Octo Partibus Orationis. + 7. De Heteroclitis Nominibus. + 8. De Concinnitate Grammatices et Constructione. + 9. Syntaxis. [A recension of No. 8.] + 10. Vulgaria. + 11. Lucubrationes. + +These eleven _fasciculi_ actually form altogether one system, and some of +them have their order of succession in the author's arrangement indicated; +as, for instance, the _Verborum Praeterita et Supina_, 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. + + +V. The treatise on the _Kinds of Nouns_, in one of the numerous editions +of it at least, is designated _Primae Partis Liber Primus_, 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. + +Of the tract on the _Declensions of Nouns_, which stands second in order, +Dibdin supplies us with a specimen:-- + + De nto singu- =Anchise et Ve-= =Capis filius= =Qui fingit elegan-= + lari prime =neris filius,= =es, ut An-= =tia carmina, a,= + declina- =as, ut Aeneas= =chises.= =ut poeta.= + tionis. Rectus as, es, a; simul am dat flexio prima. + =Aeneae= =Aeneae= + =ut huius= =huic= + =musae= =musae= + + De gto et dto Ac dat dipthongum genitiuus sic que datiuus + singularibus =hi poete= =o poete= + et nto et veto Singularis, sic pluralis primus quoque quintus + pluralibu. =familie et= =aulai pro aulae= + =vt huius= =huic= + =familias= =pictai pro pictae.= + Olim rectus in a, genito dedit as simul ai. + =vt hic Judas, huius Jude, vel Juda= + Ex Judas Juda aut Judae dat pagina sacra + =vt hic Adam. huius Adam. huic Adam, &c.= + Barbara in am propria aut a recto non variantur. + +We must now pass to the treatise _De Syllabarum Quantitate_, which, in a +chronological respect, ranks first among Whittinton's works, as there was +an edition of it as early as 1513. + +This tripartite volume, 1. _On the Quantity of Syllables_; 2. _On Accent_; +and 3. _On the Roman Magistrates_, is noteworthy on two accounts. The +second portion embraces the earliest specimen in any English book of the +poems of Horace, and the concluding section is a kind of rudimentary +Lempriere. Subjoined is a sample of the lines upon accents, from Dibdin:-- + + "=Accentus tonus est per que fit syllaba quevis + Cognita: quado acui debet, vel qu gravari + Accentus triplex; fit acutus vel gravis, inde + Est circuflexus: qui nunc fit rarus in vsu. + Syllaba cum tendit sursum est accentus acutus + Est gravis accentus sed syllaba pressa deorsum + Fit circuflexus gravis in prima: sed in altum + Attollit mediam, postrema gravis reciditque.=" + +This metrical exposition, which will not be mistaken for the language of +Horace, is followed by a commentary in prose. + +The next three divisions do not call for any particular criticism. They +treat of the _Eight Parts of Speech_, the _Irregular Nouns_, and the _Laws +of Grammatical Construction_, of which the last is the first cast of the +_Syntax_. + +There remain the _Vulgaria_ and the _Lucubrations_, which are far more +important and interesting, and of which there were numerous editions. The +subjoined samples will shew the principle on which the _Vulgaria_ was +compiled:-- + +"Befe and motton is so dere, that a peny worth of meet wyll scant suffyse +a boy at a meale. + +"Whan I was a scholler of Oxforthe I lyued competently with vii. pens +commens wekely. + +"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. + +"A busshell of whete was holde at xii. pens. + +"A gallon of swete wyne is at viii. pens in London. + +"A gallon of ale is at a peny and ferdynge. + +"I warne the fro hens forthe medle not with my bokes. Thou blurrest and +blottest them, as thou were a bletchy sowter." + +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. + +Of the _Lucubrations_ the most interesting portion to an English reader +will be the + + "_To arraye or_ _To backbyte._ The goute. + _to dyght._ Detraho Arthesis + Orno Detracto Arthtica passio + Vestio Obtrecto Morbus articularis + Amicio Maledico Chiragra + Induo Carpo Podagra + Como &c. &c. &c. + Colo + + _An alyen or_ _To playe the_ _To be wode._ + _outlandysshe._ _brothell._ Seuio + Alienagena Scortari Furio + Peregrinus Prostitui Insanio + Aduena Fornicari Excandeseor + Alienus Merere Bacchor + Exterus Struprari _Wodnesse or_ + Externus Adulterari _madnesse._ + Barbarus Cohire Insania + Extraneus Concumbere Seviciae + &c. &c. Furor." + +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 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 Moliere and Tasso wrote as the hybrid dialect in which +erudite foreigners had been used to correspond and compose. + +Whittinton styles himself on the title-pages of several of his pieces +_laureatus_ and _protovates Angliae_. In one place he speaks of being +"primus in Anglia lauri coronam gestans," and elsewhere he professes to be +_magister grammatices_. 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:-- + +"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 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." + +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. + +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). + + + + +V. + + Educational tracts produced by other writers--_Parvula_--Holt's _Milk + for Children_--Horman's _Vulgaria_ 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. + + +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. + +In the former category is placeable the small piece published three or +four times by Wynkyn de Worde about 1509, under the title of _Parvula_ or +_Longe Parvula_. It is a series of rules for translation and other +exercises in the form of question and answer, thus:-- + +"Q. What shall thou do whan thou hast an englysshe to make in latyn? + +"A. I shal reherse myne englysshe ones, twyes, or thryes, and loke out my +pryncypal, & aske y questyon, who or what." + +A second publication is the _Milk for Children_ 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." + +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. + +Besides his _Milk for Children_ and the _Parvulorum Institutio_, to the +latter of which I have already referred, Holt appears to me the most +likely person to have compiled the tract called _Accidentia ex +Stanbrigiana Collectione_, 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. + +Another of the miscellaneous unofficial pieces, answering very nearly to +the mediaeval _Nominale_, has no other title than _Os, Facies, mentum_, and +is a Latin poem descriptive of the human form, first printed in 1508, with +an interlinear English gloss. It begins thus:-- + + a mouthe a face a chyne a toth a throot a tonge + Os facies mentu dens guttur lingua + a berde a browe abrye a forhede teples a lype + Barba supercilium ciliu frons tepora labru + roffe of the mouth + palatum + +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. + + +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. + +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 _Grammatica +Latino-Anglica, Tractatus de octo orationis partibus_, and _Brief Rules of +the Regiment or construction of the Eight Parts of Speech, in English and +Latin_, 1537. + +The _Introductorium linguae Latinae_ 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 _Gradus Comparationum_ of Johannes Bellomayus, and the +_Regulae Informationis_ of John Barchby. + +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. + +William Horman, who is presumed to have been the author of the +_Introductorium_ 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. + +Of the _Gradus Comparationum_ the subjoined may be received as a +specimen:-- + +"What nownes make comparyson? All adiectyues welnere y 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 y comparatiue & the superlatyue. How knowe ye the posityue +gedre? For he is the groude and the begynner of all other degrees of +coparyson. 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." + + +III. The _Vulgaria_ 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:-- + +"Physicians, that be all sette to wynne money, bye and sylle our lyues: +and so ofte tymes we bye deth with a great and a sore pryce. _Animas +nostras aeruscatores medici negociantur, &c._ + +"Papyre fyrste was made of a certeyne stuffe like the pythe of a bulrushe +in AEgypt: and syth it is made of lynnen clothe soked in water, stapte +or grude pressed and smothed. _Chartae seu papyri, &c._ + +"The greattest and hyest of pryce: is papyre imperyall. _Augustissimum +papyrum, &c._ + +"The prynters haue founde a crafte to make bokis by brasen letters sette +in ordre by a frame. _Calcographi arte, &c._ + +"Pryntynge hathe almooste vndone scryueners crafte. _Chalcographia +librarioru qstu pene exhavsit._ + +"Yf the prynters take more hede to the hastynge: than to the true settynge +of theyr moldis: the warke is vtterly marred. _Si qui libros, &c._" + +The rest are given without the Latin equivalents, which have no particular +interest. + +"Scryueners write with blacke, redde, purple, gren, blewe, or byce: and +suche other. + +Parchement leues be wonte to be ruled: that there may be a comly +marget: also streyte lynes of equal distaunce be drawe withyn: that the +wryttyng may shewe fayre. + +Olde or doting chourles can not suffre yoge children to be mery. + +I haue lefte my boke in the tennys playe. + +This ynke is no better than blatche. + +Frobeynes prynt is called better than Aldus: but yet Aldus is neuer the +lesse thanke worthy: for he began the fynest waye: and left sauple by +the whiche other were lyghtly provoked and taughte to deuyse better. + +There is come a scoolle of fysshe. + +The tems is frosne ouer with yse. + +The trompettours blowe a fytte or a motte. + +Vitelars thryue: by getherynge of good felowes that haue swete mouthes. + +The mokis of charter-house: neuer ete fleshe mete. + +We shall drynke methe or metheglen. + +We shall haue a iuncket after dyner. + +Serue me with pochyd eggis. + +He kepeth rere suppers tyll mydnyght. + +Se that I lacke nat by my beddes syde a chayer of easement: with a vessel +vnder: and an vrinall bye. + +Women couette to sytte on lowe or pote stolys: men upon twyse so hye. + +It is couenyent that a man haue one seueral place in his house to +hymselfe fro cobrance of wome. + +Women muste haue one place to themselfe to tyffil themselfe and kepe theyr +apparell. + +They whyte theyr face, necke and pappis with cerusse: and theyr lyppis and +ruddis with purpurisse. + +Tumblers, houndes, that can goo on huntynge by them selfe: brynge home +theyr praye. + +Lytel popies, that serueth for ladies, were sutyme bellis: sutyme +colers ful of prickkis for theyr defece. + +I haue layde many gynnys, pottis, and other: for to take fisshe. + +Some fisshe scatre at the nette. + +Poules steple is a mighty great thyng / and so hye that vneth a man may +discerne the wether cocke. + +It is an olde duty / and an auncyent custume / that the Mayre of London +with his bretherne shall offer at Poules certayne dayes in the yere. + +In London be. lij. parysshe chyrches. + +Two or. iij. neses be holsome: one is a shrowed toke." + +These selected extracts will convey some notion of the unusual curiosity +of the _Vulgaria_ 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. + +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 _Declensions_ 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 that day as written by a foreigner. It will be observed +that the author seems to confound the comma and the colon:-- + +"_Of the craft of poynting._ + +"Therbe fiue maner poyntys / and diuisios most vside with cunnyng men: +the whiche if they be wel vsid: make the sentens very light / and esy to +vnderstod both to the reder & the herer. & they be these: virgil / come +/ parethesis / playne poynt / and interrogatif. A virgil is a +scleder 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 setens yet ether is vnperfet: or els if it be +perfet: ther cumith more after / logyng to it: the which more +comynly can not be perfect by itself without at the lest sumat 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 an other +clause: that may be perfet: thof the clause / so comyng betwene: wer +awey and therfore it is sowndyde comynly a note lower: than the vtter +clause. yf the setens 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 cumith after the ende of al the whole setens +betokinyng a loge rest. An iterrogatif is with tway titils: the +vppir rysyng this wyse? & it cumith 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 i latin. [pilcrow] 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." + + +VI. It is perhaps fruitless to offer any vague conjecture as to the +authorship of the _Ascensian Declensions_. 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. + +Two years subsequently to the appearance of his _Vulgaria_, 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 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. + +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 _Quarrels of Authors_. + +The Salernitan gentleman (Andrea Guarna) who set the Noun and the Verb +together by the ears in his _Grammar War_, acted, no doubt, more +discreetly, since he reserved to himself the power to terminate the fray +which he had commenced. + + +VII. Generally speaking, it is the case that the men who compiled the +curious and highly 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. + +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 +_Verborum Explicatio_ and the _Synonyma_, 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 _and +feel_ no more of him. + +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 _May Flower_ +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. + +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 _Short Introduction_, and which in most of its essentials +corresponds with the system employed by those 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. + +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. Ultimately, as we know, the +Latin proportion sensibly diminished, and even a preponderant share of +space was accorded to the vernacular. + +I have spoken of AElius 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. + +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. + +Such an one was Guarini of Verona, whose _Regulae Grammaticales_ 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. + +The book, which consists only of twenty-two leaves or forty-four pages, +begins with describing 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 _Versus +differentiales_ or synonyms; and some of the illustrations are given in +Italian. The section on diphthongs forms an Appendix. + +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:-- + + "Largior ris per donare e p essere donato + Experior ris per puare e per essere puato + Ueneror ris per honorare e p essere honorato + Moror ris per aspectare e p eere aspectato + Osculor ris per basare e p essere basiato." + +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 occur the _A. B. C._ and the _Boys' Primer_; 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, _Robin Hood_, the +_Nutbrown Maid_, the _Squire of Low Degree_, _Sir Isumbras_, _Robert the +Devil_, and ballads. There are, besides, the _Sermon of the Boy-Bishop_, +the _Book of Cookery_, the _Book of Carving_, and an Anglo-French +vocabulary. + +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 _A. B. C._ and the primers, the educational works of Erasmus +were in greatest demand. + +This old ledger has a sort of living value, inasmuch as it carries us back +with it to the 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. + + + + +VI. + + Auxiliary books--_Vulgaria_ of Terence--His Comedies printed in + 1497--Some of them popular in schools--HORACE--CICERO--His _Offices_ + and _Old Age_ translated by Whittinton--VIRGIL--OVID--Specimens of + Whittinton's Cicero--The school Cato--Notices of other works designed + or employed for educational purposes. + + +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. + +The earliest and one of the most influential of these was the _Vulgaria_ +of Terence. As far back as the reign of Edward IV., I find it annexed to +the _Compendium Grammaticae_ of 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:-- + + "Here must I abyde allone this ij dayes + =Biduus hic manendu; est mihi soli.= + + Though I may not touch it yet I may see + =Si non tangendi copia e videndi ta; erit.= + + The dede selfe scheweth or telleth + =Res ipsa indicat.= + + If I had tarayed a lytill while I hadd not found hym at home + =Paululu si cessasse eu domi no offendisse.=" + +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 _Ralph +Roister Doister_, edited portions of the Latin poet with an English +translation, doubtless for the benefit of the scholars 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. + +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. + +In 1588 the _Andria_ 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 _Eunuch_ and the _Andria_, dedicating his performance to the +scholars of Paul's, to whom he wished increase in grace and learning. The +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. + +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. + + * * * * * + +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 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. + + +II. Leaving Terence, we may pass to Virgil, whose _Bucolics_ were +published in 1512 with a dull Latin commentary, illustrating the +construction of the verse and other critical points. + +No ancient English edition of Horace exists, either in the original +language or a translation. But Whittinton admitted selections from him +into his _Syntax_. In 1534 he translated Cicero's _Offices_ for the use of +schools, printing the Latin and English face to face; and the treatise of +_Old Age_ closely followed. + +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 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. + +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. + +Except in a prose translation, which bears no mark of having been intended +for boys, the _AEneid_ was not introduced among us for a very long period +subsequently to the revival of learning, nor were the _Georgics_. A +selection from Ovid's _Art of Love_ appeared in 1513; perhaps the whole +was deemed too fescennine for the juvenile peruser. + +I shall add Caesar, whose _Commentaries_ were 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. + +The Caesar, in fact, occupies an analogous position to the English editions +of Cicero and the prose paraphrase of the _AEneid_ 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. + + +III. I have before me a copy of Whittinton's versions of the _Offices_ and +_Old Age_ 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 _Offices_:-- + + De Officiis Servandis in eos qui Of offyces to be obserued agayne + intulerunt nobis iniuriam. suche as haue done vs wronge + + Svnt autem quaedam officia There be also certayne offyces + etiam aduersus eos seruada a to be kepte agayne suche / of + quibus iniuriam acceperis. Est whom a ma hath taken wrong. + enim ulciscendi & puniendi For there is a maner of reuengynge + modus. Atq; haud scio an satis and punysshyng, and I can not + sit eum, qui lacessierit, iniuriae tell whether it be suffycient + suae poenitere, ut & ipse ne quid for hym that hath done + tale posthac committat, & caeteri wronge to be sory of his wronge / + sint ad iniuriam tardiores. and that he offende no more so + after that. Also other shall be + the more lothe to do wronge. + +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 _De +Senectute_--a _chef d'oeuvre_, which it is a sin to read in any idiom +but its own. + + Sequitur tertia vituperatio The thyrde accusacion of olde + senectutis, quod eam carere dicunt age foloweth. By cause it must + voluptatibus. O praeclarum munus forgo pleasures. O that excellent + aetatis, siquidem id aufert benefyte of olde age: yf it + nobis, quod est in adolescentia take away from vs that thynge / + vitiosissimum. Accipite suim whiche in youth is moost vicious. + optimi adolescentes, ueterem Therfore ye gentyll yonge men + orationem Archytae Tarentini, heare the olde sentence of Archytas + magni in primis, et praeclari viri, a Tarentyne / a great and + quae mihi tradita est cum essem a famous man amonges all other + adolescens Tarenti cum Q. Maximo. / which was taught vnto me whan + Nulla capitaliore peste I was a yonge man in the citye + quam corporis uoluptate hominibus of Tarentu with Quintus Maximus. + dicebat a natura data.... He sayd that there was + not a more deedly poyson gyuen + to man by nature / than sensuall + pleasure of body.... + +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 mediaeval barbarism and the +heresies of the Dutch school. + +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. + + +V. Outside the pale of the schoolroom, but still clearly designed for +learners, one finds such literary fossils as the _Book of Cato_, the _Cato +for Boys_, the _Eclogues_ of Mantuan, of which Bale speaks as popular in +his day, and which Holofernes mentions in _Love's Labour's Lost_; various +abridgments of the _Colloquia_ of Erasmus and his _Little Book of Good +Manners for Children_ (another monument of the industry and scholarship of +Whittinton); and, lastly, such elementary guides to mythology and history +as Lydgate's _Interpretation of the Natures of Gods and Goddesses_, and +the _Chronicle of all the Kings' Names that have reigned in England_, +1530. With these I should perhaps couple the Latin _AEsop_ of 1502, with a +commentary in the same language, and the later edition of which, in 1535, +includes the _Fables_ of Poggius. + +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. + +I take occasion to shew the beneficial share 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 _Dialogues_ 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. + + + + +VII. + + 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. + + +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 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." + +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 Pace, who succeeded Colet in the Deanery of St. Paul's. + +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:-- + +"Before Erasmus left England, he laid the plan of his useful Tract _de +conscribendis epistolis_, 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,[2] 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." + +So we see that, prior to the visit of Erasmus to us at the end of the +fifteenth century, there 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. + +A story which Knight relates about his author's literary enterprise in the +epistolary line is too amusing to be overlooked:-- + +"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{d.} 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{d.} 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 characters debate the advantages and drawbacks of wedlock. + +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 pharmacopoeia. 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. + + +II. Knight, in his Life of Dean Colet, enumerates several of the schools +which were founded shortly before the Reformation. "This noble 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 (_alias_ Veysey), bishop of +Exeter: an eighth at Farnworth in Lancashire, by Dr. William Smith, Bishop +of 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." + +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." + +George Lily, son of the grammarian and schoolmaster, and canon of St. +Paul's, refers doubtless to these benefactions when, in his _Chronicle_, +he speaks of the encouragement of learning by the princes and nobility of +England, and goes on to say that their good example was 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." + +The foundation was for one hundred and seventy-three scholars--a number +selected in remembrance of the miracle of the fishes. + + +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:-- + +"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. + +"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. + +"If he be apt to lerne, ye shal be contente that he continue here tyl he +have competent literature. + +"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. + +"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. + +"Also if he fall thryse into absence, he shal be admytted no more. + +"Your chylde shal, on Chyldermas daye, wayte vpon the boy byshop at +Powles, and offer there. + +"Also ye shal fynde him waxe in winter. + +"Also ye shal fynde him convenyent bokes to his lernynge. + +"If the offerer be content with these articles, than let his childe be +admytted." + +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 his _Precepts_ and the _Copia Verborum_ +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. + +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? We +all have pretty similar beginnings, as the _prima stamina_ 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. + +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 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. + +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." + + +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:-- + +"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 (_magister scholarum_), 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 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." + +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. + +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 _Monumenta Franciscana_ shews that the site of Colet's +original school, which perished in the Great Fire, had been in the +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. + +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. + +The _Black Eagle_ 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. + +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 _Hours of the Virgin_, 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. + +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. + + + + +VIII. + + 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 _Short + Introduction of Grammar_ (1548)--Its re-issue by Queen Elizabeth + (1566-7)--Some account of its contents--Its failure. + + +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 _Introductory_ 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, 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 _De +ratione studii puerilis_, where, from delicacy, he made a point of +commending the labours of Linacre and the abridgment of the _Rudiments_ by +Erasmus. + +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. + +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 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. + + +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 +_Rudiments_ 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. + +The Cardinal's preface is dated August 1, 1528. It is followed by the +_Docendi Methodus_, the _Rules_, the _Articles of Faith_, _Precepts of +Living_, _Apostles' Creed_, _Decalogue_, &c.; and the rest of the book is +occupied by the _Introduction of the Eight Parts of Speech_ and the +_Rudiments of Grammar_. + +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 _Rudiments_, with and without +the other accessories, were periodically republished even later than the +so-called Oxford Grammar of 1709. + +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 _Rudiments_ +he speaks of the "new school of Paul's," and that in 1518 Erasmus had +executed a Latin metrical version of the _Lord's Prayer_ and _Precepts of +Good Living_ for the school under the title of _Christiani hominis +Institutum_. + +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. + +The _Coleti aeditio_, &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:-- + +"Al be it many have wryten, and have made certayne introducyons into Latyn +speche, called _Donates_ and _Accidens_, 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, 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." + +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 _Introduction_ (including the _Rudiments_) 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. + + +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. + +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 +_Eclaircissement_. + +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 _Parts of Speech_ and other rudiments +in English, while the second part contains a digested recension of the +Latin series under the title of _A Compendious Institution of the whole +Grammar_. + +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. + +Whoever they were who arranged for publication the Primer had probably a +hand in the _Alphabetum Latino-Anglicum_ 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. + + +IV. In January 1547, Henry was succeeded by his son, and the change is +marked by the substitution of _A Short Introduction of Grammar generally +to be used_, in two parts, the English followed by the Latin, for the +original Primer of 1540. A complaint appears to have arisen at the same +time that the large book was inconvenient for beginners; and we are told +that Fox the martyrologist was commissioned to prepare _Tables of Grammar_ +for the use, probably, of the lower forms in schools. But we know nothing +farther of them; and the _Introduction_, 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. + +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 throughout the country +the endowments of which Christ's Hospital is the most familiar type. + +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 _Introduction_, and, +unless all intervening copies have perished, there was a clear lapse of +ten years before the new Protestant _regime_ took steps to re-issue the +book. + +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 _Short +Introduction_ of 1548 and 1567 was, in the main, a reproduction of Henry's +book. But the same unqualified encomium is pronounced on Henry by John +Palsgrave, the celebrated lexicographer and teacher of languages, in the +prolix and fulsome dedication to his English _Acolastus_, 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. + +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 _Introduction of the Eight Parts of Speech_ constitutes the +body and remainder of the English part. + +There are six forms of grace before meat, and six others of grace after +meat. + +The Latin section opens with the Greek alphabet, and proceeds to the parts +of grammar, concluding with Erasmus's _De Ratione_. 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 +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. + + +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 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 Oxoniae." + +How differently Horman in his _Vulgaria_, 1519, handled his subject, and +his pages were intended for schoolboys and students too! + +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. + +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 +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. + +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. + +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. + + +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. + +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 _and Ireland_,"--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 simplified Latin Primer _in usum juventutis Cambro-Britannicae_, which +aimed at a monopoly of the Principality without prejudice to persons +beyond the border. + +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 _English Introduction to the Latin +Tongue_ 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 _Roman Antiquities_ of Prideaux, in 1614, for Abingdon. + +Perhaps, however, the most conspicuous example of this localisation was +the _Outlines of Rhetoric_ for St. Paul's, of which we meet with a third +edition in 1659; and which must have 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 _Musaeum Minervae_ +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 mediaeval 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. + +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 _A Hundred Merry Tales_, 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. + + + + +IX. + + 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. + + +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 _Autobiography_ Leigh Hunt +sheds some interesting light on the condition of Christ's Hospital when +Lamb, Coleridge, and himself were there in the last years of the last +century. + +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 _Elia_ 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." + +The origin of Merchant Taylors' School is thus described by Wilson:-- + +"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 September 1561, on which day the statutes were framed and a +schoolmaster chosen." + +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." + +It is rather curious that the hours of attendance were originally from +seven till eleven A.M. and from one till five P.M., 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. + +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." + +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. + +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'. + +We do not arrive, meanwhile, at any clear 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 AEsop's _Fables_ in Greek, Tully's _Epistles_, and the +_Dialogues_ 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. + +The _School's Probation_ 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. + + +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; 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 _School's Probation_, 1652, that in the seventeenth century the +Company paid for some kind of collation:-- + +"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 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." + +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. + +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, AEsop's _Fables_ 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. + +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." + +In another place, under _Sententiae Varietas_, there are five-and-twenty +ways of describing in a sentence the great qualities of Cicero. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 _Ludus Ludi +Litterarii_, 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 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. + +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 _Apollo Shroving_, 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. + +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. + +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 general company +listened in respectful silence to interlocutions or monologues as +mysterious to them as the Writing on the Wall. + + +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. + +Dugard states in _An humble Remonstrance Presented to the Right +Worshipfull Company of Merchant-Tailors, Maii 15, 1661_, that the Company +assigned no cause for their proceeding; but he says at the same time: "It +is alleged in your Order, _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 School, and of the breach of the +Companie's Orders and Ordinances thereof_." + +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." + +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. + +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 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; _Nulli praecludor, Tibi pateo_." + +The _Remonstrance_ 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. + +Whatever the precise result was, there are two or three curious points +brought out in the course 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 _Printer to the +Council of State_; 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. + +He had sold the press at the desire of the Company for L300 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 +L800 by unpaid quarter wages, thus making it seem probable that he was +directly responsible for the fees. + +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." + +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 _raison d'etre_ of Dugard's collateral +occupation. + + + + +X. + + 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 _Accidence_ (1669)--Old mode of advertising private + establishments. + + +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. + +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 +_regimen_. 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. + +In his section on _Derivatives_ Robertson has some matter, as to which the +modern etymologist may form his own conclusions. This is a specimen:-- + + "Vox uocis, a voco. Iucundus a iuuo. + Lex legis, a lego. Iunior a iuuenis. + Rex regis, a rego. Mobilis a moueo. + Sedes a sedeo. Humanus ab homo. + Iumentum a iuuo. Vomer a uomo. + Fomes a foueo. Pedor a pede." + +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 +_Irregular Verbs and Nouns_ were printed with Lily's _Rules_ at least as +late as the reign of James I. + +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. + + +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 those countries was +constant from the earliest period. + +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, +_The Key into the Spanish Tongue_. 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. + +Yet at the same time these, and many more like the _Dutch Tutor_, the +_Nether-Dutch Academy_, 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. + +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, +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. + +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. + +Perhaps of all the philological undertakings 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. + + +II. Shakespear, in his conception of HOLOFERNES 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 JOHN FLORIO, +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. + +The City of London itself, with all its great industrial benefactions, +abounded with private schools and with tutors for special objects. 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. + +Two of them, in Primers which they published in 1682 and 1688, when such +distinctions were important, call their volumes the _Protestant School_ +and the _Protestant Schoolmaster_, 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 _The Perfect +Schoolmaster_. This part of the metropolis was at that time rather thickly +sown with teachers of all kinds; as you drew nearer to Wapping, the +schools of geography and navigation became more conspicuous. It was about +the period when Mr. Secretary Pepys was residing in Hart Street. + +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 ASTROLOGY _in all its +parts_; which appears to be an uncustomary combination, and to bespeak a +separate class or department. + +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 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. + + +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: _Here lie Walker's Particles_. + +But even MILTON could not desist from entering into the competition, and, +two years after the appearance of _Paradise Lost_, 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 little +volume called _Accidence Commenc'd Grammar_, of which the main object was +to reduce into an English digest the Latin _Accidence and Grammar_, by +which the illustrious writer declared and complained that ten years of an +ordinary life were consumed. + +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. + +_A Little Book for Little Children_, 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. + +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. + +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 _Latin Grammar_ and the Eton Greek Grammar used to be employed. At +Bodmin, Valpy's _Greek Grammar_, and at Faversham, Lily's _Latin Primer_, +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. + +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. + +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 +public, the system or theory with which they had started, and which in +their hands underwent, perhaps, certain modifications. + +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 _Introduction to +History_, 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 _Rational and Speedy +Method of attaining to the Latin Tongue_, 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. + +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 _Introduction to the Art of +Teaching the Latin Speech_, 1634, gives hope to the dullest boy that, by +the use of his method, he may acquire it in four years. + +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. + + +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 _The Wellspring of +Sciences_, 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:-- + +"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 _Humfry +Baker_, 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." + +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 +_Writing School-master_, 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 _Compound of Alchemy_, 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. + +Preceptors naturally congregated near the centre of mercantile life. + + + + +XI. + + Proposed University of London in 1647--The _Museum Minervae_ 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 _Sir Hugh Evans_ and _Holofernes_--William + Hazlitt's account of his Shropshire school in 1788. + + +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. + +I hold in my hand _Motives Grounded upon the Word of God, and upon Honour, +Profit, and Pleasure for the present Founding an University in the +Metropolis, London_, 1647. It purports to be the work of "a true Lover of +his Nation, and especially of the said City." + +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. + +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 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." + +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 _nothing but Latin_ +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + + +II. The _Musaeum Minervae_, 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:-- + +"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 indeavours by the Erection of an Academy on +Bednall Green without Aldgate. To teach _Hebrew_, _Greek_, _Latine_, +_French_, _Italian_, _Spanish_, _High Dutch_, and _Low Dutch_, both +Ancient and Modern _Histories_, joyntly with the Constitutions and +Governments of the most famous _Empires_ and _Dominions_ in the World, the +true Naturall and Experimentall _Philosophy_, the _Mathematicks_, +_Arithmetick_, and the keeping _Bookes of Accounts_ by _Creditor_ and +_Debitor_. All excellent _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._" + +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 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. + +The establishment of the _Musaeum_ in 1635 had been inaugurated by a +dramatic performance, which the Court honoured with its presence; and in +the following year the _Constitutions_, as they are called, were printed. + +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 _Musaeum_, from which the +pupils might be drafted into the higher one. + +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. + +It is worth remarking that now for the first 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 mediaeval simplicity and crudity. + +The _Musaeum Minervae_, 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. + +These Academies present a very powerful contrast to the archaic school in +the multiplicity of 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 +_Musaeum Minervae_ 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. + +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. + +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 to be +incomplete, and to present us with a list of names far from exhaustive. + +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. + +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 volumes +more attractive, and illustrating the capabilities of the goose-quill. + +Among our foremost literary celebrities, Shakespear wrote the Court hand, +judging from his signature, and Bacon and Ben Jonson the Italian. + +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 +the Stuarts, and whose cypher was adopted by Pepys in the composition of +his diary. + + +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. + +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:-- + +"The Arts and Sciences taught and practis'd in the Academy are these. + + _All sorts of Instruments, Singing and Dancing. + French and Italian. + The Mathematicks. + Grammar, Writing and Arithmetick. + Painting and Drawing. + Fencing, Vaulting and Wrastling._" + +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:-- + +"Or any young Gentleman design'd for Travel, there are persons of several +Nations fit to instruct him in any Language. + +"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." + +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. + + +IV. In all the great provincial centres there were, of course, educational +institutes supported 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. + +Of the seventeenth-century school at Manchester we gain an accidental +glimpse and notion from the _Delectus of Latin Phrases_ 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 _Delectus_ 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. + +In Sir Hugh Evans, the Welsh parson and schoolmaster, Shakespear has not +improbably 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! + +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. + +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 _Metamorphoses_ and Eutropius.... I +began to cypher a fortnight after Christmas, 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." + +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. Lempriere, whose +name the lad transformed into Dolounghpryee, 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. + +The proprietary establishments for boys, which spread themselves by +degrees over the land, formed a valuable succedaneum to the Edward 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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +XII. + + Educational condition of SCOTLAND--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. + + +I. When we turn to Scotland, we find the compendium of the Grammar of +AElius 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 _Original Chronicle of Scotland_ 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 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +Vaus grounded his _Rudiments_, printed at Paris repeatedly about 1520, on +the old _Doctrinale_ 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. + +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. + +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 _New Grammar for the Use of the Scotish Youth_, 1612, was a +popular compendium founded on Lily; it seems to have met with limited and +brief acceptance, and his tract on the _Orthography and Congruity of the +British Tongue_, which was a literary essay intended rather for the closet +(to use the old-fashioned parlance), remained till lately in MS. + + +II. But books of instruction and for employment in schools continued, down +to the days of THOMAS RUDDIMAN, to be at once scarce and unsatisfactory, +insomuch that, side by side with these and other unrecovered productions, +it was 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. + +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 +_Rudiments of Grammar_ 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 _Institutions of Latin Grammar_, which, like the disquisition of +Alexander Hume recently mentioned, was an ordinary unprofessional piece +of authorship. + +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 L20 +a year, and a frugal lad found seven or eight shillings a week sufficient +for his board and lodging. + + +III. Many causes contributed, toward the 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 and his advisers saw thus clothed with the twofold +responsibility of mental and spiritual tuition. + +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. + +The persons who were selected to sit on these committees for the several +urban and provincial districts included many God-fearers of the +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. + +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. + +Samuel Harmar, in his _Vox Populi, or Gloucestershire's Desire_, 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 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. + +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! + + + + +XIII. + + 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 _Poems for + Young Ladies_--Rise of the Ladies' School--Political importance of the + training of women. + + +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 Southern Britons in this respect, +the better upbringing of the mother communicating itself to her children. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 _principia_ of knowledge, and on +the fallow state of the intellectual faculties which these evidences +establish. The Paston and Plumpton Correspondence, Mrs. Green's _Letters +of Illustrious Ladies_, 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. + +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. + + +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 +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 _Memoirs of +Learned Ladies_, 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 Church, and indemnifying the clergy for +the direct political influence of which the Reformation dispossessed them. + +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, 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. + +"A Gentleman of Cambridge," as he styles himself on the title of an +English adaptation of the Abbe d'Ancourt's _Lady's Preceptor_, 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! + +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, 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. + +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. + +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 _Key to the Grammar +School_, 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. + +Goldsmith's _Poems for Young Ladies_, "Devotional, Moral, and +Entertaining," 1767, partly arose out of Dr. Fordyce's _Sermons for Young +Women_. The editor assures his fair readers that the Muse in this case is +not a syren, but a friend; and there is plenty of the religious element +in the volume. But there are, on the other hand, extracts from Pope's +_Homer_, stories from Ovid and Virgil, Addison's _Letter from Italy_, and +a selection from Collins's _Oriental Eclogues_. 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 _Messiah_ or his _Universal Prayer_, +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. + +The universal and unchanging aim of the ecclesiastical authority is +manifestly temporal, and Henry VIII. and his coadjutors, and their +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. + +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. + + +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. + +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 institutions conformably to the great changes in +political and social life. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 programme +must be ultimately obeyed by every school in the three kingdoms. + +The Bible is for scholars, not for school-folk; and, as Jeremy Bentham +demonstrated nearly a century ago, the Catechism is trash. + + + + +XIV. + + 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.--_Propria quae Maribus_ and _Johnny quae Genus_--The Catechism + and Primer. + + +I. The manner in which the earliest _Abaci_ 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, the scene depicts a +later stage in the educational course. + +In the _Jests of Scogin_, 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?'" + +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 of a portion of the rudiments is, of course, +ascribable to a pleasant hyperbole, or to the scholar's phenomenal +density; but the _Abacus_ 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. + + +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." + +Subsequently to the A. B. C. of 1553, there seems to be nothing actually +extant of this nature till we come to _The Pathway to Reading, or the +newest spelling A. B. C._ 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, seeming to shew its popularity and a +brisk demand for copies. + +A few years later (1610) there is _A New Book of Spelling, with +Syllables_, 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 _e_ in such monosyllables as _Babe_. + +From vowels he proceeds to the diphthong, where he animadverts on the +abuse of the _w_ for the _u_. He then presents us with the Lord's Prayer, +the Creed, the Decalogue, &c., as orthographical theses. + +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. + +The spelling-book of 1610 was printed for 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. + +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. + +While I have the book before me, it may be worth while to transfer to +these pages a specimen of it:-- + + kach, kech, kich, koch, kuch, + kash, kesh, kish, kosh, kush, + kath, keth, kith, koth, kuth. + +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. + +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. + +In Russia they have, or had very lately, the _stchoti_, 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. + +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. + + +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 _Propria quae Maribus_ and _As in Praesenti_, 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 _Johnny quae Genus_. + +But an early authority[3] claims for Lily himself the honour of having +written the _Propria quae Maribus_ and _As in Praesenti_, and informs us +that Rightwise merely published them with a glossary. + +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:-- + + "This little Catechism learned + by heart (for so it ought), + The PRIMER next commanded is + for children to be taught." + +When I speak here of the _Primer_, 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." + +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. + +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. + +In the Preface to his _New English Grammar_, 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. + +The same writer, while edition upon edition of the famous Grammar of +Lindley Murray was pouring from the press, like Hayley's _Triumphs of +Temper_ and Moore's _Loves of the Angels_, 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 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. + +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." + + + + +XV. + + Ascham's _Schoolmaster_--Richard Mulcaster--The earliest Anglo-Latin + Dictionary--Ocland's _Anglorum Praelia_. + + +I. The _Schoolmaster_, 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 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. + +Ascham's _Schoolmaster_, 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. + +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; "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." + +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 +_Cicero de Officiis_ to the Manuals compiled by Horman, Whittinton, and +the rest of the old school of English grammarians. The passage in the +_Schoolmaster_ 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 ientlie, so pleasantlie, with such faire allurements to +learning, that I thinke all the tyme nothing whiles I am with him." + +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. + +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 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 _Schoolmaster_; 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 _Positions_, 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. + + +II. The early teacher and his pupils enjoyed, when the typographical art +had been applied 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 _Ortus +Vocabulorum_ and the _Promptorius Parvulorum_ 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. + +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 _Catholicon_ of Balbus, 1460, the _Cornucopia_ +of Perottus, the _Gemma Vocabulorum_, and the _Medulla Grammatices_, with +additions by Ascensius. The _Promptorius_, or, as it is also called in +some of the issues, _Promptuarium_, appears to be substantially identical +with the _Medulla_. + +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 COOPER'S THESAURUS. Elyot, the +first compiler, tells us, in the dedication to Henry VIII. prefixed to the +_editio princeps_, 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." + +In the epistle to Henry just referred to, the 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. + +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 _Aviarium_, "a thycke +wodde without waye," although he at the same time adds the ordinary +acceptation. + +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 _Dictionary for Children_, by John Withals, 1553, or the +_Manipulus Vocabulorum_ 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 _Promptorius_ and the _Eclaircissement de la langue +Francoise_, so uninviting to consult. + +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 _Ortus +Vocabulorum_, one of these archaic works of reference, had been largely +formed out of the _Cornucopia_ of Perottus, and Cooper owed very +considerable obligations to the Lexicon of Stephanus, which he was +censured by a critic of his day for not properly acknowledging. + +The _Short Dictionary for Children_ 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. + +Littleton, who brought out his Dictionary in 1678, was Rector of Chelsea. +He includes the barbarous Latin for the first time. + +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 the use +of the British _Nations_," 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 _Promptuarium Parvulorum_, and closes with +Elisha Coles, embracing a period of nearly two centuries. + + +III. The Latin Lexicon was an indispensable _vade-mecum_ 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, 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. + +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 _Anglorum Praelia_ 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. + +This literary gem, which was to supersede 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:-- + + "Regia Nympha, soli [_sic_] moderatrix alma Britanni, + Quae pace et vera religione nites, + Quae vitae meritis, morum & candore coruscans, + Zenobiam vincis, siqua vel ante fuit." + +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! + +Despite the lofty patronage and auspicious circumstances under which the +_Anglorum Praelia_ 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." + + + + +XVI. + + Ben Jonson and Shirley writers of Grammars--Some account of the + former--Thomas Hayne's Latin Grammar--A curious anecdote about it. + + +I. The _English Grammar_ 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 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. + +The work in its present state is divided into chapters: _Of Grammar and +the Parts_; _Of Letters and their Powers_; _Of the Vowels_; _Of the +Consonants_, 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_, even where it obtains the seat of a consonant, as in _young_, +_younker_, which the Dutch, whose primitive it is, write _junk_, _junker_. +And so might we write _iouth_, _ies_, _ioke_...." + +"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 _orthography_ or _custom_." +Nor is _c_ the only member of the alphabet with which Jonson considers +that we might have advantageously dispensed; for in a subsequent page he +declares that "_q_ is a letter we might very well have spared in our +_alphabet_, if we would but use the serviceable _k_ 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 _q_, with her waiting woman _u_ +after her, but exprest + + _quail_,} {_kuail_, + _quest_,} by {_kuest_, + _quick_,} {_kuick_, + _quill_,} {_kuill_." + +In other words, Jonson, discarding _c_ and _q_, was with those who +nowadays ask us to say _Kikero_, _Kelt_, _Kaesar_; and he seems also to be +an advocate for such terminations as _st_ or _pt_ for _ed_ in _exprest_, +_confest_, _profest_, _stopt_, _dropt_, _cropt_, wherein he has a follower +in Mr. Furnivall. + +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 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." + +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. + +Jonson's _Grammar_, 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 _Martyrs_, Harding's _Chronicle_, Chaucer, and Sir +John Cheke. + +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 _Relation de la Nouvelle France_, 1641, where he puts +_Kebeck_ for _Quebec_; but the change must necessarily influence the +pronunciation. + +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. + +In the dedication to Lord Herbert of his little book, JAMES SHIRLEY 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:-- + + "In _di_, _do_, _dum_, the Gerunds chime and close, + _Um_, the first Supine, _u_ the latter shews." + +As late as 1726, Jenkin Thomas Phillipps reprinted Shirley's Grammar with +additions. On the title-page of this edition it is said to be "for the +use of Prince William." + +In 1640 Thomas Hayne published his _Grammatices Latinae Compendium_. 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 _James Duke of Yorke_ 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +As one arrests a stray copy of Heylin's _Cosmography_, Godwin's _Roman +Antiquities_, edited for the use of Abingdon School, Provost Rous's _Attic +Archaeology_, Prideaux's _Introduction to the Reading of Histories_, 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 culture +and light of our ancestors were in fair relative proportion to our own. + +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 _Roman Antiquities_ of Adams and the _Dictionary_ +of Lempriere as Adams and Lempriere are removed from Dr. Smith's series. + + + + +XVII. + + 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. + + +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 acquaintance with Greek which he had +gained through a local monastic seminary. + +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. + +The biographer of Colet has something to say on this subject:-- + +"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 _Graeculus iste_; which was a +long time after the phrase for an heretic." + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +"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 _Parva Logicalia_ (as they called them), the +old axioms of Aristotle, and the questions of John Scotus." + +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 _Introductiones ad Linguam Graecam_ and _Elementa Grammaticae +Graecae_--the earliest attempts to place before students in a handy form the +alphabet of the subject. + +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. + +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 epoch, that he was enabled to earn money +as a teacher of it. + +It was not apparently till 1524 that Greek type was introduced into our +printing-offices. Linacre's book _De Emendata Structura Latini Sermonis_, +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. + + +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 _Life of Dean Colet_ 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. + +Colet himself, it is to be noted, displayed in 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. + +"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." + +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 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 _Moria_." "Yes," says Richard Pace, "may it +please your highness, such a subject is fit for such a reader." + +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. + +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 bringing into notice many Greek +authors whose works had not hitherto been read. + +The literary contest between Cheke and Gardiner was printed abroad in +1555, and only eleven years later a paraphrase of the _Phoenissae_ of +Euripides by George Gascoigne and Francis Kinwelmersh was performed at +Gray's Inn. + + +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 _olli_ for _illi_, _queis_ for _quibus_, _mareito_ +for _marito_, _maxume_ for _maxime_; and in Greek words, the ancients, +says he, certainly said _Achilles_, _Tydes_, _Theses_, and _Ulisses_, not, +as people sometimes now do, _Achillews_, _Tudews_, _Thesews_, and +_Ulussews_. The author likewise refers to the employment of the aspirate +in orthography, as in _hydropisis_, _thermae_, _Bathonia_, and _Hybernia_, +which used to be read _ydropisis_, _termae_, _Batonia_, and _Ivernia_. He +was clearly no advocate for the latter-day mode in England of hardening +the _g_ and the _c_ as in _Regina_ and _Cicero_. + +But the fact is that, where there are no positive _data_ 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. + +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. + +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 by the inhabitants of ancient Hellas in pronouncing words and +particles, and, in short, to the grammatical laws by which their speech +was regulated. + +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 _prima +facie_ argument are on his side; and when we find that he gives to the +long E or [Greek: eta] the force of A, and to the diphthong [Greek: oi] +that of E, 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 _Iliad_ ostensibly support this +interchange of phonetic values. I need scarcely advert to the favourite +theory that, so far as the Greek long E is concerned, it had its source in +the vocal intonation of the sheep, which is, after all, far from an +invariable standard. + +The Englishman, in dealing with such themes 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. + + +IV. But scarcely any books in the Greek character were printed in England +until Edward Grant, head-master of Westminster School, brought out his +_Graecae Linguae Spicilegium_, 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 _Universa Grammatica Graeca_ at Lyons in a +shape calculated to invite a yet more limited circulation than the essay +of Grant. + +Perhaps one of the earliest English publications relative to the study of +Greek poetry was the _Progymnasma Scholasticum_ 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 works. This was avowedly taken from +the _Anthology_ of Stephanus, and presents a Greek-Latin interlinear text. + +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. + +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. + +The partial translation of the _Iliad_ by Arthur Hall of Grantham, 1581, +was taken from the French. But Chapman accomplished the feat of rendering +the whole of Homer, as well as the _Georgics_ of Hesiod and the Neo-Greek +_Hero and Leander_. 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 _Iliad_. + +The grand work of Herodotus was approached in 1584 by an anonymous writer, +who completed only _Clio_ and _Euterpe_. + +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. + +Many of the schools employed a small elementary selection from the Greek +writers, of which a fifth edition was printed in 1771. + +When Charles Lamb was at the Blue Coat School (1782-9), the Greek authors +read there appear to have been Lucian and Xenophon, the former in a +Selection from the _Dialogues_. The present writer, who was at Merchant +Taylors' School from 1842 to 1850, used Xenophon, Homer, Euripides, +Sophocles, and some volume of _Analecta_. 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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +XVIII. + + 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. + + +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:-- + + "Here is a good boke to lerne to speke french. + Vecy ung bon lievre a apprendre parler fraunchoys. + In the name of the fader of the sonne. + En nom du pere et du fils. + And of the holy goost I will begynne. + Et du saint esprit ie veuel comenchier. + To lerne to speke frenche. + A apprendre a parler franchoys." + +After this exordium follow the numbers, the names of precious stones, +articles of merchandise, fruits, wines, &c. _Wine of rochell_ is rendered +_vin de rosele_. What we know as _Beaune_ is called _byane_ in French and +_beaune_ in English. On the fourth page, among "Other maner of speche in +frenche," occur:-- + + "Sir god giue you good day. + Sire dieu vous doint bon iour. + Sir god giue you good euyn. + Sire dieu vous doint bon vespere. + Holde sir here it is. + Tenez sire le veez ey." + +The _z_ in _tenez_ 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 _ditez_ (for _dites_). The question is asked how much +one man owes another, and the reply is _ten shillings_, for which the +French equivalent is taken to be _dix soulz_. But there were no shillings +in England at that time; perhaps the writer was thinking of the skilling, +with which our coin has no more than a nominal affinity. + +The _Eclaircissement de la langue Francoise_, by John Palsgrave, 1530, and +the _Introductory to learn, pronounce, and speak the French tongue_, by +Giles Du Wes or Dewes, written some years later for the use of the +Princess Mary in the same way as Linacre's _Latin Grammar_ 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 _Comedy of +Acolastus_ 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. + +Nearly, if not quite, contemporary with him and Dewes was Pierre du +Ploiche, who in the time of Henry published a very curious little volume +of more general scope, called _A Treatise in English and French right +necessary and profitable for all young children_. 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 _Catechism_, the _Litany and Suffrages_, and +a series of _Prayers_. These occupy three sections; the fourth, fifth, and +sixth sections are devoted to secular and familiar topics: _For to speake +at the table_, _for to aske the way_, and _for to bie and sell_; and the +concluding portion embraces the A. B. C. and Grammar. + +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. + +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, _Lisez Maynart_," 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. + +There is a delicate refinement of phraseology here and there, as where +"You ly" is rendered "Vous espargnez la verite;" 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." + +The annexed extract from the same chapter may assist in fixing the date of +the publication to 1544:-- + + "And you sir, from whence "_Et vous seigneur, d'ou venez + com you? vous?_ + + I come from Bulloigne. _Ie viens de Boulongne._ + + From Englande, from Germany. _D'Engleterre, d'Allemaigne._ + + What newes? _Quelle nouuelles?_ + + I know none but good. _Ie ne scay rien que bien._ + + I harde say _i'ay ouy dire_ + + That the Englishe men _que les anglois_ + + haue kylled many frenche men. _ont occis beaucoup de Francois._ + + And where? _Et ou?_ + + Before Bulloigne. _Deuant Boulongne._ + + When came the newes? _Quant vinrent tez nouuelle?_ + + This morninge by a post." _A ce matin par vng poste._" + +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. + +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 usual lines. The present treatise came +to a new edition in 1578, but it does not seem to have been very +successful. + +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. + + +II. Claude Desainliens, who transformed himself into _Claudius Holy-Band_ +or _Hollyband_, 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 _French Littleton_ in 1566, and his French +Dictionary was not printed till 1593. In 1581 he had moved from the +Lucrece to the Golden Ball, just by. + +Perhaps of all his multifarious performances his _French_ and _Italian +Schoolmasters_ 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 _Italian Schoolmaster_ +originally appeared in 1575 as an annex to a version of the story of +_Arnalte and Lucenda_; 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, where in a +dialogue a man is inquiring the way to London, we find at the conclusion +such pure _Italicisms_ as _Have me recommended_: _I am yours_: _Remaine +with God_. 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 _Per +maritarsi = To be married_, Hollyband starts by rendering _O bella +giovane_ "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." + +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:-- + + "_To sing and daunce._ + + "O fellowes, I wish that wee shoulde sing a song, and I will take the + lute. + Let vs sing and daunce, when you will. + Mystres, will it please you to daunce a galliard with me? pray you + therefore. + I cannot daunce after the Italian fashion. + We shall daunce after the high Dutch. + Go to, play a galliard vpon the violl. + I would rather vpon the virginals.... + + _Of the Booke binder._ + + Shew me an Italian, and English bookes and of the best print. + I have none bound at this present. + Bind me this with silke and claspes.... + Reach me royall paper to write. + Neede you any ynke and bombash? + No, but wast paper, & of that which wee call drinking paper.... + + _Of the Shoemaker._ + + I would you shoulde make mee a paire of bootes, a ierkin, and a paire of + shoes, pantofles, mules, and buskins. + We will make the sir, & of good leather. + See this faire shooing. + Put on those pompes...." + +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. + +The _Arnalte and Lucenda_ 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 +_Italian Phrases_ we meet on the English side of the page with: "Hee +looketh rather like a cutter or fencer then," and "He goeth accompanied +with Roisters and cutters." + +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. + + +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 _French Alphabet_ (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 _The French Garden for English +Ladies and Gentlemen to walk in; Or A Summer day's Labour_. 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 +_naivete_ 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 +_Sentimental Journey_, 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. + +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 _Le Jardin de Vertu et Bonnes Moeurs_, +1581, where the English and French are given, as usual, in parallel +columns, is the most remarkable. There is a Table of _Errata_ 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." + +The writer trips, as may be conjectured, just in those nice points in +which even an Englishman is not always at home. + +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 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. + +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:-- + + "Of making Stop. + + "Hola, ho there, prou well, well, so so; assez enough, enough; + demeure, arreste, stay, stay, budge not." + + + "Of feeling Pain. + + "Aou, haou, aouf, ah, of, alas. The same words will serve in English." + + + "Of Joy. + + "Gay, deliait, alaigrement, heighday, as a man woud wish, merrily + then." + +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, 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." + + + + +XIX. + + Foreigners' English. + + +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 _The English +Schoolmaster, for teaching strangers to pronounce English_. 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 +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 _Familiar Letters_, +who brought out in 1662 _A New English Grammar, prescribing as certain +rules as the language will bear, for foreigners to learn English_. This +was nearly a century after Bellot; and Howell was both a linguist and a +scholar. + +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 +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. + +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 _Dr. Caius_, who speaks broken +English, but hardly a Frenchman's broken English. The _Duke de Jarmany_ 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 _dramatis +persona_ was among the comic effects. + +The Mrs. Plawnish of a modern novelist thought that bad English might be +good French; but the jargon of Caius is _sui generis_; 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 _Merry Wives_ +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. + +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. + + +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 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. + +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 Nuernberg so late as 1744 +under the title _Representation of the High-landers who arrived at the +Camp of the Confederated Army_, 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 _Declaration of the Commandments_, 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!" + +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 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:-- + + "TO THE READER. + + "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 / ...." + +An extract from one of the interlocutions must suffice:-- + + "_D._ Peeter / is that your sone? + + _P._ Yea it is my sonne. + + _D._ it is a goodlie childe. God let hun al wayes prosper in virtue. + + _P._ I thancke you coosen. + + _D._ Doth he not go to the scole? + + _P._ Yes / hee learneth to speake French. + + _D._ Doth hee? it is very well done. John / can you well speake + French? + + _J._ Not very well coosen, but I learne. + + _D._ Wher go you too schoole? + + _J._ In the Lumbeardes streat. + + _D._ Have you gon long too schoole? + + _J._ About half a yeare." + +So the dialogue goes on, and there is a series of them. + + +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. + +Now, here, in lieu of the alleged width of 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. + +Going back in order of time, I shall furnish some specimens of the +tetraglot _History of Aurelio and of Isabel Daughter to the King of +Scotland_, translated from the Spanish, and printed in 1556 at Antwerp. I +propose to quote a passage where two knights in love with Isabel 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 [_voilles amoureuses_ in the French +column], for that shoulde be to defile, that so great betwene vs and more, +then of brother conioyned frendship." + +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 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 _Tempest_. + +But a far stranger monument of orthographical and grammatical heresies +exists in _The historijke Pvrtreatvres of the woll[4] Bible_, 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 Derendel, who +was doubtless connected with Pierre Erondelle, a well-known preceptor in +London at a somewhat later date. + +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 _prolegomena_, 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. + +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 cotinuallie 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." + +The discovery of Moses by Pharaoh's daughter is thus poetically set +forth:-- + + "The kinges daughter fonde him in great pitie + The russhes amonge, withe to him fauourable, + As god did please, him to saue thought worthie, + His owne mother giuing him for noorce able." + +Once more, the fall of Abimelech in _Judges_ ix. is portrayed after the +ensuing fashion:-- + + "Hauing killed his bretherne on a stone, + Abimelech was forced ielde the ghoast: + For besieging with for warre Thebes, anon + A strocke he had, of a woman with lost." + +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 _patois_ must have proved a puzzle to all alike. + +The early English educational books 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 _Short Catechisme_ of Cardinal +Bellarmine published in 1614 at Augsburgh, where the slips do not exceed +an ordinary Table of Errata. + +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 _AEneid_, published at Leyden in 1582, +renders the opening lines of Book the Second thus:-- + + "With tentive list'ning each wight was setled in harckning; + Then father AEneas chronicled from loftie bed hautie. + You me bid, O Princesse, too scarrifie a festered old soare, + How that the Troians wear prest by Grecian armie." + +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. + + + + +XX. + + Origin and spirit of Phonography--William Bullokar the earliest + regular advocate of it--Charles Butler--Dr. Jones and his theory + examined. + + +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. + +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 sound, and on which he +relies, differs in different localities. + +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. + +Bullokar published his large Grammar in 1580, and his Brief one in 1586; +and he also put forth in 1585 a version of AEsop's Fables, the title of +which is a curiosity:--"AEsopz 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. + + Gev' God the praiz + That teacheth all waiz. + When Truth trieth, + Erroor flieth." + +Butler became a convert in later life to the views previously entertained +and promulgated by Bullokar, bringing out a third edition of his _History +of Bees_ in 1634, adapted to the new standard; and in his _English +Grammar_, 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. + +But perhaps the most strenuous and elaborate attempt to reform us in this +particular direction was made by Dr. Jones, who drew up a _Practical +Phonography_, "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. + +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 pronunciation and _ergo_ the spelling of half-a-dozen familiar words +and proper names:--_Aron_, _baut_ (bought), _Mair_, _Dixnary_, _pais_ +(pays), and _Wooster_; 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)." + +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. + +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. + + + + +INDEX. + + + Abacus, 209-15. + + A. B. C., 88, 209-15, 234-7. + + Abingdon School, 132, 183. + + Absence from school severely treated, 108-9. + + Academies, private, 143-4, 170-4, 178-83. + + Accomplishments taught at the _Musaeum Minervae_, 170-4. + + ---- at a private academy in 1676, 178-9. + + _Acolastus_, 127, 257. + + Addison's _Letter from Italy_, 203. + + AEsop, 48, 99, 139, 141, 287. + + Ainsworth, Robert, 229-30. + + Aldus, 76. + + Ale, 140. + + Alexander de Villa Dei, 45-6, 243-4. + + Alfric, Archbishop, his _Colloquy_, 30. + + Allibone, John, 12. + + Alphabet, Jonson's remarks on our, 234-6. + + _Alphabetum Latino-Anglicum_, 1543, 124. + + America, 33-4. + + American Plantations, 17, 84. + + Amwell, 51-3, 200. + + Andreas, Bernardus, 68, 102. + + Andrew of Wyntown, 184. + + Anglo-Gallic dictionary, 35. + + ---- _vocabulary_, 255. + + Anglo-Latin literature, 72. + + Anniquil, John, schoolmaster and grammarian, 11, 51-3, 91. + + _Apollo Shroving_, 1627, 144. + + Apothecaries, early, ignorance of, 105. + + Appleby, 107. + + Appositions, 138. + + Aristotle, 244. + + Arithmetic, 163-4. + + Arthur, Prince, son of Henry VII., 68, 102. + + Arthusius, Gotardus, 155. + + Ascensius, Jod. Badius, 78-80. + + Ascham, Roger, 12, 19, 196, 220-3. + + _As in praesenti_, 216. + + Astrology, 157-8. + + Astronomy, judicial, 133, 157. + + Aufield, W., 268-9. + + _Aurelio and Isabel, History of_, 1556, 279-81. + + _Aviarium_, 227-8. + + Aylesbury, 160. + + + Bacon, Francis, 177. + + Baker, Humphrey, 163-4. + + Bailey, Old, 165. + + Balbus, Johannes, 50, 225. + + Bale, Bishop, 98. + + Bales, Peter, 165. + + Barchby, John, 73. + + Barclay, Alexander, 12. + + Beaune, 256. + + Bebelius of Basle, 81. + + Beer, 140. + + Bellarmine's (Cardinal) _Catechism_, 284. + + Bellomayus, Johannes, 73. + + Bellot, Jacques, 267-8, 271-2. + + _Bellum Grammaticale_, 82. + + Berkshire, 160. + + Bethnal Green, 133, 170-1. + + Bible, the, in schools, 205-8. + + _Black Eagle_ in St. Paul's Churchyard, 115. + + Blue Coat School, 253. + + Board Schools, wise policy of the, 207. + + Bodley, Sir Thomas, 10-11. + + Bodmin, 161. + + Bookbinders, 114-15, 264. + + Borde, Andrew, 210-11. + + Boulogne, 260. + + Bow Lane, 156. + + Boy-bishop at St. Paul's, 109. + + Bracebridge, Thomas, 180. + + Brackley, Waynflete's school at, 11. + + Bread, manchet, 140. + + Bright, Timothy, 177. + + Brightland, John, 131. + + Browne, Alexander, 175. + + Buchanan, George, 117, 196. + + Buckinghamshire, 160. + + Bullokar, William, 286-7. + + Burles, Edward, 131. + + Burney, Charles, 23. + + Busby, Dr., 18, 21-3. + + Buskins, 265. + + Butler, Charles, 286-7. + + Butter, sweet, in 1652, 140. + + + Caius, or Kay, John, 247-8, 273-4. + + Calligraphy, 165, 175-6. + + Cambridge, 243-4. + + Canterbury, 241. + + Carmichael, James, 187. + + Carving, 171. + + Cassilis, Gilbert, Earl of, 117-18. + + Catechism, the, 207-8, 216. + + Cathedral schools, 7-9, 113. + + Catherine of Aragon, 118. + + Cato, Dionysius, 98, 287. + + Caxton, W., his prose _AEneid_, 95-6. + + Cecil, W., Lord Burleigh, 19, 220. + + Chancellor of St. Paul's, 113. + + Chapman, George, 252. + + Charactery, 177. + + Charles II. and Dr. Busby, 21. + + Charterhouse, 76. + + Chaucer, 223. + + Cheke, Sir John, 82, 221, 247-8. + + Chichester, 106. + + Childermass, 109. + + Christ's Hospital, 126, 135-6, 253-4. + + Christ-cross-row, 210-11. + + Church, salutary influence of the early, 5 _et seq._ + + Churchyard, Thomas, 286. + + Cicero, 18, 94, 96 _et seq._, 110, 139, 141-2. + + Ciceronian Academy, 219. + + Cirencester, 108. + + City of London School, 135, 204. + + Civil War in Great Britain, influence of the, 190, 200. + + Classic authors read in England in 1520, 88. + + ---- in 1563, 221. + + ---- used at St. Paul's, 110. + + ---- at Merchant Taylors', &c., 251, 253-4. + + ---- at a provincial school in 1788, 181. + + ---- by ladies, 199, 203. + + ---- attempt to supersede, in 1582, 231-2. + + Clerical control over education, 3, 5-7, 190-2, 195-208. + + Cocker, Edward, 175-6. + + Coleridge, S. T., 136. + + Colet, Dean, 8, 103, 108-14, 120-2. + + Collation at Merchant Taylors' on Probation Day, 140. + + College education in Scotland, former cost of, 189. + + Collins, W., 281. + + Collins's _Oriental Eclogues_, 203. + + Columbus, C., 33. + + Comparative study of Latin and English, 72. + + Conventual schools, 6-7. + + Cooper's _Thesaurus_, 226, 228-9. + + Corderius, M., 139. + + Cornwall, 161. + + Corporal punishment in schools, 18-26, 30. + + ---- petitions to Parliament against it, 25. + + Coster, Laurence, 54. + + Cox, Leonard, 123. + + Croft, Richard, 194. + + Croke, Richard, 244. + + Cromwell, Oliver, 191-2. + + ---- Thomas, Earl of Essex, 227, 257. + + + Dame-schools, 196-7, 202, 206. + + Dancing, 171, 178. + + Davies's Welsh Grammar, 233. + + Decalogue, 120-1. + + _De Conscribendis Epistolis_, by Erasmus, 103-4. + + ---- an anecdote about the book, 104. + + De Corro, Anthonio, 153. + + De Flores, Juan, 279-81. + + Delamothe, G., 266. + + Denny, Sir Anthony, 226. + + Derendel, Peter, 281. + + Desainliens, Claude, 261-6. + + Despauterius, 46. + + Dialogues of Lucian translated into Latin by Erasmus, 100. + + ---- in English and French, 258-9. + + ---- in English and Italian, 263-5, 279. + + Dickens's _Mrs. Plawnish_, 273. + + Dictionaries, early, 27 _et seq._, 225-30. + + Dictionary, definition of a, 32. + + ---- of Johannes de Garlandia, 32-4. + + Discipline, severity of early, 17-26, 108-12. + + _Doctrinale_ of Alexander de Villa Dei, 45-6, 186. + + Donatus, AElius, 46-9, 50, 86, 121, 184. + + Dorchester, 183. + + Dorne, John, 39, 87-9. + + Dorset Street, Spitalfields, 157. + + D'Ouvilly, Sir Balthazar Gerbier, 170-4. + + Drawing, 171, 175. + + Dugard, William, 140, 145-9. + + Duncan, Dr., 219. + + Du Ploiche, Pierre, 258-61. + + Dutch language, 153, 171, 173. + + Du Wes or Dewes, Giles, 117, 257. + + Dyonisie de Mountchensy, 36. + + + East Indies, 155. + + Edward the Confessor, 17. + + ---- I. 35. + + ---- VI., 123-6, 135. + + Elizabeth, Queen, 126, 130, 230-2, 241. + + Elyot, Sir Thomas, 226-9. + + Endowed grammar schools of Edward VI., 126. + + English school-books printed abroad, 85, 273. + + Erasmus, Desiderius, 99, 103, 118, 120, 127, 244-5, 247. + + Erondelle, Pierre, 266-7, 281-2. + + Eton, 18-19, 21. + + ---- Grammar, 160. + + Etymology, 151. + + Euripides, 248, 254. + + Evans, Sir Hugh, 180-1. + + Exchange, Royal, 164. + + + Farriery, 263. + + Faversham, 161. + + Feckenham, 194. + + Female influence, 206-8. + + Festeau, Paul, 269-70. + + Fish, 76-7. + + Fisher, Bishop, 242-3. + + Fitzjames, Bishop, 106. + + ---- Lord Chief Justice, 106. + + Fitzstephen, W., 15. + + Flageolet, 175. + + Flanders, 273. + + Florence, 245. + + Florio, John, 155. + + Foreign influence, 3, 38 _et seq._, 66, 170-4. + + ---- ignorance of English, 273-84. + + Founders of schools at the Reformation, 106. + + Fox, John, 125. + + Free school at Oxford, 60. + + Free school at Feckenham, 194. + + French dame-schools, 197. + + ---- influence, 3, 257-62, 266-70. + + ---- _Introductory_, by G. Du Wes, 117. + + ---- knowledge of English, 274, 280 _et seq._ + + ---- language, 153, 254 _et seq._, 270. + + ---- orthography, 35-6. + + ---- school in St. Paul's Churchyard, 116. + + Frobenius, 76. + + Frorne = frozen, 76. + + + Gadbury, John, 158. + + Gardiner, Bishop, 82, 247-8. + + Gascoigne, George, 248. + + _Gemma Vocabulorum_, 225. + + Geneva, English residents at, 10. + + _Gentleman's Calling, The_, 13. + + German influence, 197. + + ---- language, 152, 171, 173. + + ---- population of Riga, 217. + + Germany, 222, 274. + + _Gloucestershire's Desire_, 1642, 193. + + Gold, writing with, 176. + + Golden Ball in St. Paul's Churchyard, 262. + + Goldsmith's Alley, 94. + + Goldsmith's _Poems for Young Ladies_, 202-3. + + _Gradus comparationum_, 73. + + Grammar schools, endowed, 126. + + _Grammatica Initialis_, 1509, 14. + + Grant, Edward, 251. + + Grantham, Lincolnshire, 252. + + Grantham, Thomas, 253. + + Gray's Inn, 248. + + Greek language, 241-54. + + ----, study of the, at Oxford, 101-5, 244. + + ---- taught at Cambridge by Erasmus, 100, 243-5. + + ---- taught at public schools, 141-2, 161, 251, 253-4. + + ---- taught by private tutors, 153. + + Greeting, Thomas, 175. + + Grey, Lady Jane, 222. + + Grocyn, W., 102, 244-5. + + Guarini of Verona, 86-7. + + Guarna, Andrea, 82. + + + Hadleigh, Suffolk, 144. + + Hall, Arthur, of Grantham, 252. + + Harmar, Samuel, 193-4. + + Hart Street, 157. + + Hawkins, William, 144. + + Hayne, Thomas, 216, 238-9. + + Hazlitt, William, 181-2. + + ---- Mr. Registrar, 281, note. + + Hebrew, 142, 153, 168. + + Henry VII., 68, 245. + + ---- VIII., 68, 123-4 126, 128, 133, 143, 198, 205, 226-7, 246-7, 257-8. + + Hereditary succession of teachers, 84. + + Herefordshire, 162. + + _Hero and Leander_ of Musaeus, 253. + + Herodotus, 253. + + Hertfordshire, 131. + + Highgate, 200. + + Highlanders, 276. + + Hills, Richard, 136. + + Holidays, ancient school, 15-17. + + Holofernes, Shakespear's, 99, 155. + + Holt, John, 70-1. + + Holwell, John, 157. + + Homer, 250, 252-4. + + Hoole, Charles, 93-4. + + Hooper, Bishop, 276. + + Horace, 64, 94. + + Horman, William, 73-8, 129, 222. + + ---- his literary quarrel with Lily and others, 81-2. + + ---- extracts from his _Vulgaria_, 74-8. + + Horn-book, 211, 212. + + _Hours of the Virgin_, 1514, 115. + + Howell, James, 233. + + Hume, Alexander, 131, 187. + + _Hundred Merry Tales_, 133-4. + + Hunt, Leigh, 135. + + + Illustrated children's books, 159. + + Indian abacus, 215. + + Inglis, Esther, 176. + + Ingulphus, 17-18. + + Ink, 76. + + Instruction, mediaeval method of, 14, 30. + + Ipswich, Wolsey's school at, 107, 119-20. + + Ireland, 131, 189, 284, 286. + + Italian influence, 3, 86-7, 197, 242-3, 245, 261-6, 278-9. + + ---- language, 152 _et seq._, 261-6. + + ---- hand, 177. + + + Jerome, St., 46, 110-11. + + Jesus College, Cambridge, 11-12. + + _Johnny Quae Genus_, 216. + + Johannes de Garlandia, 32-4, 83. + + Johnson, Thomas, 212. + + Jones, Dr., 287-9. + + Jonson, Benjamin, 177, 233-6. + + Julius Caesar, 95-6. + + + Ken, Bishop, 137. + + Kent, 161. + + Kinaston, Sir Francis, 173, 233. + + Kingston-upon-Hull, 106. + + ---- Thames, 252. + + Kinwelmersh, Francis, 248. + + Knox, John, 185, 194. + + Kyffin, Maurice, 92. + + + Ladies, 175. + + ---- colleges for, 200 _et seq._ + + Ladies' lapdogs, 77. + + Lamb, Charles, 136, 200, 253-4. + + ---- Mary, 200. + + Lancashire, 106. + + Lane, A., 162-3. + + Languages, living, taught in England, 152 _et seq._, 168, 171, 173. + + Latimer, Bishop, 221. + + ---- W., 102. + + Latin language, 72, 152, 155, 162-3, 229-30. + + ---- authors used at St. Paul's, 109-10. + + ---- barbarous or low, 228. + + Laureateship, ancient, 67. + + Lawrence Pountney, St., 136. + + Leghorn, English at, 278-9. + + Lempriere, Dr., 182. + + Leominster, 162. + + Letter-writing, 103. + + Levins, Peter, 228. + + Lexicons, 225-30. + + Libraries, parochial, proposed in Scotland, 185-6. + + Lichfield, 60. + + Life, mediaeval, illustrated by ancient school-books, 31-2, 75-8. + + ---- English, of the 16th and 17th centuries illustrated, 259 _et seq._ + + Lilly, William, the astrologer, 158. + + Lily, George, 107. + + ---- William, 44, 60, 81, 84-5, 118-22, 124, 139, 150-2, 161, 186, 216, + 242, 245, 247. + + Linacre, Thomas, 102, 117-18, 244-5, 257. + + Lincolnshire, 158. + + Littleton, Adam, 229. + + Logic, 133-4. + + Lombard Street, 278. + + London, localities of, 76, 77-8, 93-4, 113-16, 156, 162, 164-5, 258-9, + 261-2, 278. + + ---- proposed University of, in 1647-8, 166-9. + + Longlond, Dr., Bishop of Lincoln, 151. + + Lord's Prayer, 120-1. + + Lothbury Garden, 93, 156. + + Louth, Lincolnshire, 158. + + Lucian, 101, 254. + + _Ludus Ludi Litterarii_, 1672, 144. + + Lydgate, John, 37, 42-3, 99. + + + Magdalen College School, Oxford, 11-12, 51, 70, 84-5, 132, 152, 204. + + Makins, Bathsua, 200. + + Malagasy language, 155. + + Malayan language, 155. + + Malmesbury, 241. + + Manchester, 106, 132, 180. + + Manchet bread, 140. + + Mantuan, Eclogues of, 98. + + Mary, Princess, afterwards Queen, 117, 125, 257. + + Mauger, Claudius, 269-70. + + Maupas, Charles, 268-9. + + _May-Flower_, the, 84. + + Maypoles, 192. + + Mayor of London, 77. + + Meals, graces at, 259. + + ---- reading at, 259. + + _Medulla Grammatices_, 225. + + Mercers' School, 135. + + Merchant Taylors' School, 16, 21, 132, 136-42, 144-9, 223-4. + + Middlesex, 131. + + Mile-End Green, 162. + + Military science, 171. + + _Milk for Children_, 70. + + Milton, John, 158-9. + + Miracle of the fishes, 108. + + Monastic or conventual schools, 6-7. + + Montefiore, Sir Moses, 143. + + _Monumenta Franciscana_ quoted, 114. + + More, Sir Thomas, 65, 70, 112, 246. + + Morris dances, 192. + + Morris, Richard, 45. + + Motto of Merchant Taylors' School, 147. + + Mountjoy, Lord William, 103. + + Mrs. Leicester's school, 200. + + Mugwell or Monkwell Street, 156. + + Mulcaster, Richard, 138, 223-4. + + Mules, 265. + + Murray, Lindley, 45, 218-19. + + _Musaeum Minervae_ at Bethnal Green, 133, 170-4. + + Musaeus, 253. + + Music taught in the conventual schools, 7. + + ---- to ladies by private masters, 175. + + + Nash, Thomas, quoted, 19-20. + + Neckam, Alexander, 32. + + Neo-Hellenic, 249, 253. + + Netherlands, 273, 279. + + Newman, Thomas, 92. + + Niger, Franciscus, 103. + + _Nominale_, the, 27 _et seq._ + + Nonsense-verses, 141. + + Norths of Kirtling, the, 199. + + Nowell, Alexander, Dean of St. Paul's, 138. + + + Ocland, Christopher, 230-2. + + Old Brompton, 140. + + Oral instruction, 14. + + _Ortus Vocabulorum_, 225, 228. + + Oudin, Cesare, 153. + + Ovid, 95. + + Owen, Lewis, 153. + + Oxford, Waynflete's school at, 11, 12, 51, 60, 68. + + ---- ancient educational machinery at, 17, 133-4, 151. + + ---- Grammar of, 1709, 120. + + + Pace, Richard, 102, 247. + + Padua, 245. + + Painting, 171. + + Palsgrave, John, 123, 127, 228. + + Pantofles, 265. + + Paper, manufacture of, 75. + + ---- different sizes of, 75. + + ---- royal, 264. + + ---- blotting, 264. + + Paris under Philip Augustus, 33-4. + + Parish churches in London, 78. + + ---- schools in England, 194. + + ---- ---- in Scotland, 185. + + ---- libraries proposed in Scotland, 185. + + Partridge, John, 158. + + _Parvula_, 69-70. + + _Parvulorum Institutio_, 52. + + Penton, Stephen, 215. + + Pepys, S., 157, 175. + + ---- Mrs., 175. + + Percy, Bishop, 7. + + Perottus, Nicolaus, 39-40, 225. + + Pes (foot) derived from the Greek, 33. + + _Phaenissae_ of Euripides, 248. + + Philelphus, Franciscus, 103. + + Phonography, 237, 285-9. + + Pictorial vocabulary, 35. + + Play-days _v._ holy-days, 16. + + Pleunus, Henry, 278-9. + + Poggius (Poggio Bracciolini), 99. + + Polyglot vocabularies, 153-4, 276-80. + + Pope, Alexander, 205. + + Popular literature of 1520, 88. + + _Portraitures of the Bible_, 1553, 281-3. + + Portuguese language, 153. + + Prayers at public schools, 137. + + Prices of provisions, 65. + + Prideaux, M., 132, 162, 239. + + Primer, National, of 1540, 123 _et seq._ + + ---- Salisbury, 121. + + ---- for children, 211, 214. + + Primrose, Dr., Goldsmith's, 81, 205. + + Printing, notices relative to, 75. + + Printing-press, private, attached to Merchant Taylors' School, 148-9. + + Probation-Day, 139-42. + + Professors of foreign languages, 153. + + _Promptorius Parvulorum_, 225. + + Pronunciation of Greek and Latin, 248-51. + + _Propria quae maribus_, 276. + + Proprietary schools, 162, 195-6, 202, 206. + + Protestant refugees at Geneva, 10. + + ---- A. B. C., first, 1553, 212. + + Provincial schools, 132, 160, 179-183. + + ---- culture, 201-2. + + Pumps, 265. + + Punctuation, early, 79-80. + + Putney, 200. + + + Quarter-wages, 148-9. + + Quiney, Mrs., 202. + + + Rabbards, R., 165. + + Rabelais, 104. + + Reading, 160. + + Reference, early books of, 239-40. + + Religious character of early teaching, 6-8. + + Remedies or holy-days, 15-17. + + Reynell, Sir Richard, 162. + + ---- Sir Thomas, 162. + + Rhetoric, 132. + + Rhodes, 242, 245. + + Richmond and Derby, Margaret, Countess of, 217. + + Riding the Great Horse, 171. + + Riga, 107. + + Rightwise, John, 216. + + Ripley's _Compound of Alchemy_, 165. + + Robertson, Thomas, of York, 81, 150-2. + + Rochelle, 256. + + _Roman Antiquities_ of Prideaux, 132. + + ---- of Adams, 240. + + ---- coins, weights, and measures, 230. + + Rome, 245. + + Rood, Theodore, 51. + + Roper, Margaret, 199. + + Rose, Manor of the, 136. + + ---- sign of the, 258-9. + + Roulston, Staffordshire, 106. + + Ruddiman, Thomas, 187-9. + + Russian abacus, 215. + + + Sackville, Sir Richard, 19, 220-2. + + ---- Mr. Robert, 221. + + Salaries of schoolmasters in 1561, 138. + + School children (parish) in 1642, 194. + + School of fish, 76. + + Schools, monastic or conventual, 6-7. + + ----, cathedral, 7-9, 113. + + ---- established in England, 1502-15, 105-8, 210. + + ---- ---- by Edward VI., 126. + + Schoolmaster, the old and new, 23-6. + + ---- of Old St. Paul's, 113-14. + + Schoolmasters under the Commonwealth, 191-2. + + Scogin, Jests of, 210-11. + + Scot, Alexander, 251. + + Scotland, 131, 184-9, 195, 197, 205, 279. + + Scotus, Joh., 244. + + Scrooby, Lincolnshire, 84. + + Secularisation of teaching, 204-8. + + Shakespear, W., 99, 155, 177, 180-1, 201-2, 281. + + ---- his _Dr. Caius_ and _Duke de Jarmany_, 273-4. + + _Ship of Fools_, 12. + + Shirley, James, 237-8. + + Shoemaker, dialogue with a, in 1597, 265. + + _Short Introduction of Grammar_, by Lily, 84. + + Shropshire, 173, 181-2. + + Shropshire school in 1788, 181-2. + + Skinners' school at Tonbridge, 135, 251. + + Smith, Sir Thomas, 247. + + Smith's series of dictionaries, &c., 240. + + Sneezing, folklore of, 78. + + Somersetshire, 106. + + Somerville, Mrs., 199. + + Spalding, Augustine, 155. + + Spanish language, 153. + + Speech-Day at Merchant Taylors', 143. + + Speeches at breaking-up, 143-5. + + _Spelling A. B. C._, 1590, 212. + + Spitalfields, 157. + + Staffordshire, 106-7. + + Stage-plays in 1654, 192. + + Stanbridge, John, 11, 39, 44, 53-9, 71, 122. + + Standish, John, 242. + + _Stans puer ad mensam_, 42-3. + + Stanyhurst's Virgil, 284. + + Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_, 267. + + St. Martin's-le-Grand, 114. + + St. Mary-le-Bow, 114. + + St. Mary Wike, Devonshire, 107. + + St. Paul's Church, 77. + + ---- Churchyard, 115-16, 156, 261-2. + + ---- School (old), 8, 113. + + ---- ---- (Colet's), 100 _et seq._, 120-2, 132-3, 204, 216, 223, 242. + + Stockwood, John, 251. + + Stratford-on-Avon, 181, 194. + + Strong, Nathaniel, 156. + + Studies at the _Musaeum Minervae_, 171-2. + + Sturmius, Johannes, 221. + + Subjects taught in mediaeval schools, 9-10. + + ---- at St. Paul's and Merchant Taylors', 109-10, 137, 139, 141-2. + + ---- at provincial schools, 181-2. + + Sulpicius, Johannes, 40-4, 50. + + Surrey, 200. + + ---- Lord, 223. + + Survival of early English system of holidays in the United States, 17. + + Sutton Colfield, 106. + + Syms, Christopher, 163. + + + _Tables of Grammar_, by John Fox, 125. + + Teachers, foreign, 5, 66. + + Terence, 46, 51, 90-4. + + Testament, Greek, 141. + + Theology in schools, 205-8. + + Thucydides, 252. + + Tiptoft, John, Earl of Worcester, 96. + + Tom Thumb's Alphabet, 159. + + Tonbridge, Skinners' School at, 135, 251. + + Tree of Knowledge, the, 13. + + Trinity Lane, 258-9. + + Tumbler, a dog, 77. + + Tunstall, Bishop, 102. + + Turner, Dr., 105. + + Tusser, Thomas, 18-19. + + Tutors, 161-3. + + + Udall, Nicolas, 19, 21. + + Union, educational results of the, 3. + + United States, system of holidays in the, 17. + + University of London, proposed, in 1647-8, 166-9. + + + Vacation, modern, not formerly understood, 16. + + Valpy's Greek Grammar, 161. + + Vaus, John, 186. + + Vergil, Polydore, 44. + + Vimont, M., 236. + + Virgil, 43-4, 94-5, 110-11, 284. + + Vitellius, Cornelius, 244. + + Vives, Ludovicus, 118. + + Vocabularies, 27 _et seq._ + + ---- polyglot, 153-4. + + + Wakes, 192. + + Wales, 131, 233. + + Walker, William, 158. + + Walter de Biblesworth, 35. + + Wapping, 156. + + Warwickshire, 60, 194. + + Watling Street, 114. + + Wax candles taken by boys to school, 109, 137. + + Waynflete, early school at, 11. + + ---- Bishop, 11, 85. + + Welsh Grammar, 233 + + Wem, Salop, 181. + + Westbury, Lord Chancellor, 281, note. + + Westminster, 17. + + ---- School, 21, 132. + + ---- Grammar, 160. + + West Point School, U.S., 17. + + White, Thomas, 159. + + ---- Sir Thomas, 138. + + Whitsun-ales, 192. + + Whittinton, Robert, 39, 44, 60-8, 81-2, 94, 96-9, 122, 186, 222. + + ---- his series of grammatical treatises described, 60-6. + + Winchester School, 137. + + Wines, 256. + + Withals, John, 228-9. + + Witton School, near Chester, 183. + + Wolfe, Reginald, 127. + + Wolsey, Cardinal, 107, 119-20. + + Wolverhampton, 107. + + Women, education of, 4, 195-208. + + ---- notices of, 77. + + Word-books, 27 _et seq._ + + Writing, 175-7. + + ---- books, abundance of, 175. + + + Xenophon, 254. + + + Zenobia, Queen Elizabeth preferred to, 231. + + +BALLANTYNE PRESS: EDINBURGH AND LONDON + + + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] 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 _Vulgaria_ of Whittinton and the _Vocabula_ and +_Accidence_ of Stanbridge as having fetched, the four together, 3s. It is +described as being in leather binding, in quarto. + +[2] Knight refers to the _Epistolae_ of Franciscus Philelphus, printed at +Milan in 1471. + +[3] Introduction to Hayne's _Latin Grammar_, 1640. + +[4] It may be worth while to note that the use of _woll_ for _whole_ was +not an unusual type of orthography and pronunciation in early English. +Thus, in the _Interlude of the Four Elements_ (1519), we have:-- + + "For, as I said, they have none iron, + Whereby they should in the earth mine, + To search for any _wore_." + +And in the _Image of Hypocrisy_, part 3, Robin Hood is called _Robyn +Whode_. Lord Chancellor Westbury used to pronounce _whole_ in the same +way, and he would also say _whot_ for _hot_. When Mr. Registrar Hazlitt +was engaged with him on the Bankruptcy Bill, he remarked more than once: +"I am sick, Hazlitt, of the _woll_ business." + + + + +Transcriber's Notes: + +Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. + +Passages in Gothic font are indicated by =font=. + +Superscripted characters are indicated by {superscript}. + +The original text includes letters with diacritical marks that are not +represented in this text version. + +The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these +letters have been replaced with transliterations. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Schools, School-Books and Schoolmasters, by +W. 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