Schools, School-Books and Schoolmasters Part 6

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 pa.s.sed 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 Lincolns.h.i.+re a small knot of resolute men went forth in the _May Flower_ to lay the first stone of that immense const.i.tutional 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 n.o.bility, 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 ill.u.s.tration, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 ill.u.s.trations 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 cla.s.s of learning abroad, while our own men were developing it among us with the occasional a.s.sistance 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 p_uare e per essere p_uato 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 cla.s.s 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, cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.s 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 cessa.s.se 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 pa.s.sed 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 Lincolns.h.i.+re, and being more contemporary in its language and treatment, drove out of fas.h.i.+on 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 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 princ.i.p.al of one at Rotherham in Yorks.h.i.+re. 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 pa.s.s to Virgil, whose _Bucolics_ were published in 1512 with a dull Latin commentary, ill.u.s.trating 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 cla.s.sics into use for educational purposes, the fine musical numbers of the ancient poet and the n.o.ble 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 a.s.sist 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 pa.s.sages 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 cla.s.sic 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 n.o.bleman, who filled at one time a professorial chair in the University of Padua.

The Caesar, in fact, occupies an a.n.a.logous 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 n.o.bis 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 pnitere, 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'uvre_, 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 dic.u.n.t 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 n.o.bis, 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 c.u.m essem a famous man amonges all other adolescens Tarenti c.u.m 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 pa.s.sages 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 scholars.h.i.+p of Whittinton); and, lastly, such elementary guides to mythology and history as Lydgate's _Interpretation of the Natures of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses_, 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.