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’sShort Introduction of Grammar(1548)—Its re-issue by Queen Elizabeth (1566-7)—Some account of its contents—Its failure.
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’sShort 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 hisIntroductoryto 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 bookDe ratione studii puerilis, where, from delicacy, he made a point of commending the labours of Linacre and the abridgment of theRudimentsby 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 certainlimits 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’sRudimentswith 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 theDocendi Methodus, theRules, theArticles of Faith,Precepts of Living,Apostles’ Creed,Decalogue, &c.; and the rest of the book is occupied by theIntroduction of theEight Parts of Speechand theRudiments 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’sRudiments, 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 1534Rudimentshe speaks of the “new school of Paul’s,” and that in 1518 Erasmus had executed a Latin metrical version of theLord’s PrayerandPrecepts of Good Livingfor theschool under the title ofChristiani 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.
TheColeti æditio, &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, calledDonatesandAccidens, 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’sIntroduction(including theRudiments) 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 theEclaircissement.
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 theParts of Speechand other rudiments in English, while the second part contains a digested recension of the Latin series under the title ofA 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 theAlphabetum Latino-Anglicumof 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 ofA 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 atthe same time that the large book was inconvenient for beginners; and we are told that Fox the martyrologist was commissioned to prepareTables of Grammarfor the use, probably, of the lower forms in schools. But we know nothing farther of them; and theIntroduction, 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 plantedthroughout 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 theIntroduction, and, unless all intervening copies have perished, there was a clear lapse of ten years before the new Protestantregimetook 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 theShort Introductionof 1548 and 1567 was, in the main, a reproduction of Henry’s book. But the same unqualified encomium is pronounced on Henry byJohn Palsgrave, the celebrated lexicographer and teacher of languages, in the prolix and fulsome dedication to his EnglishAcolastus, 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. TheIntroduction of the Eight Parts of Speechconstitutes 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’sDe 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 throughouther 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 havedone this! It makes us cheerful, amid the habitual dearth of something to leaven the text, to stumble upon a few of the little touches in the older books retained as an exception, such as: “Vivo in Anglia. Veni per Galliam in Italiam,” or “Vixit Londini: Studuit Oxoniæ.”
How differently Horman in hisVulgaria, 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 peremptorylegislation. 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 Britainand 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 asimplified Latin Primerin usum juventutis Cambro-Britannicæ, 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 theEnglish Introduction to the Latin Tonguefor 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 theRoman Antiquitiesof Prideaux, in 1614, for Abingdon.
Perhaps, however, the most conspicuous example of this localisation was theOutlines of Rhetoricfor St. Paul’s, of which we meet with a third edition in 1659; and which must havebeen 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 famousMusæum Minervæand the commencing taste for a more complex platform. For such subjects do not seem to have made part of the ordinary course of training anywhere since the mediæval period, when the Aristotelian system was paramount at our Universities; although, at the same time, among more advanced students philosophical treatises never ceased to possess interest and attract perusers. But the relevance of the handbook for St Paul’s lies in its professed destination for the young.
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 inA Hundred MerryTales, 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.
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.
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 hisAutobiographyLeigh Hunt sheds some interesting light on the condition of Christ’s Hospitalwhen 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 ofEliatells 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 24thSeptember 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 elevenA.M.and from one till fiveP.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 clearor complete notion of the books which were used at the school, but it is to be inferred that Lily’s Grammar was the Latin text-book. In the rules made for Probation-Day in 1606-7, I find Æsop’sFablesin Greek, Tully’sEpistles, and theDialoguesof 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.
TheSchool’s Probationpresents 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’sSchool’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 setupon 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, Æsop’sFablesin 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, underSententiæ 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 properlyunderstood 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 calledLudus 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., thepractice 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 entitledApollo 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 andgeneral 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 inAn 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 thatSchool, 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 waywithin 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 præcludor, Tibi pateo.”
TheRemonstrancedid 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 courseof 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 asPrinter 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 £300 less than the cost; and this was by no means the full extent of his sacrifices and misfortunes. For he gives his principals to understand that he had grown lean by the observance of fast-days in accordance with their recent order; and, moreover, that during his nineteen years’ term of office he had lost £800by 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 andraison d’êtreof Dugard’s collateral occupation.
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’sAccidence(1669)—Old mode of advertising private establishments.
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’sAccidence(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 educationalregimen. 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 onDerivativesRobertson has some matter, as to which the modern etymologist may form his own conclusions. This is a specimen:—
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 ofIrregular Verbs and Nounswere printed with Lily’sRulesat 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 allthose 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 theDutch Tutor, theNether-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 undertakingsof 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 ofHolofernesin “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 celebratedJohn 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 theProtestant Schooland theProtestant 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 christenedThe 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, theschools 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, butAstrologyin 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 throughthe 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 evenMiltoncould not desist from entering into the competition, and, two years after the appearance ofParadise 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 alittle volume calledAccidence Commenc’d Grammar, of which the main object was to reduce into an English digest the LatinAccidence 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’sLatin Grammarand the Eton Greek Grammar used to be employed.At Bodmin, Valpy’sGreek Grammar, and at Faversham, Lily’sLatin 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 thepublic, 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 theIntroduction 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 hisRational 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 hisIntroduction 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 entitledTheWellspring 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 ofHumfry 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 theWriting 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’sCompound 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.