“Physicians, that be all sette to wynne money, bye and sylle our lyues: and so oftē tymes we bye deth with a great and a sore pryce.Animas nostras æruscatores medici negociantur, &c.“Papyre fyrste was made of a certeyne stuffe like the pythe of a bulrushe in Ægypt: and syth it is made of lynnen clothe soked in water, stāpte or grūde pressed and smothed.Chartæ 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 artē, &c.“Pryntynge hathe almooste vndone scryueners crafte.Chalcographia librariorū q̄stū 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.”
“Physicians, that be all sette to wynne money, bye and sylle our lyues: and so oftē tymes we bye deth with a great and a sore pryce.Animas nostras æruscatores medici negociantur, &c.
“Papyre fyrste was made of a certeyne stuffe like the pythe of a bulrushe in Ægypt: and syth it is made of lynnen clothe soked in water, stāpte or grūde pressed and smothed.Chartæ 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 artē, &c.
“Pryntynge hathe almooste vndone scryueners crafte.Chalcographia librariorū q̄stū 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 margēt: also streyte lynes of equal distaunce be drawe withyn: that the wryttyng may shewe fayre.Olde or doting chourles can not suffre yōge 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 saūple 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 mōkis 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 achayer 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 cōuenyent that a man haue one seueral place in his house to hymselfe fro cōbrance of womē.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 sūtyme bellis: sūtyme colers ful of prickkis for theyr defēce.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 hisbretherne 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 tokē.”
“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 margēt: also streyte lynes of equal distaunce be drawe withyn: that the wryttyng may shewe fayre.
Olde or doting chourles can not suffre yōge 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 saūple 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 mōkis 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 achayer 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 cōuenyent that a man haue one seueral place in his house to hymselfe fro cōbrance of womē.
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 sūtyme bellis: sūtyme colers ful of prickkis for theyr defēce.
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 hisbretherne 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 tokē.”
These selected extracts will convey some notion of the unusual curiosity of theVulgariaof 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 theDeclensionsof 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 ofthat 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 diuisiōs most vside with cunnyng men: the whiche if they be wel vsid: make the sentens very light / and esy to vnderstōd both to the reder & the herer. & they be these: virgil / come / parēthesis / playne poynt / and interrogatif. A virgil is a sclēder stryke: lenynge forwarde thiswyse / be tokynynge a lytyl / short rest without any perfetnes yet of sentens: as betwene the fiue poyntis a fore rehersid. A come is with tway titils thiswyse: betokynyng a lenger rest: and the sētens yet ether is vnperfet: or els if it be perfet: ther cūmith more after / lōgyng to it: the which more comynly can not be perfect by itself without at the lest sūmat of it: that gothe a fore. A parenthesis is with tway crokyd virgils: as an olde mone / & a neu bely to bely: the whiche be set theron afore the begynyng / and thetother after the latyr ende of a clause: comyng withinan other clause: that may be perfet: thof the clause / so cōmyng betwene: wer awey and therfore it is sowndyde comynly a note lower: than the vtter clause. yf the sētens cannot be perfet without the ynner clause: then stede of the first crokyde virgil a streght virgil wol do very wel: and stede of the latyr must nedis be a come. A playne point is with won tittil thiswyse. & it cūmith after the ende of al the whole sētens betokinyng a lōge rest. An īterrogatif is with tway titils: the vppir rysyng this wyse? & it cūmith after the ende of a whole reason: wheryn ther is sum question axside. the whiche ende of the reson / tariyng as it were for an answare: risyth vpwarde. we haue made these rulis in englisshe: by cause they be as profitable / and necessary to be kepte in euery moder tuge / as ī latin. ¶ Sethyn we (as we wolde to god: euery precher [? techer] wolde do) haue kepte owre rulis bothe in owre englisshe / and latyn: what nede we / sethyn owre own be sufficient ynogh: to put any other exemplis.”
“Of the craft of poynting.
“Therbe fiue maner poyntys / and diuisiōs most vside with cunnyng men: the whiche if they be wel vsid: make the sentens very light / and esy to vnderstōd both to the reder & the herer. & they be these: virgil / come / parēthesis / playne poynt / and interrogatif. A virgil is a sclēder stryke: lenynge forwarde thiswyse / be tokynynge a lytyl / short rest without any perfetnes yet of sentens: as betwene the fiue poyntis a fore rehersid. A come is with tway titils thiswyse: betokynyng a lenger rest: and the sētens yet ether is vnperfet: or els if it be perfet: ther cūmith more after / lōgyng to it: the which more comynly can not be perfect by itself without at the lest sūmat of it: that gothe a fore. A parenthesis is with tway crokyd virgils: as an olde mone / & a neu bely to bely: the whiche be set theron afore the begynyng / and thetother after the latyr ende of a clause: comyng withinan other clause: that may be perfet: thof the clause / so cōmyng betwene: wer awey and therfore it is sowndyde comynly a note lower: than the vtter clause. yf the sētens cannot be perfet without the ynner clause: then stede of the first crokyde virgil a streght virgil wol do very wel: and stede of the latyr must nedis be a come. A playne point is with won tittil thiswyse. & it cūmith after the ende of al the whole sētens betokinyng a lōge rest. An īterrogatif is with tway titils: the vppir rysyng this wyse? & it cūmith after the ende of a whole reason: wheryn ther is sum question axside. the whiche ende of the reson / tariyng as it were for an answare: risyth vpwarde. we haue made these rulis in englisshe: by cause they be as profitable / and necessary to be kepte in euery moder tuge / as ī latin. ¶ Sethyn we (as we wolde to god: euery precher [? techer] wolde do) haue kepte owre rulis bothe in owre englisshe / and latyn: what nede we / sethyn owre own be sufficient ynogh: to put any other exemplis.”
VI. It is perhaps fruitless to offer any vague conjecture as to the authorship of theAscensianDeclensions. 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 hisVulgaria, 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 movementfor 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’sQuarrels of Authors.
The Salernitan gentleman (Andrea Guarna) who set the Noun and the Verb together by the ears in hisGrammar 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 highlyvaluable 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, theVerborum Explicatioand theSynonyma, 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 hearand feelno 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 theMay Flowerto 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’sShort Introduction, and which in most of its essentials corresponds with the system employed by thosewho 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 Ælius Donatus as an author whose Grammar enjoyed a long celebrity and an enormously wide acceptance, down from his own age to the date of the revival of learning. It was used throughout the Continent, in England, and in Scotland.
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, whoseRegulæ Grammaticaleswere 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 describingthe 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 headedVersus differentialesor 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:—
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 booksoccur theA. B. C.and theBoys’ 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, theNutbrown Maid, theSquire of Low Degree,Sir Isumbras,Robert the Devil, and ballads. There are, besides, theSermon of the Boy-Bishop, theBook of Cookery, theBook 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 theA. 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 thevery 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.
Auxiliary books—Vulgariaof Terence—His Comedies printed in 1497—Some of them popular in schools—Horace—Cicero—HisOfficesandOld Agetranslated by Whittinton—Virgil—Ovid—Specimens of Whittinton’s Cicero—The school Cato—Notices of other works designed or employed for educational purposes.
Auxiliary books—Vulgariaof Terence—His Comedies printed in 1497—Some of them popular in schools—Horace—Cicero—HisOfficesandOld Agetranslated 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 theVulgariaof Terence. As far back as the reign of Edward IV., I find it annexed to theCompendium GrammaticæofJohannes 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 dayesBiduus hic manendū; est mihi soli.Though I may not touch it yet I may seeSi non tangendi copia ē videndi tā; erit.The dede selfe scheweth or tellethRes ipsa indicat.If I had tarayed a lytill while I hadd not found hym at homePaululū si cessassē eū domi nō offendissē.”
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 ofRalph Roister Doister, edited portions of the Latin poet with an English translation, doubtless for the benefit of the scholarsat 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 theAndriawas 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 theEunuchand theAndria, dedicating his performance to the scholars of Paul’s, to whom he wished increase in grace and learning. Thetreatment 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 theprincipal 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, whoseBucolicswere 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 hisSyntax. In 1534 he translated Cicero’sOfficesfor the use of schools, printing the Latin and English face to face; and the treatise ofOld Ageclosely 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 noway 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, theÆneidwas not introduced among us for a very long period subsequently to the revival of learning, nor were theGeorgics. A selection from Ovid’sArt of Loveappeared in 1513; perhaps the whole was deemed too fescennine for the juvenile peruser.
I shall add Cæsar, whoseCommentarieswereprinted 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 Cæsar, in fact, occupies an analogous position to the English editions of Cicero and the prose paraphrase of theÆneidpublished 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 theOfficesandOld Ageof 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 theOffices:—
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 theDe Senectute—achef d’œuvre, which it is a sin to read in any idiom but its own.
These two passages afford a fair idea of the capability of Whittinton for his task, and of the means which the English student of those days enjoyed for profiting by the lessons of antiquity and holding intercourse with the greatest minds of former ages, at the same time that it led the way to the purification of the current Latinity from mediæval barbarism and the heresies of the Dutch school.
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 theBook of Cato, theCato for Boys, theEcloguesof Mantuan, of which Bale speaks as popular in his day, and whichHolofernes mentions inLove’s Labour’s Lost; various abridgments of theColloquiaof Erasmus and hisLittle 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’sInterpretation of the Natures of Gods and Goddesses, and theChronicle of all the Kings’ Names that have reigned in England, 1530. With these I should perhaps couple the LatinÆsopof 1502, with a commentary in the same language, and the later edition of which, in 1535, includes theFablesof 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 sharewhich 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 theDialoguesof 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.
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.
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 themalways 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 RichardPace, 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 Tractde 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, therewere 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 Ld.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 Ld.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 chiefcharacters 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 pharmacopœia. The illustrious and erudite Dutchman did, doubtless, what he could, and made several of the classics more familiar and intelligible by new editions, with some of which he connected the names of English scholars and prelates; but the time had not arrived for any general movement.
II. Knight, in his Life of Dean Colet, enumerates several of the schools which were founded shortly before the Reformation. “This nobleimpulse 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 (aliasVeysey), bishop of Exeter: an eighth at Farnworth in Lancashire, by Dr. William Smith, Bishop ofLincoln, 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 hisChronicle, he speaks of the encouragement of learning by the princes and nobility of England, and goes on to say that their good example wasfollowed 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.”
“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 ofhisPreceptsand theCopia Verborumof 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 theprima staminaof 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 ofthe 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, ofgood 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 theMonumenta Franciscanashews that the site of Colet’s original school, which perished in the Great Fire, had been in thepossession 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.
TheBlack Eaglewas 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 theHours 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.