The Abacus or A. B. C.—Its construction and use—The printed A. B. C.—The first Protestant one (1553)—Spelling-books—Anecdotes of the A. B. C.—Propria quæ MaribusandJohnny quæ Genus—The Catechism and Primer.
The Abacus or A. B. C.—Its construction and use—The printed A. B. C.—The first Protestant one (1553)—Spelling-books—Anecdotes of the A. B. C.—Propria quæ MaribusandJohnny quæ Genus—The Catechism and Primer.
I. The manner in which the earliestAbaciwere constructed and applied is precisely one of those points which, in the absence of specimens of remote date and documentary information as to their form and use, we have to elucidate, as far as possible, from casual allusions or internal testimony. The most ancient woodcuts representing a school interior display the method in which the master and pupils worked together; but here the latter appear, as I have stated elsewhere, to reiterate what their teacher reads from a book, or, in other words,the scene depicts a later stage in the educational course.
In theJests of Scogin, a popular work of the time of Henry VIII., and probably reliable as a faithful portraiture of the habits and notions of the latter half of the fifteenth and opening decades of the following century, one of the sections relates “How a Husbandman put his son to school with Scogin.” From the text it is plain that the lad was very backward in his studies, or had commenced them unusually late, considering that it was the farmer’s ambition to procure his admission into holy orders. “The slovenly boy,” we are told, “would begin to learn his A. B. C. Scogin did give him a lesson of nine of the first letters of A. B. C., and he was nine days in learning of them; and when he had learned the nine Christ-cross-row letters, the good scholar said, ‘am ich past the worst now?’”
The important feature in this passage is the reference to the Christ-cross-row, which contained the nine letters of the alphabet from A to I in the form of the Cross. The time consumed in this particular instance in the acquisitionof a portion of the rudiments is, of course, ascribable to a pleasant hyperbole, or to the scholar’s phenomenal density; but theAbacusor Christ-cross-row was, no doubt, the first step in the ladder, and although it was superseded by the Horn-book and the Primer, it did not substantially disappear from use in petty schools till the present century. Its shape and functions, however, underwent a material change, and instead of being employed as a medium for grounding children in the Accidence, it became a vehicle for arithmetical purposes, and resembled a slate in form and dimensions, consisting of a small oblong wooden frame fitted with rows of balls of wood or bone strung on transverse wires. To those who, like the present writer, saw this apparatus in common use to induct the young into the art of counting, its pedigree was naturally unknown. It was an evolution from the contrivance which Scogin put into the hands of the country bumpkin whom he was engaged to prepare for the priesthood, and who, as we learn from subsequent passages in these Anecdotes, was actually ordained a deacon within a limited period.
II. To the Abacus, prior to the Reformation, was added the printed A. B. C. accompanied by prayers and a metrical version of the Decalogue, and in 1553 appeared the first Protestant A. B. C. and Catechism for the use of schools and the young. It is after this date and the accession of Elizabeth that we find a marked and permanent stimulus given to elementary literature; and the press from 1553 onward teemed with A. B. C.’s of all sorts; as, for instance, “an a. b. c. for children, with syllables, 1558;” “an a. b. c. in Latin,” 1559; “the battle of A. B. C.,” 1586; “the horn a. b. c., 1587;” and even the title itself grew popular, not only for manuals of other kinds, but for publishers’ signs and ballads. There was “the aged man’s A. B. C,” the “Virgin’s A. B. C.,” and “the young man’s A. B. C.”
Subsequently to the A. B. C. of 1553, there seems to be nothing actually extant of this nature till we come toThe Pathway to Reading, or the newest spelling A. B. C.of Thomas Johnson, 1590, which I have not been able to inspect, but as to which there was a litigation between two publishers in the following year,seeming to shew its popularity and a brisk demand for copies.
A few years later (1610) there isA New Book of Spelling, with Syllables, a series of alphabets, followed by the vowels, alphabetical arrangements of syllables, and remarks on vowels, in the course of which the writer furnishes us with an explanation of the virtue and force of the finalein such monosyllables asBabe.
From vowels he proceeds to the diphthong, where he animadverts on the abuse of thewfor theu. He then presents us with the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, the Decalogue, &c., as orthographical theses.
At the end of the Scriptural selections we arrive at this curious heading: “Certain words devised alphabetically without sense, which whosoever will take the pains to learn, he may read at the first sight any English book that is laid before him.” These words are divided into two classes, dissyllables and words of three and four syllables, and introduced by a few lines of introduction, in which the words are divided by way of guidance.
The spelling-book of 1610 was printed forthe Stationers’ Company, by which it had been perhaps taken over; and as the Company did not usually have assigned to it any stock except old copyrights, there is little doubt that there were earlier impressions. At any rate, it is a Shakespearian volume, and, as the only manual for children or illiterate adults except the Protestant A. B. C. of 1553, it becomes interesting to consider that the great poet himself may have had a copy in his hands of some edition, if at least his scholastic researches ever went beyond the Horn-book and the Abacus.
The volume may be regarded as a pioneer in the direction of English orthography and pronunciation; and when the author propounds that you might proceed from his pages to the Latin tongue, he does nothing more than follow in the steps of all teachers of that time, as well as of every other age and country down to almost yesterday.
While I have the book before me, it may be worth while to transfer to these pages a specimen of it:—
kach, kech, kich, koch, kuch,kash, kesh, kish, kosh, kush,kath, keth, kith, koth, kuth.
And so it runs through the alphabet. In the Lord’s Prayer and other selections the syllables are also divided for the convenience and ease of the learner.
The biographer of Dean Colet mentions that Mr. Stephen Penton, Principal of St. Edmund’s Hall, Oxford, in the days of Charles II., published a Horn-book or A. B. C. for children. This, which Knight oddly characterises as a piece of humble condescension on the part of so worthy and noted a man, I have not yet seen.
In Russia they have, or had very lately, thestchoti, a kind of Abacus, a small wooden frame strung with horizontal wires, on which slide a series of ivory balls, each wire representing a certain value from the kopeck upwards. This piece of machinery is used in all commercial transactions, whether they take place in shop, market, counting-house, or bank; and familiarity and practice enable the parties concerned to calculate the amount payable or receivable with equal ease and rapidity.
There is a similar machine in use among the natives of British India, and also for mercantile purposes, not as a vehicle for acquiring the science of numbers in the schools.
III. It is said to have been John Rightwise, second head-master of St. Paul’s, and son-in-law of Lily, who introduced into his predecessor’s book thePropria quæ MaribusandAs in Præsenti, to which were subsequently joined the Rules of Heteroclites or Irregular Nouns, probably digested from Whittinton by Robertson of York. This last section, from the commencing words, combined perhaps with the Christian name of Rightwise, was the origin ofJohnny quæ Genus.
But an early authority[3]claims for Lily himself the honour of having written thePropria quæ MaribusandAs in Præsenti, and informs us that Rightwise merely published them with a glossary.
In some of the schools the course seems to have been to commence with the A. B. C. and Catechism, and then proceed to the Primer. At the end of the A. B. C. of 1757 are these lines:—
“This little Catechism learnedby heart (for so it ought),ThePrimernext commanded isfor children to be taught.”
When I speak here of thePrimer, I must take care to distinguish between the Service-book so styled and the Manual for the young. It is singular enough that the most ancient which has come under my eyes is of the age of Elizabeth, and includes not only the Catechism, but “the notable fairs in the Calendar,” as matters “to be taught unto children.”
This type of Primer is very rare till we arrive at comparatively modern days. The mission which it was designed to fulfil was one precisely calculated to hinder its transmission to us.
The practice of printing children’s books on some more than usually substantial material is not so modern as may be supposed; for there is an A. B. C. published at Riga for the use of the German pupils, the German population preponderating there over the Russian or Polish, on paper closely resembling linen, and of a singularly durable texture; and this little volume belongs to the commencement of the last century, several generations before such a system was adopted in England.
In the Preface to hisNew English Grammar,1810, Hazlitt complains of the want of any undertaking of the kind, and it has not been really supplied till our own day, when the labours of the Philological and English Text Societies and the payment of increased attention to Early English Literature prepared the way to reform in a quarter where reform was so sadly needed.
The same writer, while edition upon edition of the famous Grammar of Lindley Murray was pouring from the press, like Hayley’sTriumphs of Temperand Moore’sLoves of the Angels, exposed the fallacies of the system, and lamented the mischief done by such erroneous doctrines. Murray, of whose lucubrations, now obsolete to petrifaction, sixty issues were exhausted between 1795 and 1859, aimed not only at popular instruction, but at literary dignity and scientific eminence; for during a portion of the time while his star was in the ascendant two parallel texts, a literary and an elementary one, were kept in print. Looking back from the vantage-ground which it is our privilege to occupy upon this phenomenon, we contemplate it not with the awe inspired by a mighty ruin, of whichthe remaining fragments are a gladdening and proud survival, but with a feeling of amazement that such a heresy in opinion and taste should have lived so long, and have been so lately dissipated.
The hazy ideas of the old-fashioned schoolmaster on this particular part of his business are brought out in tolerably prominent relief in the reply to a gentleman who had expressed to Dr. Duncan of the Ciceronian Academy at Pimlico his wish that his son might learn English in lieu of Latin Grammar. “Sir,” said the Doctor, “Grammar is Grammar all the world over.”
Ascham’sSchoolmaster—Richard Mulcaster—The earliest Anglo-Latin Dictionary—Ocland’sAnglorum Prælia.
Ascham’sSchoolmaster—Richard Mulcaster—The earliest Anglo-Latin Dictionary—Ocland’sAnglorum Prælia.
I. TheSchoolmaster, by Roger Ascham, is a work so celebrated and so classical, and has been so often reprinted, that it seems almost supererogatory to pass any remark upon its character and merits. It arose, as we all know, out of a conversation at Windsor in 1563 between Sir Richard Sackville, Treasurer of the Exchequer, and the author, and it is a literary treatise rather than a technical one. Ascham did not live to see it in type, nor was his patron spared to witness its completion in MS.; it was published in 1570 by the author’s widow, and dedicated to Sir William Cecil, who was one of the party at Windsor when the idea was first ventilated. The opening paragraphs of the Preface, whereAscham describes the company at dinner, and Sackvile afterwards drawing him aside, and leading him to turn his thoughts to the production of such a book, are as famous and unforgettable as Latimer’s noble and touching narrative to us, in one of his sermons before the King, of his boyhood and the obligations under which he lay to his father for sending him to a good school.
Ascham’sSchoolmaster, 1570, is a volume, as its title perhaps may import, for the teacher indeed rather than for the learner. It is a manual of valuable suggestions and counsels for the guidance and use of those under whose direction the course of school-work was carried out, although immediately it was designed for the benefit of Mr. Robert Sackville, the deceased Treasurer’s grandson. The writer confesses his indebtedness to Sir John Cheke and to Sturmius, among the moderns, and to his old masters, as he calls them, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero.
Sir Richard Sackville, who was happily instrumental in persuading Ascham to undertake the task, told him that he had found the disadvantage in his own case of an imperfect education;“for a fond scholemaster,” quoth he, “before I was fullie fourtene yeare olde, draue me so, with feare of beating, from all loue of learninge, as nowe, when I know what difference it is to haue learninge, and to haue little or none at all, I feele it my greatest greife, and finde it my greatest hurte, that euer came to me; that it was my so ill chance to light vpon so lewde a schoolmaster.”
Ascham was of his friend’s opinion in regard to greater clemency and patience on the part of teachers, and he also preferred such text-books asCicero de Officiisto the Manuals compiled by Horman, Whittinton, and the rest of the old school of English grammarians. The passage in theSchoolmasterwhere the author narrates his interview, before he went on his travels into Germany, with Lady Jane Grey at her father’s house in Leicestershire, is familiar enough; it exhibits a converse case, so far as the severities of school-teachers are concerned; for that amiable and unfortunate woman found her only compensation for the harshness and rigour of her parents in a gentle and beloved tutor, “who,” she told Ascham, “teacheth me soientlie, so pleasantlie, with such faire allurements to learning, that I thinke all the tyme nothing whiles I am with him.”
One sees that Ascham, while loth to say too much on such a topic, did not cordially relish the old translations into English verse of some of the classics, even when the translator was such a man as Surrey or Chaucer; and there I agree with him, and indeed I think that many more are inclined so to do.
Richard Mulcaster, first head-master of Merchant Taylors’ School, and for several years after his retirement from that position principal of St. Paul’s, was the author of two works of comparatively slight interest and importance at the present day, whatever estimate may have been formed of them by some of his learned contemporaries. Of the two “fruits of his writing,” as he terms them, he dedicated the earlier, “Positions,” 1581, a kind of introduction to the matter, to Queen Elizabeth, and the other, “The First Part of the Elementary,” 1582, to Lord Leicester, in two rather turgid and verbose epistles. But it is a question whether either production met with muchapplause on its appearance, though ushered into notice under such influential auspices; certainly they never grew popular or reached a second impression. They were both calculated for the guidance of teachers, like Ascham’sSchoolmaster; but they present a stiff and didactic frigidity, which is absent in the famous and favourite manual of his predecessor, who knew how to make us the partakers of his own learning in a more agreeable manner than the professional pedagogue. I think it very possible that the very few readers which the publications of Mulcaster have found have arrived at the conclusion of their labour without being much wiser than when they embarked in it. But, of the two, I prefer very decidedly thePositions, which are written in a more natural style, and contain occasional passages of interest. This gentleman lived to see the close of the long reign of which he had witnessed the opening, and to write some dull verses upon the death of the Queen.
II. The early teacher and his pupils enjoyed, when the typographical art had been appliedto the production of educational works previously accessible in a limited number of MSS., the considerable advantage of books of reference for Latin, Greek, French, and eventually Italian and other tongues. Within a year of each other (1499-1500), theOrtus Vocabulorumand thePromptorius Parvulorumfurnished our schools, so far as Latin was concerned, with two excellent lexicons, both formed out of the best compilations of the kind current abroad. These were the Ainsworth and Riddle of our ancestors, who resorted to them where the required information was not forthcoming in the Primer or the Delectus.
Both these phrase-books passed through a series of reprints between the commencement and middle of the sixteenth century. The former purports to have been grounded on theCatholiconof Balbus, 1460, theCornucopiaof Perottus, theGemma Vocabulorum, and theMedulla Grammatices, with additions by Ascensius. ThePromptorius, or, as it is also called in some of the issues,Promptuarium, appears to be substantially identical with theMedulla.
But the earliest regular Anglo-Latin Dictionary in our literature is that of Sir Thomas Elyot, first published in 1538, and frequently reprinted with additions by others from a variety of English and foreign sources, until it became the bulky folio known asCooper’s Thesaurus. Elyot, the first compiler, tells us, in the dedication to Henry VIII. prefixed to theeditio princeps, that he had accomplished about half his labour when it reached the royal ear through Master (subsequently Sir) Anthony Denny that he had such a project in hand; whereupon the King caused all possible facilities to be afforded him, and the books in the royal library to be open to his inspection. It is hard to say how far Elyot flatters his sovereign when he assures him that, after it was all done, he was so afraid of his Lexicon being faulty and imperfect, that he felt as if he could have torn the MS. to pieces, “had not the beames of your royal maiestie entred into my harte, by remembraunce of the comforte whiche I of your grace had lately receyued.”
In the epistle to Henry just referred to, theauthor pays a tribute to the encouragement which he had experienced from Lord Cromwell; and in the British Museum is the copy presented to the Lord Privy Seal, with a holograph Latin letter prefixed, in which hardly any form of adulation is spared, so far as Cromwell’s virtues, magnanimity, culture, and other cognate qualities are concerned, and nothing is said about him being secondary to royalty in these matters, as in the printed inscription is expressed. But much, after all, is to be forgiven to a man of rank who in those days chose to consume his time, as Elyot did, in the pursuit of letters.
The plan of the work is familiar enough, first, through the later impressions, which are among the commonest volumes in Early English literature; and, secondly, from the fact that the principle on which it is constructed is similar to that of Ainsworth and others. The main difference seems to be where certain Latin words, by an intelligible survival, continued in Elyot’s day to bear a meaning which subsequently grew obsolete; as, for instance, in the case ofAviarium, “a thycke woddewithout waye,” although he at the same time adds the ordinary acceptation.
Still the credit remains with Elyot, of course, of having supplied a model for many succeeding lexicographers and phraseologists; and if we turn, for example, to theDictionary for Children, by John Withals, 1553, or theManipulus Vocabulorumof Levins, 1571, we see that the general plan is similar. Elyot, in fact, got rid of the tiresome and perplexing arrangement which renders the books of reference and instruction prior to his day, like thePromptoriusand theEclaircissement de la langue Françoise, so uninviting to consult.
Save in respect to development and extension, there is no substantial difference, in fact, between the dictionaries of Elyot and Littleton or of Littleton and Ainsworth. The general plan is the same, whereas in some of the early lexicons the arrangement is so obscure and defective as to render them comparatively useless for practical purposes. The oldOrtus Vocabulorum, one of these archaic works of reference, had been largely formed out of theCornucopiaof Perottus, and Cooper owed very considerableobligations to the Lexicon of Stephanus, which he was censured by a critic of his day for not properly acknowledging.
TheShort Dictionary for Childrenby Withals, already specified, supplied the obvious need for a more portable work than either Elyot or Cooper. It met with a cordial response from the constituency to which it appealed, and was reprinted, with large additions and improvements, by successive editors down to the time of Charles I.
Littleton, who brought out his Dictionary in 1678, was Rector of Chelsea. He includes the barbarous Latin for the first time.
Robert Ainsworth, whose famous Latin Dictionary belongs to the reign of George II., having been first printed in 1736, planned his enterprise on a sensible and enduring basis, and earned for himself the reputation of a classic and a type. He had of course the advantage of all the improvements of Elyot, Cooper, and Littleton, besides the numerous other minor lexicographers, of whom he supplies an interesting chronological account in his preface; but his substantial quarto volume, “designed forthe use of the BritishNations,” was a clear advance on its precursors. He gives not only the Latin-English and English-Latin appellatives, the Christian names of men and women, the proper names of places, the ancient Latin names of places, and the more modern names, but the Roman calendar, the Roman coins, weights and measures, and ancient law-terms. Of the preceding workers in the same field, whom he commemorates, he may very well have known some personally. The catalogue, enriched with biographical particulars, begins with thePromptuarium Parvulorum, and closes with Elisha Coles, embracing a period of nearly two centuries.
III. The Latin Lexicon was an indispensablevade-mecumwhere boys had to translate the classics of that language into English; and the taste for some of the Roman writers, including Ovid, so far from declining, appears in the time of Elizabeth to have spread in schools. The authors at whom the criticism is more particularly aimed may be guessed in the absence of the names; but the clerical party about 1580,being of opinion that these ancient productions were injurious to morality, availed themselves of a most singularly fortunate opportunity for substituting a work which should be to Latin versification what Lily’s Grammar was to English accidence—a standard and a model.
A year or two prior to the discovery of this pernicious influence, Christopher Ocland had printed a metrical narrative in doggerel metre of the martial achievements of the English people from the time of the Plantagenets down to that of Elizabeth, whom he places before Zenobia; and this gentleman or his friends had sufficient influence to procure, through the Lords Commissioners in Causes Ecclesiastical, letters-patent prescribing the use of hisAnglorum Præliain all grammar-schools in England and Wales in lieu of the books of less moral authors. The privilege, dated May 7, 1582, was accorded in consideration not only of the freedom of Ocland’s volume from profligacy, but of “the quality of the verse,”—an encomium quite seriously intended, in whatever degree it may strike us as ironical.
This literary gem, which was to supersedeVirgil, Ovid, Homer, and the rest of the heathens, was dedicated to Zenobia by the worthy writer in some lines which are a fair sample of the “quality of the verse.” They begin:—
“Regia Nympha, soli [sic] moderatrix alma Britanni,Quæ pace et vera religione nites,Quæ vitæ meritis, morum & candore coruscans,Zenobiam vincis, siqua vel ante fuit.”
Such was the Oclandian Muse which the Lords Commissioners in Causes Ecclesiastical accounted preferable to the compositions which were the glory of their own and the delight of every succeeding age!
Despite the lofty patronage and auspicious circumstances under which theAnglorum Præliawas launched on its proud career, the imbecility of the whole idea appears to have been promptly appreciated; and the “lascivious poets,” whom it was to have effaced, continued, and to this day continue, “to corrupt the youth.”
Ben Jonson and Shirley writers of Grammars—Some account of the former—Thomas Hayne’s Latin Grammar—A curious anecdote about it.
Ben Jonson and Shirley writers of Grammars—Some account of the former—Thomas Hayne’s Latin Grammar—A curious anecdote about it.
I. TheEnglish Grammarinserted among Ben Jonson’s works in 1640, and also to be found in the modern editions, is not the production originally compiled by that eminent writer, but a series of notes and rough material collected perhaps for a new undertaking after the destruction of Jonson’s books and MSS. by an accidental fire. It appears that the author had taken considerable trouble to collect together the literature of this class already existing in our own and other languages, with a view to comparison and improvement, and he was probably assisted by friends, as Howell speaks so early as 1620 of having borrowed for him Davis’s Welsh Grammar, “to add to thosemany which he already had.” Sir Francis Kinaston cites “his most learned and celebrated friend, Master Ben Jonson,” as the possessor of a very ancient grammar written in the Saxon tongue and character, by way of illustrating what it could scarcely illustrate—the state of our language in the time of Chaucer. This book doubtless perished with the rest.
The work in its present state is divided into chapters:Of Grammar and the Parts;Of Letters and their Powers;Of the Vowels;Of the Consonants, and so forth. In the third chapter, under Y, the writer remarks:—“Y is mere vowelish in our tongue, and hath only the power of ani, even where it obtains the seat of a consonant, as inyoung,younker, which the Dutch, whose primitive it is, writejunk,junker. And so might we writeiouth,ies,ioke....”
“C is a letter,” he says, “which our forefathers might very well have spared in our tongue; but since it hath obtained place both in our writing and language, we are not now to quarrel withorthographyorcustom.” Nor iscthe only member of the alphabet with which Jonson considers that we might haveadvantageously dispensed; for in a subsequent page he declares that “qis a letter we might very well have spared in ouralphabet, if we would but use the serviceablekas he should be, and restore him to the right of reputation he had with our forefathers. For the English Saxon knew not this haltingq, with her waiting womanuafter her, but exprest
In other words, Jonson, discardingcandq, was with those who nowadays ask us to sayKikero,Kelt,Kæsar; and he seems also to be an advocate for such terminations asstorptforedinexprest,confest,profest,stopt,dropt,cropt, wherein he has a follower in Mr. Furnivall.
His demonstration of the manner in which the several letters ought to be sounded as pronounced is occasionally very amusing. “T,” he informs the reader, “is sounded with the tongue striking the upper teeth.” “P breaketh softly through the lips.” “N ringeth somewhat more in the lips and nose.” But of H heremarks: “Whether it be a letter or no, hath been much examined by the ancients, and by some of the Greek party too much condemned, and thrown out of the alphabet.”
This last piece of criticism should have its consoling effect on those among the moderns who also repudiate it, and may not be aware that they have the Greek party in Jonson’s day on their side, only that the Greek party did not offer the deposed letter any substituted position.
Jonson’sGrammar, as we have it, is a book for scholars and philologists, however, rather than for the elementary stage of education. The method is discursive and the style obscure; and it is chiefly prizable as an evidence of the versatility, the extensive reading, and the perseverance of the author. He quotes among his examples Sir Thomas More, Gower, Lidgate, Fox’sMartyrs, Harding’sChronicle, Chaucer, and Sir John Cheke.
It is curious enough that Jonson’s notion as to the superfluities of our alphabet is supported to some extent by the orthography sanctioned by M. Vimont in hisRelation de la Nouvelle France, 1641, where he putsKebeckforQuebec;but the change must necessarily influence the pronunciation.
Neither of these writers was avowedly an advocate of Phonography; but the adoption of that principle of spelling would necessarily involve the dispensation with certain letters which at present form part of the English A. B. C.
In the dedication to Lord Herbert of his little book,James Shirleyrefers to the abundance of such treatises at that time before the public, “by which some,” he says, “would prophetically imply the decay of learning, as if the root and foundation of art stood in need of warmth and reparation.” But he furnishes no information respecting himself or the motives which led him to write the volume, although it is readily inferable that he did so to augment the slender income which he derived, after the closing of the theatres, from school-work in Whitefriars. Some of the illustrations are in such couplets as the subjoined:—
“Indi,do,dum, the Gerunds chime and close,Um, the first Supine,uthe latter shews.”
As late as 1726, Jenkin Thomas Phillipps reprinted Shirley’s Grammar with additions.On the title-page of this edition it is said to be “for the use of Prince William.”
In 1640 Thomas Hayne published hisGrammatices Latinæ Compendium. A copy before me was presented by the author to Charles II. when a boy, and has an autograph inscription on the blank page before the title to the young Prince. It also passed through the hands of his brother, James Duke of York, who has writtenJames Duke of Yorkein a childish hand on the fly-leaf. During the troubles it seems to have passed out of their hands, and was bought at Oxford on the 4th October 1647 by a later owner, who records the fact at the top of another page. It was subsequently at Stowe, and the fine old blue morocco binding betrays no sign of a schoolboy’s thumbs.
Hayne supplies a highly interesting survey of the progress and development of this branch of literature and learning in former days, and some of the later attempts made with a view to improve the method, and explains his own plan, which introduces the English and Latin in parallel columns, and systematises and tabulates the cases and declensions in a morelucid manner than the prior experiments. If we set it side by side with Whittinton’s eleven divisions, we see that it is a great advance.
From the commencement of the seventeenth century an increasing volume of literature calculated to assist the diffusion of useful and improving knowledge supplemented the books expressly designed for schools. These publications, belonging to nearly every department of science and inquiry, were often reproduced with the same steady regularity as the educational works themselves; and nothing more triumphantly establishes the unceasing progress of discovery and reform than the fact that the standard manuals of one century become the waste paper of the next.
As one arrests a stray copy of Heylin’sCosmography, Godwin’sRoman Antiquities, edited for the use of Abingdon School, Provost Rous’sAttic Archæology, Prideaux’sIntroduction to the Reading of Histories, or any other book of the same stamp, on its passage from an old collection to the mill, a not unlikely reflection to arise is that, considering their straitened opportunities and the force of clerical influence, theculture and light of our ancestors were in fair relative proportion to our own.
The literary thought and bias of the age were naturally affected by these shallow and meagre repertories of information, which were as far removed in scholarship from theRoman Antiquitiesof Adams and theDictionaryof Lemprière as Adams and Lemprière are removed from Dr. Smith’s series.
Limited acquaintance with the Greek language in England—Erasmus first learns, and then teaches, Greek at Cambridge—Notices of a few Philhellenists—Study of the language at Rhodes by Lily—Languid interest in it among us—Disputes at Cambridge as to the pronunciation—Remarks on this subject—The tract by John Kay—Few books in the Greek character printed in England.
Limited acquaintance with the Greek language in England—Erasmus first learns, and then teaches, Greek at Cambridge—Notices of a few Philhellenists—Study of the language at Rhodes by Lily—Languid interest in it among us—Disputes at Cambridge as to the pronunciation—Remarks on this subject—The tract by John Kay—Few books in the Greek character printed in England.
I. The few scattered notices, which offer themselves in Warton and other authorities, of Englishmen of very remote days who entered on the study of the Greek tongue, tend mainly to illustrate the fact, how sparingly and imperfectly that noble and precious language was cultivated down to the age of Elizabeth; and of course this circumstance involves the almost complete neglect of it in our universities and academies. Warton himself cites a case in which a scholar travelled from Malmesbury to Canterbury in order to improve a rudimentaryacquaintance with Greek which he had gained through a local monastic seminary.
The first man who helped at all largely and sensibly to render Greek a part of the educational system was Lily the grammarian, who spent some years of his life at Rhodes, and introduced a study of the language into the routine of St. Paul’s, whence it found its way by degrees to the other great foundations in London and in the provinces.
The biographer of Colet has something to say on this subject:—
“Such was the infelicity of those times, that the Greek tongue was not taught in any of our grammar-schools; nor was there thought to be any great need of it in the two Universities by the generality of scholars. It is worth notice that [John] Standish, who was a bitter enemy to Erasmus, in his declamation against him styles himGræculus iste; which was a long time after the phrase for an heretic.”
“But,” he adds, “Dr. John Fisher ... was of another mind, and very sensible of this imperfection, which made him desirous to learn Greek in his declining years.”
The Bishop, however, who through Erasmus was recommended to William Latymer, one of the foremost Philhellenists of the day, could not persuade that scholar to enter on the task, as he considered the prelate too old to acquire the language; and Knight tells us that, in order to escape from the application, he advised Fisher to send for a professor out of Italy.
Englishmen, even at a later period than this, occasionally went to Florence or elsewhere to learn Greek; but Erasmus made himself, with the assistance of Linacre, tolerably proficient in it, on the contrary, during his first visit to England in the time of Henry the Seventh (1497-8), and was sufficiently versed, at all events in the rudiments, to give lessons to others while he remained at Cambridge. Doubtless he did so in aid of his expenses.
“In Cambridge,” observes Knight, “Erasmus was the first who taught the Greek grammar. And so very low was the state of learning in that University, that (as he tells a friend) about the year 1485, the beginning of Henry the Seventh’s reign, there was nothing taught in that public seminary besides Alexander’sParvaLogicalia(as they called them), the old axioms of Aristotle, and the questions of John Scotus.”
Erasmus himself was for some time Greek Reader at Cambridge, and was contemporary there with Richard Croke, of King’s College, who did valuable service in promoting the cause of classical learning at that University, and published several tracts relating to the Greek literature and tongue, includingIntroductiones ad Linguam GræcamandElementa Grammaticæ Græcæ—the earliest attempts to place before students in a handy form the alphabet of the subject.
At Oxford it was an Italian, Cornelius Vitellius, who became the first Greek professor, and William Grocyne, who with Latymer and Linacre was the earliest Greek scholar in England, was among his pupils.
It is to be suspected that, while a man of genius like Erasmus could scarcely have failed to make something of whatever he seriously undertook, his conversance with Greek was always comparatively superficial, and it is merely an additional piece of evidence how little the language was cultivated at Cambridge at thatepoch, that he was enabled to earn money as a teacher of it.
It was not apparently till 1524 that Greek type was introduced into our printing-offices. Linacre’s bookDe Emendata Structura Latini Sermonis, published in that year, is generally received as containing the first specimen found in any production of the English press. The Greek alphabet occurs in the Primer of 1548.
II. Florence, Rome, Padua, and Rhodes were four great centres whither foreigners were then accustomed to resort for the study and mastery of Greek. In theLife of Dean Coletit is shown how he travelled in Italy, and met with two of his countrymen at Florence, Grocyn and Linacre, and with a third at Rome, Lily, afterwards the famous grammarian, who, after learning Greek at Rhodes, had proceeded to Rome to render himself equally adept in Latin, so that, when he finally settled in London, he had served a laborious apprenticeship and taken unusual pains to become an instructor of others.
Colet himself, it is to be noted, displayed inearlier life a bent towards theology and the Fathers, though he had scanty sympathy with the survivals whom he found around him, both at home and abroad, of the monastic schoolmen and expounders of the old divinity.
“He had observed these schoolmen,” says his biographer indeed, “to be a heavy set of formal fellows, that might pretend to anything rather than to wit and sense, for to argue so elaborately about the opinions and the very words of other men: to snarl in perpetual objections, and to distinguish and divide into a thousand niceties: this was rather the work of a poor and barren invention than anything else.”
Knight preserves a rather diverting anecdote of a preacher who spoke in his sermon before Henry VIII. against the Greek tongue, and of a conference which Henry caused to be arranged after the discourse, at which in his presence the divine and More should take opposite sides, the former attacking, and the latter vindicating, the language. More did his part, but the other fell down on his knees and begged the King’s pardon, alleging that what he did was by theimpulse of the Spirit. “Not the spirit of Christ,” says the King to him, “but the spirit of infatuation.” His majesty then asked him whether he had read anything of Erasmus, whom he assailed from the pulpit. He said “No.” “Why then,” says the King, “you are a very foolish fellow to censure what you never read.” “I have read,” says he, “something they callMoria.” “Yes,” says Richard Pace, “may it please your highness, such a subject is fit for such a reader.”
The end of it was that the preacher declared himself on reflection more reconciled to the Greek, because it was derived from the Hebrew, and that Henry dispensed with his further attendance upon the Court.
The feeling and taste for Greek culture which Lily, Erasmus, and others had introduced and encouraged, were promoted by the exertions of Sir John Cheke and Sir Thomas Smith at Cambridge, and by Dr. Kay or Caius; and a controversy, almost amounting to a quarrel, which Cheke had with Bishop Gardiner on Greek pronunciation, stimulated the movement by attracting public attention to the matter, andbringing into notice many Greek authors whose works had not hitherto been read.
The literary contest between Cheke and Gardiner was printed abroad in 1555, and only eleven years later a paraphrase of thePhœnissæof Euripides by George Gascoigne and Francis Kinwelmersh was performed at Gray’s Inn.
III. The tract published by the learned John Kay in 1574 on the pronunciation of Greek and Latin is rather pertinent to the present movement for varying the old fashion in this respect. Kay instances the cases of substitutingolliforilli,queisforquibus,mareitoformarito,maxumèformaximè; and in Greek words, the ancients, says he, certainly saidAchilles,Tydes,Theses, andUlisses, not, as people sometimes now do,Achillews,Tudews,Thesews, andUlussews. The author likewise refers to the employment of the aspirate in orthography, as inhydropisis,thermæ,Bathonia, andHybernia, which used to be readydropisis,termæ,Batonia, andIvernia. He was clearly no advocate for the latter-day mode in England of hardening thegand thecas inReginaandCicero.
But the fact is that, where there are no positivedatafor fixing the standard or laying down any general principle, there can never be an end of the conflicting views and theories on this subject, and the best of them amount to little more than guess-work.
The modes of pronouncing both the Greek and Latin languages have always probably varied, as they do yet, in different countries; and the Scots adhere to the Continental fashion as regards, at all events, the latter.
Experience and practical observation seem to shew that every locality has a tendency to adapt its rules for sounding the dead tongues to those in force for sounding its current vocabulary; as a Roumanian lad, for instance, in learning Latin, will instinctively follow his native associations in giving utterance to diphthongs, vowels, and compound words. The Greek language, in respect to this point of view, occupies an anomalous position, because it enjoys a partial survivorship in the Neo-Hellenic dialect; and it has been natural to seek in the method employed by their modern representatives and descendants a key to that employedby the inhabitants of ancient Hellas in pronouncing words and particles, and, in short, to the grammatical laws by which their speech was regulated.
It appears, however, that philologists have been disappointed in the results of this test, as the differences between the two idioms are often so wide and material. Yet, nevertheless, a Greek of the nineteenth century must be allowed to be a rather important witness in taking evidence on such a question, as the whole strength of received tradition and aprimâ facieargument are on his side; and when we find that he gives to the longEor ητα the force ofA, and to the diphthong οι that ofE, we grow somewhat sceptical as to our right to impose on those particles a different function, especially seeing that the Ionic dialect and the metrical arrangement of theIliadostensibly support this interchange of phonetic values. I need scarcely advert to the favourite theory that, so far as the Greek longEis concerned, it had its source in the vocal intonation of the sheep, which is, after all, far from an invariable standard.
The Englishman, in dealing with such themesas foreign spelling and pronunciation, treads upon eggs, so to speak, as he lives within the knowledge of the whole world in a glass house of his own.
IV. But scarcely any books in the Greek character were printed in England until Edward Grant, head-master of Westminster School, brought out hisGræcæ Linguæ Spicilegium, or Greek Delectus, in 1575. It saw only a single edition, and is still a common book, not having been apparently successful; and the next attempt of the kind did not even appeal to the English student, though the work of a native of North Britain; for Alexander Scot published hisUniversa Grammatica Græcaat Lyons in a shape calculated to invite a yet more limited circulation than the essay of Grant.
Perhaps one of the earliest English publications relative to the study of Greek poetry was theProgymnasma Scholasticumof John Stockwood, published in 1596. Stockwood had been master of Tonbridge School, a foundation established by the Skinners’ Company, and while he was there brought out one or two professionalworks. This was avowedly taken from theAnthologyof Stephanus, and presents a Greek-Latin interlinear text.
Again, in 1631, William Burton, the Leicestershire historian, and a schoolmaster by profession, delivered at Gloucester Hall, Oxford, an oration on the origin and progress of Greek, which many years later, when he had charge of the school at Kingston-on-Thames, was edited by Gerard Langbaine. It was a scholarly thesis, and of no educational significance, except that it exhibited the survival of some languid interest in the topic at the University.
Very few Greek authors found early translators here beyond the selections prepared for schools; but it is remarkable that the example in this way was set by a citizen of London, and a member of the Goldsmiths’ Company, Thomas Niccols, who in 1550, at the instance of Sir John Cheke, undertook to put into English the History of Thucydides. This was almost a century before the version by Hobbes of Malmesbury.
The partial translation of theIliadby Arthur Hall of Grantham, 1581, was taken from the French. But Chapman accomplished the featof rendering the whole of Homer, as well as theGeorgicsof Hesiod and the Neo-GreekHero and Leander. At a later date, Thomas Grantham, a schoolmaster in Lothbury, who seems to have been in a state of perpetual warfare with his critics as to the merits of his fashion of teaching, brought out at his own expense, and possibly for the use of his own pupils, the first, second, and third books of theIliad.
The grand work of Herodotus was approached in 1584 by an anonymous writer, who completed onlyClioandEuterpe.
But these intermittent and isolated cases shew how languid the feeling for Hellenic literature and history long remained in England; nor, when we regard the unsatisfactory character of the translations from the Greek, with rare exceptions, down to the present day, is it hard to see that the want was at least as largely due to incapacity on the part of scholars as to indifference on that of the public.
Many of the schools employed a small elementary selection from the Greek writers, of which a fifth edition was printed in 1771.
When Charles Lamb was at the Blue CoatSchool (1782-9), the Greek authors read there appear to have been Lucian and Xenophon, the former in a Selection from theDialogues. The present writer, who was at Merchant Taylors’ School from 1842 to 1850, used Xenophon, Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, and some volume ofAnalecta. When the school was founded in 1561, it was difficult to find a boy to read Greek; but in the following century it enters rather prominently into the prospectus on Examination-day.
All the great seminaries differ in their lists; the choice depends on the personal taste of the masters from time to time; and there is a certain virtue in traditional names.
But the truth is that in England, after all, although this language has continued to be taught in all schools of any standing or pretension, the critical study and genuine appreciation of it have always been confined to a narrow circle of scholars; and nowadays there is a growing tendency to prefer the living languages, as they are called, to the dead.