More’s domestic happiness.
There was probably no brighter home—brighter in present enjoyment, or more brilliant in future prospects—than that home in Bucklersbury, into which Erasmus, jaded by the journey, entered on his arrival from Italy. He must have found More and his gentle wife rejoicing in their infant son, and the merry voices of three little daughters echoing the joy of the house.[341]
V. ERASMUS WRITES THE ‘PRAISE OF FOLLY’ WHILE RESTING AT MORE’S HOUSE (1510 OR 1511).
For some days Erasmus was chained indoors by an attack of a painful disease to which he had for long been subject. His books had not yet arrived, and he was too ill to admit of close application of any kind.
The ‘Praise of Folly,’ written in More’s house.
To beguile his time, he took pen and paper, and began to write down at his leisure the satirical reflections on men and things which, as already mentioned, had grown up within him during his recent travels, and served to beguile the tedium of his journey from Italy to England. It was not done with any grave design, or any view of publication; but he knew his friend More was fond of a joke, and he wanted something to do, to take his attention from the weariness of the pain which he was suffering. So he worked away at his manuscript. One day when More came home from business, bringing a friend or two with him, Erasmusbrought it out for their amusement. The fun would be so much the greater, he thought, when shared by several together. He had fancied Folly putting on her cap and bells, mounting her rostrum, and delivering an address to her votaries on the affairs of mankind. These few select friends having heard what he had already written, were so delighted with it that they insisted on its being completed. In about a week the whole was finished.[342]This is the simple history of the ‘Praise of Folly.’
It was a satire upon follies of all kinds. The bookworm was smiled at for his lantern jaws and sickly look; the sportsman for his love of butchery; the superstitious were sneered at for attributing strange virtues to images and shrines, for worshipping another Hercules under the name of St. George, for going on pilgrimage when their proper duty was at home. The wickedness of fictitious pardons and the sale of indulgences,[343]the folly of prayers to the Virgin in shipwreck or distress, received each a passing censure.
Grammarians and schools.
Grammarians were singled out of the regiment of fools as the most servile votaries of folly. They were described as ‘A race of men the most miserable, who grow old in penury and filth in their schools—schools, did I say?prisons! dungeons!I should have said—among their boys, deafened with din, poisoned by a fœtid atmosphere, but, thanks to their folly, perfectly self-satisfied, so long as they can bawl and shout to their terrified boys, and box, and beat, and flog them,and so indulge in all kinds of ways their cruel disposition.’[344]
The scholastic system.
After criticising with less severity poets and authors, rhetoricians and lawyers, Folly proceeded to re-echo the censure of Colet upon the dogmatic system of the Schoolmen.
Scholastic science.
She ridiculed the logical subtlety which spent itself on splitting hairs and disputing about nothing, and to which the modern followers of the Schoolmen were so painfully addicted. She ridiculed, too, the prevalent dogmatic philosophy and science, which having been embraced by the Schoolmen, and sanctioned by ecclesiastical authority, had become a part of the scholastic system. ‘With what ease do they dream and prate of the creation of innumerable worlds, measuring sun, moon, stars, and earth as though by a thumb and thread; rendering a reason for thunder, wind, eclipses, and other inexplicable things; never hesitating in the least, just as though they had been admitted into the secrets of creation, or as though they had come down to us from the council of the Gods—with whom, and whose conjectures, Nature is mightily amused!’[345]
Scholastic theology.Foolish questions.
From dogmatic science Folly turned at once to dogmatic theology, and proceeded to comment in her severest fashion on a class whom, she observes, it might have been safest to pass over in silence—divines.[346]‘Their pride and irritability are such (she said) that they will come down upon me with their six hundred conclusions, and compel me to recant; and, if I refuse,declare me a heretic forthwith.... They explain to their own satisfaction the most hidden mysteries: how the universe was constructed and arranged—through what channels the stain of original sin descends to posterity—how the miraculous birth of Christ was effected—how in the Eucharistic wafer the accidents can exist without a substance, and so forth. And they think themselves equal to the solution of such questions as these:—Whether ... God could have taken upon himself the nature of a woman, a devil, an ass, a gourd, or a stone? And how in that case a gourd could have preached, worked miracles, and been nailed to the cross?WhatPeter would have consecrated if he had consecrated the Eucharist at the moment that the body of Christ was hanging on the Cross? Whether at that moment Christ could have been called a man? Whether we shall eat and drink after the resurrection?’[347]In a later edition[348]Folly is made to say further:—‘These Schoolmen possess such learning and subtlety that I fancy even the Apostles themselves would need another Spirit, if they had to engage with this new race of divines about questions of this kind. Paul was able “to keep the faith,†but when he said, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for,†he defined it very loosely. He was full ofcharity, but he treated of it and defined it very illogically in the thirteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians.... The Apostles knew the mother of Jesus, but which of them demonstrated so philosophically as our divines do in what way she was preserved from the taint of original sin? Peter received thekeys, and received them from Him who would not have committed them to one unworthy to receive them, but I know not whetherheunderstood (certainly he never touched upon the subtlety!) in what way thekey of knowledgecan be held by a man whohas no knowledge. They often baptized people, but they never taught what is the formal, what the material, what the efficient, and what the ultimate cause of baptism; they say nothing of its delible and indelible character. They worshipped indeed, butin spirit, following no other authority than the gospel saying, “God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.†But it hardly seems to have been revealed to them, that in one and the same act of worship the picture of Christ drawn with charcoal on a wall was to be adored, as well as Christhimself.... Again, the Apostles spoke of “grace,†but they never distinguished between “gratiam gratis datam,†and “gratiam gratificantem.†They preached charity, but did not distinguish between charity “infused†and “acquired,†nor did they explain whether it was an accident or a substance, created oruncreated. They abhorred “sin,†but I am a fool if they could define scientificallywhat we call sin, unless indeed they were inspired by the spirit of the Scotists!’[349]
There are some who hate the scholastic method.
After pursuing the subject further, Folly suggests that an army of them should be sent against the Turks, not in the hope that the Turks might be converted by them so much as that Christendom would be relieved by their absence, and then sheis made quietly to say:[350]—‘You may think all this is said in joke, but seriously, there are some, even amongst divines themselves, versed in better learning, who are disgusted at these (as they think) frivolous subtleties of divines. There are some who execrate, as a kind of sacrilege, and consider as the greatest impiety, these attempts to dispute with unhallowed lips and profane arguments about things so holy that they should rather be adored than explained, to define them with so much presumption, and to pollute the majesty of Divine theology with cold, yea and sordid, words and thoughts. But, in spite of these, with the greatest self-complacency divines go on spending night and day over their foolish studies, so that they never have any leisure left for the perusal of the gospels, or the epistles of St. Paul.’[351]
Finally, Folly exclaims, ‘Are they not the most happy of men whilst they are treating of these things? whilst describing everything in the infernal regions as exactly as though they had lived there for years? whilst creating new spheres at pleasure, one, the largest and most beautiful, being finally added, that, forsooth, happy spirits might have room enough to take a walk, to spread their feasts, or to play at ball?’[352]
With this allusion to the ‘empyrean’ heavens of the Schoolmen, the satire of Folly upon their dogmatic theology reaches its climax. And in the notes added by Lystrius to a later edition, it was thus furtherexplained in terms which aptly illustrate the relation of theology and science in the scholastic system:—
Dogmatic theology and dogmatic science.
‘The ancients believed ... in seven spheres—one to each planet—and to these they added the one sphere of the fixed stars. Next, seeing that these eight spheres had two motions, and learning from Aristotle that only one of these motions affected all the spheres, they were compelled to regard the other motion asviolent. A superior sphere could not, however, be moved in its violent motion by an inferior one. So outside all they were obliged to place a ninth sphere, which they called “primum mobile.†To these, in the next place,divines added a tenth, which they called the “empyrean sphere,†as though the saints could not be happy unless they had a heaven of their own!’[353]
And that the ridicule and satire of Erasmus were aimed at the dogmatism of both science and theology is further pointed out in a previous note, where the presumption of ‘neoteric divines’ in attempting to account for everything, however mysterious, is compared to the way in which ‘astronomers, not being able to find out the cause of the various motions of the heavens, constructed eccentrics and epicycles on the spheres.’[354]
Thus were the scholastic divines censured for just those faults to which the eyes of Erasmus had been opened ten years before by his conversation with Colet at Oxford, and words of more bitter satire could hardly have been used than those now chosen.
On Monks.
Monkscame in for at least as rough a handling. There is perhaps no more severe and powerful passageanywhere in the whole book than that in which Folly is made to draw a picture of their appearance on the Judgment Day, finding themselves with the goats on the left hand of the Judge, pleading hard their rigorous observance of the rules and ceremonies of their respective orders, but interrupted by the solemn question from the Judge, ‘Whence this race of new Jews? I know only of one law which is really mine; but of that I hear nothing at all. When on earth, without mystery or parable, I openly promised my Father’s inheritance, not to cowls, matins, or fastings, but to the practice of faith and charity. I know you not, ye who know nothing but your own works. Let those who wish to be thought more holy than I am inhabit their newly-discovered heavens; and let those who prefer their own traditions to my precepts, order new ones to be built for them.’ When they shall hear this (continues Folly), ‘and see sailors and waggoners preferred to themselves, how do you think they will look upon each other?’[355]
On kings, &c.
Kings, princes, and courtiers next pass under review, and here again may be traced that firm attitude of resistance to royal tyranny which has already been marked in the conduct of More. If More in his congratulatory verses took the opportunity of publicly asserting his love of freedom and hatred of tyranny in the ears of the new King, his own personal friend, as he mounted the throne, so Erasmus also, although come back to England full of hope that in Henry VIII. he might find a patron, not only of learning in general but of himself in particular, took this opportunity ofputting into the mouth of Folly a similar assertion of the sacred rights of the people and the duties of a king:—
Duties of princes.Their practice.
‘It is the duty (she suggests) of a true prince to seek the public and not his own private advantage. From the laws, of which he is both the author and executive magistrate, he must not himself deviate by a finger’s breadth. He is responsible for the integrity of his officials and magistrates.... But (continues Folly) by my aid princes cast such cares as these to the winds, and care only for their own pleasure.... They think they fill their position well if they hunt with diligence, if they keep good horses, if they can make gain to themselves by the sale of offices and places, if they can daily devise new means of undermining the wealth of citizens, and raking it into their own exchequer, disguising the iniquity of such proceedings by some specious pretence and show of legality.’[356]
If the memory of Henry VII. was fresh in the minds of More and Erasmus, so also his courtiers and tools, of whom Empson and Dudley were the recognised types, were not forgotten. The cringing, servile, abject, and luxurious habits of courtiers were fair game for Folly.
From this cutting review of kings, princes, and courtiers, the satire, taking a still bolder flight, at length swooped down to fix its talons in the very flesh of the Pope himself.
On the Pope.
The Oxford friends had some personal knowledge of Rome and her pontiffs. When Colet was in Italy, the notoriously wicked Alexander VI. was Pope, and what Colet thought of him has been mentioned. WhileErasmus was in Italy Julius II. was Pope. He had succeeded to the Papal chair in 1503.
Pope Julius II.
Julius II., in the words of Ranke, ‘devoted himself to the gratification of that innate love of war and conquest which was indeed the ruling passion of his life.... It was the ambition of Julius II. to extend the dominions of the Church. He must therefore be regarded as the founder of the Papal States.’[357]Erasmus, during his recent visit, had himself been driven from Bologna when it was besieged by the Roman army, led by Julius in person. He had written from Italy that ‘literature was giving place to war, that Pope Julius was warring, conquering, triumphing, and openly acting the Cæsar.’[358]Mark how aptly and boldly he now hit off his character in strict accordance with the verdict of history, when in the course of his satire he came to speak of popes. Folly drily observes that—
On the folly of war.
‘Although in the gospel Peter is said to have declared, “Lo, we have left all, and followed thee,†yet these Popes speak of “St. Peter’s patrimony†as consisting of lands, towns, tributes, customs, lordships; for which, when their zeal for Christ is stirred, they fight with fire and sword at the expense of much Christian blood, thinking that in so doing they are Apostolical defenders of Christ’s spouse, the Church, from her enemies. As though indeed there were any enemies of the Church more pernicious than impious Popes!... Further, as the Christian Church was founded in blood, and confirmed by blood, and advanced by blood, now in like manner, as thoughChrist weredeadand could no longer defend his own, they take to the sword. And although war be a thing so savage that it becomes wild beasts rather than men, so frantic that the poets feigned it to be the work of the Furies, so pestilent that it blights at once all morality, so unjust that it can be best waged by the worst of ruffians, so impious that it has nothing in common with Christ, yet to the neglect of everything else they devote themselves to war alone.’[359]
Pope Julius II. and his fondness for war.
And this bold satire upon the warlike passions of the Pope was made still more direct and personal by what followed. To quote Ranke once more:—‘Old as Julius now was, worn by the many vicissitudes of good and evil fortune, and most of all by the consequences of intemperance and licentious excess, in the extremity of age he still retained an indomitable spirit. It was from the tumults of a general war that he hoped to gain his objects. He desired to be the lord and master of the game of the world. In furtherance of his grand aim he engaged in the boldest operations, risking all to obtain all.’[360]Compare with this picture of the old age of the warlike Pope the following words put by Erasmus into the mouth of Folly, and printed and read all over Europe in the lifetime of Julius himself!
‘Thus you may see even decrepid old men display all the vigour of youth, sparing no cost, shrinking from no toil, stopped by nothing, if only they can turn law, religion, peace, and all human affairs upside down.’[361]
In conclusion, Folly, after pushing her satire in other directions, was made to apologise for the bold flight she had taken. If anything she had said seemed to be spoken with too much loquacity or petulance, she begged that it might be remembered that it was spoken byFolly. But let it be remembered, also, she added, that
A fool oft speaks a seasonable truth.
She then made her bow, and descended the steps of her rostrum, bidding her most illustrious votaries farewell—valete, plaudite, vivite, bibite!
Editions of the ‘Praise of Folly.’
Such was the ‘Praise of Folly,’ the manuscript of which was snatched from Erasmus by More or one of his friends, and ultimately sent over to Paris to be printed there, probably in the summer of 1511, and to pass within a few months through no less than seven editions.[362]
Erasmus settled at Cambridge.
Meanwhile, after recruiting his shattered health under More’s roof, spending a few months with Lord Mountjoy[363]and Warham,[364]and paying a flying visit to Paris, it would seem that Erasmus, aided and encouraged by his friends, betook himself to Cambridge to pursue his studies, hoping to be able to eke out his income by giving lessons in the Greek language to such pupils as might be found amongst the University students willing to learn,—the chance fees of students being supplemented by the promise of a small stipend from the University.[365]
It seems to have been taken for granted that the ‘new learning’ was now to make rapid progress, having Henry VIII. for its royal patron, and Erasmus for its professor of Greek at Cambridge.
I. COLET FOUNDS ST. PAUL’S SCHOOL (1510).
Fully as Colet joined his friends in rejoicing at the accession to the throne of a king known to be favourable to himself and his party, he had drunk by far too deeply of the spirit of self-sacrifice to admit of his rejoicing with a mere courtier’s joy.
Colet inherits his father’s fortune.
Fortune had indeed been lavish to him. His elevation unasked to the dignity of Doctor and Dean; the popular success of his preaching; the accession of a friendly king, from whom probably further promotion was to be had for the asking; and, lastly, the sudden acquisition on his father’s death of a large independent fortune in addition to the revenues of the deanery;—here was a concurrence of circumstances far more likely to foster habits of selfish ease and indulgence than to draw Colet into paths of self-denial and self-sacrificing labour. Had he enlisted in the ranks of a great cause in the hasty zeal of enthusiasm, it had had time now to cool, and here was the triumphal arch through which the abjured hero might gracefully retire from work amidst the world’s applause.
But Colet, in his lectures at Oxford, had laid great stress upon the necessity of that living sacrifice of men’s hearts and lives without which all othersacrifices were empty things, and it seems that after he was called to the deanery he gave forth ‘A right fruitfull Admonition concerning the Order of a good Christian Man’s Life,’[366]which passed through many editions during the sixteenth century, and in which he made use of the following language:—
Colet on the duty of self-sacrifice.
‘Thou must know that thou hast nothing that good is of thyself, but of God. For the gift of nature and all other temporal gifts of this world ... well considered have come to thee by the infinite goodness and grace of God, and not of thyself.... But in especial is it necessary for thee to know that God of his great grace has made thee his image, having regard to thy memory, understanding, and free will, and that God is thy maker, and thou his wretched creature, and that thou art redeemed of God by the passion of Jesus Christ, and that God is thy helper, thy refuge, and thy deliverance from all evil.... And, therefore, think, and thank God, and utterly despise thyself, ... in that God hath done so much for thee, and thou hast so often offended his highness, and also done Him so little service. And therefore, by his infinite mercy and grace, call unto thy remembrance the degree of dignity which Almighty God hath called thee unto, and according thereunto yield thy debt, and do thy duty.’
Colet was not the man to preach one thing and practise another. No sooner had he been appointedto the deanery of St. Paul’s, than he had at once resigned the rich living of Stepney,[367]the residence of his father, and now of his widowed mother. And no sooner had his father’s fortune come into his hands, than he earnestly considered how most effectually to devote it to the cause in which he had laboured so unceasingly at Oxford and St. Paul’s.
Colet founds St. Paul’s School.Colet’s object in founding it.
After mature deliberation he resolved, whilst living and in health, to devote his patrimony[368]to the foundation of a school in St. Paul’s Churchyard, wherein 153 children,[369]without any restriction as to nation or country, who could already read and write, and were of ‘good parts and capacities,’ should receive a sound Christian education. The ‘Latin adulterate, which ignorant blind fools brought into this world,’ poisoning thereby ‘the old Latin speech, and the very Roman tongue used in the time of Tully and Sallust, and Virgil and Terence, and learned by St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine,’—all that ‘abusion which the later blind world brought in, and which may rather be called Blotterature than Literature,’—should be ‘utterly abanished and excluded’ out of this school. The children should be taught good literature, both Latin and Greek, ‘such authors that have with wisdom joined pure chaste eloquence’—‘specially Christian authors who wrote their wisdom in clean and chaste Latin, whether in prose or verse; for,’ said Colet, ‘my intent is by this school specially to increase knowledge, and worshipping of God and OurLord Jesus Christ, and good Christian life and manners in the children.’[370]
And, as if to keep this end always prominently in view, he placed an image of the ‘Child Jesus,’ to whom the school was dedicated, standing over the master’s chair in the attitude of teaching, with the motto, ‘Hear ye him;’[371]and upon the front of the building, next to the cathedral, the following inscription:—‘Schola catechizationis puerorum in Christi Opt. Max. fide et bonis Literis. Anno Christi MDX.’[372]
The building consisted of one large room, divided into an upper and lower school by a curtain, which could be drawn at pleasure; and the charge of the two schools devolved upon a high-master and a sub-master respectively.
Salaries of the masters.Cost of Colet’s school.
The forms were arranged so as each to seat sixteen boys, and were provided each with a raised desk, at which the head boy sat as president. The building also embraced an entrance-porch and a little chapel for divine service. Dwelling-houses were erected, adjoining the school, for the residence of the two masters; and for their support Colet obtained, in the spring of 1510, a royal license to transfer to the Wardens and Guild of Mercers in London, real property to the value of 53l.per annum[373](equivalent to at least 530l.of present money). Of this the headmaster was to receive as his salary 35l.(say 350l.) and the under-master 18l.(say 180l.) per annum. Three or four years after, Coletmade provision for a chaplain to conduct divine service in the chapel, and to instruct the children in the Catechism, the Articles of the faith, and the Ten Commandments—inEnglish; and ultimately, before his death, he appears to have increased the amount of the whole endowment to 122l.(say 1,200l.) per annum. So that it may be considered, roughly, that the whole endowment, including the buildings, cannot have represented a less sum than 30,000l.or 40,000l.of present money.[374]
And if Colet thus sacrificed so much of his private fortune to secure a liberal (and it must be conceded his was a liberal) provision for the remuneration of the masters who should educate his 153 boys, he must surely have had deeply at heart the welfare of the boys themselves. And, in truth, it was so. Colet was like a father to his schoolboys. It has indeed been assumed that a story related by Erasmus, to exhibit the low state of education and the cruel severity exercised in the common run of schools, was intended by him to describe the severe discipline maintained by Colet and his masters; but I submit that this is a pure assumption, without the least shadow of proof, and contrary to every kind of probability. The story itself is dark enough truly, and, in order that Colet’s name may be cleared once for all from its odium, may as well be given to the reader as it is found in Erasmus’s work ‘On the Liberal Education of Boys.’
Abuses in private schools.
It occurs, let it be remembered, in a work written by Erasmus to expose and hold up to public scorn the private schools, including those of monasteries andcolleges, in which honest parents were blindly induced to place their children—at the mercy, it might be, of drunken dames, or of men too often without knowledge, chastity, or judgment. It was a work in which he described these schools as he had described them in his ‘Praise of Folly,’ and in which he detailed scandals and cruelty too foul to be translated, with the express object of enforcing his opinion, that if there were to be any schools at all, they ought to bepublicschools—in fact, precisely such schools as that which Colet was establishing. The story is introduced as an example of the scandals which were sometimes perpetrated by incompetent masters, in schools of the class which he had thus harshly, but nottooharshly, condemned.
After saying that no masters were more cruel to their boys than those who, from ignorance, can teach them least (a remark which certainly could not be intended to refer to Colet’s headmaster), he thus proceeded:—
Cruelty of some schoolmasters.Story of cruelty, wrongly attributed to Colet.
‘What can such masters do in their schools but get through the day by flogging and scolding? I once knew a divine, and intimately too—a man of reputation—who seemed to think that no cruelty to scholars could be enough, since he would not have any but flogging masters. He thought this was the only way to crush the boys’ unruly spirits, and to subdue the wantonness of their age. Never did he take a meal with his flock without making the comedy end in a tragedy. So at the end of the meal one or another boy was dragged out to be flogged.... I myself was once by when, after dinner, as usual, he called out a boy, I should think, about ten years old. He hadonly just come fresh from his mother to school. His mother, it should be said, was a pious woman, and had especially commended the boy to him. But he at once began to charge the boy with unruliness, since he could think of nothing else, and must find something to flog him for, and made signs to the proper official to flog him. Whereupon the poor boy was forthwith floored then and there, and flogged as though he had committed sacrilege. The divine again and again interposed, “That will do—that will do;†but the inexorable executioner continued his cruelty till the boy almost fainted. By-and-by the divine turned round to me and said, “He did nothing to deserve it, but the boys’ spirits must be subdued.â€â€™[375]
This is the story which we are told it would be difficult to apply to anyone but Colet,[376]as though Colet were the only ‘divine of reputation’ ever intimately known to Erasmus! or as though Erasmus would thus hold up his friend Colet to the scorn of the world!
Colet’s gentleness and love of children.
The fact is that no one could peruse the ‘precepts of living’ laid down by Colet for his school without seeing not only how practical and sound were his views on the education of the heart, mind, and body of his boys, but also how at the root of them lay a strong undercurrent of warm and gentle feelings, a real love of youth.[377]
In truth, Colet was fond of children, even to tenderness. Erasmus relates that he would often remind his guests and his friends how that Christ had made children the examples for men, and that he was wont to compare them to the angels above.[378]And if any further proof were wanted that Colet showed even a touching tenderness for children, it must surely be found in the following ‘lytell proheme’ to the Latin Grammar which he wrote for his school, and of which we shall hear more by-and-by:—
Colet’s preface to his grammar.Colet’s tenderness towards little children.
‘Albeit many have written, and have made certain introductions into Latin speech, calledDonatesandAccidens, in Latin tongue and in English; in such plenty that it should seem to suffice, yet nevertheless, for the love and zeal that I have to the new school of Paul’s, and to the children of the same, I have also ... of the eight parts of grammar made this little book.... In which, if any new things be of me, it is alonely that I have put these “parts†in a more clear order, and I have made them a little more easy to young wits, than (methinketh) they were before: judging that nothing may be too soft, nor too familiar for little children, specially learning a tongue unto them all strange. In which little book I have left many things out of purpose, considering the tenderness and small capacity of little minds....[378]I pray God all may be to his honour, and to the erudition and profit of children, my countrymenLondonersspecially, whom, digesting this little work, I had always before mine eyes, considering more whatwas forthemthan to show any great cunning; willing to speak the things often before spoken, in such manner as gladly young beginners and tender wits might take and conceive. Wherefore I pray you, all little babes, all little children, learn gladly this little treatise, and commend it diligently unto your memories, trusting of this beginning that ye shall proceed and grow to perfect literature, and come at the last to begreat clerks.And lift up your little white hands for me, which prayeth for you to God, to whom be all honour and imperial majesty and glory. Amen.’
The man who, having spent his patrimony in the foundation of a school, could write such a preface as this to one of his schoolbooks, was not likely to insist ‘upon having none but flogging masters.’
Colet will not trouble them with many rules.
Moreover, this preface was followed by a short note, addressed to his ‘well-beloved masters and teachers of grammar,’ in which, by way of apology for its brevity, and the absence of the endless rules and exceptions found in most grammars, he tells them: ‘In the beginning men spake not Latin because such rules were made, but, contrariwise, because men spake such Latin the rules were made. That is to say, Latin speech was before the rules, and not the rules before the Latin speech.’ And therefore the best way to learn ‘to speak and write clean Latin is busily to learn and read good Latin authors, and note how they wrote and spoke.’ ‘Wherefore,’ he concludes, ‘after “the parts of speech†sufficiently known in your schools, read and expound plainly unto your scholars good authors, and show to them every word, and in every sentence what they shall note and observe; warning them busily to follow and to do like, both in writing and in speaking, andbe to them your own self also, speaking with them the pure Latin, very present, andleave the rules. For reading of good books, diligent information of taught masters, studious advertence and taking heed of learners, hearing eloquent men speak, and finally busy imitation with tongue and pen, more availeth shortly to get the true eloquent speech, than all the traditions, rules, and precepts of masters.’
Lilly’s Epigram.
Nor would it seem that Colet’s first headmaster, at all events, failed to appreciate the practical common-sense and gentle regard for the ‘tenderness of little minds,’ which breathes through these prefaces; for at the end of them he himself added this epigram:—
Pocula si linguæ cupias gustare Latinæ,Quale tibi monstret, ecceColetusiter!Non per Caucaseos montes, aut summa Pyrene;Te ista per Hybleos sed via ducit agros.[379]
II. HIS CHOICE OF SCHOOLBOOKS AND SCHOOLMASTERS (1511).
Linacre’s rejected Grammar.‘Lilly’s Grammar.’
The mention of Colet’s ‘Latin Grammar’ suggests one of the difficulties in the way of carrying out of his projected school, his mode of surmounting which was characteristic of the spirit in which he worked. It was not to be expected that he should find the schoolbooks of the old grammarians in any way adapted to his purpose. So at once he set his learned friends to work to provide him with new ones. The first thing wantedwas a Latin Grammar for beginners. Linacre undertook to provide this want, and wrote with great pains and labour a work in six books, which afterwards came into general use. But when Colet saw it, at the risk of displeasing his friend, he put it altogether aside. It was too long and too learned for his ‘little beginners.’ So he condensed within the compass of a few pages two little treatises, an ‘Accidence’ and a ‘Syntax,’ in the preface to the first of which occur the gentle words quoted above.[380]These little books, after receiving additions from the hands of Erasmus, Lilly, and others, finally became generally adopted and known asLilly’s Grammar.[381]
This rejection of his Grammar seems to have been a sore point with Linacre, but Erasmus told Colet not to be too much concerned about it: he would, he said, get over it in time,[382]which probably he did much sooner than Colet’s school would have got over the loss which would have been inflicted by the adoption of a schoolbook beyond the capacity of the boys.
‘De Copiâ Verborum.’
Erasmus, in the same letter in which he spoke of Linacre’s rejected grammar, told Colet that he was working at his ‘De Copiâ Verborum,’ which he was writing expressly for Colet’s school. He told him, too, that he had sometimes to take up the cudgels for him against the ‘Thomists and Scotists of Cambridge;’ thathe was looking out for an under-schoolmaster, but had not yet succeeded in finding one. Meanwhile he enclosed a letter, in which he had put on paper his notions of what a schoolmaster ought to be, and the best method of teaching boys, which he fancied Colet might not altogether approve, as he was wont somewhat more to despise rhetoric than Erasmus did. He stated his opinion that—
Erasmus on the true method of education.
‘In order that the teacher might be thoroughly up to his work, he should not merely be a master of one particular branch of study. He should himself have travelled through the whole circle of knowledge. In philosophy he should have studied Plato and Aristotle, Theophrastus and Plotinus; in Theology the Sacred Scriptures, and after them Origen, Chrysostom, and Basil among the Greek fathers, and Ambrose and Jerome among the Latin fathers; among the poets, Homer and Ovid; in geography, which is very important in the study of history, Pomponius Mela, Ptolemy, Pliny, Strabo. He should know what ancient names of rivers, mountains, countries, cities, answer to the modern ones; and the same of trees, animals, instruments, clothes, and gems, with regard to which it is incredible how ignorant even educated men are. He should take note of little facts about agriculture, architecture, military and culinary arts, mentioned by different authors. He should be able to trace the origin of words, their gradual corruption in the languages of Constantinople, Italy, Spain, and France. Nothing should be beneath his observation which can illustrate history or the meaning of the poets. But you will say what a load you are putting on the back of the poor teacher! It is so; but Iburden the one to relieve the many. I want the teacher to have traversed the whole range of knowledge, that it may spare each of his scholars doing it. A diligent and thoroughly competent master might give boys a fair proficiency in both Latin and Greek, in a shorter time and with less labour than the common run of pedagogues take to teach their babble.’[383]
On receipt of this letter and its enclosure, Colet wrote to Erasmus:—