Schools, School-Books and Schoolmasters Part 4

9. Syntaxis. [A recension of No. 8.]

10. Vulgaria.

11. Lucubrationes.

These eleven _fasciculi_ actually form altogether one system, and some of them have their order of succession in the author's arrangement indicated; as, for instance, the _Verborum Praeterita et Supina_, which is called the Fifth Book of the First Part; but others are deficient in this clue, so that if one cla.s.ses them, it must be in one's own way.

V. The treatise on the _Kinds of Nouns_, in one of the numerous editions of it at least, is designated _Primae Partis Liber Primus_, which seems an inducement to yield it the foremost place in the series. But it will be presently observed that, although the collection in a complete state is susceptible of a consecutive arrangement, the pieces composing it did not, so far as we can tell, follow each other originally in strict order of time.

Of the tract on the _Declensions of Nouns_, which stands second in order, Dibdin supplies us with a specimen:--

De nto singu- =Anchise et Ve-= =Capis filius= =Qui fingit elegan-= lari prime =neris filius,= =es, ut An-= =tia carmina, a,= declina- =as, ut Aeneas= =chises.= =ut poeta.= tionis. Rectus as, es, a; simul am dat flexio prima.

=Aeneae= =Aeneae= =ut huius= =huic= =musae= =musae=

De gto et dto Ac dat dipthongum genitiuus sic que datiuus singularibus =hi poete= =o poete= et nto et veto Singularis, sic pluralis primus quoque quintus pluralibu. =familie et= =aulai pro aulae= =vt huius= =huic= =familias= =pictai pro pictae.= Olim rectus in a, genito dedit as simul ai.

=vt hic Judas, huius Jude, vel Juda= Ex Judas Juda aut Judae dat pagina sacra =vt hic Adam. huius Adam. huic Adam, &c.= Barbara in am propria aut a recto non variantur.

We must now pa.s.s to the treatise _De Syllabarum Quant.i.tate_, which, in a chronological respect, ranks first among Whittinton's works, as there was an edition of it as early as 1513.

This tripart.i.te volume, 1. _On the Quant.i.ty of Syllables_; 2. _On Accent_; and 3. _On the Roman Magistrates_, is noteworthy on two accounts. The second portion embraces the earliest specimen in any English book of the poems of Horace, and the concluding section is a kind of rudimentary Lempriere. Subjoined is a sample of the lines upon accents, from Dibdin:--

"=Accentus tonus est per que fit syllaba quevis Cognita: quado acui debet, vel qu gravari Accentus triplex; fit acutus vel gravis, inde Est circuflexus: qui nunc fit rarus in vsu.

Syllaba c.u.m tendit sursum est accentus acutus Est gravis accentus sed syllaba pressa deorsum Fit circuflexus gravis in prima: sed in altum Attollit mediam, postrema gravis reciditque.="

This metrical exposition, which will not be mistaken for the language of Horace, is followed by a commentary in prose.

The next three divisions do not call for any particular criticism. They treat of the _Eight Parts of Speech_, the _Irregular Nouns_, and the _Laws of Grammatical Construction_, of which the last is the first cast of the _Syntax_.

There remain the _Vulgaria_ and the _Lucubrations_, which are far more important and interesting, and of which there were numerous editions. The subjoined samples will shew the principle on which the _Vulgaria_ was compiled:--

"Befe and motton is so dere, that a peny worth of meet wyll scant suffyse a boy at a meale.

"Whan I was a scholler of Oxforthe I lyued competently with vii. pens commens wekely.

"Be of good chere man for I sawe ryght nowe a rodde made of wythye for the, garnysshed with knottes, it wolde do a boy good to loke vpon it.

"A bussh.e.l.l of whete was holde at xii. pens.

"A gallon of swete wyne is at viii. pens in London.

"A gallon of ale is at a peny and ferdynge.

"I warne the fro hens forthe medle not with my bokes. Thou blurrest and blottest them, as thou were a bletchy sowter."

Such bits as these were decidedly worth extracting, yet Dibdin, with the very copy of the book from which they are derived before him, let them pa.s.s. In this volume Whittinton takes occasion to speak in eulogistic terms of Sir Thomas More.

Of the _Lucubrations_ the most interesting portion to an English reader will be the

"_To arraye or_ _To backbyte._ The goute.

_to dyght._ Detraho Arthesis Orno Detracto Arthtica pa.s.sio Vestio Obtrecto Morbus articularis Amicio Maledico Chiragra Induo Carpo Podagra Como &c. &c. &c.

Colo

_An alyen or_ _To playe the_ _To be wode._ _outlandysshe._ _broth.e.l.l._ Seuio Alienagena Scortari Furio Peregrinus Prost.i.tui Insanio Aduena Fornicari Excandeseor Alienus Merere Bacchor Exterus Struprari _Wodnesse or_ Externus Adulterari _madnesse._ Barbarus Cohire Insania Extraneus Conc.u.mbere Seviciae &c. &c. Furor."

The copious storehouse of equivalent phrases in Latin composition shews us in what wide vogue that language was in England at this period, as there is no corresponding facility offered for persons desirous of enlarging their English vocabulary. The influence of the scholars of France, Italy, Holland, and Germany long kept our vernacular in the background, and r.e.t.a.r.ded the study of English by Englishmen; but the uprise of a taste for the French and Italian probably gave the first serious blow to the supremacy of the dead tongues, as they are called, and it became by degrees as fas.h.i.+onable for gentlemen and ladies to read and speak the languages in which Moliere and Ta.s.so wrote as the hybrid dialect in which erudite foreigners had been used to correspond and compose.

Whittinton styles himself on the t.i.tle-pages of several of his pieces _laureatus_ and _protovates Angliae_. In one place he speaks of being "primus in Anglia lauri coronam gestans," and elsewhere he professes to be _magister grammatices_. As Warton and others have speculated a good deal on the real nature and import of the dignity which this early scholar claimed in regard to the laurel crown or wreath, it may be worth noting that Wood furnishes the annexed explanation of the point:--

"In the beginning of the year 1513, he supplicated the venerable congregation of regents under the name and t.i.tle of Robert Whittington, a secular chaplain and a scholar of the art of rhetoric: that, whereas he had spent fourteen years in the study of the said art, and twelve years in the informing of boys, it might be sufficient for him that he might be laureated. This supplication being granted, he was, after he had composed an hundred verses, which were stuck up in public places, especially on the door or doors of St. Mary's Church [Oxford], very solemnly crowned, or his temples adorned with a wreath of laurel, that is, decorated in the arts of grammar and rhetoric, 4 July the same year."

The biographer of Colet is undoubtedly correct in supposing that the ancient poet-laureats.h.i.+p was nothing more than an academical degree, and that in this sense, and in no other, Skelton bore that designation, as well as Bernardus Andreas, who was tutor to Prince Arthur, elder brother of Henry VIII.

It also appears from the account of the decoration of Whittinton that he had commenced his qualification for a schoolmaster as far back as 1499, which is reconcilable with the date a.s.signed to his birth (1480).

V.

Educational tracts produced by other writers--_Parvula_--Holt's _Milk for Children_--Horman's _Vulgaria_ and its singular curiosity and value--The author's literary quarrel with Whittinton--The contemporary foreign teachers--Specimen of the Grammar of Guarini of Verona (1470)--Vestiges of the literature current at Oxford in the beginning of the sixteenth century--The printed works of Johannes de Garlandia.

I. Of independent tracts intended for the use of our early schools, there were several either anonymous or written by persons whom we do not recognise as writers of more than a single production.

In the former category is placeable the small piece published three or four times by Wynkyn de Worde about 1509, under the t.i.tle of _Parvula_ or _Longe Parvula_. It is a series of rules for translation and other exercises in the form of question and answer, thus:--

"Q. What shall thou do whan thou hast an englysshe to make in latyn?

"A. I shal reherse myne englysshe ones, twyes, or thryes, and loke out my pryncypal, & aske ? questyon, who or what."

A second publication is the _Milk for Children_ of John Holt, of Magdalen College, Oxford, who had the honour of numbering among his pupils Sir Thomas More. One of the most interesting points about the little book to us nowadays is that it is accompanied by some Latin hexameters and pentameters and an epigram in the same language by More. The latter has the air of having been sent to Holt, and inserted by him with the heading which occurs before it, where the future Chancellor is termed "disertus adolescentulus."

A decided singularity of this volume is the quaint device of the author for impressing his precepts on those who read his pages or attended his academy by arranging the cases and declensions on woodcuts in the shape of outstretched hands.

Besides his _Milk for Children_ and the _Parvulorum Inst.i.tutio_, to the latter of which I have already referred, Holt appears to me the most likely person to have compiled the tract called _Accidentia ex Stanbrigiana Collectione_, a small grammatical manual based on that of his predecessor or even colleague at Magdalen School; and this may be the work to which Knight points where he says that Holt put forth an Accidence and Grammar concurrently with his other tract, though the biographer of Dean Colet errs in placing Stanbridge after Holt in chronological sequence.

Another of the miscellaneous unofficial pieces, answering very nearly to the mediaeval _Nominale_, has no other t.i.tle than _Os, Facies, mentum_, and is a Latin poem descriptive of the human form, first printed in 1508, with an interlinear English gloss. It begins thus:--

a mouthe a face a chyne a toth a throot a tonge Os facies mentu dens guttur lingua a berde a browe abrye a forhede teples a lype Barba supercilium ciliu frons tepora labru roffe of the mouth palatum

There is nothing, of course, on the one hand, recondite, or, on the other, very edifying in this; but it is a sample of the method pursued in these little ephemerides nearly four centuries ago.

II. The comparative study of Latin and English acquired increased prominence under the Tudors; and in addition to the regular text-books compiled by such men as Stanbridge and Whittinton, there is quite a small library of pieces designed for educational purposes, and framed on a similar model. Doubtless these were in many cases accepted in the schools on an equal footing with the productions of the masters themselves, or the latter may have had a hand, very possibly, in those which we have to treat as anonymous.

Between the commencement and middle of the sixteenth century, during the reigns of the first and second Tudors, there were several of these unclaimed and unidentified compilations, such as the _Grammatica Latino-Anglica, Tractatus de octo orationis partibus_, and _Brief Rules of the Regiment or construction of the Eight Parts of Speech, in English and Latin_, 1537.

The _Introductorium linguae Latinae_ by W. H. may perhaps be ascribed to William Horman, of whom we shall have more to say; and there are also in the category of works which had no particular width or duration of currency the _Gradus Comparationum_ of Johannes Bellomayus, and the _Regulae Informationis_ of John Barchby.

These, and others, again, of which all trace has at present disappeared, were employed in common with the regular series, constantly kept in print, of Whittinton and Stanbridge, prior to the rise of the great public seminaries, many of which, as it will be my business to shew, took into use certain compilations supposed to be specially adapted to their requirements.