put the preposition a before all ablatives. This was simplified into the blunder of putting it before none, and teaching boys, e.g. that Domino alone was Latin for 'by a lord.' The old grammar had an optative mood with utinam (Utinam sim, I pray God I be'; Utinam essem, 'Would God I were,' &c.), and a subjunctive with cum (cum sim, when I am,' &c.). These gave place to the mysterious announcement of the Eton Grammar, 'The subjunctive mood is declined like the potential.' The old book has, besides Lily's Carmen de Moribus, the Apostles' Creed, &c., in Latin verse. The following classical version of the Lord's Prayer is curious, and reminds one of Renaissance architecture : : O Pater omnipotens, clarique habitator Olympi, Da nobis hodie panem, et nos exime noxæ, Nec sine tentando Stygius nos opprimat Error: Amen. Our Lord's command, 'Go teach all nations,' is thus rendered: : Ite per extremas, ô vos mea viscera, gentes; Inque Patris, Natique et Flatus nomine Sancti COLET. From Joannis Coleti theologi, olim Decani Divi Pauli, editio, una cum quibusdam G. Lilii Grammatices Rudimentis, &c. Antuerpiæ 1530.' After the accidence of the eight parts of speech, he says: Of these eight parts of speech, in order well construed, be made reasons and sentences, and long orations. But how and in what manner, and with what constructions of words, and all the varieties, and diversities, and changes in Latin speech (which be innumerable), if any man will know, and by that knowledge attain to understand Latin books, and to speak and to write clean Latin, let him, above all, busily learn and read good Latin authors of chosen poets and orators, and note wisely how they wrote and spake; and study alway to follow them, desiring none other rules but their examples. For in the beginning men spake not Latin because such rules were made, but, contrariwise, because men spake such Latin, upon that followed the rules, and were made. That is to say, Latin speech was before the rules, and not the rules before the Latin speech. Wherefore, well beloved masters and teachers of grammar, after the parts of speech sufficiently known in our schools, read and expound plainly unto your scholars, good authors, and show to them [in] every word, and in every sentence, what they shall note and observe, warning them busily to follow and do like both in writing and in speaking; and be to them your own self also, speaking with them the pure Latin very present, and leave the rules; for reading of good books, diligent information of learned 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. The British Museum copy of this curious little book is bound up with a 'Rudimenta Grammatices' for Ipswich, and is catalogued under Wolsey. I find the above passage is given in Knight's Life of Colet,' and is referred to by Mr. Seebohm. 1 MULCASTER. Richard Mulcaster, who, in the second half of the sixteenth century, was the first head-master of Merchant Tailors' School, and in 1596 became head-master of St. Paul's School, was a celebrated man in his day, and was highly esteemed by Bishop Andrews, who had been his pupil, and always kept a portrait of him hung up in his study. Mulcaster has left us two curious books on education, the 'Positions,' and the 'Elementarie.' The following defence of the use of English by the learned, is from the latter: : Is it not a marvellous bondage to become servants to one tongue, for learning's sake, the most part of our time, with loss of most time, whereas we may have the very same treasure in our own tongue with the gain of most time? our own bearing the joyful title of our liberty and freedom, the Latin tongue remembering us of our thraldom and bondage? I love Rome, but London better; I favour Italy, but England more: I honour the Latin, but I worship the English. I honour foreign tongues, but wish my own to be partaker of their honour. Knowing them, I wish my own tongue to resemble their grace. I confess their furniture, and wish it were ours. . The diligent labour of learned countrymen did so enrich those tongues, and not the tongues themselves; though they proved very pliable, as our tongue will prove, I dare assure it, of knowledge, if our learned countrymen will put to their labour. And why not, I pray you, as well in English as either Latin or any tongue else? Will ye say it is needless ? sure that will not hold. If loss of time, while ye be pilgrims to learning, by lingering about tongues be no argument of need; if lack of sound skill while the tongue distracteth sense more than half to itself, and that most of all in a simple student or a silly wit, be no argument of need, then ye say somewhat which pretend no need. But because we needed not to lose any time unless we listed, if we had such a vantage, in the course of study, as we now lose while we travail in tongues; and because our understanding also were most full in our natural speech, though we know the foreign exceedingly well-methink necessity itself doth call for English, whereby all that gaiety may be had at home which makes us gaze so much at the fine stranger. Among various objections to the use of English which he answers, he comes to this one : But will ye thus break off the common conference with the learned foreign? To this his answer is not very forcible :- The conference will not cease while the people have cause to interchange dealings, and without the Latin it may well be continued: as in some countries the learneder sort and some near cousins to the Latin itself do already wean their pens and tongues from the use of the Latin, both in written discourse and spoken disputation into their own natural, and yet no dry nurse being so well appointed by the milch nurse's help. Further on he says: The Emperor Justinian said, when he made the Institutes of force, that the students were happy in having such a foredeal [i.e. APPENDIX. 303 advantage-German Vortheil] as to hear him at once, and not to wait four years first. And doth not our languaging hold us back four years and that full, think you? [But this is not all.] Our best understanding is in our natural tongue, and all our foreign learning is applied to our use by means of our own: and without the application to particular use, wherefore serves learning?.. [As for dishonouring antiquity], if we must cleave to the eldest and not the best, we should be eating acorns and wearing old Adam's pelts. But why not all in English, a tongue of itself both deep in conceit and frank in delivery? I do not think that any language, be it whatsoever, is better able to utter all arguments either with more pith or greater plainness than our English tongue is. It is our accident which restrains our tongue, and not the tongue itself, which will strain with the strongest and stretch to the furthest, for either government if we were conquerors, or for cunning if we were treasurers; not any whit behind either the subtil Greek for couching close, or the stately Latin for spreading fair. There is much more in the same strain, but I have already quoted enough to show how vigorously a learned man and a schoolmaster in the sixteenth century took the side of the vernacular against the Latin language. The Elementarie' now, of course, a scarce book. There are two copies of it in the British Museum, but none that I have been able to discover of the 'Positions.' is WORDS AND THINGS. This antithesis between words and things which constantly occurs in educational literature, from the sixteenth century onward, is not very exact. Sometimes the antithesis so expressed is really between the material world and abstract ideas. In this case the study of things which affect the senses is opposed to the study of grammar, logic, rhetoric, &c. Sometimes by words is understood the expression of ideas in different languages, and by things the ideas themselves. This is the antithesis of those who depreciate linguistic study, and say that it is better to acquire fresh ideas than various ways of expressing the same idea. Of course it may be shown, that linguistic study does more for us than merely giving us various ways of expressing ideas, but I will not here discuss the matter. Besides the disputants who use one or other of these antitheses, many of those who find fault with the attention bestowed on words in education, mean generally words learned by rote, and not connected with ideas at all. Several of our greatest writers have declared in one sense or other against 'words.' First, both in time and importance, we have Milton : The end of all learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love Him, to imitate Him, to be like Him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith, makes up the highest perfection. But because our understanding cannot in this body found itself but on sensible things, nor arrive so clearly to the knowledge of God, and things invisible as by orderly conning over the visible and inferior creature, the same method is necessarily to be followed in all discreet teaching. And seeing every nation affords not experience and tradition enough for all kinds of learning, therefore we are chiefly taught the language of those people who have at any time been most industrious after wisdom: so that language is but the instrument conveying to us things useful to be known. And though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet if he have not studied solid things in them, as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man, as any yeoman or tradesman completely wise in his mother dialect only.'* Soon after we find Cowley complaining of the loss which children make of their time at most schools, employing or rather casting away, six or seven years in the learning of words only; and he designs a school in which things should be taught together with language. (Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy.) Both Milton and Cowley wished that boys should read such Latin books as would *Tract to Hartlib. |