PREFACE.

"AFTER the child hath learned perfectly the eight parts of speech, let him then learn the right joining together of substantives with adjectives, the noun with the verb, the relative with the antecedent. And in learning farther his syntaxis, by mine advice, he shall not use the common order in common schools, for making of Latines: whereby the child commonly learneth, first, an evil choice of words1 (and right choice of words, saith Caesar, is the foundation of eloquence); then a wrong placing of words; and, lastly, an ill framing of the sentence, with a perverse judgment, both of words and sentences. These faults, taking once root in youth, be never, or hardly plucked away in age. Moreover, there is no one thing, that hath more, either dulled the wits, or taken away the will of children from learning, than the care they have to satisfy their masters in making of Latines.

"For the scholar is commonly beat for the making, when the master were more worthy to be beat for the mending, or rather marring of the same; the master many times being as ignorant as the child, what to say properly and fitly to the matter.

"Two schoolmasters have set forth in print, either of them a book of such kind of Latines, Horman and Whittington. A

1 Cicero, Brutus, c. 72, where it is said of Caesar" qui etiam in maximis occupationibus quum ad te ipsum (inquit, in me intuens) de ratione loquendi accuratissime scripserit, primoque in libro dixerit verborum delectum originem esse eloquentiae," &c. Compare Suetonius, Caesar, 56. 9 I have formerly seen Mr. Horman's book, who was master of Eton school. The book itself could be of no great use, for, as I remember, 'twas only a collection of single sentences, without order or method, put into Latine. (Upton's note.)

a

child shall learn of the better of them, that which another day, if he be wise and come to judgment, he must be fain to unlearn again. There is a way touched in the3 first book of Cicero de Oratore, which wisely brought into schools, truly taught, and constantly used, would not only take wholly away this butcherly fear in making of Latines, but would also with ease and pleasure, and in short time, as I know by good experience, work a true choice and placing of words, a right ordering of sentences, an easy understanding of the tongue, a readiness to speak, a facility to write, a true judgment both of his own and other men's doings, what tongue soever he doth use.

"The way is this. After the three concordances learned, as I touched before, let the master read unto him the Epistles of Cicero, gathered together, and chosen out by Sturmius for the capacity of children.

"First, let him teach the child cheerfully and plainly the cause and matter of the letter; then, let him construe it into English, so oft, as the child may easily carry away the understanding of it; lastly, parse it over perfectly. This done thus, let the child, by and by, both construe and parse it over again; so that it may appear, that the child doubteth in nothing that his master taught him before. After this, the child must take a paper book, and sitting in some place, where no man shall prompt him, by himself, let him translate into English his former lesson. Then showing it to his master, let the master take from him his Latin book, and pausing an hour at the least, then let the child translate his own English into Latin again in another paper book. When the child bringeth it turned into Latin, the master must compare it with Tully's book, and lay them both together;

8 De Oratore, i. 34. "Postea mihi placuit, eoque sum usus adolescens, ut summorum oratorum Graecas orationes explicarem, quibus lectis hoc assequebar ut, cum ea quae legerem Graece Latine redderem, non solum optimis verbis uterer et tamen usitatis, sed etiam exprimerem quaedam verba imitando quae nova nostris essent, dummodo essent idonea." Cicero says nothing of turning back his Latin into Greek, for his object was to improve his Latin style. The Roman writers improved their tongue chiefly by translations from the Greek; and the translation from Latin and Greek authors has been one of the modes of improving modern languages, as Gilbert Burnet remarks in the preface to his translation of More's Utopia.

and where the child doth well, either in chusing or true placing Tully's words, let the master praise him, and say, 'Here you do well.' For, I assure you, there is no such whetstone to sharpen a good wit, and encourage a will to learning, as is praise.

"But if the child miss, either in forgetting a word, or in changing a good with a worse, or misordering the sentence, I would not have the master either frown or chide with him it the child have done his diligence, and used no truandship therein. For I know by good experience, that a child shall take more profit of two faults gently warned of, than of four things rightly hit; for then the master shall have good occasion to say unto him, 'Tully would have used such a word, not this: Tully would have placed this word here, not there; would have used this case, this number, this person, this degree, this gender; he would have used this mood, this tense, this simple rather than this compound; this adverb here, not there; he would have ended the sentence with this verb, not with that noun or participle,' &c.

"In these few lines I have wrapped up the most tedious part of grammar, and also the ground of almost all the rules, that are so busily taught by the master, and so hardly learnt by the scholar in all common schools; which after this sort, the master shall teach without all error, and the scholar shall learn without great pain; the master being led by so sure a guide, and the scholar being brought into so plain and easy a way. And therefore we do not contemn rules, but we gladly teach rules, and teach them more plainly, sensibly, and orderly, than they be commonly taught in common schools. For when the master shall compare Tully's book with the scholar's translation, let the master at the first lead and teach his scholar to join the rules of his grammar book with the examples of his present lesson, until the scholar by himself be able to fetch out of his grammar every rule for every example; so as the grammar book be ever in the scholar's hand, and also used of him as a dictionary for every present use. This is a lively and perfect way of teaching of rules; where the common way used in common schools, to read the grammar alone by itself, is tedious for the master, hard for the scholar, cold and uncomfortable for them both.

"Let your scholar be never afraid to ask you any doubt, but

use discreetly the best allurements you can to encourage him to the same; least his overmuch fearing of you drive him to seek some misorderly shift; as to seek to be helped by some other book, or to be prompted by some other scholar; and so go about to beguile you much and himself more.

"With this way of good understanding the matter, plain construing, diligent parsing, daily translating, cheerful admonishing, and heedful amending of faults, never leaving behind just praise for well doing, I would have the scholar brought up withal, till he had read and translated over the first book of Epistles chosen out by Sturmius, with a good piece of a comedy of Terence also.

"All this while, by mine advice, the child shall use to speak no Latin; for, as Cicero saith in like matter, with like words, 'loquendo male loqui discunt;' and that excellent learned man, G. Budaeus, in his Greek Commentaries, sore complaineth, that when he began to learn the Latin tongue, use of speaking Latin at the table and elsewhere unadvisedly, did bring him to such an evil choice of words, to such a crooked framing of sentences, that no one thing did hurt or hinder him more all the days of his life afterwards, both for readiness in speaking and also good judgment in writing.

But

“In very deed, if children were brought up in such an house or such a school, where the Latin tongue were properly and perfectly spoken, as Tib. and C. Gracchi were brought up in their mother Cornelia's house, surely then the daily use of speaking were the best and readiest way to learn the Latin tongue. now, commonly in the best schools in England, for words, right choice is smally regarded, true property wholly neglected, confusion is brought in, barbarousness is bred up so in young wits, as afterward they be not only marred for speaking, but also

4 Cicero, Brutus, c. 58. "Sed magni interest quos quisque audiat quotidie domi, quibuscum loquatur a puero, quemadmodum patres, paedagogi, matres etiam loquantur. Legimus epistolas Corneliae matris Gracchorum : apparet filios non tam in gremio educatos quam in sermone matris." In another passage of the Brutus (c. 27) he speaks again of the care of this Roman matron about her son's education: "Fuit Gracchus diligentia Corneliae matris a puero doctus et Graecis literis eruditus; nam semper habuit exquisitos e Graecia magistros."