TUDOR SCHOOL-BOY LIFE
_All rights reserved._
[Illustration: _Juan Luis Vives._]
TUDOR
SCHOOL-BOY LIFE
THE DIALOGUES
OF
JUAN LUIS VIVES
TRANSLATED FOR THE FIRST TIME INTO ENGLISH
TOGETHER WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
FOSTER WATSON, M.A.
Professor of Education in the University College
of Wales, Aberystwyth
[Illustration]
LONDON
J. M. DENT & COMPANY
MCMVIII
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION— PAGE
J. L. Vives: A Scholar of the Renascence vii
The Significance of the _Dialogues_ of J. L. Vives xviii
The Dedication of the _School-Dialogues_ of Vives xxi
Contents of the _Dialogues_ xxii
Home and School Life xxiii
Subject-matter and Style xxxii
Popularity xxxiv
The Greek Words in Vives’ _Dialogues_ xxxv
Euphrosynus Lapinus xxxvi
Style xxxvi
Characteristics of Vives as a Writer of _Dialogues_ xxxvii
Vives as a Precursor of the Drama xxxvii
Some Educational Aspects of Vives’ _Dialogues_ xxxix
Vives’ Idea of the School xxxix
Games xli
Nature Study xliv
Wine-drinking and Water-drinking xlv
The Vernacular xlvi
The Educational Ideal of Vives xlviii
Vives’ Last _Dialogue_: The Precepts of Education l
DIALOGUES
I. SURRECTIO MATUTINA—_Getting up in the Morning_ 1
II. PRIMA SALUTATIO—_Morning Greetings_ 6
III. DEDUCTIO AD LUDUM—_Escorting to School_ 9
IV. EUNTES AD LUDUM LITERARIUM—_Going to School_ 11
V. LECTIO—_Reading_ 18
VI. REDITUS DOMUM ET LUSUS PUERILIS—_The Return Home
and Children’s Play_ 21
VII. REFECTIO SCHOLASTICA—_School Meals_ 26
VIII. GARRIENTES—_Students’ Chatter_ 39
IX. ITER ET EQUUS—_Journey on Horseback_ 55
X. SCRIPTIO—_Writing_ 65
XI. VESTITUS ET DEAMBULATIO MATUTINA—_Getting Dressed
and the Morning Constitutional_ 80
XII. DOMUS—_The New House_ 93
XIII. SCHOLA—_The School_ 101
XIV. CUBICULUM ET LUCUBRATIO—_The Sleeping-room
and Studies by Night_ 109
XV. CULINA—_The Kitchen_ 117
XVI. TRICLINIUM—_The Dining-room_ 125
XVII. CONVIVIUM—_The Banquet_ 132
XVIII. EBRIETAS—_Drunkenness_ 150
XIX. REGIA—_The King’s Palace_ 163
XX. PRINCEPS PUER—_The Young Prince_ 172
XXI. LUDUS CHARTARUM SEU FOLIORUM—_Card-playing
or Paper-games_ 185
XXII. LEGES LUDI—_Laws of Playing_ 198
XXIII. CORPUS HOMINIS EXTERIUS—_The Exterior of
Man’s Body_ 210
XXIV. EDUCATIO—_Education_ 219
XXV. PRAECEPTA EDUCATIONIS—_The Precepts of
Education_ 234
INDEX 243
INTRODUCTION
J. L. VIVES: A SCHOLAR OF THE RENASCENCE
1492–1492
Erasmus was born in 1466, Budé (Budaeus) in 1468, and Vives in 1492.
These great men were regarded by their contemporaries as a triumvirate
of leaders of the Renascence movement, at any rate outside of Italy.
The name of Erasmus is now the most generally known of the three, but
in one of his letters Erasmus stated his fear that he would be eclipsed
by Vives. No doubt Erasmus was the greatest propagandist of Renascence
ideas and the Renascence spirit. No doubt Budé, by his _Commentarii
Linguae Graecae_ (1529), established himself as the greatest Greek
scholar of the age. Equally, without doubt, it would appear to those
who have studied the educational writings of Erasmus, Budé, and Vives,
the claim might reasonably be entered for J. L. Vives that his _De
Tradendis Disciplinis_ placed him first of the three as a writer on
educational theory and practice. In 1539 Vives published at Paris the
_Linguae Latinae Exercitatio_, _i.e._, the _School Dialogues_ which are
for the first time, in the present volume, presented to the English
reader.
Juan Luis Vives was born, March 6, 1492 (the year of Columbus’s
discovery of America), at Valencia, in Spain. His father was Luis
Vives, of high-born ancestry, whose device was _Siempre vivas_.
Similarly his mother, Blanca March, was of a good family, which had
produced several poets. Vives himself has described his parents, their
relation to each other and to himself, in two passages in his _De
Institutione Feminae Christianae_ (1523). This work was translated into
English (_c._ 1540) by Richard Hyrde. As the two passages contain all
that is known of the parents, and give a short but picturesque idea of
the household relations, I transcribe them from Hyrde’s translation:
“My mother Blanca, when she had been fifteen years married unto my
father, I could never see her strive with my father. There were two
sayings that she had ever in her mouth as proverbs. When she would say
she believed well anything, then she used to say, ‘It is even as though
Luis Vives had spoken it.’ When she would say she would anything, she
used to say, ‘It is even as though Luis Vives would it.’ I have heard
my father say many times, but especially once, when one told him of a
saying of Scipio African the younger, or else of Pomponius Atticus (I
ween it were the saying of them both), that they never made agreement
with their mothers. ‘Nor I with my wife,’ said he, ‘which is a greater
thing.’ When others that heard this saying wondered upon it, and the
concord of Vives and Blanca was taken up and used in a manner for a
proverb, he was wont to answer like as Scipio was, who said he never
made agreement with his mother, because he never made debate with her.
But it is not to be much talked in a book (made for another purpose) of
my most holy mother, whom I doubt not now to have in heaven the fruit
and reward of her holy and pure living.”
Vives states that he had the intention of writing a “book of her acts
and her life,” and no one who reads the foregoing passage will be
otherwise than regretful that he failed to carry out this purpose. As
it is, we must content ourselves with another passage.[1]
“No mother loved her child better than mine did; nor any child did ever
less perceive himself loved of his mother than I. She never lightly
laughed upon me, she never cockered me; and yet when I had been three
or four days out of her house, she wist not where, she was almost sore
sick; and when I was come home, I could not perceive that ever she
longed for me. Therefore there was nobody that I did more flee, or
was more loath to come nigh, than my mother, when I was a child; but
after I came to man’s estate, there was nobody whom I delighted more to
have in sight; whose memory now I have in reverence, and as oft as she
cometh to my remembrance I embrace her within my mind and thought, when
I cannot with my body.”
Vives went to the town school of Valencia. The outlines of the
history of this school have been sketched by Dr. Rudolf Heine.[2]
The foundation of the school dates back to the time of James I. of
Aragon, when Pope Innocent IV. gave privileges to the newly founded
school in 1245. The school, Dr. Heine says, was first a _schola_, then
a _studium_, then a _gymnasium_, and in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries was known as an _academy_, the name by which Vives describes
schools in the _Colloquies_. In 1499 new statutes were drawn up for the
Valencia Academy, ordaining the teaching of grammar, logic, natural and
moral philosophy, metaphysics, canon and civil law, poetry, and “other
subjects such as the city desires and requires.”
The spirit of scholasticism reigned supreme in the Valencian Academy
when Vives was a pupil. The dominant subject of study was dialectic,
and the all-controlling method of education was the disputation. Vives
thus received a thorough drilling in dialectic and disputation. When
Vives became a convert to the Renascence interest of literature and
grammar, he was thus well prepared by his experience in the Valencian
Academy for an effective onslaught on the old disputational methods.
How deeply interwoven these methods were in the school instruction may
be seen in Vives’ own words:—
“Even the youngest scholars (_tyrones_) are accustomed never to keep
silence; they are always asserting vigorously whatever comes uppermost
in their minds, lest they should seem to be giving up the dispute.
Nor does one disputation or even two each day prove sufficient, as
for instance at dinner. They wrangle at breakfast; they wrangle
after breakfast; before supper they wrangle, and they wrangle after
supper.... At home they dispute, out of doors they dispute. They
wrangle over their food, in the bath, in the sweating-room, in the
church, in the town, in the country, in public, in private; at all
times they are wrangling.”
The names of two of Vives’ schoolmasters are preserved, Jerome
Amiguetus and Daniel Siso. Amiguetus was a thorough-going scholastic,
teaching by the old mediæval methods, and a stalwart opponent of the
Renascence. Spain generally resisted the Revival of Learning, and
wished to have a ban placed even on the works of Erasmus. But in the
person of Antonio Calà Harana Del Ojo, better known as Antonio de
Lebrijà (or Antonius Nebrissensis), a doughty champion of classicism
appeared and raised a Spanish storm. In 1492, the year of Vives’
birth, Antonio published a grammar and a dictionary, and had the
hardihood to present his learning in the Spanish language. About 1506
it was proposed to introduce Antonio’s _Introductiones Latinae_ into
the Valencian Academy. This suggestion was strenuously opposed by
Amiguetus. With the enthusiasm of a school-boy of fourteen years of
age, Vives espoused the side of his teacher, and by declamation and by
pen supported the old methods. But when he published his _De Tradendis
Disciplinis_ (1531) more than a quarter of a century afterwards,
he paid Lebrijà the praise which as a school-boy he had withheld,
recognising his varied and broad reading, his intimate knowledge of
classical writers, his glorious scholarship, and his modesty in only
claiming to be a grammarian.
Of Vives’ school-life little more can be gathered, except indeed
what in his writings may be surmised to be the reminiscences of his
own boy-life. We find glimpses of this kind in the _Dialogues_. For
example, in the twenty-second Dialogue—which expounds the laws of
school games—he describes his native town and early environment.
In 1509 Vives went to Paris to continue his studies. Amongst the
teachers under whom he studied here was the Spanish John Dullard. Vives
tells us that Dullard used to say: Quanto eris melior grammaticus,
tanto pejus dialecticus et theologus![3] Nevertheless, Paris had
awakened Vives to the unsatisfactory nature of a one-sided training
in dialectic. In 1512 he proceeded to Bruges. He became tutor in a
Spanish family, by name Valdaura. One of the daughters, Margaret, whom
he taught, he afterwards (in 1524) married. He speaks of the mother of
the family, Clara Cervant, in the highest terms, and regarded her—next
to his own mother—as the highest example of womanly devotion to duty he
had ever known, for she had nursed her husband, it is said, from their
marriage day for many years through a severe and obstinate illness.
Whilst at Bruges his thoughts gathered strength in the direction of
the Renascence. In 1514 he suggests that Ferdinand of Spain would do
well to get Erasmus as tutor in his family, for he says Erasmus is
known to him personally, and is all that is dear and worthy. It is thus
certain that Vives was confirmed by Erasmus in the study of classical
literature as transcending all the old mediæval educational disciplines.
From 1512 onwards, with breaks, Vives’ main quarters were in Flanders,
at Bruges or Louvain, at the former of which was the residence of many
of his Spanish compatriots. One of these breaks of residence was in
1514 at Paris, another at Lyons in 1516. In 1518 Vives was at Lyons,
where he was entrusted with the education of William de Croy, Cardinal
designate and Archbishop of Toledo. The course of instruction which
he gave was founded on a thorough reading of the ancient authors
and instruction in rhetoric and philosophy. At Lyons, too, Vives
met Erasmus. “Here we have with us,” writes Erasmus in one of his
letters, “Luis Vives, who has not passed his twenty-sixth year of
age. Young as he is, there is no part of philosophy in which he does
not possess a knowledge which far outstrips the mass of students. His
power of expression in speech and writing is such as I do not know
any one who can be declared his equal at the present time.” In 1519
Vives was at Paris, where he became personally acquainted with the
great William Budé. Of him Vives, in one of his letters to Erasmus,
writes, “What a man! One is astounded at him whether we consider his
knowledge, his character, or his good fortune.” But more interesting
to English readers, is a letter about this time (1519) of Sir Thomas
More on seeing some of the published work of Vives himself. He says:
“Certainly, my dear Erasmus, I am ashamed of myself and my friends, who
take credit to ourselves for a few brochures of a quite insignificant
kind, when I see a young man like Vives producing so many well-digested
works, in a good style, giving proof of an exquisite erudition. How
great is his knowledge of Greek and Latin; greater still is the way in
which he is versed in branches of knowledge of the first rank. Who in
this respect is there who surpasses Vives in the quantity and depth
of his knowledge? But what is most admirable of all is that he should
have acquired all this knowledge so as to be able to communicate it to
others by instruction. For who instructs more clearly, more agreeably,
or more successfully than Vives?”
At this point may be stated the chief works which Vives so far had
written:—
1507. The boyish _Declamationes in Antonium Nebrissensem_
(not extant).
1509. _Veritas Fucata_, in which he designates the
contents of the classics as “food for demons.”
1514. _Jesu Christi Triumphus._
1518. _De Initiis, Sectis et Laudibus Philosophiae_,
perhaps the first modern work on the history of
philosophy.
1519. _In Pseudo-dialecticos._ This famous treatise pours
its invective and indignation against the formalistic
disputational dialectic of the schools of Paris, and
marks Vives’ complete break with scholastic mediævalism,
and his acceptance of the Renascence material of
knowledge and methods of inquiry.
1519. _Pompeius Fugiens._
1519. _Praelectio in Quartum Rhetoricorum in Herennium._
1519. The Dialogue called _Sapiens_.
1519. _Praelectio in Convivia Philelphi._
1519. _Censura de Aristotelis Operibus._
1519. Edited _Somnium Scipionis_, the introduction to
which was afterwards known as _Somnium Vivis_. Vives here
regards Plato as the herald of Christianity.
1520. _Sex Declamationes._
1520. _Aedes Legum._ In this book Vives made important
suggestions founded on Roman law for the improvement of
law in his own times.
At the beginning of 1521 Vives’ old pupil and patron, Cardinal de
Croy, died. It was at this time he took in hand his great work, the
commentary on St. Augustine’s _Civitas Dei_. Erasmus suggested the
work to him, so that Vives might do for St. Augustine what Erasmus
himself had done for the works of St. Jerome. Vives’ edition of
St. Augustine’s _Civitas Dei_ was dedicated to King Henry VIII. of
England. The writing of this commentary was a huge labour, and it
marks two crises in Vives’ life—firstly, he fell ill with a tertian
fever, and, secondly, he gave up his teaching of youths, work which he
had hitherto strenuously pursued along with his literary labours. In
1522 he wrote a pleading letter to Erasmus, begging him forgive his
slowness in despatching the _Civitas Dei_. In it he confesses that
“school-keeping has become in the highest degree repulsive,” and that
he would rather do anything else than any longer continue “_inter has
sordes et pueros_.” It appears that at the time Vives was giving three
lectures daily in the University of Louvain as well as teaching boys.
In the autumn of 1522 Vives came to England for a short visit, and
in the following year he was offered the Readership in Humanity
in the University of Oxford. Whilst at Oxford he lived in Corpus
Christi College. He had for patron Queen Catharine of Aragon, to
whom he dedicated his _De Institutione Feminae Christianae_, which
was published in 1523. Vives was entrusted with the direction of the
Princess Mary (afterwards Queen Mary I.), for whose use was written
_De Ratione Studii Puerilis ad Catharinam Reginam Angliae_, 1523. In
the same year Vives also wrote _De Ratione Studii Puerilis ad Carolum
Montjoium Guilielmi Filium_. These two tractates present an excellent
account of the best Renascence views on education, in Tudor times, of a
girl and a boy respectively.
The _De Institutione Feminae Christianae_ already mentioned is one of
the earliest and most important Tudor documents on women’s education.
It marks the transition from the old mediæval tradition of the
cloistral life as the highest womanly ideal to that of training for
domestic life, in which the mother should be distinguished by the
deepest culture of piety and all the intellectual education conducive
to religious development. It may be described as typical of Catholic
Puritanism in the education of women in the Tudor times.
From 1522 onwards, till after the divorce of Catharine of Aragon, Vives
appears to have spent a portion of the year in England, and to have
earned enough money to keep him for the rest of the year in Flanders
or elsewhere, where he continued his literary career. Although he
sometimes lectured in Oxford his time seems principally to have been
spent at the court of Henry VIII. and his wife, Catharine. He had times
of great weariness in England. He writes in one of his letters of his
London life: “I have as sleeping place a narrow den, in which there
is no chair, no table. Around it are the quarters of others, in which
so constant and great noise prevails that it is impossible to settle
one’s mind to anything, however much one may have the will or need. In
addition, I live a distance from the royal palace, and in order not to
lose the whole day by often going and coming back, from early morning
till late evening I have no time at home. When I have taken my mid-day
meal I cannot once turn round in my narrow and low room, but must waltz
round and round as on a cheese. Study is out of the question in such
circumstances. I have to take great care of my health, for if I became
ill they would cast me like a mangy dog on a dung-hill. Whilst eating
I read, but I eat little, for with so much sitting I cannot digest, as
I should do if I walked about. For the rest, life here is such that I
cannot hide my ennui. About the only thing I can do, is to do nothing.”
Vives enjoyed allowances both from the king and from the queen, and he
had other sources of earnings. In 1524 he was back in Flanders to marry
his pupil Margaret Valdaura. Soon after his marriage, which appears to
have been a very happy one—though with Vives’ frequent travelling the
two were often separated—he wrote one of his widest circulated works,
the _Introductio ad Sapientiam_, which presents the grounds of the
Christian religion and the right fashioning of life by intelligence and
temperance.
Vives next turned his attention to great European military contests,
and was a warm advocate of international peace between Christian
powers together with combined warfare against the Turks. These views
he elaborated in 1526 in his _De Europae Dissidiis et Bello Turico_.
More remarkable still, in the same year, was his treatise, _De
Subventione Pauperum_, in which he is the first advocate of national
state provision for the poor. He would require those who are poor by
their own fault to submit to compulsory labour, and even to help in the
provision for other poor people.
In 1528 Vives wrote his _De Officio Mariti_, a companion volume to the
_De Institutione Feminae Christianae_. In this year he had to leave
England for good, since Henry VIII. was determined to divorce Catharine
of Aragon. Vives was a strong supporter of Catharine. It is said that
the queen wished to have Vives as her counsel before the judges on the
case, but Henry cast Vives in prison for six weeks, and only freed him
on the condition that he left the court and England. Vives retreated to
Belgium.
In 1529 Vives wrote the _De Concordia et Discordia in Humano Genero_,
another large-hearted discourse on the value of peace. In 1531 appeared
his great pædagogical work, the _De Disciplinis_.[4] In 1539 he wrote
the _De Anima et Vita_, one of the first modern works on psychology,
and the _De Veritate Fidei Christianae_. And in the same year appeared
the _Linguae Latinae Exercitatio_ or the _School Dialogues_. Vives died
May 6, 1540.
The _De Disciplinis_, with the two divisions _De Causis Corruptarum
Artium_ and the _De Tradendis Disciplinis_, and the _Exercitatio_ are
the great pædagogical works of Vives, the first a most comprehensive
theoretical work of education, probably the greatest Renascence book
on education. The _Exercitatio_ is perhaps the most interesting
school-text-book of the age.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE _DIALOGUES_ OF J. L. VIVES
THE POVERTY OF THE VERNACULAR LITERATURE BEFORE THE TUDOR PERIOD
It is difficult to realise the position of the student of literature in
England in the first half of the sixteenth century. The whole wealth
of the Elizabethan writers, and all their successors in the Ages of
Milton, of Dryden and Pope, of Samuel Johnson, of Charles Lamb, of
Shelley, Byron, and Wordsworth, and the large range of Victorian
literature, all this had to come. The modern man, therefore, must
confess that it was not to English literature that the Tudor student
could look for the material of education. Even if it be justifiable
to claim that modern literature is a more fruitful study than ancient
literature, for the ordinary man, the question remains: How was the
ordinary educated man to be trained in the earlier Tudor Age, when the
time of great modern literature was “not yet”?
Before we can understand the function served by a Latin text-book of
boys’ dialogues like the work of Vives translated in this volume, we
must, therefore, first realise the poverty of the vernacular literature
of periods anterior to the sixteenth century, and the consequent
delight of scholars in finding Latin and Greek literature ready to hand.
“There is every reason to believe that the English language, before
the invention of printing, was held by learned or literary men in very
little esteem. In the library of Glastonbury Abbey, which bids fair
to have been one of the most extensive in the kingdom in 1248, there
were but four books in English, and those upon religious subjects, all
beside _vetusta et inutilia_. We have not a single historian in English
prose before the reign of Richard II., when John Trevisa translated
the _Polychronicon_ of Randulph Higden. Boston of Bury, who seems
to have consulted all the monasteries in England, does not mention
one author who had written in English; and Bale, at a later period,
has comparatively but an insignificant number; nor was Leland so
fortunate as to find above two or three English books in the monastic
and other libraries which he rummaged and explored under the King’s
Commission.”[5]
The classical writers of Greece and Rome, however, have always drawn
towards them a large proportion of the well-trained scholarly men of
each generation. _Before the vernacular literature existed, necessarily
it was to the ancient classical languages that the literary scholar
turned._ In Greek, Plato and Aristotle had written; so, too, Aeschylus,
Sophocles, Euripides, as dramatists, and the historians Thucydides,
Herodotus, Xenophon, and the “divine poet” Homer. Amongst the Latin
prose writers were Cicero, Terence, Livy; and amongst the poets, Horace
and Vergil. On any showing, such classical writers hold their own high
place even if brought into comparison with the greatest of the moderns.
The intellectual discipline received by reading their works in the
original Greek and Latin had its value. Hence the sixteenth-century
English student was trained on those ancient Greek and Latin authors,
all unconscious of the great awakening that was to be of modern English
literature, into which the twentieth-century reader so lightly enters.
The whole of the well-educated, scholarly, learned men of the sixteenth
century, in England and on the continent of Europe, all entered into
the _same_ classical heritage. They all honoured the same great names
of Greek and Latin authors. Latin was the learned language, as the
language of Latin literature, as well as the starting-point for the
study of Greek. Latin, too, was spoken in every country amongst the
learned, and even amongst many who were not regarded as learned. Latin
was, it is to be clearly understood, not only a dead language, but
a current, live language. It is said that beggars begged in Latin;
shopkeepers and innkeepers, and indeed all who had to deal with the
general public of travellers, are credited with a knowledge of some
colloquial Latin. Church services, of course, were all in Latin, and
youths were taught for the most part in the chantries of the churches,
and even elementary education provided sufficient knowledge of Latin to
enable the pupil to help the priest to say mass, _i.e._, a minimum of
Latin and of music.
Latin, therefore, at least occupied the place in the Mediæval Ages
which French holds to-day as an international language. When Laurentius
Valla, about 1440, wrote his epoch-making _Elegantiae Latinae Linguae_,
his aim was not to induce people to speak Latin—all well-conducted
persons, of course, did so—but to give them the facilities for speaking
_correct and well-chosen_ Latin phrases, such as Cicero or Terence
would have used. The complaint of the writers of the Renascence times
was not that students and the ordinary educated people did not speak
Latin, but that they spoke it so inaccurately that the Latin was spoken
differently, not only in pronunciation but also in construction, in
different countries, and even in different parts of the same country.
Text-book after text-book was written to expose and correct the
barbarisms in Latin which had become current. For this reason, in our
own country, Dean Colet enjoined the reading of good literature in
Latin and Greek. Colet requires “that filthiness and all such abusion
which the later blind world brought in, which much rather may be called
blotterature than literature,” shall be absent from the famous school
of St. Paul’s, which he founded.
The Renascence influence, then, attempted on the educational side to
bring the pupils of the schools away from the jargon and barbarism
of current Latin to the classical Latin of Terence and Cicero. The
Renascence leaders had the courage to hope to bring this reform even
into the ordinary conversation of educated men and women in their
speaking of Latin.
Into this aim Vives entered with the keenest enthusiasm. This will
become evident by reference to the Dedication of the _Dialogues_ which
I give in full.
THE DEDICATION OF THE SCHOOL-DIALOGUES OF VIVES:
“Vives to Philip, son and heir to the august Emperor Charles, with all
good will.
“Very great are the uses of the Latin language both for speaking and
thinking rightly. For that language is as it were the treasure-house of
all erudition, since men of great and outstanding minds have written on
every branch of knowledge in the Latin speech. Nor can any one attain
to the knowledge of these subjects except by first learning Latin.
For which reason I shall not grudge, though engaged in the pursuit of
higher researches, to set myself to help forward to some degree the
elementary studies of youth. I have, in these Dialogues, written a
first book of practice in speaking the Latin language as suitable as
possible, I trust, to boys. It has seemed well to dedicate it to thee,
Boy-Prince, both because of thy father’s goodwill to me, in the highest
degree, and also because I shall deserve well of my country, that is,
Spain, if I should help in the forming of sound morals in thy mind.
For our country’s health is centred in thy soundness and wisdom. But
thou wilt hear more fully and often enough on these matters from John
Martinius Siliceus, thy teacher.”
It will be noted that the expressed aim of Vives is to help boys
_who are learning to speak the Latin language_. For this purpose,
Vives realised that the method must be conversational, that the style
of speech must be clear, correct, and as far as possible based on
classical models, and that the subject-matter must consist of topics
interesting to children and connected with their daily life. The Prince
Philip, to whom the Dialogues are dedicated, it should be noted, was
afterwards Philip II., the consort of the English Queen Mary I.,
daughter of Catharine of Aragon.
CONTENTS OF THE DIALOGUES
The German historian of Latin School-Dialogues, Dr. Bömer, speaks of
the characteristic power of Vives in introducing, in relatively short
space, the ordinary daily life of boys, and tracking it into the
smallest corners. “If a boy is putting on his clothes, we learn every
single article of clothing, and all the topics of toilettes and the
names of each object (Dialogues I. and XI.). When two school-boys pay
a visit to a stranger’s house, we have shown to us its whole inner
arrangement by an expert guide (XII.). Interesting observations are
made on the different parts of the human body by a painter, Albert
Dürer (XXIII.). With a banquet as the occasion, we are introduced to
the equipment of a dining-room (XVI.), with ordinary kinds of foods
and drinks (XVII.), and if we like we can betake ourselves to the
cook in the kitchen and watch the direction of operations (XV.). We
are told in another Dialogue (XVIII.) of a man’s fear to go home to
his wife after too liberal a banquet, and how she would entertain him
with longer homilies than those of St. Chrysostom. When a company of
scholars wish to make a distant excursion, all kinds of horses and
carriages, with their trappings, are presented to the notice of the
reader (IX.).”[6] Then, to show us life under the most favourable of
circumstances, Vives gives a dialogue on the King’s Palace (XIX.).
Whilst the general environments of boys’ lives are thus pourtrayed in
considerable detail, Vives is particularly careful to show boys the
general features and significance of home and school life, and regards
it as part of his duty to expound, in the last two dialogues, some
general guiding principles of education for the boys, their teachers,
and readers of the book to ponder over.
HOME AND SCHOOL LIFE
The first dialogue treats of getting up in the morning. The girl
Beatrice tries to rouse the two boys Emanuel and Eusebius, the latter
of whom makes the excuse, “I seem to have my eyes full of sand,” to
which Beatrice replies, “That is always your morning song.” Then the
boys dress. Beatrice enjoins them, “Kneel down before this image of our
Saviour and say the Lord’s Prayer, etc. Take care, my Emanuel, that you
think of nothing else while you are praying.” The interchange of wit
between the boys and the maid is an interesting picture of child-life.
In the second dialogue, after family morning greetings, which include
playing with the little dog Ruscio, the father teaches his
little boy the difference between the little dog and a little boy.
“What have you,” he asks his child, “in you why you should become a man
and not he?” He suggests to him that the difference really is contained
in the magic word “school.” The boy says: “I will go, father, with all
the pleasure in the world.” Whereupon the boy’s elder sister gets him
his little satchel and puts him up his breakfast (_i.e._, lunch) in
it. The father takes the boy to the school, and (in III.) discusses
with a neighbour the comparative merits of the schoolmasters Varro and
Philoponus. The father is told that Philoponus has the _smaller_ number
of boys, and at once decides: “I should prefer him!” Then as Philoponus
comes into view, he turns to his boy, saying: “Son, this is as it
were the laboratory for the formation of men, and Philoponus is the
artist-educator. Christ be with you, Master! Uncover your head, my boy,
and bow your right knee.... Now stand up!”
_Philoponus._ May your coming to us be a blessing to all!
What may be your business?
_Father._ I bring you this boy of mine for you to make of
him a man from the beast.
_Philoponus._ This shall be my earnest endeavour. He
shall become a man from the beast, a fruitful and good
creature out of a useless one. Of that have no doubt.
_Father._ What is the charge for the instruction you give?
_Philoponus._ If the boy makes good progress it will be
little; if not, a good deal.
_Father._ That is acutely and wisely said, as is all you
say. We share the responsibility then; you to instruct
zealously, I to recompense your labour richly.
It will thus be seen that the idea of co-operation and consultation
of parents and teachers is no new one.[7] But the enthusiasm of the
parent, depicted by Vives, to recompense the teacher “richly” can
hardly be said to have continued, if it existed in the Tudor age,
outside of Vives’ generous heart.
The next dialogue (IV.) shows how boys loitered on the way to school,
their difference in powers, and in the practice of observations and
the self-training of the senses and wits in the streets, such as made
R. L. Stevenson wonder if the truant from school did not gain more by
his self-chosen though casual wanderings than if he had gone orderly to
school.
An account of actual school-work in the subjects of reading (V.) and
writing (X.) is given, and the _raison d’être_ of school instruction
in these subjects suggested. The boys go home (VI.) and a most
pleasing picture is given of home-life, with the mother, the boys, the
girls, and the serving maiden, introducing children’s games and the
interference of meals with games.
Dialogue VII. deals with school-meals, and we plunge at once right
into the heart of school interests and life. The sort of foods and
drinks, the different kinds of banquets and feastings, mentioned in
older writers, the preparation of the table, moderation in eating and
drinking, the necessity of cleanliness in all the stages of a meal,
including washing up, become topics of the dialogue as it proceeds.
Then comes the fitting device of introducing a guest to the boys’
table, of another boy, a Fleming from Bruges. He is asked if he
has brought his knife. He has not. “This is a wonder!” exclaims an
interlocutor. “A Fleming without a knife, and he too a Brugensian,
where the best knives are made!” The conversation proceeds _in Latin_,
since boys were required to speak _in and out_ of school in Latin, at
least in all self-respecting establishments.
The Brugensian boy has been under John Theodore Nervius, and this
becomes the occasion for a compliment to that schoolmaster. Bruges,
too, we have seen, was the town in which Vives himself spent a
considerable portion of his adult life. He does not hesitate to
introduce himself, humorously, into this dialogue on school-boys’ meals.
_Master._ But what is our Vives doing?
_Nepotulus._ They say he is in training as an athlete,
but not by athletics.
_Master._ What is the meaning of that?
_Nepotulus._ He is always wrestling, but not bravely
enough.
_Master._ With whom?
_Nepotulus._ With his _gout_.
_Master._ O mournful wrestler, which first of all attacks
the feet.
_Usher._ Nay, rather cruel victor, which fetters the
whole body!
In this dialogue of school-boy meals, Vives has given samples of
conversational topics, and their due treatment, in the presence of
masters and in regular daily routine. In the next dialogue (VIII.),
called “Pupils’ Chatter,” boys are out of doors, and a series of
nineteen “stories” or topics of conversation get started. The subjects
are of interest in showing the type of incidents which boys were
supposed to introduce into conversation, and though didactic in
tendency, certainly do not favour the supposition that school-boys were
supposed to be absorbed in the study of recondite classical subtleties,
or even in purely Ciceronian subjects.
Dialogue IX., “Journey on Horseback,” contains the record of what
modern educationalists call “the school journey.” The idea of studying
geography and history by taking journeys, in which instruction shall
arise naturally out of the places of interest seen in the course of
the journey, is not a new one, as is often supposed. Vittorino da
Feltre, for instance, used to take his school in the summer months
for excursions from Mantua to Goito. Vives represents his Parisian
pupil as journeying from Paris to Boulogne. The occasion of holiday
for the pupils is that Pandulphus, their teacher, has “incepted” in
the university, and having thus become a “Master of Arts” (with the
right to teach school on his own account), according to university
custom he is performing his duty of giving a great feast to the other
masters in honour of his laurels, and as a matter of fact, as these
boys recognise, is making them drunk. This dialogue of the “Journey on
Horseback” contains a full account of different kinds of locomotion.
It is especially distinguished by the love that is shown for natural
objects of the country, the river, the sweet scent of the fields, the
nightingale, and the goldfinch.
In Dialogue XIII. the school is described. Each type and grade of
scholar is discussed. Vives’ conception of a school was afterwards
followed by Milton. It was an academy, in which the pupil remained from
early years up to and including the university stage. In this dialogue
is the account of a disputation, with description of the _propugnator_
of a thesis, and several types of oppugnators.
Dialogue XIV. describes a scholar burning the midnight oil. Vives
describes the extensive preparations of the scholar for his work of
reading authors. The account is almost a supplement to Erasmus’s famous
picture of the Ciceronian scholar setting himself to his composition.
The dialogue ends with the scholar going to bed whilst one of his
attendants sings to the accompaniment of the lyre the lines of Ovid
beginning: _Somne, quies rerum, placidissime somne deorum_.
It has already been stated that Vives devoted a dialogue to an account
of the King’s Palace. Similarly, in speaking now of Vives’ treatment
of school life, careful notice should be taken of the fact that one
dialogue (XX.) is concerned with the education of the boy-prince.
This dialogue is of especial interest, since the boy-prince is Philip
himself, the son of the Emperor Charles V., the child to whom Vives
dedicates the _Dialogues_. Philip was born at Valladolid, May 21,
1527, and was therefore eleven years of age when Vives completed the
writing of the _Dialogues_ and was twelve years old when they appeared.
It will be remembered that in 1554 Philip came to England to claim as
his bride the English Queen Mary I., the “bloody” Mary, daughter of
Catharine of Aragon, the first queen-consort of Henry VIII., whose
coming to England was probably to some degree the ground of its
attraction to Vives when he paid his first visit to England, in the
autumn of 1522. It is interesting to note that Vives wrote, in 1523, a
short treatise on the education of the Princess Mary, probably at the
request of Queen Catharine of Aragon, and at any rate dedicated to that
ill-fated queen. Vives, thus, is in the remarkable position of having
prescribed, as consultant-educationalist, for the Spanish Philip in one
of his dialogues (in 1538) and for the English Mary in 1523.[8]
In this dialogue, “The Boy Prince,” are the interlocutors, Prince
Philip and the two counsellor-teachers, Morobulus and Sophobulus.
Morobulus is a fawning sycophant, who advises Philip to “ride about,
chat with the daughters of your august mother, dance, learn the art of
bearing arms, play cards or ball, leap and run.” But as for the study
of literature, why, that is for men of “holy” affairs, priests or
artisans, who want technical knowledge. Get plenty of fresh air. Philip
replies that he cannot follow all this advice without opposing his
tutors, Stunica and Siliceus. Morobulus points out that these tutors
are subjects of Philip, or at any rate of Philip’s father. Philip
observes that his father has placed them over him. Morobulus advises
resistance to them. Sophobulus urges, on the contrary, that if Philip
does not obey them, he will become a “slave of the worst order, worse
than those who are bought and sold from Ethiopia or Africa and employed
by us here.”[9]
Sophobulus then shows, by three similitudes, that safety in actions
and in the events of life depends upon knowledge and study. First, he
proposes a game in which one is elected king. “The rest are to obey
according to the rules of the game.” Let Philip be king. But Philip
inquires as to the nature of the game. If he does not know the game, he
inquires, how can he take the part of king in it?
Secondly, Philip is invited to ride the ferocious Neapolitan steed,
well known for its kicking proclivities. Eleven-year-old Philip
declines, because he has not as yet learned the art of managing a
refractory horse, and has not got the strength to master such a horse.
Thirdly, Philip is offered, and declines, the rôle of pilot of a boat,
which has lately been overturned by an unskilled helmsman.
The young prince is thus led to recognise that for playing games
rightly, for riding properly, for directing a boat safely, in all these
cases adequate knowledge and skill is necessary. He himself is led to
suggest (in true pedagogical method) that for governing his kingdom
it will be necessary for him to acquire the knowledge of the art and
skill of sound government, and that this knowledge can only be gained
by assiduous study and learning. Sophobulus leads the young prince,
further, to the recognition that helpful wisdom can be learned from
“monitors” like Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, Livy, Plutarch.
Philip asks: “How can we learn from the dead? Can the dead speak?”
“Yes,” is the reply. “These very men and others like them, departed
from this earth, will talk to you as often and as much as you like.”
Surely Vives has chosen an attractive and reasonable way of presenting
the significance of literature to the child. He uses a further
illustration in urging the study of the words and writings of wise
men. “Imagine that over the river yonder there was a narrow plank as
bridge, and that every one told you that as many as rode on horseback
and attempted thus to cross it had fallen into the water, and were in
danger of their lives, and, moreover, with difficulty they had been
dragged out half dead.... Would not, in such a case, a man seem to you
to be demented, who, taking that journey, did not get off from his
horse and escape from the danger in which the others had fallen?”
_Philip._ To be sure he would.
_Sophobulus._ And rightly. Seek now from old men, as to
what chiefly they have felt unfortunate in this life,
what negligence in themselves they most bitterly regret.
All will answer with one voice, so far as they have
learned anything, their regret is “not to have learned
more.”
In two points the young Prince Philip seems to have risen to meet
Vives’ hopes. When Philip came to England in 1554 and married Queen
Mary, he is reported to have announced that he wished to live like
an Englishman. He asked for beer at a public dinner, and “gravely
commended it as the wine of the country.” He evidently had acquired
courteous bearing. Still more clearly, in accordance with the wishes
expressed in the Dedication, is the statement of the fact that Philip
addressed in Latin a deputation of the council which he received
at Southampton, on landing, and further that it was decided that
reports of proceedings of the council should be made in Latin or
Spanish. Whether Philip had learned to speak Latin from Vives’ _School
Dialogues_ is not recorded, but it is not unlikely.
The Dedication of the _Dialogues_ shows how earnestly Vives had
sought to influence Prince Philip. The last two dialogues (XXIV. and
XXV.) endeavour to lay down sound principles of education. The boys
(and Prince Philip amongst them) who had read through the preceding
dialogues were not to be dismissed until Vives had declared to them
the whole gospel of education, as he conceived it. Learning Latin,
even to speak it eloquently and to write it accurately, is not of
itself education; even to read the sayings and writings of the wise and
experienced dead, and to listen to the exhortations and suggestions
of the noblest and most learned of living men, is not necessarily the
essence of education. The underlying impulse of the student, the roots
of his will, must be taken into account. Education is not the adornment
of mental distinctions for the sake of popularity or reputation. It is
not the acquisition of an additional charm to a particular grade of
nobility. It is no artificial appanage. It is not a class distinction.
The real argument for education is that it makes a man a _better_ man.
If you use the word better it implies the _good_. Vives shows “the
good” does not consist in riches, honours, position, or in learning
merely, but in a keen intellect, wise mature judgment, religion, piety
towards God, and in performance of duties towards one’s country,
one’s dependants, one’s parents, and in the cultivation of justice,
temperance, liberality, magnanimity, equability of mind in calamity and
brave bearing in adversity. It is in the acquisition of these qualities
(for which learning is of high service) that we get “real, solid,
noble education.” Such training to the man of court-life will bring
“true urbanity,” and make him “pleasing and dear to all. But even this
thou wilt not set at high value, but wilt have as sole care—to become
acceptable to the Eternal God.”
SUBJECT-MATTER AND STYLE
In studying a work like the _School-boy Dialogues_ of Juan Luis
Vives the modern reader is likely to be attracted much more by the
subject-matter than by the literary style of the author. Were the
chief interest in Vives’ style, it would be difficult to plead any
justification for presenting an English translation. But the fact is
that these _School Dialogues_, in the course of time, have become, as
it were, historical documents, serving a purpose which was certainly
far from being present in the mind of the author. Vives, no doubt,
wished his book to be regarded as good and pure Latinity, and would
have been hurt to the quick if he had been charged with the barbarisms
and inaccuracies which it was the very object of the book to supplant.
But as for the subject-matter, he wanted it to contain the Latin
expressions for all sorts of common _things_ which entered into the
notice of, and required mention from, the young student of Latin. Vives
is thus the forerunner of Comenius, and when he treats of subjects
such as clothes, the kitchen, the bed-chamber, dining-room, papers and
books, the exterior of the body of man, and supplies the Latin for
all the terms used in connection with these subjects, he is exactly
on Comenius’s ground in the _Janua Linguarum_ and the _Orbis Pictus_.
But Vives is to be distinguished in two ways from Comenius:—(1) he is
constantly in touch with the real interests of boys; (2) he is greatly
concerned as to his methods of expression.
It is partly because Vives’ _Dialogues_ are intrinsically attractive
that we are content to believe they are a true picture of boys’
manners, habits, and life in the Tudor period. By their realistic
sincerity the dialogues bring with them their own evidence of
unconscious reality. But further evidence is to be found in the great
success and popularity of the dialogues. For had the details been
inaccurate and _invraisemblables_, and had there been a wrong emphasis
of educational spirit, it is not likely that the book would have
had its extensive vogue. It must be remembered that there were many
competing collections of dialogues. Vives’ _Dialogues_ may therefore
be regarded as being amongst the survivals of the fittest. Probably
the Latin dialogues for schools which have actually had the widest
circulation are those of Erasmus, Maturinus Corderius, and Sébastien
Castellion. Of these undoubtedly the dialogues of Vives (1538) and of
Corderius (whose dialogues were first published in 1564) throw the most
light upon the school-life of boys and the conditions of the schools.