Sulpitii Examen de octo partibus orationis.
Carmen Iuuenile.
De declinatione nominum orthoclitorum.
---------------------- heteroclitorum.
De nominibus heteroclitis.
De generibus nominum.
De verbis defectiuis.
De præteritis verborum.
De supinis ----------.
De regimine et constructione dictionum Libellus.
De componendis ornandisq; epistolis.
De Carminibus.
De quantitate syllabarum.
De A, E, &c. in primis syllabis.
---------------- mediis ----.
De ultimis syllabis.
De Carminibus decoro [_sic_] &c.
Donati de figuris opusculum.
De latinarum dictionum recta scriptura.
De grecarum dictionum orthographia.
De ratione dipthongangi.
Ascensii de orthographia carmina.
Vocabulorum interpretatio.
The _Carmen Juvenile_, inserted here and in the antecedent issues, is the
poem better known as _Stans Puer ad Mensam_, and in its English dress by
Lydgate. Mr. Blades tells us that the _editio princeps_ of the Latin poem
appeared in 1483, and that Caxton printed Lydgate's English one at an
anterior date. Lydgate, however, had been dead many years when his
production saw the light in type, and as he could scarcely have translated
the piece from Sulpicius, the probability seems to be that both resorted
to a pre-existent original, which the Englishman rendered into his own
tongue, and the foreign grammarian adopted or modernised. A comparison of
the English text with that given in the work of Sulpicius shews
considerable variations; the latter version is here and there more
outspoken and blunt in its language than the paraphrase of the good Monk
of Bury St. Edmunds. It is accompanied by a running gloss by the learned
Ascensius; and although the book was ostensibly designed for the use of
students, the contractions are unusually troublesome, and many of the
proper names are exhibited in an orthography at any rate rather peculiar.
The god whose special province was the management of the solar orb is
introduced as _formosus appollo_. His substitution of _Vergilius_ as the
name of the Latin poet is so far not remarkable, inasmuch as Polydore
Vergil of Urbino appears always to have spelled his name so, and in the
edition of Virgil by Aldus, 1501, the author is called _Vergilius_. I am
afraid that if I were to furnish a specimen of the contractions, a modern
typographer would be puzzled to reproduce it with the desirable
exactitude.
III. When one turns over the leaves of a volume of this kind, and sees the
way in which the avenue to learning and knowledge was hampered by pedantic
and ignorant instructors, it seems marvellous, not that the spread of
education was so slow and partial, but that so many scholars should have
emerged from such a process.
A more obscure and repellent series of grammatical dissertations can
hardly be imagined; yet Sulpicius holds a high rank among the promoters of
modern education, as the precursor of all those, such as Robert
Whittinton, John Stanbridge, and William Lily, who, after the revival of
learning and the institution of the printing-press, prepared the way for
improved methods and more enlightened preceptors. His followers naturally
went beyond him; but Sulpicius was doubtless as much in advance of his
forerunners as Richard Morris is in advance of Lindley Murray.
After the restoration of letters, Sulpicius seems to have been the pioneer
in re-erecting grammar into a science, and formulating its rules and
principles on a systematic basis.
In enumerating the aids to learning which the English received from the
Continent, we must not overlook Alexander Gallus, or Alexander de Villâ
Dei, a French Minorite and school-teacher of the thirteenth century, who
reduced the system of Priscian to a new metrical plan, doubtless for the
use of his own pupils, as well as his personal convenience and
satisfaction.
The _Doctrinale_ of Alexander, which is in leonine verse, circulated more
or less in MS. during his life, and was one of the earliest books
committed to the press, as a fragment on vellum with the types of Laurence
Coster of Haarlem establishes. It was repeatedly published abroad, but
does not really seem to have ever gained a strong footing among ourselves,
since three editions of it are all that I can trace as having come from
London presses, and of these the first was in 1503. It did not, in fact,
command attention till we were on the eve of a great reform in our
school-books; and while in France, if not elsewhere abroad, it preserved
its popularity during two or three centuries, till it was supplanted by
the Grammar and Syntax of Despauterius about 1515, here in a dozen years
it had run its course, and scarcely left even the marks of its influence
behind.
IV. But the prototype of all the grammatical writers and teachers of early
times in this as well as other countries was ÆLIUS DONATUS, a Roman
professor of the fourth century, who probably acquired his experience from
Priscian and the other works published under the Empire upon his favourite
science, and who had the honour to number Saint Jerome among his
disciples.
Donatus is the author of a System of Grammar in three parts, and of a
series of Prefaces and Scholia to Terence; and his reputation became so
great and was so widely diffused, that a _Donatus_ or _Donet_ was a
well-understood synonym for a Primer, and John of Basing even christens
his Greek Grammar, compiled about 1240, _Donatus Græcorum_. Langland, in
his _Vision concerning Piers Ploughman_, written a century later, says--
"Thaune drowe I me amonges draperes my donet to lerne;"
and the _Testament of Love_ alludes to the work in similar terms. "In the
statutes of Winchester College [written about 1386]," says Warton, "a
grammar is called _Antiquus Donatus_, i.e. the Old Donat, or the name of a
system of grammar at that time in vogue, and long before. The French have
a book entitled 'Le Donnet, traitè de grammaire.... Among Rawlinson's MSS.
at Oxford I have seen _Donatus opitimus noviter compilatus_, a manuscript
on vellum, given to Saint Albans by John Stoke, Abbot in 1450. In the
introduction, or _lytell Proheme_, to Dean Colet's _Grammatices
Rudimenta_, we find mention made of 'certayne introducyons into latyn
speche called Donates, &c. ... Cotgrave ... quotes an old French proverb:
'Les diables etoient encores a leur Donat'--The devils were but yet in
their grammar."
In common with Æsop, the _Dialogus Creaturarum_, and other peculiarly
popular works, Donatus lent his name to productions which really had no
connection with his own, and we find such titles as _Donatus Moralizatus_,
_Donatus Christianatus_, adopted by writers of a different class in order
to attract attention and gain acceptance.
In England, however, the Works of Donatus do not appear to have obtained
the same broad footing which they probably did in Italy. The modern
edition by Lindemann, taken from a manuscript at Berlin, exhibits the
entire system divided into three sections or books. But all that we know
to have passed the press, at all events in this country, are two pieces
evidently prepared for petty schools--the _Donatus Minor_ and the _Donatus
pro pueris_, both published at the end of the fifteenth or beginning of
the sixteenth century.
The former has on the title-page a large woodcut, representing a
schoolmaster in a sort of thronal chair, with the instrument of
correction in his hand, and three pupils kneeling in front of him. Both
the teacher and his scholars wear the long hair of the period and plain
close caps. It is curious that the pupils should not be uncovered, but the
engraving could not, perhaps, be altered.
"The work begins with the title 'De Nomine.' Almost every page has a
distinct running title descriptive of the subject below treated of.
Herbert properly adds: 'In this book the declension of some of the
pronouns is very remarkable, viz. N. Ego. G. mei vel mis. N. Tu. G. tui
vel tis. N. Quis vel qui, que vel qua, Quod vel quid. Pl. D. & Ab. quis
vel quibus. Also Nostras and Vestras are declined throughout without the
neuter gender.'"