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 title 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 y 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 Institutio_, 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 mediæval _Nominale_, has no other title 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 linguæ Latinæ_ 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
_Regulæ 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.
William Horman, who is presumed to have been the author of the
_Introductorium_ above mentioned, was schoolmaster and Fellow of Eton
College; in 1477 he became a perpetual Fellow of New College, Oxford, and
he was eventually chosen Vice-Provost of Eton. He survived till 1535. From
an epigram appended to the volume it is to be gleaned that Horman was a
pupil of Dr. Caius, poet-laureate to Edward the Fourth.
Of the _Gradus Comparationum_ the subjoined may be received as a
specimen:--
"What nownes make comparyson? All adiectyues welnere y betoken a
thynge that maye be made more or lesse: as fayre: fayrer: fayrest: black,
blacker, blackest. How many degrees of comparacyon ben there? iij. the
positiue y comparatiue & the superlatyue. How knowe ye the posityue
gedre? For he is the groude and the begynner of all other degrees of
coparyson. How knowe ye the comparatyue degre? for he passeth his
posityue with this englysshe more, or his englysshe endeth in r, as more
wyse or wyser. How knowe ye the superlatyue degre? for he passeth his
posityue with engysshe moost: or his englisshe endeth in est: as moost
fayre or fayrest, moost whyte or whytest."
III. The _Vulgaria_ of William Horman, 1519, is perhaps one of the most
intrinsically curious and valuable publications in the entire range of our
early philological literature. It would be easy to fill such a slender
volume as that in the hands of the reader with samples of the contents
without exhausting the store, but I must content myself with such extracts
as seem most entertaining and instructive:--
"Physicians, that be all sette to wynne money, bye and sylle our lyues:
and so ofte tymes we bye deth with a great and a sore pryce. _Animas
nostras æruscatores medici negociantur, &c._
"Papyre fyrste was made of a certeyne stuffe like the pythe of a bulrushe
in Ægypt: and syth it is made of lynnen clothe soked in water, stapte
or grude pressed and smothed. _Chartæ seu papyri, &c._
"The greattest and hyest of pryce: is papyre imperyall. _Augustissimum
papyrum, &c._
"The prynters haue founde a crafte to make bokis by brasen letters sette
in ordre by a frame. _Calcographi arte, &c._
"Pryntynge hathe almooste vndone scryueners crafte. _Chalcographia
librarioru qstu pene exhavsit._
"Yf the prynters take more hede to the hastynge: than to the true settynge
of theyr moldis: the warke is vtterly marred. _Si qui libros, &c._"
The rest are given without the Latin equivalents, which have no particular
interest.
"Scryueners write with blacke, redde, purple, gren, blewe, or byce: and
suche other.
Parchement leues be wonte to be ruled: that there may be a comly
marget: also streyte lynes of equal distaunce be drawe withyn: that the
wryttyng may shewe fayre.
Olde or doting chourles can not suffre yoge children to be mery.