Successors of Lily--Thomas Robertson of York--Cultivation of the
living languages--Numerous works published in England upon them--Their
various uses--The Vocabularies for travellers and merchants--Rival
authors of Grammars--Different text-books employed at
schools--Milton's _Accidence_ (1669)--Old mode of advertising private
establishments.
I. After the death of Lily his work was carried on and developed by other
men, who gradually achieved the task of consolidating, or reducing into a
more compact form, the rather perplexing series of elementary treatises
edited by Whittinton. Among these followers of the Master of St. Paul's
was a schoolmaster at Oxford, the Thomas Robertson of York whom I had
lately occasion to name in connection with Ascensius, and who at all
events produced in 1532 at Basle an edition of Lily's Grammar with a
Preface and Notes.
Robertson applauds, in his dedication to Dr. Longlond, Bishop of Lincoln,
himself a man of letters, the system of Lily, and testifies to the
excellent way in which the boys at Oxford prospered under his educational
_regimen_. But, nevertheless, he does not conceal his notion and
expectation of improving on his master; and indeed there is no doubt that
we have here the earliest clear approach to our modern grammar-book,
although the whole is in Latin, except certain quotations and names in
Greek, as he compares the practice of the Greek poets with that of the
Romans, much as Robert Etienne a little later pointed out the conformity
of the French with the Greek. Philological parallels had become
fashionable.
In his section on _Derivatives_ Robertson has some matter, as to which the
modern etymologist may form his own conclusions. This is a specimen:--
"Vox uocis, à voco. Iucundus à iuuo.
Lex legis, à lego. Iunior à iuuenis.
Rex regis, à rego. Mobilis à moueo.
Sedes à sedeo. Humanus ab homo.
Iumentum à iuuo. Vomer à uomo.
Fomes à foueo. Pedor à pede."
Of the miscellaneous labourers in this field Robertson was one of the most
conspicuous; nor did his name and work die with him, for his tables of
_Irregular Verbs and Nouns_ were printed with Lily's _Rules_ at least as
late as the reign of James I.
It is out of my power to cross the boundary-line of conjecture when I
offer the opinion that the Oxford employment of Robertson was on the old
Magdalen staff.
II. But there was no lack of instruments for carrying out the scheme of
education in England, whatever the imperfections of it might be. There
were, besides the ordinary pedagogue, whose accomplishments did not,
perhaps, extend beyond the language of his own country, writing, and
arithmetic, professors for French, Italian, and Dutch, and men whose
training at college qualified them more or less to give instruction in
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The German, Spanish, and Portuguese do not seem
to have been much cultivated down to a comparatively recent date, which is
the more extraordinary since our intercourse with all those countries was
constant from the earliest period.
There were certainly English versions of the Spanish grammars of Anthonio
de Corro and Cesare Oudin made in the times of Elizabeth and her
successor, as well as the original production by Lewis Owen, entitled,
_The Key into the Spanish Tongue_. But these were assuredly never used as
ordinary school-books, and were rather designed as manuals for travellers
and literary students; and the same is predicable, I apprehend, of the
anonymous Portuguese Dictionary and Grammar of 1701, which is framed on a
scale hardly adapted for the requirements of the young.
Yet at the same time these, and many more like the _Dutch Tutor_, the
_Nether-Dutch Academy_, and so forth, were of eminent service in private
tuition and select classes, where a pupil was placed with a coach for some
special object, or to complete the studies which were not included in the
school programmes.
Moreover, it is not to be overlooked that in the polyglot vocabulary and
phrase-book the student, either with or without the aid of a tutor,
possessed in former times a very valuable machinery for gaining a
knowledge of languages for conversational and commercial purposes; and
these works sometimes comprised the German, as well as the more usual
tongues employed in correspondence and intercourse. The title-page of one
of them, published at Antwerp in 1576, expressly intimates its utility to
all merchants; and a second of rather earlier date (1548) is specified as
a book highly necessary to everybody desirous of learning the languages
embraced in it, which are English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Flemish,
German, and Latin--a remarkable complement, as very few are more than
hexaglot.
But these helps were of course outside the schoolroom, and were called
into requisition chiefly by individuals whose vocations took them abroad,
or rendered an acquaintance with foreign terms more or less imperative;
and undoubtedly our extensive mercantile and diplomatic relations with all
parts of the world made this class of supplementary instruction a
livelihood for a very numerous body of teachers.
Perhaps of all the philological undertakings of the kind, the most
singular was that of Augustine Spalding, a merchant of London, who in 1614
published a translation of some dialogues in the Malay dialect, from a
book compiled by Arthusius of Dantzic in Latin, Malayan, and Malagassy;
and he informs us that his object was to serve those who might have
occasion to travel to the East Indies.
II. Shakespear, in his conception of HOLOFERNES in "Love's Labour's Lost,"
is supposed to have taken hints from one of the foreigners who settled in
London in his time as teachers of languages, the celebrated JOHN FLORIO,
who is best known as the first English translator of Montaigne, but who
produced a good deal of useful professional work, and became intimate with
many of the literary men of his day. We cannot be absolutely sure that
Florio sat for Holofernes; but at any rate the dramatist has depicted in
that character in a most inimitable style the priggish mannerist, as he
knew and saw him.
The City of London itself, with all its great industrial benefactions,
abounded with private schools and with tutors for special objects. Some
of them were authors, not only of school-books for the use of their own
pupils, but of translations from the classics and from foreign writers;
and they had their quarters in localities long since abandoned to other
occupations, such as Bow Lane, Mugwell or Monkwell Street, Lothbury
Garden, and St. Paul's Churchyard, where accommodation was once readily
procurable at rents commensurate with their resources. Some of these men
had originally presided over similar establishments in the provinces, and
had come up to town, no doubt, from ambitious motives.
Two of them, in Primers which they published in 1682 and 1688, when such
distinctions were important, call their volumes the _Protestant School_
and the _Protestant Schoolmaster_, in order to reassure parents, who
distrusted Papists and Jacobites. A few years before, Nathaniel Strong,
dating from the Hand and Pen, in Red-Cross Alley, on Great Tower Hill,
launched what he somewhat unguardedly christened _The Perfect
Schoolmaster_. This part of the metropolis was at that time rather thickly
sown with teachers of all kinds; as you drew nearer to Wapping, the
schools of geography and navigation became more conspicuous. It was about
the period when Mr. Secretary Pepys was residing in Hart Street.
In connection with these private schools on the east side of London, for
the special advantage of those who desired to embark on a sea-faring,
naval, military, or other technical career, there is a very characteristic
and suggestive advertisement by one John Holwell at the end of an
astrological tract published by him in 1683, where he states that he
professes and teaches at his house on the east side of Spitalfields,
opposite Dorset Street, next door to a glazier's, not merely such matters
as arithmetic, geography, trigonometry, navigation, astronomy, dialling,
gauging, surveying, fortification, and gunnery, but ASTROLOGY _in all its
parts_; which appears to be an uncustomary combination, and to bespeak a
separate class or department.
Astrology, which was a sort of outgrowth and development from the judicial
astronomy of the early Oxford schoolmen, had been a source of controversy
since the time of Elizabeth, but had gained a footing in the following
century through the exertions of several indefatigable advocates and
writers, of whom William Lilly, John Partridge, and John Gadbury were the
most eminent and influential. Lilly, during the Civil War, is said to have
been consulted by both political parties; and he published a small library
of pamphlets professing to see into futurity.
III. There was a host of rival authors, some bringing general treatises in
their hand, others special branches of the subject handled in a new
fashion, from all parts of the kingdom to the London publishing firms. Dr.
Walker, head-master of King Edward the Sixth's Grammar School at Louth in
Lincolnshire, completed his monograph on Particles in 1655; it is the only
work by which he is at present remembered; and it occasioned the joke that
his epitaph should be: _Here lie Walker's Particles_.
But even MILTON could not desist from entering into the competition, and,
two years after the appearance of _Paradise Lost_, when the writer was, of
course, sufficiently well known both as a political controversialist and a
poet, yet scarcely so famous as he became and remains, came out a little
volume called _Accidence Commenc'd Grammar_, of which the main object was
to reduce into an English digest the Latin _Accidence and Grammar_, by
which the illustrious writer declared and complained that ten years of an
ordinary life were consumed.
But advocates of particular theories had a very slender chance of success,
even where their promoters were persons so distinguished as Ben Jonson and
Milton, unless they possessed some adventitious interest or appealed to
popular sentiment.
_A Little Book for Little Children_, by Thomas White, minister of the
Gospel, had an astonishing run, for instance; there were at least a dozen
editions; but it was embellished with choice woodcuts of the Catnach
school, and enlivened by a string of stories which, if they are not vapid
and silly, are simply outrageous and revolting. The sole redeeming feature
is, that among the alphabets occurs what is sometimes called "Tom Thumb's
Alphabet,"--"A was an Archer, and shot at a Frog,"--which is not found in
the earlier primers, so far as I know, and may have been specially written
by White or for him.
But the numerous experimental essays of ambitious schoolmasters and other
friends to the cause of learning which found their way into type at
various times, were, as a rule, speedily consigned to oblivion; the
production of a successful school-book was a task demanding a rare union
of tact in structure with influence in initiative quarters; and Lily's
Primer, itself based on the labours of his predecessors, was generally
adopted by the endowed schools throughout England, Wales and Scotland at
first, and indeed till somewhere in the early years of the eighteenth
century, with some modifications of detail and spelling, but at last in
the form of the Eton or the Westminster Grammar, which Carlisle reports in
1818 as in almost universal use in this country. The exceptions which he
names were then very few, and we see that they were nearly always in
favour of some text-book introduced by local agency.
This was the case at Reading, where it appears that the system of teaching
was founded on those of Westminster, Eton, and Winchester. At Aylesbury,
Owen's _Latin Grammar_ and the Eton Greek Grammar used to be employed. At
Bodmin, Valpy's _Greek Grammar_, and at Faversham, Lily's _Latin Primer_,
edited by Ward, were preferred. At some minor schools, where a boy was
intended for any of the great foundations, special books were placed in
his hands to facilitate preparation.
But the course of instruction at some of these institutions, outside the
elementary stage, was remarkably liberal and extensive, and enabled a boy
of ability to ground himself, at all events, very fairly in the Greek and
Roman classics. This was, it must be borne in mind, however, the dawn of a
new era--the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
A class of men who influentially helped to carry on the succession of
school-books and the slower process of amendment were the private tutors
in noble or distinguished families, who, when their services were no
longer required, if they did not obtain immediate preferment, received
pupils or opened proprietary establishments. They were, for the most part,
university graduates and persons of fair attainments, who were glad enough
to introduce into print, with a double eye to their own scholars and the
public, the system or theory with which they had started, and which in
their hands underwent, perhaps, certain modifications.
Matthias Prideaux, of Exeter College, Oxford, and A. Lane, M.A., were at
the outset of their careers retainers of this kind in the great Devonshire
family of Reynell. The former signalised himself by the _Introduction to
History_, which, whatever our verdict upon it may be, was a highly
successful venture, and, after serving its original purpose as a
class-book for his private pupils, the sons of Sir Thomas Reynell, was
printed and held the market for many years. Lane, who was a man of ability
and intelligence, makes his patron, Sir Richard Reynell, Lord Chief
Justice of Ireland, share with him the credit of his _Rational and Speedy
Method of attaining to the Latin Tongue_, 1695, which he had been
encouraged by Sir Richard to pursue with young Reynell, a boy of eight,
and which formed, no doubt, the basis of his system when he embarked on
tuition as a career. He presided at first over the free school at
Leominster, but subsequently set up for himself at Mile End Green, where
he would be at fuller liberty to follow his own bent.
Lane desires us to believe that the progress made by his young pupil,
while he was under his charge, was little less than miraculous; but an
earlier writer, Christopher Syms, in his _Introduction to the Art of
Teaching the Latin Speech_, 1634, gives hope to the dullest boy that, by
the use of his method, he may acquire it in four years.
From the sixteenth century downward, there seems to have been a succession
of competitors to public favour and support in this, as in every other,
department of activity; and among the whole crowd of aspirants there was
not one who succeeded in discovering the true principles of the art till
our own time.
IV. The absence of newspapers or other ready means of communication
necessitated a resort to a system of advertising educational
establishments through the medium of broadsides, in which were set forth
the advantages of particular institutions and the branches of knowledge in
which instruction was to be had there. As early as 1562, Humphrey Baker,
of London, published an arithmetical work entitled _The Wellspring of
Sciences_, which was frequently reprinted both in his lifetime and after
his decease; but he was a teacher of the art, as well as a writer upon it,
and there is a printed sheet announcing his arrangements for receiving
pupils, and giving lessons in that and various other subjects. For, as the
terms of the document, herewith annexed, shew, Baker had in his employment
other gentlemen, who assisted him in his scholastic labours:--
"Such as are desirous, eyther themselves to learne, or to have theyr
children or servants instructed in any of these Arts and Faculties heere
under named: It may please them to repayre unto the house of _Humfry
Baker_, dwelling on the North side of the Royall Exchange, next adjoyning
to the signe of the shippe. Where they shall fynde the Professors of the
said Artes, &c. Readie to doe their diligent endevours for a reasonable
consideration. Also if any be minded to have their children boorded at the
said house, for the speedier expedition of their learning, they shall be
well and reasonably used, to theyr contentation.... The Arts and Faculties
to be taught are these, ... God save the Queene."
The case of Baker merely stands alone because we do not happen to be in
possession of any similar contemporary testimony. But schoolmasters who
resided at their own private houses found it, of course, indispensable to
adopt some method or other of making their professional whereabouts known,
as we find Peter Bales, the Elizabethan calligraphist, and author of the
_Writing School-master_, 1590, notifying, at the foot of the title to his
book, that it was to be sold at his house in the upper end of the Old
Bailey, "where he teacheth the said Arts." Bales probably rented the
house, and underlet such portions as he did not require; for at the end of
Ripley's _Compound of Alchemy_, 1591, Rabbards, the translator, asks those
who had any corrections to suggest in the text to send them to him at the
house of Peter Bales.
Preceptors naturally congregated near the centre of mercantile life.