Ben Jonson and Shirley writers of Grammars--Some account of the
former--Thomas Hayne's Latin Grammar--A curious anecdote about it.
I. The _English Grammar_ inserted among Ben Jonson's works in 1640, and
also to be found in the modern editions, is not the production originally
compiled by that eminent writer, but a series of notes and rough material
collected perhaps for a new undertaking after the destruction of Jonson's
books and MSS. by an accidental fire. It appears that the author had taken
considerable trouble to collect together the literature of this class
already existing in our own and other languages, with a view to comparison
and improvement, and he was probably assisted by friends, as Howell speaks
so early as 1620 of having borrowed for him Davis's Welsh Grammar, "to add
to those many which he already had." Sir Francis Kinaston cites "his most
learned and celebrated friend, Master Ben Jonson," as the possessor of a
very ancient grammar written in the Saxon tongue and character, by way of
illustrating what it could scarcely illustrate--the state of our language
in the time of Chaucer. This book doubtless perished with the rest.
The work in its present state is divided into chapters: _Of Grammar and
the Parts_; _Of Letters and their Powers_; _Of the Vowels_; _Of the
Consonants_, and so forth. In the third chapter, under Y, the writer
remarks:--"Y is mere vowelish in our tongue, and hath only the power of an
_i_, even where it obtains the seat of a consonant, as in _young_,
_younker_, which the Dutch, whose primitive it is, write _junk_, _junker_.
And so might we write _iouth_, _ies_, _ioke_...."
"C is a letter," he says, "which our forefathers might very well have
spared in our tongue; but since it hath obtained place both in our writing
and language, we are not now to quarrel with _orthography_ or _custom_."
Nor is _c_ the only member of the alphabet with which Jonson considers
that we might have advantageously dispensed; for in a subsequent page he
declares that "_q_ is a letter we might very well have spared in our
_alphabet_, if we would but use the serviceable _k_ as he should be, and
restore him to the right of reputation he had with our forefathers. For
the English Saxon knew not this halting _q_, with her waiting woman _u_
after her, but exprest
_quail_,} {_kuail_,
_quest_,} by {_kuest_,
_quick_,} {_kuick_,
_quill_,} {_kuill_."
In other words, Jonson, discarding _c_ and _q_, was with those who
nowadays ask us to say _Kikero_, _Kelt_, _Kæsar_; and he seems also to be
an advocate for such terminations as _st_ or _pt_ for _ed_ in _exprest_,
_confest_, _profest_, _stopt_, _dropt_, _cropt_, wherein he has a follower
in Mr. Furnivall.
His demonstration of the manner in which the several letters ought to be
sounded as pronounced is occasionally very amusing. "T," he informs the
reader, "is sounded with the tongue striking the upper teeth." "P breaketh
softly through the lips." "N ringeth somewhat more in the lips and nose."
But of H he remarks: "Whether it be a letter or no, hath been much
examined by the ancients, and by some of the Greek party too much
condemned, and thrown out of the alphabet."
This last piece of criticism should have its consoling effect on those
among the moderns who also repudiate it, and may not be aware that they
have the Greek party in Jonson's day on their side, only that the Greek
party did not offer the deposed letter any substituted position.
Jonson's _Grammar_, as we have it, is a book for scholars and
philologists, however, rather than for the elementary stage of education.
The method is discursive and the style obscure; and it is chiefly prizable
as an evidence of the versatility, the extensive reading, and the
perseverance of the author. He quotes among his examples Sir Thomas More,
Gower, Lidgate, Fox's _Martyrs_, Harding's _Chronicle_, Chaucer, and Sir
John Cheke.
It is curious enough that Jonson's notion as to the superfluities of our
alphabet is supported to some extent by the orthography sanctioned by M.
Vimont in his _Relation de la Nouvelle France_, 1641, where he puts
_Kebeck_ for _Quebec_; but the change must necessarily influence the
pronunciation.
Neither of these writers was avowedly an advocate of Phonography; but the
adoption of that principle of spelling would necessarily involve the
dispensation with certain letters which at present form part of the
English A. B. C.
In the dedication to Lord Herbert of his little book, JAMES SHIRLEY refers
to the abundance of such treatises at that time before the public, "by
which some," he says, "would prophetically imply the decay of learning, as
if the root and foundation of art stood in need of warmth and reparation."
But he furnishes no information respecting himself or the motives which
led him to write the volume, although it is readily inferable that he did
so to augment the slender income which he derived, after the closing of
the theatres, from school-work in Whitefriars. Some of the illustrations
are in such couplets as the subjoined:--
"In _di_, _do_, _dum_, the Gerunds chime and close,
_Um_, the first Supine, _u_ the latter shews."
As late as 1726, Jenkin Thomas Phillipps reprinted Shirley's Grammar with
additions. On the title-page of this edition it is said to be "for the
use of Prince William."
In 1640 Thomas Hayne published his _Grammatices Latinæ Compendium_. A copy
before me was presented by the author to Charles II. when a boy, and has
an autograph inscription on the blank page before the title to the young
Prince. It also passed through the hands of his brother, James Duke of
York, who has written _James Duke of Yorke_ in a childish hand on the
fly-leaf. During the troubles it seems to have passed out of their hands,
and was bought at Oxford on the 4th October 1647 by a later owner, who
records the fact at the top of another page. It was subsequently at Stowe,
and the fine old blue morocco binding betrays no sign of a schoolboy's
thumbs.
Hayne supplies a highly interesting survey of the progress and development
of this branch of literature and learning in former days, and some of the
later attempts made with a view to improve the method, and explains his
own plan, which introduces the English and Latin in parallel columns, and
systematises and tabulates the cases and declensions in a more lucid
manner than the prior experiments. If we set it side by side with
Whittinton's eleven divisions, we see that it is a great advance.
From the commencement of the seventeenth century an increasing volume of
literature calculated to assist the diffusion of useful and improving
knowledge supplemented the books expressly designed for schools. These
publications, belonging to nearly every department of science and inquiry,
were often reproduced with the same steady regularity as the educational
works themselves; and nothing more triumphantly establishes the unceasing
progress of discovery and reform than the fact that the standard manuals
of one century become the waste paper of the next.
As one arrests a stray copy of Heylin's _Cosmography_, Godwin's _Roman
Antiquities_, edited for the use of Abingdon School, Provost Rous's _Attic
Archæology_, Prideaux's _Introduction to the Reading of Histories_, or any
other book of the same stamp, on its passage from an old collection to the
mill, a not unlikely reflection to arise is that, considering their
straitened opportunities and the force of clerical influence, the culture
and light of our ancestors were in fair relative proportion to our own.
The literary thought and bias of the age were naturally affected by these
shallow and meagre repertories of information, which were as far removed
in scholarship from the _Roman Antiquities_ of Adams and the _Dictionary_
of Lemprière as Adams and Lemprière are removed from Dr. Smith's series.