The examples of fifteenth-century English, which make in our eyes its chief value, were of course introduced as casual ill.u.s.trations.

The lexicographical and grammatical works of this noted prelate undoubtedly exercised a very powerful and beneficial influence at, and long after, the period of their composition; and I am disposed to think that this was particularly the case with his _Rudimenta Grammatices_, 1476, and his _Cornucopia Linguae Latinae_, 1490. The former was not only imported into this country for sale, but was reprinted here in 1512, and the _Cornucopia_ forms part of the groundwork of our own _Ortus Vocabulorum_, 1500.

II. Next in succession to Bishop Perrot, whose publications, however, cannot be said to belong to the present category in more than an incidental degree, was JOHANNES SULPICIUS VERULa.n.u.s, who is perhaps to be viewed as the leader of the movement for spreading, not only in France, but in England, a fuller and more scholarly acquaintance with the laws of grammar. Nearly the first book which proceeded from the press of Richard Pynson was his _Opus Grammatic.u.m_, 4to, 1494.

Almost every successive impression seems to differ in the contents or their distribution, owing, as I apprehend, to the circ.u.mstance that the volume was compounded of separate tracts, of which some were occasionally added or omitted at pleasure, or variously placed.

The edition of 1505 comprises the undermentioned pieces:--

Sulpitii Verulani examen de 8 partibus orationis.

De declinatione nominum.

De preteritis & supinis.

Carmen iuuenile de moribus mensae.

Vocabulorum interpretatio.

Iod. Badii Ascensii De regimine dictionum.

Sulp. Verul. De regimine & constructione.

De componendis ordinandisq. epistolis.

De carminibus.

The t.i.tle-leaf presents the woodcut, often employed by Pynson in his later performances, of a person, probably a schoolmaster, seated at a _plutus_ or reading-desk, holding a paper in one hand, and reading from a book which lies open before him.

Whatever may now be thought of them, the philological labours of Sulpicius, which were subsequently edited and glossed by Badius Ascensius, were long extremely popular and successful, and a very large number of copies must have been in English hands during the reigns of Henry the Seventh and his son. Of these, as I have said, some proceeded from the London press, while others were imported from Paris.

The _fasciculi_ in one of 1511 are as follow:--

Sulpitii Examen de octo partibus orationis.

Carmen Iuuenile.

De declinatione nominum orthoc.l.i.torum.

---------------------- heteroc.l.i.torum.

De nominibus heteroc.l.i.tis.

De generibus nominum.

De verbis defectiuis.

De praeteritis verborum.

De supinis ----------.

De regimine et constructione dictionum Libellus.

De componendis ornandisq; epistolis.

De Carminibus.

De quant.i.tate 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 G.o.d whose special province was the management of the solar orb is introduced as _formosus appollo_. His subst.i.tution 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 exact.i.tude.

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 inst.i.tution 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 Villa 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 aeLIUS 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 Graecorum_. 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 ent.i.tled 'Le Donnet, traite de grammaire.... Among Rawlinson's MSS.

at Oxford I have seen _Donatus opitimus noviter compilatus_, a ma.n.u.script 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 aesop, 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 t.i.tles as _Donatus Moralizatus_, _Donatus Christianatus_, adopted by writers of a different cla.s.s 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 ma.n.u.script at Berlin, exhibits the entire system divided into three sections or books. But all that we know to have pa.s.sed 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 t.i.tle-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 t.i.tle 'De Nomine.' Almost every page has a distinct running t.i.tle descriptive of the subject below treated of.

Herbert properly adds: 'In this book the declension of some of the p.r.o.nouns 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.'"

IV.

Rise of native teachers--Magdalen College School, Oxford--John Annaquil, its first master, and his grammatical handbooks--The _Compendium Grammatices_ with the _Vulgaria_ of Terence annexed--The _Parvulorum Inst.i.tutio_--Personal allusions in the examples given--JOHN STANBRIDGE--Account of his works, with extracts of interesting pa.s.sages--ROBERT WHITTINTON--His sectional series of Grammars.

I. The influence of Donatus was both widespread and of prolonged duration, and we must regard the ancient capital of the civilised world as the focus and cradle of all modern grammatical literature. Upon the great revival of culture, many Englishmen repaired to Rome to undergo a formal training for the scholastic profession under the masters who arose there, among whom were Sulpicius, author, as we have seen, of several educational tracts, which obtained considerable currency here, and Johannes Balbus, who compiled the famous _Catholicon_.

The LEXICON and DICTIONARY naturally followed the Primer; and our earliest productions of this kind were formed out of the Vocabularies composed and printed abroad--not in Italy, but in Germany, as a rule. But while in many instances we are made acquainted with the writers or editors of the smaller treatises, the names of those laborious men who undertook the compilation of the first type of glossographical Manual are scarcely known.

But the time soon arrived when a native school of tuition was formed in England, and its original seat seems to have been at the Free School immediately adjacent to Magdalen College, Oxford.

We find John Annaquil mentioned as the master of this seminary in the time of Henry the Seventh, and it is the most ancient record of it that has been apparently recovered. Annaquil, of whom our knowledge is extremely scanty, wrote, for the use more immediately of his own pupils, _Compendium Grammatices_, with an Anglo-Latin version of the _Vulgaria_ of Terence annexed. This volume was printed at Oxford by Theodore Rood about 1484; and an edition of the work ent.i.tled _Parvulorum Inst.i.tutio_, ascribed to the same press, was doubtless prepared by Annaquil, or under his direction, for the benefit of his school. Such fragments as have been recovered of this book exhibit variations from the later copies, into which subsequent editors purposely introduced improvements and corrections. There are some familiar allusions here, such as, had they been more numerous, might have rendered these ancient educational tracts more attractive and precious even than they are. I mean such entries as, "I go to Oxford: _Eo Oxonium_ or _Ad Oxonium_." "I shall go to London: _Ibo Londinum_."