Part 3

This didactic treatise is additionally interesting to the English student from its relationship, in the way of likely literary ancestry, to the subsequent compilations of a cognate sort by Lydgate and others. The diction is obscure enough, and has the air of having been the work of a man of imperfect culture, from the presence of such forms as _dreyne_ for _derreniere_ or _derniere_ and the abundance of false syntax, which ought not to have been so conspicuous, even at this remote date, in a composition professedly educational. Yet, after all deductions, the work is of singular curiosity and fascination, not only for its own sake, but as the best philological standard which we seem to have to put side by side with its successors in the same important direction.

III.

Earliest printed works of instruction--Publications of Bishop Perottus--His _Grammatical Rules_--Johannes Sulpicius and his _Opus Grammaticum_--Some account of the book--Importance and influence of these foreign Manuals in England--The _Carmen Juvenile_ or _Stans Puer ad Mensam_--Alexander Gallus or De Villâ Dei and his _Doctrinale_--The _Doctrinale_ one of the earliest productions of the Dutch press--Ælius Donatus--His immense popularity and weight both at home and abroad--Selections or abridgments of his Grammar used in English schools.

I. The most ancient published books of instruction for Englishmen in scholastic and academical culture emanated from a foreign country and press. When the Vocabularies, Grammars, and other Manuals ceased to circulate in a manuscript form, or to be written and multiplied by teachers for the use of their own pupils, the early Parisian printers supplied the market with the works, which it had been theretofore possible to procure only to a very limited extent, in transcripts executed by the authors themselves or by professional copyists.

The educational writings of some of the men, whose influence for good in this direction had of course been greatly circumscribed by the ignorance of typography, found their way into print. But one of the foremost persons who addressed himself to the task of diffusing a knowledge of elementary learning and of teaching English by Latin was NICHOLAUS PEROTTUS, BISHOP OF SIPONTUM, whose _Grammatical Rules_ first appeared, so far as I know, in 1486.[1]

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

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 Linguæ Latinæ_, 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 VERULANUS, 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 Grammaticum_, 4to, 1494.

Almost every successive impression seems to differ in the contents or their distribution, owing, as I apprehend, to the circumstance 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 mensæ. Vocabulorum interpretatio. Iod. Badii Ascensii De regimine dictionum. Sulp. Verul. De regimine & constructione. De componendis ordinandisq. epistolis. De carminibus.

The title-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 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.'"

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 Institutio_--Personal allusions in the examples given--JOHN STANBRIDGE--Account of his works, with extracts of interesting passages--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 entitled _Parvulorum Institutio_, 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_."

Knight explains these references in his Life of Dean Colet: "It may not be amiss to remark that many of the examples in the Latin Grammar pointed to the then juncture of public affairs; viz., the prosecution of Empson and Dudley in the beginning of Henry VIII.'s reign: as _Regum est tueri leges: Refert omnium animadverti in malos_. And this humour was the reason why, in the following editions of the Syntax, there were examples accommodated to the respective years of the impressions; as, _Audito regem Doroberniam proficisci_; _Imperator_ [Maximilian] _meruit sub rege_, &c. There were likewise in that edition of Erasmus several examples referring to Dean Colet, as _Vixit Romæ_, _studuit Oxonii_, _natus est Londini_, _discessit Londini_, &c."

Annaquil is supposed to have died about 1488, and was succeeded in his work by John Stanbridge, who is much better known as a grammarian than his predecessor. Stanbridge was a native of Northamptonshire, according to Wood, and received his education at Winchester. In 1481 he was admitted to New College, Oxford, after two years' probation, and remained there five years, at the end of which he was appointed first usher under Annaquil of the Free School aforesaid, and after his principal's death took his place. The exact period of his death is not determined; but he probably lived into the reign of Henry the Eighth.

II. The writings of Stanbridge are divisible into two sections--those which he published in his own lifetime, and those which appeared after his death in the form either of reimpressions or selections by his pupil Whittinton and others. The former category embraces: 1. ACCIDENCE; 2. VOCABULA; 3. VULGARIA. In the latter I include: 1. ACCIDENTIA EX STANBRIGIANA EDITIONE RECOGNITA limâ Roberti Whittintoni; 2. PARVULORUM INSTITUTIO EX STANBRIGIANA COLLECTIONE. The first of these productions, not strictly to be regarded as proceeding from the pen of Stanbridge, bears the name of Whittinton; the second I merely apprehend to have been his. But the line of distinction between the publications of Stanbridge himself and posthumous, or at any rate not personally superintended reprints, is one which ought to be drawn.

There is an edition of Stanbridge's _Accidence_, printed at the end of the sixteenth century by Caxton's successor at Westminster. The variations between it and the collections which were modelled upon it, probably by John Holt, whom I shall again mention, are thus explained and stated by the author of the _Typographical Antiquities_:--

"This treats of the eight parts of reason; but they differ in several respects as to the manner of treating of them; this treating largely of the degrees of comparison, which the other (_Accidentia ex Stanbrigiana Collectione_) does not so much as mention. That gives the moods and tenses of the 4. conjugations at large, both active and passive, whereas this gives only a few short rules to know them by. Again, this shews the concords of grammar, which the other has not."

There are at least three issues of the _Accidence_ from London presses, and a fourth in an abridged shape from an Antwerp one, presumably for the convenience of English residents in the Low Countries. The tide had by this time begun to a certain extent to flow in an opposite direction, as it were, and not only introductions to our own language were executed here and reproduced abroad, but Latin authors were beginning to find competent native interpreters, among whom John Annaquil was perhaps the foremost.

Next to the _Accidence_ of Stanbridge I shall consider briefly his _Vocabula_, which was, on the whole, the most popular of his works, and continued for the greatest length of time in vogue, as I record editions of it as late as the period of the Civil War (1647). I have not, on the other hand, met with any anterior to 1510. Annexed is a specimen:--

_De naui et eius pertinentibus._

The formost parte The hynder parte The saylewarde the bottom of the of the shyppe of the shyppe =antenna= shyppe =Prora nauis= =Puppis rostrum= =carina=

The takelynge the mast The cable an anker the stern =Armamenta= =malus= =rudens simul= =anchora= =clauus=

The hatches the pompe the water pompe the hatches =foci= =sentina cum= =nautea nausea= =transtra=

The sayle cloth idem the maste of the shyppe to sayle a shypman =carbalus= =et belum= =nauergus= =et nauigo= =nauta=

Qui nauem regit idem i. nauis =nauicularius= =et nauclerus= =nauigiumq=;

Ptines ad naue to rowe qui remigat the dockes an ore =naualis= =remigio= =remus= =naualia= =remex=

Ptinens ad naue qui fregit nauem the see a wawe =nauticus et= =naufragus naufragium= =ac mare= =fretu=

To carry ouer to dryue to carry ouer the toll, or the custome =Trajitio= =appello= =transporto= =portarjumq=;

A fery man a fery barge idem a cokbote a bottom =Portitor= =hyppago= =ponto= =Iynter quoq=; =cymba=

This extract is highly edifying. In the concluding line _ponto_, a ferry-barge, is the modern _punt_, and _lynter_, a cock-boat, is the early Venetian _lintra_, to which I refer in _Venice before the Stones_ as antecedent to the gondola.

III. The remaining contribution of Stanbridge to this class of literature is his _Vulgaria_, which I take to be the least known. Dibdin describes it somewhat at large, and it may be worth while to transfer a specimen hither:--

"_Sinciput, et vertex, caput, occiput, et coma, crinis._

=hoc sinciput, is=, the fore parte of the heed =hic vertex, cis=, for the crowne of the heed =hoc caput, is=, for a heed =hoc occiput, is=, the hynder parte of the heed =hec coma, e=, for a brisshe =hic crinis, nis=, for a heer

* * * * *

A garment a clothe idem apparayle =Hic indumentum= =vestis= =vestitus= =amictus= idem idem idem =Ornatus= =simul apparatus= =amiculus idem= a cappe agat: e idem =Ista caput gestat apex= =caliptra= =galerus= a cappe idem an hood idem =Biretum= =pilius= =cuculus= =capitiumq=;

* * * * *

_Vulgaria queda cu suis vernaculis compilata iuxta consuetudinem ludi litterarij diui Pauli._

Good morowe. =Bonu tibi huius diei sit primordiu.= Good nyght. =Bona nox, tranquilla nox, optata requies, &c.=

Scolers must lyue hardly at Oxford, =Scolasticos Oxonii parce viuere oportet.=

My fader hath had a greate losse on the see. =Pater meus magna p naufragiu iactura habuit.=

Wysshers and wolders be small housholders. =Affectatibus diuitias modica hospitalitate obseruant.="

The abridgments of Stanbridge's _Accidence_ led, I presume, to the distinction of the original text as the _Long Accidence_, although I have not personally met with more than a single edition of the work under such a title. Dibdin, however, has a story that John Bagford had heard of one printed at Tavistock, for which the said John "would have stuck at no price."

The chief of these adaptations of the _Accidence_ is the _Parvulorum Institutio_, which I have described as probably emanating, in the first place, from the earliest press for the use of the earliest known school at Oxford. But it was reprinted with alterations by Stanbridge, and perhaps by John Holt. In Dibdin's account of one of these recensions he observes:--

"The work begins immediately on sign. A ij:-'What is to be done whan an englysshe is gyuen to be made in latyn? Fyrst the verbe must be loked out, and yf there be moo verbes than one in a reason, I must loke out the pryncypall verbe and aske this questyon who or what, and that word that answereth to the questyon shall be the nomynatyve case to the verbe. Except it be a verbe Impersonell the whiche wyll haue no nomynative case.'

"On the last leaf but one we have as follows:--

=Indignus dignus obscenus fedus Cice. qq hecauditu acerbus.= acerba sunt.