Part 8

He had sold the press at the desire of the Company for £300 less than the cost; and this was by no means the full extent of his sacrifices and misfortunes. For he gives his principals to understand that he had grown lean by the observance of fast-days in accordance with their recent order; and, moreover, that during his nineteen years' term of office he had lost £800 by unpaid quarter wages, thus making it seem probable that he was directly responsible for the fees.

Altogether, nothing worse than indiscretion, perhaps, was chargeable to Dugard. "I bless God for it," he expressly says, "I know the Divel himself cannot justly accuse me of any notorious or scandalous Crime."

Probably not; but there are seasons when indiscretion is criminal, and besides his proclamation of his appointment at the time to the Commonwealth as their official printer, in 1657 there came from his press the reply of Milton to Salmasius, an anti-royalist manifesto not calculated to be palatable to the restored dynasty or to the civic feeling, and certainly, so far as one can form a judgment, an encroachment on the special objects and _raison d'être_ of Dugard's collateral occupation.

X.

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.

XI.

Proposed University of London in 1647--The _Museum Minervæ_ at Bethnal Green--Its catholic character and liberal programme--Calligraphy--Shorthand--Bright's system patented in 1588--Education in the provinces--The old school at Manchester--Shakespear's _Sir Hugh Evans_ and _Holofernes_--William Hazlitt's account of his Shropshire school in 1788.

I. It is a fact, probably within the knowledge of very few, that two hundred years and more before the actual establishment of the University of London, a project for such an institution was mooted by an anonymous pamphleteer, who may be considered as a kind of pioneer, preceding the Benthams and Broughams.

I hold in my hand _Motives Grounded upon the Word of God, and upon Honour, Profit, and Pleasure for the present Founding an University in the Metropolis, London_, 1647. It purports to be the work of "a true Lover of his Nation, and especially of the said City."

The lines and object in this piece are purely clerical. The author maintains the insufficiency of the two existing Universities and the College in Ireland to rear as many "sons of the Prophets"--an euphemism for parsons--to attend upon the spiritual needs of the English and the Londoners.

He puts down on paper statistics of the number of scholars at Oxford and Cambridge, and he argues that if the total were much larger--10,000 instead of 5900--there would be no means of raising the 20,000 preachers necessary in his view to carry on the business of religion. He pleads the fall of Episcopacy in support of his scheme, as "we cannot hope," he says, "that so many will apply their studies to Divinity, and therefore have the greater need to maintain the more poor scholars at our Universities," or, in other words, the absence of the prizes in the lottery had taken the best men out of the market. In fact, the writer himself does not shrink altogether from presenting the commercial side of the question, for he observes:--"Without injury unto any, an University in London would increase London's Trading, and inrich London, as the Scholars do Cambridge and Oxford, where how many poor people also are benefited by the Colleges, yea, the countries round about them."

So far, so good; but he, in the very next paragraph, strikes a chord which jars upon the ear. We see that he is a partisan of that theory which flourished here down to our own day, and which contributed so powerfully to retard and cripple our scholastic and academical studies. Hear what he says: "If here in London there be a College, in which _nothing but Latin_ shall be spoken, and your children put into it, and from ten years old to twelve hear no other Language, in those two years they will be able to speak as good Latin as they do English, and as readily. The Roman children learned Latin as ours do English...;" and so he goes on as to Greek, Hebrew, Italian, French, and Spanish.

The sole point here, in our modern estimation, is the admission of the three living languages into the curriculum, in order to qualify the students in later life to make themselves understood abroad either as merchants or as diplomatists. But here he was before his time. Nothing of the kind was to be attempted in England for generations. For generations Englishmen were to be instructed only in the dead tongues, and were to have not an English, but a Latin Grammar put into their hands age after age.

He talks about the Roman youth learning Latin as we do English; but he failed, perhaps, to perceive that they did not learn British or Gaulish as we do Latin. His text is wealthy in Scriptural quotations and parallels; but whatever one may think of his notions regarding the details and advantages of such a plan, this unnamed "true Lover of his Nation" is entitled, at any rate, to the credit and distinction of having been apparently the first to suggest what we have now before us in the shape of an accomplished fact.

It is not too much to assert, probably, that if the appearance of this tract had been followed by the execution of the ideas enunciated in it, the force of opinion would by this time have spared very little of the work of the original promoters.

II. The _Musæum Minervæ_, instituted by Sir Balthazar Gerbier d'Ouvilly at Bethnal Green in 1635, presents a thorough contrast to those philanthropic or eleemosynary institutions of which I have lately spoken, inasmuch as it was a novel and costly apparatus of Continental origin, calculated only for the children of rich persons and for those who desired to complete themselves in various accomplishments. Lectures were delivered on several subjects, and printed afterwards for circulation; but the enterprise did not succeed, and the outbreak of the Civil War probably sealed its doom. Yet as late as 1649 the management, or the founder himself, issued a prospectus of the different branches of learning and culture which were taught at this establishment. The language of this document, which is curious enough to append entire, portends the approaching collapse, and reads like a final appeal to public spirit and patronage:--