Part 13 (1/2)

In the Preface to his _New English Gra of the kind, and it has not been really supplied till our own day, when the labours of the Philological and English Text Societies and the paylish Literature prepared the way to reform in a quarter where reform was so sadly needed

The same writer, while edition upon edition of the fa from the press, like Hayley's _Triuels_, exposed the fallacies of the system, and lamented the mischief done by such erroneous doctrines

Murray, of whose lucubrations, now obsolete to petrifaction, sixty issues were exhausted between 1795 and 1859, ainity and scientific e a portion of the time while his star was in the ascendant two parallel texts, a literary and an elee-ground which it is our privilege to occupy upon this phenohty ruin, of which the re and proud survival, but with a feeling of amazement that such a heresy in opinion and taste should have lived so long, and have been so lately dissipated

The hazy ideas of the old-fashi+oned schoolht out in tolerably proentleman who had expressed to Dr Duncan of the Ciceronian Acadelish in lieu of Latin Grammar ”Sir,” said the Doctor, ”Grammar is Grammar all the world over”

XV

Aschalo-Latin Dictionary--Ocland's _Angloruer Ascham, is a work so celebrated and so classical, and has been so often reprinted, that it seeatory to pass any remark upon its character and merits It arose, as we all know, out of a conversation at Windsor in 1563 between Sir Richard Sackville, Treasurer of the Exchequer, and the author, and it is a literary treatise rather than a technical one Ascham did not live to see it in type, nor was his patron spared to witness its completion in MS; it was published in 1570 by the author's , and dedicated to Sir William Cecil, as one of the party at Windsor when the idea was first ventilated The opening paragraphs of the Preface, where Ascham describes the co hihts to the production of such a book, are as fa narrative to us, in one of his serations under which he lay to his father for sending hiood school

Ascham's _Schoolmaster_, 1570, is a volume, as its title perhaps may import, for the teacher indeed rather than for the learner It is a uidance and use of those under whose direction the course of school-as carried out, although ined for the benefit of Mr Robert Sackville, the deceased Treasurer's grandson The writer confesses his indebtedness to Sir John Cheke and to Stur the moderns, and to his old masters, as he calls them, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero

Sir Richard Sackville, as happily instru Ascham to undertake the task, told hie in his own case of an imperfect education; ”for a fond scholemaster,” quoth he, ”before I was fullie fourtene yeare olde, draue e, as nohen I knohat difference it is to haue learninge, and to haue little or none at all, I feele it reatest hurte, that euer caht vpon so lewde a schoolard to greater clemency and patience on the part of teachers, and he also preferred such text-books as _Cicero de Officiis_ to the Manuals compiled by Horrae in the _Schoolmaster_ where the author narrates his interview, before he went on his travels into Germany, with Lady Jane Grey at her father's house in Leicestershi+re, is fah; it exhibits a converse case, so far as the severities of school-teachers are concerned; for that amiable and unfortunate woour of her parents in a gentle and beloved tutor, ”who,” she told Ascham, ”teacheth me so ientlie, so pleasantlie, with such faire allure whiles I am with him”

One sees that Ascham, while loth to say too much on such a topic, did not cordially relish the old translations into English verse of some of the classics, even when the translator was such a ree with him, and indeed I think that many more are inclined so to do

Richard Mulcaster, first head-master of Merchant Taylors' School, and for several years after his retirement from that position principal of St

Paul's, was the author of torks of coht interest and importance at the present day, whatever estimate may have been formed of them by some of his learned conte,” as he terms them, he dedicated the earlier, ”Positions,” 1581, a kind of introduction to the matter, to Queen Elizabeth, and the other, ”The First Part of the Eleid and verbose epistles But it is a question whether either production h ushered into notice under such influential auspices; certainly they never grew popular or reached a second iuidance of teachers, like Aschaidity, which is absent in the famous and favourite manual of his predecessor, who kne to reeable ue I think it very possible that the very few readers which the publications of Mulcaster have found have arrived at the conclusion of their labour without being much wiser than when they embarked in it But, of the two, I prefer very decidedly the _Positions_, which are written in a es of interest This gentlen of which he had witnessed the opening, and to write some dull verses upon the death of the Queen

II The early teacher and his pupils enjoyed, when the typographical art had been applied to the production of educational works previously accessible in a lie of books of reference for Latin, Greek, French, and eventually Italian and other tongues Within a year of each other (1499-1500), the _Ortus Vocabulorum_ and the _Promptorius Parvulorum_ furnished our schools, so far as Latin was concerned, with two excellent lexicons, both formed out of the best compilations of the kind current abroad These were the Ainsworth and Riddle of our ancestors, who resorted to the in the Primer or the Delectus

Both these phrase-books passed through a series of reprints between the commencement and middle of the sixteenth century The forrounded on the _Catholicon_ of Balbus, 1460, the _Cornucopia_ of Perottus, the _Gemma Vocabulorum_, and the _Medulla Grammatices_, with additions by Ascensius The _Promptorius_, or, as it is also called in some of the issues, _Promptuarium_, appears to be substantially identical with the _Medulla_

But the earliest regular Anglo-Latin Dictionary in our literature is that of Sir Thomas Elyot, first published in 1538, and frequently reprinted with additions by others fron sources, until it became the bulky folio known as COOPER'S THESAURUS Elyot, the first compiler, tells us, in the dedication to Henry VIII prefixed to the _editio princeps_, that he had accomplished about half his labour when it reached the royal ear through Master (subsequently Sir) Anthony Denny that he had such a project in hand; whereupon the King caused all possible facilities to be afforded him, and the books in the royal library to be open to his inspection It is hard to say how far Elyot flatters his sovereign when he assures him that, after it was all done, he was so afraid of his Lexicon being faulty and imperfect, that he felt as if he could have torn the MS to pieces, ”had not the beames of your royal maiestie entred into race had lately receyued”

In the epistle to Henry just referred to, the author pays a tribute to the encouragement which he had experienced from Lord Cromwell; and in the British Museuraph Latin letter prefixed, in which hardly any fornaninate qualities are concerned, and nothing is said about hi secondary to royalty in these matters, as in the printed inscription is expressed But iven to a man of rank who in those days chose to consume his time, as Elyot did, in the pursuit of letters

The plan of the work is fah the later ilish literature; and, secondly, from the fact that the principle on which it is constructed is similar to that of Ainsworth and others The main difference seeible survival, continued in Elyot's day to bear a rew obsolete; as, for instance, in the case of _Aviariuh he at the same time adds the ordinary acceptation

Still the credit re supplied a ists; and if we turn, for example, to the _Dictionary for Children_, by John Withals, 1553, or the _Manipulus Vocabulorueneral plan is si arrangement which renders the books of reference and instruction prior to his day, like the _Proue Francoise_, so uninviting to consult

Save in respect to development and extension, there is no substantial difference, in fact, between the dictionaries of Elyot and Littleton or of Littleton and Ainsworth The general plan is the saement is so obscure and defective as to render them comparatively useless for practical purposes The old _Ortus Vocabuloruely formed out of the _Cornucopia_ of Perottus, and Cooper owed very considerable obligations to the Lexicon of Stephanus, which he was censured by a critic of his day for not properly acknowledging

The _Short Dictionary for Children_ by Withals, already specified, supplied the obvious need for a more portable work than either Elyot or Cooper It met with a cordial response from the constituency to which it appealed, and was reprinted, with large additions and improvements, by successive editors down to the tiht out his Dictionary in 1678, was Rector of Chelsea

He includes the barbarous Latin for the first time

Robert Ainsworth, whose fae II, having been first printed in 1736, planned his enterprise on a sensible and enduring basis, and earned for himself the reputation of a classic and a type He had of course the advantage of all the improvements of Elyot, Cooper, and Littleton, besides the nuraphers, of whoical account in his preface; but his substantial quarto voluned for the use of the British _Nations_,” was a clear advance on its precursors He gives not only the Latin-English and English-Latin appellatives, the Christian names of men and women, the proper names of places, the ancient Latin names of places, and the more hts andworkers in the same field, whom he commemorates, he ue, enriched with biographical particulars, begins with the _Pro a period of nearly two centuries

III The Latin Lexicon was an indispensable _vade-mecue into English; and the taste for so, appears in the time of Elizabeth to have spread in schools The authors at whouessed in the absence of the na of opinion that these ancient productions were injurious to ularly fortunate opportunity for substituting a hich should be to Latin versification what Lily's Gralish accidence--a standard and a model