Schools, School-Books and Schoolmasters Part 14

As late as 1726, Jenkin Thomas Phillipps reprinted s.h.i.+rley's Grammar with additions. On the t.i.tle-page of this edition it is said to be "for the use of Prince William."

In 1640 Thomas Hayne published his _Grammatices Latinae 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 t.i.tle to the young Prince. It also pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sist 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_, G.o.dwin's _Roman Antiquities_, edited for the use of Abingdon School, Provost Rous's _Attic Archaeology_, Prideaux's _Introduction to the Reading of Histories_, or any other book of the same stamp, on its pa.s.sage 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 scholars.h.i.+p from the _Roman Antiquities_ of Adams and the _Dictionary_ of Lempriere as Adams and Lempriere are removed from Dr. Smith's series.

XVII.

Limited acquaintance with the Greek language in England--Erasmus first learns, and then teaches, Greek at Cambridge--Notices of a few Philh.e.l.lenists--Study of the language at Rhodes by Lily--Languid interest in it among us--Disputes at Cambridge as to the p.r.o.nunciation--Remarks on this subject--The tract by John Kay--Few books in the Greek character printed in England.

I. The few scattered notices, which offer themselves in Warton and other authorities, of Englishmen of very remote days who entered on the study of the Greek tongue, tend mainly to ill.u.s.trate the fact, how sparingly and imperfectly that n.o.ble and precious language was cultivated down to the age of Elizabeth; and of course this circ.u.mstance involves the almost complete neglect of it in our universities and academies. Warton himself cites a case in which a scholar travelled from Malmesbury to Canterbury in order to improve a rudimentary acquaintance with Greek which he had gained through a local monastic seminary.

The first man who helped at all largely and sensibly to render Greek a part of the educational system was Lily the grammarian, who spent some years of his life at Rhodes, and introduced a study of the language into the routine of St. Paul's, whence it found its way by degrees to the other great foundations in London and in the provinces.

The biographer of Colet has something to say on this subject:--

"Such was the infelicity of those times, that the Greek tongue was not taught in any of our grammar-schools; nor was there thought to be any great need of it in the two Universities by the generality of scholars. It is worth notice that [John] Standish, who was a bitter enemy to Erasmus, in his declamation against him styles him _Graeculus iste_; which was a long time after the phrase for an heretic."

"But," he adds, "Dr. John Fisher ... was of another mind, and very sensible of this imperfection, which made him desirous to learn Greek in his declining years."

The Bishop, however, who through Erasmus was recommended to William Latymer, one of the foremost Philh.e.l.lenists of the day, could not persuade that scholar to enter on the task, as he considered the prelate too old to acquire the language; and Knight tells us that, in order to escape from the application, he advised Fisher to send for a professor out of Italy.

Englishmen, even at a later period than this, occasionally went to Florence or elsewhere to learn Greek; but Erasmus made himself, with the a.s.sistance of Linacre, tolerably proficient in it, on the contrary, during his first visit to England in the time of Henry the Seventh (1497-8), and was sufficiently versed, at all events in the rudiments, to give lessons to others while he remained at Cambridge. Doubtless he did so in aid of his expenses.

"In Cambridge," observes Knight, "Erasmus was the first who taught the Greek grammar. And so very low was the state of learning in that University, that (as he tells a friend) about the year 1485, the beginning of Henry the Seventh's reign, there was nothing taught in that public seminary besides Alexander's _Parva Logicalia_ (as they called them), the old axioms of Aristotle, and the questions of John Scotus."

Erasmus himself was for some time Greek Reader at Cambridge, and was contemporary there with Richard Croke, of King's College, who did valuable service in promoting the cause of cla.s.sical learning at that University, and published several tracts relating to the Greek literature and tongue, including _Introductiones ad Linguam Graecam_ and _Elementa Grammaticae Graecae_--the earliest attempts to place before students in a handy form the alphabet of the subject.

At Oxford it was an Italian, Cornelius Vitellius, who became the first Greek professor, and William Grocyne, who with Latymer and Linacre was the earliest Greek scholar in England, was among his pupils.

It is to be suspected that, while a man of genius like Erasmus could scarcely have failed to make something of whatever he seriously undertook, his conversance with Greek was always comparatively superficial, and it is merely an additional piece of evidence how little the language was cultivated at Cambridge at that epoch, that he was enabled to earn money as a teacher of it.

It was not apparently till 1524 that Greek type was introduced into our printing-offices. Linacre's book _De Emendata Structura Latini Sermonis_, published in that year, is generally received as containing the first specimen found in any production of the English press. The Greek alphabet occurs in the Primer of 1548.

II. Florence, Rome, Padua, and Rhodes were four great centres whither foreigners were then accustomed to resort for the study and mastery of Greek. In the _Life of Dean Colet_ it is shown how he travelled in Italy, and met with two of his countrymen at Florence, Grocyn and Linacre, and with a third at Rome, Lily, afterwards the famous grammarian, who, after learning Greek at Rhodes, had proceeded to Rome to render himself equally adept in Latin, so that, when he finally settled in London, he had served a laborious apprentices.h.i.+p and taken unusual pains to become an instructor of others.

Colet himself, it is to be noted, displayed in earlier life a bent towards theology and the Fathers, though he had scanty sympathy with the survivals whom he found around him, both at home and abroad, of the monastic schoolmen and expounders of the old divinity.

"He had observed these schoolmen," says his biographer indeed, "to be a heavy set of formal fellows, that might pretend to anything rather than to wit and sense, for to argue so elaborately about the opinions and the very words of other men: to snarl in perpetual objections, and to distinguish and divide into a thousand niceties: this was rather the work of a poor and barren invention than anything else."

Knight preserves a rather diverting anecdote of a preacher who spoke in his sermon before Henry VIII. against the Greek tongue, and of a conference which Henry caused to be arranged after the discourse, at which in his presence the divine and More should take opposite sides, the former attacking, and the latter vindicating, the language. More did his part, but the other fell down on his knees and begged the King's pardon, alleging that what he did was by the impulse of the Spirit. "Not the spirit of Christ," says the King to him, "but the spirit of infatuation."

His majesty then asked him whether he had read anything of Erasmus, whom he a.s.sailed from the pulpit. He said "No." "Why then," says the King, "you are a very foolish fellow to censure what you never read." "I have read,"

says he, "something they call _Moria_." "Yes," says Richard Pace, "may it please your highness, such a subject is fit for such a reader."

The end of it was that the preacher declared himself on reflection more reconciled to the Greek, because it was derived from the Hebrew, and that Henry dispensed with his further attendance upon the Court.

The feeling and taste for Greek culture which Lily, Erasmus, and others had introduced and encouraged, were promoted by the exertions of Sir John Cheke and Sir Thomas Smith at Cambridge, and by Dr. Kay or Caius; and a controversy, almost amounting to a quarrel, which Cheke had with Bishop Gardiner on Greek p.r.o.nunciation, stimulated the movement by attracting public attention to the matter, and bringing into notice many Greek authors whose works had not hitherto been read.

The literary contest between Cheke and Gardiner was printed abroad in 1555, and only eleven years later a paraphrase of the _Phnissae_ of Euripides by George Gascoigne and Francis Kinwelmersh was performed at Gray's Inn.

III. The tract published by the learned John Kay in 1574 on the p.r.o.nunciation of Greek and Latin is rather pertinent to the present movement for varying the old fas.h.i.+on in this respect. Kay instances the cases of subst.i.tuting _olli_ for _illi_, _queis_ for _quibus_, _mareito_ for _marito_, _maxume_ for _maxime_; and in Greek words, the ancients, says he, certainly said _Achilles_, _Tydes_, _Theses_, and _Ulisses_, not, as people sometimes now do, _Achillews_, _Tudews_, _Thesews_, and _Ulussews_. The author likewise refers to the employment of the aspirate in orthography, as in _hydropisis_, _thermae_, _Bathonia_, and _Hybernia_, which used to be read _ydropisis_, _termae_, _Batonia_, and _Ivernia_. He was clearly no advocate for the latter-day mode in England of hardening the _g_ and the _c_ as in _Regina_ and _Cicero_.

But the fact is that, where there are no positive _data_ for fixing the standard or laying down any general principle, there can never be an end of the conflicting views and theories on this subject, and the best of them amount to little more than guess-work.

The modes of p.r.o.nouncing both the Greek and Latin languages have always probably varied, as they do yet, in different countries; and the Scots adhere to the Continental fas.h.i.+on as regards, at all events, the latter.

Experience and practical observation seem to shew that every locality has a tendency to adapt its rules for sounding the dead tongues to those in force for sounding its current vocabulary; as a Roumanian lad, for instance, in learning Latin, will instinctively follow his native a.s.sociations in giving utterance to diphthongs, vowels, and compound words. The Greek language, in respect to this point of view, occupies an anomalous position, because it enjoys a partial survivors.h.i.+p in the Neo-h.e.l.lenic dialect; and it has been natural to seek in the method employed by their modern representatives and descendants a key to that employed by the inhabitants of ancient h.e.l.las in p.r.o.nouncing words and particles, and, in short, to the grammatical laws by which their speech was regulated.

It appears, however, that philologists have been disappointed in the results of this test, as the differences between the two idioms are often so wide and material. Yet, nevertheless, a Greek of the nineteenth century must be allowed to be a rather important witness in taking evidence on such a question, as the whole strength of received tradition and a _prima facie_ argument are on his side; and when we find that he gives to the long E or ?ta the force of A, and to the diphthong ?? that of E, we grow somewhat sceptical as to our right to impose on those particles a different function, especially seeing that the Ionic dialect and the metrical arrangement of the _Iliad_ ostensibly support this interchange of phonetic values. I need scarcely advert to the favourite theory that, so far as the Greek long E is concerned, it had its source in the vocal intonation of the sheep, which is, after all, far from an invariable standard.

The Englishman, in dealing with such themes as foreign spelling and p.r.o.nunciation, treads upon eggs, so to speak, as he lives within the knowledge of the whole world in a gla.s.s house of his own.

IV. But scarcely any books in the Greek character were printed in England until Edward Grant, head-master of Westminster School, brought out his _Graecae Linguae Spicilegium_, or Greek Delectus, in 1575. It saw only a single edition, and is still a common book, not having been apparently successful; and the next attempt of the kind did not even appeal to the English student, though the work of a native of North Britain; for Alexander Scot published his _Universa Grammatica Graeca_ at Lyons in a shape calculated to invite a yet more limited circulation than the essay of Grant.

Perhaps one of the earliest English publications relative to the study of Greek poetry was the _Progymnasma Scholastic.u.m_ of John Stockwood, published in 1596. Stockwood had been master of Tonbridge School, a foundation established by the Skinners' Company, and while he was there brought out one or two professional works. This was avowedly taken from the _Anthology_ of Stepha.n.u.s, and presents a Greek-Latin interlinear text.

Again, in 1631, William Burton, the Leicesters.h.i.+re historian, and a schoolmaster by profession, delivered at Gloucester Hall, Oxford, an oration on the origin and progress of Greek, which many years later, when he had charge of the school at Kingston-on-Thames, was edited by Gerard Langbaine. It was a scholarly thesis, and of no educational significance, except that it exhibited the survival of some languid interest in the topic at the University.

Very few Greek authors found early translators here beyond the selections prepared for schools; but it is remarkable that the example in this way was set by a citizen of London, and a member of the Goldsmiths' Company, Thomas Niccols, who in 1550, at the instance of Sir John Cheke, undertook to put into English the History of Thucydides. This was almost a century before the version by Hobbes of Malmesbury.

The partial translation of the _Iliad_ by Arthur Hall of Grantham, 1581, was taken from the French. But Chapman accomplished the feat of rendering the whole of Homer, as well as the _Georgics_ of Hesiod and the Neo-Greek _Hero and Leander_. At a later date, Thomas Grantham, a schoolmaster in Lothbury, who seems to have been in a state of perpetual warfare with his critics as to the merits of his fas.h.i.+on of teaching, brought out at his own expense, and possibly for the use of his own pupils, the first, second, and third books of the _Iliad_.

The grand work of Herodotus was approached in 1584 by an anonymous writer, who completed only _Clio_ and _Euterpe_.

But these intermittent and isolated cases shew how languid the feeling for h.e.l.lenic literature and history long remained in England; nor, when we regard the unsatisfactory character of the translations from the Greek, with rare exceptions, down to the present day, is it hard to see that the want was at least as largely due to incapacity on the part of scholars as to indifference on that of the public.

Many of the schools employed a small elementary selection from the Greek writers, of which a fifth edition was printed in 1771.

When Charles Lamb was at the Blue Coat School (1782-9), the Greek authors read there appear to have been Lucian and Xenophon, the former in a Selection from the _Dialogues_. The present writer, who was at Merchant Taylors' School from 1842 to 1850, used Xenophon, Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, and some volume of _a.n.a.lecta_. When the school was founded in 1561, it was difficult to find a boy to read Greek; but in the following century it enters rather prominently into the prospectus on Examination-day.

All the great seminaries differ in their lists; the choice depends on the personal taste of the masters from time to time; and there is a certain virtue in traditional names.

But the truth is that in England, after all, although this language has continued to be taught in all schools of any standing or pretension, the critical study and genuine appreciation of it have always been confined to a narrow circle of scholars; and nowadays there is a growing tendency to prefer the living languages, as they are called, to the dead.