Schools, School-Books and Schoolmasters Part 5

William Horman, who is presumed to have been the author of the _Introductorium_ above mentioned, was schoolmaster and Fellow of Eton College; in 1477 he became a perpetual Fellow of New College, Oxford, and he was eventually chosen Vice-Provost of Eton. He survived till 1535. From an epigram appended to the volume it is to be gleaned that Horman was a pupil of Dr. Caius, poet-laureate to Edward the Fourth.

Of the _Gradus Comparationum_ the subjoined may be received as a specimen:--

"What nownes make comparyson? All adiectyues welnere ? betoken a thynge that maye be made more or lesse: as fayre: fayrer: fayrest: black, blacker, blackest. How many degrees of comparacyon ben there? iij. the positiue ? comparatiue & the superlatyue. How knowe ye the posityue gedre? For he is the groude and the begynner of all other degrees of coparyson. How knowe ye the comparatyue degre? for he pa.s.seth his posityue with this englysshe more, or his englysshe endeth in r, as more wyse or wyser. How knowe ye the superlatyue degre? for he pa.s.seth his posityue with engysshe moost: or his englisshe endeth in est: as moost fayre or fayrest, moost whyte or whytest."

III. The _Vulgaria_ of William Horman, 1519, is perhaps one of the most intrinsically curious and valuable publications in the entire range of our early philological literature. It would be easy to fill such a slender volume as that in the hands of the reader with samples of the contents without exhausting the store, but I must content myself with such extracts as seem most entertaining and instructive:--

"Physicians, that be all sette to wynne money, bye and sylle our lyues: and so ofte tymes we bye deth with a great and a sore pryce. _Animas nostras aeruscatores medici negociantur, &c._

"Papyre fyrste was made of a certeyne stuffe like the pythe of a bulrushe in aegypt: and syth it is made of lynnen clothe soked in water, stapte or grude pressed and smothed. _Chartae seu papyri, &c._

"The greattest and hyest of pryce: is papyre imperyall. _Augustissimum papyrum, &c._

"The prynters haue founde a crafte to make bokis by brasen letters sette in ordre by a frame. _Calcographi arte, &c._

"Pryntynge hathe almooste vndone scryueners crafte. _Chalcographia librarioru qstu pene exhavsit._

"Yf the prynters take more hede to the hastynge: than to the true settynge of theyr moldis: the warke is vtterly marred. _Si qui libros, &c._"

The rest are given without the Latin equivalents, which have no particular interest.

"Scryueners write with blacke, redde, purple, gren, blewe, or byce: and suche other.

Parchement leues be wonte to be ruled: that there may be a comly marget: also streyte lynes of equal distaunce be drawe withyn: that the wryttyng may shewe fayre.

Olde or doting chourles can not suffre yoge children to be mery.

I haue lefte my boke in the tennys playe.

This ynke is no better than blatche.

Frobeynes prynt is called better than Aldus: but yet Aldus is neuer the lesse thanke worthy: for he began the fynest waye: and left sauple by the whiche other were lyghtly provoked and taughte to deuyse better.

There is come a scoolle of fysshe.

The tems is frosne ouer with yse.

The trompettours blowe a fytte or a motte.

Vitelars thryue: by getherynge of good felowes that haue swete mouthes.

The mokis of charter-house: neuer ete fleshe mete.

We shall drynke methe or metheglen.

We shall haue a iuncket after dyner.

Serue me with pochyd eggis.

He kepeth rere suppers tyll mydnyght.

Se that I lacke nat by my beddes syde a chayer of eas.e.m.e.nt: with a vessel vnder: and an vrinall bye.

Women couette to sytte on lowe or pote stolys: men upon twyse so hye.

It is couenyent that a man haue one seueral place in his house to hymselfe fro cobrance of wome.

Women muste haue one place to themselfe to tyffil themselfe and kepe theyr apparell.

They whyte theyr face, necke and pappis with cerusse: and theyr lyppis and ruddis with purpurisse.

Tumblers, houndes, that can goo on huntynge by them selfe: brynge home theyr praye.

Lytel popies, that serueth for ladies, were sutyme bellis: sutyme colers ful of p.r.i.c.kkis for theyr defece.

I haue layde many gynnys, pottis, and other: for to take fisshe.

Some fisshe scatre at the nette.

Poules steple is a mighty great thyng / and so hye that vneth a man may discerne the wether c.o.c.ke.

It is an olde duty / and an auncyent custume / that the Mayre of London with his bretherne shall offer at Poules certayne dayes in the yere.

In London be. lij. parysshe chyrches.

Two or. iij. neses be holsome: one is a shrowed toke."

These selected extracts will convey some notion of the unusual curiosity of the _Vulgaria_ of Horman, of which a second edition came out in 1530; it is so far rather surprising that it did not prove more popular. But it had to enter into compet.i.tion with books of a similar t.i.tle and cast by Stanbridge and Whittinton, who had their established connection to a.s.sist the sale of their publications.

The concluding item in this list of educational performances is also a curious philological relic, and a factor in the ill.u.s.tration of the imperfect mastery of English by foreigners of all periods and almost all countries. I allude to an edition of the _Declensions_ of the learned Parisian printer Ascensius with an English gloss. The tract was evidently printed abroad; and I am tempted to transcribe the paragraph on Punctuation, as it may afford an idea of the nature of the publication and of the English of that day as written by a foreigner. It will be observed that the author seems to confound the comma and the colon:--

"_Of the craft of poynting._

"Therbe fiue maner poyntys / and diuisios most vside with cunnyng men: the whiche if they be wel vsid: make the sentens very light / and esy to vnderstod both to the reder & the herer. & they be these: virgil / come / parethesis / playne poynt / and interrogatif. A virgil is a scleder stryke: lenynge forwarde thiswyse / be tokynynge a lytyl / short rest without any perfetnes yet of sentens: as betwene the fiue poyntis a fore rehersid. A come is with tway t.i.tils thiswyse: betokynyng a lenger rest: and the setens yet ether is vnperfet: or els if it be perfet: ther c.u.mith more after / logyng to it: the which more comynly can not be perfect by itself without at the lest sumat of it: that gothe a fore. A parenthesis is with tway crokyd virgils: as an olde mone / & a neu bely to bely: the whiche be set theron afore the begynyng / and thetother after the latyr ende of a clause: comyng within an other clause: that may be perfet: thof the clause / so comyng betwene: wer awey and therfore it is sowndyde comynly a note lower: than the vtter clause. yf the setens cannot be perfet without the ynner clause: then stede of the first crokyde virgil a streght virgil wol do very wel: and stede of the latyr must nedis be a come. A playne point is with won t.i.ttil thiswyse. & it c.u.mith after the ende of al the whole setens betokinyng a loge rest. An iterrogatif is with tway t.i.tils: the vppir rysyng this wyse? & it c.u.mith after the ende of a whole reason: wheryn ther is sum question axside. the whiche ende of the reson / tariyng as it were for an answare: risyth vpwarde. we haue made these rulis in englisshe: by cause they be as profitable / and necessary to be kepte in euery moder tuge / as i latin. -- Sethyn we (as we wolde to G.o.d: euery precher [? techer] wolde do) haue kepte owre rulis bothe in owre englisshe / and latyn: what nede we / sethyn owre own be sufficient ynogh: to put any other exemplis."

VI. It is perhaps fruitless to offer any vague conjecture as to the authorship of the _Ascensian Declensions_. Many Englishmen resident in Paris, Antwerp, and Germany might have edited such a book. The orthography and punctuation are alike peculiar, and suspiciously redolent, it may be considered, of a foreign parentage; but one of our countrymen who had long resided abroad, or who had even been educated out of England, might very well have been guilty of such slips as we find here. A Thomas Robertson of York, of whom I shall have more presently to say, was a few years later in communication with the printers and publishers of Switzerland, and became the editor of a text of Lily the grammarian. Robertson, as a Northern man, was apt, in writing English, to introduce certain provincialisms; and I put it, though merely as a guess, that he might have executed this commission, as he did the other, for Bebelius of Basle.

Two years subsequently to the appearance of his _Vulgaria_, Horman involved himself in a literary controversy with Whittinton in consequence of an attack which he had made on the laureate's grammatical productions in a printed Epistle to Lily; it was the beginning of a movement for reforming or remodelling the current educational literature, and Horman himself was a man of superior character and literary training, as we are able to judge from the way in which he acquitted himself of his own contribution to this cla.s.s of work.

A curious and very interesting account of the dispute between Lily and Horman, in which Robert Whittinton and a fourth grammarian named Aldrich became involved, is given by Maitland in his Notices of the Lambeth Palace Library. I elsewhere refer to the warm altercation between Sir John Cheke and Bishop Gardiner on the p.r.o.nunciation of Greek. Both these matters have to be added to a new edition of Disraeli's _Quarrels of Authors_.

The Salernitan gentleman (Andrea Guarna) who set the Noun and the Verb together by the ears in his _Grammar War_, acted, no doubt, more discreetly, since he reserved to himself the power to terminate the fray which he had commenced.

VII. Generally speaking, it is the case that the men who compiled the curious and highly valuable Manuals of Instruction during the Middle Ages were superseded and effaced by others following in their track and profiting by their experience. The bulk of these more ancient treatises, such as I have described, still remained in MS. till of recent years, like the college text-books, which are yet sometimes left unprinted from choice; and after the introduction of typography the teaching and learning public accorded a preference to those scholars who constructed their system on more modern lines, and whose method was at once more intelligible and more efficient.