THE NEGLECT OF ENGLISH.
No English was taught in the Stratford school then, or for many years after. It is only in our own day that it has begun to receive proper attention in schools of this grade in England, or indeed in our own country.
It is interesting, however, to know that the first English schoolmaster to urge the study of the vernacular tongue was a contemporary of Shakespeare. In 1561 Richard Mulcaster, who had been educated at King's College, Cambridge, and Christ Church, Oxford, was appointed head-master of Merchant-Taylors School in London, which had just been founded as a feeder, or preparatory school, for St. John's College, Oxford. In his Elementarie, published in 1582, he has the following plea for the study of English:—
"But because I take upon me in this Elementarie, besides some friendship to secretaries for the pen, and to correctors for the print, to direct such people as teach children to read and write English, and the reading must needs be such as the writing leads unto, therefore, before I meddle with any particular precept, to direct the reader, I will thoroughly rip up the whole certainty of our English writings so far forth and with such assurance as probability can make me, because it is a thing both proper to my argument and profitable to my country. For our natural tongue being as beneficial unto us for our needful delivery as any other is to the people which use it; and having as pretty and as fair observations in it as any other hath; and being as ready to yield to any rule of art as any other is; why should I not take some pains to find out the right writing of ours as other countrymen have done to find the like in theirs? and so much the rather because it is pretended that the writing thereof is marvellous uncertain, and scant to be recovered from extreme confusion, without some change of as great extremity?
"I mean therefore so to deal in it as I may wipe away that opinion of either uncertainty for confusion or impossibility for direction, that both the natural English may have wherein to rest, and the desirous stranger may have whereby to learn. For the performance whereof, and mine own better direction, I will first examine those means whereby other tongues of most sacred antiquity have been brought to art and form of discipline for their right writing, to the end that, by following their way, I may hit upon their right, and at the least by their precedent devise the like to theirs, where the use of our tongue and the property of our dialect will not yield flat to theirs.
"That done, I will set all the variety of our now writing, and the uncertain force of all our letters, in as much certainty as any writing can be, by these seven precepts:
"1. General rule, which concerneth the property and use of each letter.
"2. Proportion, which reduceth all words of one sound to the same writing.
"3. Composition, which teacheth how to write one word made of more.
"4. Derivation, which examineth the offspring of every original.
"5. Distinction, which bewrayeth the difference of sound and force in letters by some written figure or accent.
"6. Enfranchisement, which directeth the right writing of all incorporate foreign words.
"7. Prerogative, which declareth a reservation wherein common use will continue her precedence in our English writing as she hath done everywhere else, both for the form of the letter, in some places, which likes the pen better; and for the difference in writing, where some particular caveat will check a common rule.
"In all these seven I will so examine the particularities of our tongue, as either nothing shall seem strange at all, or if anything do seem, yet it shall not seem so strange but that either the self same, or the very like unto it, or the more strange than it is, shall appear to be in those things which are more familiar unto us for extraordinary learning than required of us for our ordinary use.
"And forasmuch as the eye will help many to write right by a seen precedent, which either cannot understand or cannot entend to understand the reason of a rule, therefore in the end of this treatise for right writing I purpose to set down a general table of most English words, by way of precedent, to help such plain people as cannot entend the understanding of a rule, which requireth both time and conceit in perceiving, but can easily run to a general table, which is readier to their hand. By the which table I shall also confirm the right of my rules, that they hold throughout, and by multitude of examples help some in precepts."
Thirty years later, in 1612, another teacher followed Mulcaster in advocating the study of English. This was John Brinsley, who, in The Grammar Schoole, writes thus:—
"There seems unto me to be a very main want in all our grammar schools generally, or in the most of them, whereof I have heard some great learned men to complain; that there is no care had in respect to train up scholars so as they may be able to express their minds purely and readily in our own tongue, and to increase in the practice of it, as well as in the Latin and Greek; whereas our chief endeavour should be for it, and that for these reasons:
"1. Because that language which all sorts and conditions of men amongst us are to have most use of, both in speech and writing, is our own native tongue.
"2. The purity and elegance of our own language is to be esteemed a chief part of the honour of our nation, which we all ought to advance as much as in us lieth....
"3. Because of those which are for a time trained up in schools, there are very few which proceed in learning, in comparison of them that follow other callings."
Among the means which he recommends "to obtain this benefit of increasing in our English tongue as in the Latin" are "continual practice of English grammatical translations," and "translating and writing English, with some other school exercises."
But, as we have seen, the study of our mother tongue continued to be generally ignored in English schools for nearly three centuries after Mulcaster and Brinsley had thus called attention to its educational value.