Dialogue VII. deals with school-meals, and we plunge at once right into the heart of school interests and life. The sort of foods and drinks, the different kinds of banquets and feastings, mentioned in older writers, the preparation of the table, moderation in eating and drinking, the necessity of cleanliness in all the stages of a meal, including washing up, become topics of the dialogue as it proceeds. Then comes the fitting device of introducing a guest to the boys’ table, of another boy, a Fleming from Bruges. He is asked if he has brought his knife. He has not. “This is a wonder!” exclaims an interlocutor. “A Fleming without a knife, and he too a Brugensian, where the best knives are made!” The conversation proceeds in Latin, since boys were required to speak in and out of school in Latin, at least in all self-respecting establishments.
The Brugensian boy has been under John Theodore Nervius, and this becomes the occasion for a compliment to that schoolmaster. Bruges, too, we have seen, was the[xxvi] town in which Vives himself spent a considerable portion of his adult life. He does not hesitate to introduce himself, humorously, into this dialogue on school-boys’ meals.
Master. But what is our Vives doing?
Nepotulus. They say he is in training as an athlete, but not by athletics.
Master. What is the meaning of that?
Nepotulus. He is always wrestling, but not bravely enough.
Master. With whom?
Nepotulus. With his gout.
Master. O mournful wrestler, which first of all attacks the feet.
Usher. Nay, rather cruel victor, which fetters the whole body!
In this dialogue of school-boy meals, Vives has given samples of conversational topics, and their due treatment, in the presence of masters and in regular daily routine. In the next dialogue (VIII.), called “Pupils’ Chatter,” boys are out of doors, and a series of nineteen “stories” or topics of conversation get started. The subjects are of interest in showing the type of incidents which boys were supposed to introduce into conversation, and though didactic in tendency, certainly do not favour the supposition that school-boys were supposed to be absorbed in the study of recondite classical subtleties, or even in purely Ciceronian subjects.
Dialogue IX., “Journey on Horseback,” contains the record of what modern educationalists call “the school journey.” The idea of studying geography and history by taking journeys, in which instruction shall arise naturally out of the places of interest seen in the course of the journey, is not a new one, as is often supposed. Vittorino da Feltre, for instance, used to take his school in the summer months for excursions from Mantua to Goito. Vives represents his Parisian pupil as journeying from Paris to Boulogne. The occasion of holiday for the pupils is that Pandulphus, their teacher, has “incepted” in the university, and having thus become a “Master of Arts” (with the right to teach school[xxvii] on his own account), according to university custom he is performing his duty of giving a great feast to the other masters in honour of his laurels, and as a matter of fact, as these boys recognise, is making them drunk. This dialogue of the “Journey on Horseback” contains a full account of different kinds of locomotion. It is especially distinguished by the love that is shown for natural objects of the country, the river, the sweet scent of the fields, the nightingale, and the goldfinch.
In Dialogue XIII. the school is described. Each type and grade of scholar is discussed. Vives’ conception of a school was afterwards followed by Milton. It was an academy, in which the pupil remained from early years up to and including the university stage. In this dialogue is the account of a disputation, with description of the propugnator of a thesis, and several types of oppugnators.
Dialogue XIV. describes a scholar burning the midnight oil. Vives describes the extensive preparations of the scholar for his work of reading authors. The account is almost a supplement to Erasmus’s famous picture of the Ciceronian scholar setting himself to his composition. The dialogue ends with the scholar going to bed whilst one of his attendants sings to the accompaniment of the lyre the lines of Ovid beginning: Somne, quies rerum, placidissime somne deorum.
It has already been stated that Vives devoted a dialogue to an account of the King’s Palace. Similarly, in speaking now of Vives’ treatment of school life, careful notice should be taken of the fact that one dialogue (XX.) is concerned with the education of the boy-prince. This dialogue is of especial interest, since the boy-prince is Philip himself, the son of the Emperor Charles V., the child to whom Vives dedicates the Dialogues. Philip was born at Valladolid, May 21, 1527,[xxviii] and was therefore eleven years of age when Vives completed the writing of the Dialogues and was twelve years old when they appeared. It will be remembered that in 1554 Philip came to England to claim as his bride the English Queen Mary I., the “bloody” Mary, daughter of Catharine of Aragon, the first queen-consort of Henry VIII., whose coming to England was probably to some degree the ground of its attraction to Vives when he paid his first visit to England, in the autumn of 1522. It is interesting to note that Vives wrote, in 1523, a short treatise on the education of the Princess Mary, probably at the request of Queen Catharine of Aragon, and at any rate dedicated to that ill-fated queen. Vives, thus, is in the remarkable position of having prescribed, as consultant-educationalist, for the Spanish Philip in one of his dialogues (in 1538) and for the English Mary in 1523.[8]
In this dialogue, “The Boy Prince,” are the interlocutors, Prince Philip and the two counsellor-teachers, Morobulus and Sophobulus. Morobulus is a fawning sycophant, who advises Philip to “ride about, chat with the daughters of your august mother, dance, learn the art of bearing arms, play cards or ball, leap and run.” But as for the study of literature, why, that is for men of “holy” affairs, priests or artisans, who want technical knowledge. Get plenty of fresh air. Philip replies that he cannot follow all this advice without opposing his tutors, Stunica and Siliceus. Morobulus points out that these tutors are subjects of Philip, or at any rate of Philip’s father. Philip observes that his father has placed them over him. Morobulus advises resistance to them. Sophobulus urges, on the contrary, that if Philip does not obey them, he will become a “slave of the worst [xxix]order, worse than those who are bought and sold from Ethiopia or Africa and employed by us here.”[9]
Sophobulus then shows, by three similitudes, that safety in actions and in the events of life depends upon knowledge and study. First, he proposes a game in which one is elected king. “The rest are to obey according to the rules of the game.” Let Philip be king. But Philip inquires as to the nature of the game. If he does not know the game, he inquires, how can he take the part of king in it?