In an age when men lied and deceived shamelessly, Vittorino’s pupils were known for their absolute sincerity. This love of truth and hatred of falsehood was not won without careful efforts on the part of the master. He would not punish for a fault that was bravely confessed, and so took away one of the occasions of lying from timid children. A funny little story is told of Alessandro Gonzaga. The little fellow was ill, and had been ordered not to drink any water. But he was horribly thirsty, and disobeyed the commands. There was no great danger of being “found out,” but the boy was uneasy, until he had confessed. “Do you know what I did?” he said to Vittorino. “I took a big, big drink of water. Wasn’t I very good?” “Well,” said Vittorino, seeing that it could not be helped now, “at least, you were very good to tell it.”
He never allowed his pupils to utter a profane word. When Carlo was quite grown up, he swore a soldier’s oath in his master’s presence. And lo! the little man was upon him in an instant, boxing his ears, as if he were still a schoolboy. To the honour of Carlo, it must be said that he bore the indignity meekly, feeling that he had deserved it.
Like Dominici, Vittorino loved to see the children run about, and laugh, and leap, and play. He found two of them, during recreation hour one day, confabbing in a corner about their lessons. Do you think he was pleased? Not a bit of it. Out he routed them, and made them take part in the other children’s games. For, long before the English Duke, he had found out for himself that many a battle yet to be fought was being won already on those meadows by the Mincio, where his pupils were playing merrily.
One of the outstanding features in Vittorino’s system was the importance he attached to games—and all sorts of physical exercises. He held as a fundamental principle that “the human spirit cannot exercise its faculties fully, if the physical organs which it must use are defective.” He insisted on outdoor exercise, whatever the weather. He had his pupils taught riding, and swimming, and wrestling, and fencing. He organised hunting and fishing expeditions for them; and, remembering that many of his pupils were to be soldiers, he liked to teach them the art of warfare, by occupying mimic trenches, and pitching mimic camps, and taking mimic towns—according to the most approved methods.
These rougher plays were not for the girls, though they, in general, shared the lessons of the boys. For them there were dancing lessons, where every movement of their body was trained to an exquisite grace. They had riding lessons, too, and hunted and played “palla,” or tennis. No game was tolerated for them which would tend to make them ungraceful—as so many of the games our girls play to-day really seem to do.
Plenty of fresh air and exercise, plenty of good, simple food, to which they brought the sauce of a healthy hunger, sound and dreamless sleep, soon made the youngsters of the “Casa Giocosa” a healthy, happy band, whom it was a delight to see at their lessons.
He had the supreme gift of the good teacher, our Vittorino, that of knowing how to interest his pupils in their work. The maxim of Quintilian “do not allow the boy to conceive an aversion for the studies which he cannot yet love,” was adopted by him, and, until the young minds were ripe enough to love learning for its own sake, it was the master’s care to surround it with attractions. So we find him reviving the Quintilianian device of teaching the youngsters to read by means of painted cards and wooden blocks. As we have seen already, our Irish ancestors had a similar plan. In Whitley Stokes’ “Lives of the Irish Saints from the Book of Lismore,” there is a charming story of Saint Columbkille, as a child, learning his letters from a cake, on which they had been stamped.
In Vittorino’s school there was no place for the rod, which we have seen play such an important part in the mediæval school-system. He liked to appeal to the children through their sense of honour and dignity. The greatest punishment for such children was to make them feel ashamed.
As far as school-work went, however, there was little need for punishment. The enthusiasm for letters which had seized on all Italy had taken possession of the little people of the “Casa Giocosa” in an extraordinary degree; and in some cases, especially that of Gianlucido, the master’s care was rather to restrain than to urge them on. That great scholar, Ambrogio Traversari, General of the Camaldolese Order, writing to his friend, the celebrated Niccolò Nicoli, mentioned the boy’s marvellous achievements in Latin and Greek. On the occasion of a later visit, which he described for the great Cosimo de’ Medici, he listened to a Latin poem of about two hundred verses, wherein Gianlucido celebrated the coming of the Emperor Sigismund to Mantua.
That same letter to Cosimo makes mention of Cecilia, whom, perhaps, my readers think I have left too long undistinguished, among the band of merry children, playing by the Mincio. “There is also a daughter of the Marquis[12] at the school,” writes Ambrogio, “who, though only ten years’ old, writes Greek with such elegance that, I am ashamed to acknowledge, scarcely any of my own pupils can approach it.” This tribute, indeed, hardly does full credit to Cecilia’s astonishing attainments. At eight years old, we are told, she read the works of Saint John Chrysostom, and wrote elegant Latin verses. She had begun the study of Greek at the mature age of six.