The Educational Writings of Richard Mulcaster

by Richard Mulcaster

Before I deal further with this matter, I must examine two principal points in our tongue, of which one is, whether it has material in it for art to build on, because I said that art dealt where she found sufficient matter for her labour. The other is, whether our writing is justly challenged for those infirmities with which it is charged in our time, because I said that this period of our own time seems to be the most perfect period in our English tongue, and that our custom has already beaten out its own rules, ready for the method and framework of art. These two points are necessarily to be considered. For if there be either no material for art owing to the extreme confusion, or if our custom be not yet ripe enough to be reduced to rule, then that perfect period in our tongue is not yet come, and I have entered upon this subject while it is yet too green. However, I hope it will not prove premature, and therefore I will first show that there is in our tongue great and sufficient stuff for art to work upon; then that there is no such infirmity in our writing as is pretended, but that our custom has become fit to receive this framing by art by the method which I have laid down, without any outside help, and by those rules only which may be gathered out of our own ordinary writing.

It must needs be that our English tongue has matter enough in her own writing to direct her own practice, if it be reduced to definite precepts and rules of art. The causes why this has not as yet been thoroughly perceived are the hope and despair of those who have either thought upon it and not dealt with it, or have dealt with it but not rightly thought upon it.

For some, considering the great difficulty which they found to be in the writing of our language, almost every letter being deputed to many and various—even well-nigh contrary—sounds and uses, and almost every word either wanting letters for its necessary sound, or having more than necessity demands, began to despair in the midst of such a confusion of ever finding out any sure direction on which art might be firmly grounded. Perhaps either they did not seek, or did not know how to seek, the right form of method for art to adopt. But whether difficulty in the search, or infirmity in the searchers, gave cause for this, the parties themselves gave over the thing, as in a desperate case, and by not meddling through despair they fail to help the right.

Again some others, bearing a good affection to their natural tongue, and being resolved to burst through the midst of all these difficulties, which offered such resistance, devised a new means, in which they placed their hope of bringing the thing about. Whereupon some of them who were of great place and good learning, set forth in print particular treatises with these newly conceived means, showing how we ought to write, and so to write correctly. But their good hope, by reason of their strange means, had the same result that the despair of the others had, either from their misconceiving the things at first, or from their diffidence at the last.

The causes why their plans did not take effect, and thus in part hindered the thing, by making many think the case more desperate than it really was, were these. The despair of those who thought that the tongue was incapable of any direction, came of a wrong cause, the fault arising indeed not from the thing which they condemned as altogether rude and incapable of rule, but from the parties themselves, who mistook their way. For the thing itself will soon be put into order, though it requires some diligence and careful consideration in him that must find it out. But when a writer takes a wrong principle quite contrary to common practice, where trial must be the touchstone, and practice must confirm the means which he conceives, is it any marvel if the use of a tongue resist such a means, which is not in conformity with it? From this proceeded the despair of hitting aright, because they missed their intention, whereas in reality they should have changed their intention, in order to hit upon the right, which is in the thing and will soon be found out, if it be rightly sought for.

Again, the hope of the others deceived them too quite as much. For they did not consider that whereas common reason and common custom have been long engaged in seeking out their own course, they themselves will be councillors, and will never yield to any private conception, which shall seem evidently either to force them or cross them, in acting as they themselves do, never giving any precept how to write correctly, till they have railed at custom as a most pernicious enemy to truth and right, even in the things where custom has most right, if it has right in any. Therefore when they proceeded in an argument of custom, with the enmity of him who is Lord of the soil, was it any wonder if they failed of their purpose, and hindered the finding out of our correct writing, which must needs be compassed by the consent of custom and the friendship of reason? So in the meantime, while despair deceives the one, and hope beguiles the other, the one missing his way, the other making a foe, and both going astray, they both lose their labour, and hinder the finding out of the best mode of writing, because the true method of finding out such a thing has another course, as I have shown before.

Yet notwithstanding all this, it is very manifest, that the tongue itself has matter in it to furnish out an art, and that the same means which has been used in reducing other tongues to their best form, will serve this of ours, both for generality of precept and for certainty of foundation, as may be easily proved on those four grounds—the antiquity of our tongue, the people’s intelligence, their learning, and their experience. For how can it be but that a tongue which has continued for many hundreds of years not only a tongue, but one of good account, both in speech and pen, should have grown in all that time to some refinement and assurance of itself, by so long and so general a use, the people that have used it being none of the dullest, and labouring continually in all exercises that concern learning, and in all practices that procure experience, either in peace or in war, either in public or private, either at home or abroad?

As for the antiquity of our speech, whether it be measured by the ancient Teutonic, whence it originally comes, or even but by the latest terms which it borrows daily from foreign tongues, either out of pure necessity in new matters, or out of mere bravery to garnish itself with, it cannot be young—unless the German himself be young, who claims a prerogative for the age of his speech, of an infinite prescription; unless the Latin and Greek be young, whose words we enfranchise to our own use, though not always immediately from themselves, but mostly through the Italian, French, and Spanish; unless other tongues, which are neither Greek nor Latin, nor any of the forenamed, from which we have something, as they have from ours, will for company’s sake be content to be young, that ours may not be old. But I am well assured that every one of these will strive for antiquity, and rather grant it to us than forgo it themselves. So that if the very newest words we use savour of great antiquity, and the ground of our speech is most ancient, it must needs then follow that our whole tongue was weaned long ago, as having all her teeth.

As for the importance of our tongue, both in pen and speech, no man will have any doubt who is able to judge what those things are that make any tongue to be of account, which things I take to be three—the authority of the people who speak it, the subject-matter with which the speech deals, and the manifold uses which it serves. For all these three our tongue need not give place to any of her peers.

First, to say something of the people that use the tongue, the English nation has always been of good credit and great estimation, ever since credit and estimation in the course of history came over to this side of the Alps, which appears to be true—even by foreign chronicles (not to use our own in a case that affects ourselves), which would never have said so much of the people if it had been obscure, and unworthy of a perpetual history.