Alexander’s Doctrinale (p. 80).—A. I thought you made it a rule to give only what was useful. What can be the use of the quotations which your old Appendix contained “from a celebrated grammar written by a Franciscan of Brittany about the middle of the 13th century”? E. Perhaps I had an attack of antiquarianism; but I rather think the quotations were given in order to shew our progress since those days. The Teachers’ art of making easy things difficult is well exemplified in Alexander’s rules for the first declension. But life is short, and folly is best forgotten.
Lily’s Grammar (p. 80). A. Would not your last remark rule out what you told us about Lily’s Grammar? E. As regards Lily’s assertion, “Genders of nouns be 7,” it certainly would. Surely nobody but a writer of school-books would ever have thought of making a “gender” out of “hic, hæc, hoc, felix”! But the absurdity did not originate with Lily. He was all for simplification, and though there were some changes in the Eton Latin Grammar which succeeded the “Short introduction of Grammar” known as Lily’s Grammar, these changes were, some of them at least, by no means improvements. The old book put a before all ablatives and taught that “by a kingdom” was a regno. If this was not any better than teaching that domino by itself was “by a Lord,” it was at least no worse. The optative of the old book (“Utinam sim I pray God I be; Utinam Essem would God I were, &c.”) and the subjunctive (“Cum Sim When I am, &c.,”) were better than the oracular statement which perplexed my youth, “The subjunctive mood is declined like the potential.” How often I said those words, and being of an inquiring mind wondered what on earth “the subjunctive mood” was!
Colet. E. The passage I refer to on page 80 from Colet is in a little book in the B.M. It is “Joannis Coleti theologi, olim Decani Divi Pauli, editio, una cum quibusdam G. Lilii Grammatices Rudimentis, &c. Antuerpiæ 1535.” After the accidence of the eight parts of speech, he says:—“Of these eight parts of speech in order well construed, be made reasons and sentences, and long orations. But how and in what manner, and with what constructions of words, and all the varieties, and diversities, and changes in Latin speech (which be innumerable), if any man will know, and by that knowledge attain to understand Latin books, and to speak and to write clean Latin, let him, above all, busily learn and read good Latin authors of chosen poets and orators, and note wisely how they wrote and spake; and study always to follow them, desiring none other rules but their examples. For in the beginning men spake not Latin because such rules were made, but, contrariwise, because men spake such Latin, upon that followed the rules, and were made. That is to say, Latin speech was before the rules, and not the rules before the Latin speech. Wherefore, well-beloved masters and teachers of grammar, after the parts of speech sufficiently known in our schools, read and expound plainly unto your scholars good authors, and show to them [in] every word, and in every sentence, what they shall note and observe, warning them busily to follow and do like both in writing and in speaking; and be to them your own self also speaking with them the pure Latin very present, and leave the rules; for reading of good books, diligent information of learned masters, studious advertence and taking heed of learners, hearing eloquent men speak, and finally, busy imitation with tongue and pen, more availeth shortly to get the true eloquent speech, than all the traditions, rules, and precepts of masters.” This passage is, I find, well known. It is given in Knights’ Life of Colet and is referred to by Mr. Seebohm. Mr. J. H. Lupton, Colet’s latest biographer, has kindly corrected the date for me: it is indistinct in the Museum copy.
Mulcaster for English (p. 97). A. Except in Clarke’s edition, your extracts from Mulcaster’s Elementarie have been omitted by your American reprinters. E. So I see. I should have thought the Americans would have been much interested by this early praise of our common language. The passage is certainly a very remarkable one, and Professor Masson has thought it worth quoting in his Life of Milton. The Elementarie is a scarce book; so I will not follow my reprinters in leaving out this passage:—“Is it not a marvellous bondage to become servants to one tongue, for learning’s sake, the most part of our time, with loss of most time, whereas we may have the very same treasure in our own tongue with the gain of most time? our own bearing the joyful title of our liberty and freedom, the Latin tongue remembering us of our thraldom and bondage? I love Rome, but London better; I favour Italy, but England more: I honour the Latin, but I worship the English.... I honour foreign tongues, but wish my own to be partaker of their honour. Knowing them, I wish my own tongue to resemble their grace. I confess their furniture, and wish it were ours.... The diligent labour of learned countrymen did so enrich those tongues, and not the tongues themselves; though they proved very pliable, as our tongue will prove, I dare assure it, of knowledge, if our learned countrymen will put to their labour. And why not, I pray you, as well in English as either Latin or any tongue else? Will ye say it is needless? sure that will not hold. If loss of time, while ye be pilgrims to learning, by lingering about tongues be no argument of need; if lack of sound skill while the tongue distracteth sense more than half to itself and that most of all in a simple student or a silly wit, be no argument of need, then ye say somewhat which pretend no need. But because we needed not to lose any time unless we listed, if we had such a vantage, in the course of study, as we now lose while we travail in tongues; and because our understanding also were most full in our natural speech, though we know the foreign exceedingly well—methink necessity itself doth call for English, whereby all that gaiety may be had at home which makes us gaze so much at the fine stranger.” Among various objections to the use of English which he answers, he comes to this one:—“But will ye thus break off the common conference with the learned foreign?” To this his answer is not very forcible:—“The conference will not cease while the people have cause to interchange dealings, and without the Latin it may well be continued: as in some countries the learneder sort and some near cousins to the Latin itself do already wean their pens and tongues from the use of the Latin, both in written discourse and spoken disputation, into their own natural, and yet no dry nurse being so well appointed by the milch nurse’s help.” Further on he says:—“The emperor Justinian said, when he made the Institutes of force, that the students were happy in having such a foredeal [i.e., advantage—German Vortheil] as to hear him at once, and not to wait four years first. And doth not our languaging hold us back four years and that full, think you?... [But this is not all.] Our best understanding is in our natural tongue, and all our foreign learning is applied to our use by means of our own; and without the application to particular use, wherefore serves learning?... [As for dishonouring antiquity], if we must cleave to the eldest and not the best, we should be eating acorns and wearing old Adam’s pelts. But why not all in English, a tongue of itself both deep in conceit and frank in delivery? I do not think that any language, be it whatsoever, is better able to utter all arguments either with more pith or greater plainness than our English tongue is.... It is our accident which restrains our tongue and not the tongue itself, which will strain with the strongest and stretch to the furthest, for either government if we were conquerors, or for cunning if we were treasurers; not any whit behind either the subtle Greek for crouching close, or the stately Latin for spreading fair.”
Marcel’s “Axiomatic Truths.”—A. I have seen Marcel referred to as a great authority in education, but I look in vain for his name in Kiddle’s Cyclopædia and in Sonnenschein’s. E. You would be more successful in Buisson’s. There I see that Claude Marcel was born at Paris in 1793, and died in 1876. He was one of Napoleon’s soldiers. After 40 years’ absence from France dating from 1825 he went back to Paris. He had been French Consul at Cork, and brought up nine children whom he taught entirely himself. In 1853 he published with Chapman and Hall his Language as a Means of Mental Culture (2 vols.). This book was not very well named, for it contains in fact an analysis of the subject—education. To the study of this subject Marcel must have given his life, and it seems odd that his contribution to English (not French) pedagogic literature is so little known. A French abridgment of his work appeared in 1855 with the title Premiers Principes d’Education; and in 1867 he published in French L’Études des Languages (Paris, Borrani) of which a translation was published in the U.S.A. Marcel’s notion of education is threefold, viz., Physical, Intellectual, and Moral Education: the 1st aiming at health, strength, and beauty; the 2nd at mental power and the acquisition of knowledge; the 3rd at piety, justice, goodness, and wisdom. According to him the Creator has made the exercise of our faculties pleasurable. This will suggest his main lines. He expects to find general assent, for he quotes from Garrick:—
“When Doctrine meets with general approbation,
“It is not heresy but reformation.”
But he has met with less approbation than neglect. His “axiomatic truths” that I quoted in the old appendix were abused without mercy by a critic of those days who accused me of “bookmaking” for putting them in. On the other hand my last American reprinter singles them out for honour and puts them at the beginning of the book. After this I suppose somebody likes them, so here they are:
“Axiomatic Truths of Methodology.—1. The method of nature is the archetype of all methods, and especially of the method of learning languages.
2. The classification of the objects of study should mark out to teacher and learner their respective spheres of action.