The schoolmaster has set his house in order at the eleventh hour, in obedience to external pressure, coming from men who have revolted against the associations and prejudices of early days, and inaugurated a new educational Hegira; and the evolutions of this modern platform are by no means fully manifest.
The propensity of the class to adhere to ancient traditions in regard to the application of corporal punishment was, of course, to be checked only by the force of public opinion. Had it not been that the latter was gradually directed against the evil, the probability is that this would have ranked among those popular antiquities which time has not seriously or generally touched. But so early as 1669 a representation on the subject was actually laid before Parliament in a document called “The Children’s Petition: Or, A modest remonstrance of that intolerable grievance our youth lie under in the accustomed severities of the school-discipline of this nation.” This protest was printed, and facing the title-page there meets the eye a notice to this effect: “It is humbly desired this book may be delivered from one hand to another, and that gentleman who shall first propose the motion to the House, the book is his, together with the prayers of posterity,”—in which last phrase a double sense may or may not lurk.
It required many attacks on such a stronghold as the united influence and prejudice of the teaching profession to produce an effect, and probably no effect was produced at first; for in 1698 another endeavour was made to obtain parliamentary relief, and in this instance the address humbly sought “an Act to remedy the foul abuse of children at schools, especially in the great schools of this nation.”
These preparatory movements indicated the direction in which sentiment and taste were beginning to stir, not so much at the outset, perhaps, from any persuasion that greater clemency was conducive to progress, but from a natural disposition on the part of parents to revolt against the senseless ill-usage of their boys by capricious martinets.
II.
The Foundations—Vocabularies, Glossaries, and Nominalia—Their manifold utility—Colloquy of Archbishop Alfric (tenth century)—Anglo-Gallic treatise of Alexander Neckam on utensils (twelfth century)—Works of Johannes de Garlandia—His Dictionary (thirteenth century) and its pleasant treatment—The Pictorial Vocabulary—Anglo-Gallic Dictionary of Walter de Biblesworth (late thirteenth century).
I. The origin and history of a class of documents which may be viewed as the basis and starting-point of our educational literature have first to be considered. I refer to the vocabularies, glossaries, and nominalia, which afford examples of the method of instruction pursued in this country from the Middle Ages to the invention of printing.
Such of these manuals as we fortunately still possess represent the surviving residue of a much larger number; and from the perishable material on which they were written and their constant employment in tuition, it becomes a source of agreeable surprise that so many specimens remain to throw light on the mode in which elementary learning was acquired in England in the infancy of a taste for letters and knowledge.