The educational writings of some of the men, whose influence for good in this direction had of course been greatly circumscribed by the ignorance of typography, found their way into print. But one of the foremost persons who addressed himself to the task of diffusing a knowledge of elementary learning and of teaching English by Latin was Nicholaus Perottus, Bishop of Sipontum, whose Grammatical Rules first appeared, so far as I know, in 1486.[1]
The examples of fifteenth-century English, which make in our eyes its chief value, were of course introduced as casual illustrations.
The lexicographical and grammatical works of this noted prelate undoubtedly exercised a very powerful and beneficial influence at, and long after, the period of their composition; and I am disposed to think that this was particularly the case with his Rudimenta Grammatices, 1476, and his Cornucopia Linguæ Latinæ, 1490. The former was not only imported into this country for sale, but was reprinted here in 1512, and the Cornucopia forms part of the groundwork of our own Ortus Vocabulorum, 1500.
II. Next in succession to Bishop Perrot, whose publications, however, cannot be said to belong to the present category in more than an incidental degree, was Johannes Sulpicius Verulanus, who is perhaps to be viewed as the leader of the movement for spreading, not only in France, but in England, a fuller and more scholarly acquaintance with the laws of grammar. Nearly the first book which proceeded from the press of Richard Pynson was his Opus Grammaticum, 4to, 1494.
Almost every successive impression seems to differ in the contents or their distribution, owing, as I apprehend, to the circumstance that the volume was compounded of separate tracts, of which some were occasionally added or omitted at pleasure, or variously placed.
The edition of 1505 comprises the undermentioned pieces:—
Sulpitii Verulani examen de 8 partibus orationis.
De declinatione nominum.
De preteritis & supinis.
Carmen iuuenile de moribus mensæ.
Vocabulorum interpretatio.
Iod. Badii Ascensii De regimine dictionum.
Sulp. Verul. De regimine & constructione.
De componendis ordinandisq. epistolis.
De carminibus.
The title-leaf presents the woodcut, often employed by Pynson in his later performances, of a person, probably a schoolmaster, seated at a plutus or reading-desk, holding a paper in one hand, and reading from a book which lies open before him.
Whatever may now be thought of them, the philological labours of Sulpicius, which were subsequently edited and glossed by Badius Ascensius, were long extremely popular and successful, and a very large number of copies must have been in English hands during the reigns of Henry the Seventh and his son. Of these, as I have said, some proceeded from the London press, while others were imported from Paris.
The fasciculi in one of 1511 are as follow:—