V.
Educational tracts produced by other writers—Parvula—Holt’s Milk for Children—Horman’s Vulgaria and its singular curiosity and value—The author’s literary quarrel with Whittinton—The contemporary foreign teachers—Specimen of the Grammar of Guarini of Verona (1470)—Vestiges of the literature current at Oxford in the beginning of the sixteenth century—The printed works of Johannes de Garlandia.
I. Of independent tracts intended for the use of our early schools, there were several either anonymous or written by persons whom we do not recognise as writers of more than a single production.
In the former category is placeable the small piece published three or four times by Wynkyn de Worde about 1509, under the title of Parvula or Longe Parvula. It is a series of rules for translation and other exercises in the form of question and answer, thus:—
“Q. What shall thou do whan thou hast an englysshe to make in latyn?
“A. I shal reherse myne englysshe ones, twyes, or thryes, and loke out my pryncypal, & aske ȳ questyon, who or what.”
A second publication is the Milk for Children of John Holt, of Magdalen College, Oxford, who had the honour of numbering among his pupils Sir Thomas More. One of the most interesting points about the little book to us nowadays is that it is accompanied by some Latin hexameters and pentameters and an epigram in the same language by More. The latter has the air of having been sent to Holt, and inserted by him with the heading which occurs before it, where the future Chancellor is termed “disertus adolescentulus.”
A decided singularity of this volume is the quaint device of the author for impressing his precepts on those who read his pages or attended his academy by arranging the cases and declensions on woodcuts in the shape of outstretched hands.