| “Vox uocis, à voco. | Iucundus à iuuo. | |
| Lex legis, à lego. | Iunior à iuuenis. | |
| Rex regis, à rego. | Mobilis à moueo. | |
| Sedes à sedeo. | Humanus ab homo. | |
| Iumentum à iuuo. | Vomer à uomo. | |
| Fomes à foueo. | Pedor à pede.” |
Of the miscellaneous labourers in this field Robertson was one of the most conspicuous; nor did his name and work die with him, for his tables of Irregular Verbs and Nouns were printed with Lily’s Rules at least as late as the reign of James I.
It is out of my power to cross the boundary-line of conjecture when I offer the opinion that the Oxford employment of Robertson was on the old Magdalen staff.
II. But there was no lack of instruments for carrying out the scheme of education in England, whatever the imperfections of it might be. There were, besides the ordinary pedagogue, whose accomplishments did not, perhaps, extend beyond the language of his own country, writing, and arithmetic, professors for French, Italian, and Dutch, and men whose training at college qualified them more or less to give instruction in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The German, Spanish, and Portuguese do not seem to have been much cultivated down to a comparatively recent date, which is the more extraordinary since our intercourse with all those countries was constant from the earliest period.
There were certainly English versions of the Spanish grammars of Anthonio de Corro and Cesare Oudin made in the times of Elizabeth and her successor, as well as the original production by Lewis Owen, entitled, The Key into the Spanish Tongue. But these were assuredly never used as ordinary school-books, and were rather designed as manuals for travellers and literary students; and the same is predicable, I apprehend, of the anonymous Portuguese Dictionary and Grammar of 1701, which is framed on a scale hardly adapted for the requirements of the young.
Yet at the same time these, and many more like the Dutch Tutor, the Nether-Dutch Academy, and so forth, were of eminent service in private tuition and select classes, where a pupil was placed with a coach for some special object, or to complete the studies which were not included in the school programmes.
Moreover, it is not to be overlooked that in the polyglot vocabulary and phrase-book the student, either with or without the aid of a tutor, possessed in former times a very valuable machinery for gaining a knowledge of languages for conversational and commercial purposes; and these works sometimes comprised the German, as well as the more usual tongues employed in correspondence and intercourse. The title-page of one of them, published at Antwerp in 1576, expressly intimates its utility to all merchants; and a second of rather earlier date (1548) is specified as a book highly necessary to everybody desirous of learning the languages embraced in it, which are English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Flemish, German, and Latin—a remarkable complement, as very few are more than hexaglot.
But these helps were of course outside the schoolroom, and were called into requisition chiefly by individuals whose vocations took them abroad, or rendered an acquaintance with foreign terms more or less imperative; and undoubtedly our extensive mercantile and diplomatic relations with all parts of the world made this class of supplementary instruction a livelihood for a very numerous body of teachers.
Perhaps of all the philological undertakings of the kind, the most singular was that of Augustine Spalding, a merchant of London, who in 1614 published a translation of some dialogues in the Malay dialect, from a book compiled by Arthusius of Dantzic in Latin, Malayan, and Malagassy; and he informs us that his object was to serve those who might have occasion to travel to the East Indies.
II. Shakespear, in his conception of Holofernes in “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” is supposed to have taken hints from one of the foreigners who settled in London in his time as teachers of languages, the celebrated John Florio, who is best known as the first English translator of Montaigne, but who produced a good deal of useful professional work, and became intimate with many of the literary men of his day. We cannot be absolutely sure that Florio sat for Holofernes; but at any rate the dramatist has depicted in that character in a most inimitable style the priggish mannerist, as he knew and saw him.