§ 6. In Brinsley we get no hint of realism; but by the middle of the sixteen hundreds we find the realistic spirit is felt even by a schoolmaster, Charles Hoole,[100] who was a kinsman of Bishop Sanderson, the Casuist, and was master first of the Grammar School at Rotherham, then of a private Grammar School in London, published besides a number of school books, a translation of the _Orbis Pictus_ (date of preface, January, 1658), and also “A New Discovery of the old art of teaching schoole ... published for the general profit, especially of young Schoolemasters” (date of preface, December, 1659). In these books we find that Hoole succeeded even in the school-room in keeping his mind open. He complains of the neglect of English, and evidently in theory at least went a long way with the realistic reformers. “Comenius,” he says, “hath proceeded (as Nature itself doth) in an orderly way, first to exercise the senses well by presenting their objects to them, and then to fasten upon the intellect by impressing the first notions of things upon it and linking them one to another by a rational discourse; whereas indeed we generally, missing this way, do teach children as we do parrots to speak they know not what, nay, which is worse, we taking the way of teaching little ones by grammar only, at the first do puzzle their imaginations with abstractive terms and secondary intentions, which, till they be somewhat acquainted with things, and the words belonging to them in the language which they learn, they cannot apprehend what they mean. And this I guess to be the reason why many greater persons do resolve sometimes not to put a child to school till he be at least eleven or twelve years of age.... You then, that have the care of little children, do not too much trouble their thoughts and clog their memories with bare grammar rudiments, which to them are harsh in getting, and fluid in retaining; because indeed to them they signifie nothing but a meer swimming notion of a general term, which they know not what it meaneth till they comprehend all particulars: but by this [_i.e._, the _Orbis P._] or the like subsidiarie inform them first with some knowledge of things and words wherewith to express them; and then their rules of speaking will be better understood and more firmly kept in mind. Else how should a child conceive what a rule meaneth when he neither knoweth what the Latine word importeth, nor what manner of thing it is which is signified to him in his own native language which is given him thereby to understand the rule? for rules consisting of generalities are delivered (as I may say) at a third hand, presuming first the things and then the words to be already apprehended touching which they are made.” This subject Hoole wisely commends to the consideration of teachers, “it being _the very basis of our profession to search into the way of children’s taking hold by little and little of what we teach them_, that so we may apply