§ 13. A good deal has been said, and perhaps something learnt, about the teaching of Latin since the days of Ascham. As far as I know the method which Ascham denounced, and which most English schoolmasters stuck to for more than two centuries longer, has now been abandoned. No one thinks of making the beginner learn by heart all the Latin Grammar before he is introduced to the Latin language. To understand the machinery of which an account is given in the grammar, the learner must see it at work, and must even endeavour in a small way to work it himself. So it seems pretty well agreed that the information given in the grammar must be joined with some construing and some exercises from the very first. But here the agreement ends. Our teachers, consciously or in ignorance, follow one or more of a number of methodizers who have examined the problem of language-learning, such men as Ascham, Ratke, Comenius, Jacotot, Hamilton, Robertson, and Prendergast. These naturally divide themselves into two parties, which I have ventured to call “Rapid Impressionists,” and “Complete Retainers.” The first of these plunge the beginner into the language, and trust to the great mass of vague impressions clearing and defining themselves as he goes along. The second insist on his learning at the first a very small portion of the language, and mastering and retaining everything he learns. It will be seen that in the first stage of the course Ascham is a “Complete Retainer.” He does not talk, like Prendergast, of “mastery,” nor, like Jacotot, does he require the learner to begin every lesson at the beginning of the book: but he makes the pupil go over each lesson “a dozen times at the least,” before he may advance beyond it. As for his practice of double translation, for the advanced pupil it is excellent, but if it is required from the beginner, it leads to unintelligent memorizing. I think I shall be able to show later on that other methodizers have advanced beyond Ascham. (_Infra_, 246 _n._) VIII. MULCASTER. (1531(?)-1611.) § 1. The history of English thought on education has yet to be written. In the literature of education the Germans have been the pioneers, and have consequently settled the routes; and when a track has once been established few travellers will face the risk and trouble of leaving it. So up to the present time, writers on the history of European education after the Renascence have occupied themselves chiefly with men who lived in Germany, or wrote in German. But the French are at length exploring the country for themselves; and in time, no doubt, the English-speaking races will show an interest in the thoughts and doings of their common ancestors.