This didactic treatise is additionally interesting to the English student from its relationship, in the way of likely literary ancestry, to the subsequent compilations of a cognate sort by Lydgate and others. The diction is obscure enough, and has the air of having been the work of a man of imperfect culture, from the presence of such forms as _dreyne_ for _derreniere_ or _derniere_ and the abundance of false syntax, which ought not to have been so conspicuous, even at this remote date, in a composition professedly educational. Yet, after all deductions, the work is of singular curiosity and fascination, not only for its own sake, but as the best philological standard which we seem to have to put side by side with its successors in the same important direction. III. Earliest printed works of instruction--Publications of Bishop Perottus--His _Grammatical Rules_--Johannes Sulpicius and his _Opus Grammaticum_--Some account of the book--Importance and influence of these foreign Manuals in England--The _Carmen Juvenile_ or _Stans Puer ad Mensam_--Alexander Gallus or De Villâ Dei and his _Doctrinale_--The _Doctrinale_ one of the earliest productions of the Dutch press--Ælius Donatus--His immense popularity and weight both at home and abroad--Selections or abridgments of his Grammar used in English schools. I. The most ancient published books of instruction for Englishmen in scholastic and academical culture emanated from a foreign country and press. When the Vocabularies, Grammars, and other Manuals ceased to circulate in a manuscript form, or to be written and multiplied by teachers for the use of their own pupils, the early Parisian printers supplied the market with the works, which it had been theretofore possible to procure only to a very limited extent, in transcripts executed by the authors themselves or by professional copyists. 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.