Sequitur tertia vituperatio The thyrde accusacion of olde senectutis, quod eam carere dicunt age foloweth. By cause it must voluptatibus. O præclarum munus forgo pleasures. O that excellent ætatis, siquidem id aufert benefyte of olde age: yf it nobis, quod est in adolescentia take away from vs that thynge / vitiosissimum. Accipite suim whiche in youth is moost vicious. optimi adolescentes, ueterem Therfore ye gentyll yonge men orationem Archytæ Tarentini, heare the olde sentence of Archytas magni in primis, et præclari viri, a Tarentyne / a great and quæ mihi tradita est cum essem a famous man amonges all other adolescens Tarenti cum Q. Maximo. / which was taught vnto me whan Nullā capitaliorē pestē I was a yonge man in the citye quam corporis uoluptatē hominibus of Tarentū with Quintus Maximus. dicebat à natura datā.... He sayd that there was not a more deedly poyson gyuen to man by nature / than sensuall pleasure of body.... These two passages afford a fair idea of the capability of Whittinton for his task, and of the means which the English student of those days enjoyed for profiting by the lessons of antiquity and holding intercourse with the greatest minds of former ages, at the same time that it led the way to the purification of the current Latinity from mediæval barbarism and the heresies of the Dutch school. To be hypercritical in the judgment of these experimental, and of course imperfect, attempts to impart to the educational system in this island a better tone and to place it on an improved footing, would be ungracious and improper. The introduction of the Roman writers in prose and verse into our schools and universities was an important step in the right direction, and tended to counteract the monastic temper and element in our method of training. V. Outside the pale of the schoolroom, but still clearly designed for learners, one finds such literary fossils as the _Book of Cato_, the _Cato for Boys_, the _Eclogues_ of Mantuan, of which Bale speaks as popular in his day, and which Holofernes mentions in _Love's Labour's Lost_; various abridgments of the _Colloquia_ of Erasmus and his _Little Book of Good Manners for Children_ (another monument of the industry and scholarship of Whittinton); and, lastly, such elementary guides to mythology and history as Lydgate's _Interpretation of the Natures of Gods and Goddesses_, and the _Chronicle of all the Kings' Names that have reigned in England_, 1530. With these I should perhaps couple the Latin _Æsop_ of 1502, with a commentary in the same language, and the later edition of which, in 1535, includes the _Fables_ of Poggius.