Schools, School-Books and Schoolmasters: A Contribution to the History of Educational Development in Great BritainHazlitt, William Carew
History
Schools, School-Books and Schoolmasters: A Contribution to the History of Educational Development in Great Britain
Hazlitt, William Carew
Education -- Great Britain; Textbooks
Probably not; but there are seasons when indiscretion is criminal, and
besides his proclamation of his appointment at the time to the
Commonwealth as their official printer, in 1657 there came from his press
the reply of Milton to Salmasius, an anti-royalist manifesto not
calculated to be palatable to the restored dynasty or to the civic
feeling, and certainly, so far as one can form a judgment, an encroachment
on the special objects and _raison d'être_ of Dugard's collateral
occupation.
X.
Successors of Lily--Thomas Robertson of York--Cultivation of the
living languages--Numerous works published in England upon them--Their
various uses--The Vocabularies for travellers and merchants--Rival
authors of Grammars--Different text-books employed at
schools--Milton's _Accidence_ (1669)--Old mode of advertising private
establishments.
I. After the death of Lily his work was carried on and developed by other
men, who gradually achieved the task of consolidating, or reducing into a
more compact form, the rather perplexing series of elementary treatises
edited by Whittinton. Among these followers of the Master of St. Paul's
was a schoolmaster at Oxford, the Thomas Robertson of York whom I had
lately occasion to name in connection with Ascensius, and who at all
events produced in 1532 at Basle an edition of Lily's Grammar with a
Preface and Notes.
Robertson applauds, in his dedication to Dr. Longlond, Bishop of Lincoln,
himself a man of letters, the system of Lily, and testifies to the
excellent way in which the boys at Oxford prospered under his educational
_regimen_. But, nevertheless, he does not conceal his notion and
expectation of improving on his master; and indeed there is no doubt that
we have here the earliest clear approach to our modern grammar-book,
although the whole is in Latin, except certain quotations and names in
Greek, as he compares the practice of the Greek poets with that of the
Romans, much as Robert Etienne a little later pointed out the conformity
of the French with the Greek. Philological parallels had become
fashionable.
In his section on _Derivatives_ Robertson has some matter, as to which the
modern etymologist may form his own conclusions. This is a specimen:--
"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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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