having grounded him well in the nouns and verbs, and made him
understand the concords, he then followed in part the excellent advice
of Lily thus given in his address to the Reader:
“When these concords be well known unto them (an easy and pleasant
pain, if the foregrounds be well and thoroughly beaten in) let them
not continue in learning of the rules orderly, as they lie in their
Syntax, but rather learn some pretty book wherein is contained not
only the eloquence of the tongue, but also a good plain lesson of
honesty and godliness; and thereof take some little sentence as it
lieth, and learn to make the same first out of English into Latin, not
seeing the book, or construing it thereupon. And if there fall any
necessary rule of the Syntax to be known, then to learn it, as the
occasion of the sentence giveth cause that day; which sentence once
made well, and as nigh as may be with the words of the book, then to
take the book and construe it; and so shall he be less troubled with
the parsing of it, and easiliest carry his lesson in mind.”
Guy followed this advice in part; and in part he deviated from it,
upon Lily's own authority, as “judging that the most sufficient way
which he saw to be the readiest mean;” while therefore he exercised
his pupil in writing Latin pursuant to this plan, he carried him on
faster in construing, and promoted the boy's progress by gratifying
his desire of getting forward. When he had done with Cordery, Erasmus
was taken up,—for some of Erasmus's colloquies were in those days used
as a school book, and the most attractive one that could be put into a
boy's hands. After he had got through this, the aid of an English
version was laid aside. And here Guy departed from the ordinary
course, not upon any notion that he could improve upon it, but merely
because he happened to possess an old book composed for the use of
Schools, which was easy enough to suit young Daniel's progress in the
language, and might therefore save the cost of purchasing Justin or
Phædrus or Cornelius Nepos, or Eutropius,—to one or other of which he
would otherwise have been introduced.
CHAPTER XIII. P. I.
A DOUBT CONCERNING SCHOOL BOOKS, WHICH WILL BE DEEMED HERETICAL: AND
SOME ACCOUNT OF AN EXTRAORDINARY SUBSTITUTE FOR OVID OR VIRGIL.
They say it is an ill mason that refuseth any stone; and there is no
knowledge but in a skilful hand serves, either positively as it is, or
else to illustrate some other knowledge.
HERBERT'S REMAINS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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