beginning to appeal to the people at large. The increased use of linen paper in place of the costlier parchment helped in the popularization of letters. In no former age had finer copies of books been produced; in none had so many been transcribed. This increased demand for their production caused the processes of copying and illuminating manuscripts to be transferred from the scriptoria of the religious houses into the hands of trade-guilds, like the Guild of Saint John at Bruges, or the Brothers of the Pen at Brussels. It was, in fact, this increase of demand for books, pamphlets, or fly-sheets, especially of a grammatical or religious character, in the middle of the fifteenth century that brought about the introduction of printing. We meet with it first in rude sheets simply struck off from wooden blocks, "blockbooks" as they are now called, and later on in works printed from separate and moveable types. Originating at Maintz with the three famous printers, Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer, the new process travelled southward to Strasburg, crossed the Alps to Venice, where it lent itself through the Aldi to the spread of Greek literature in Europe, and then floated down the Rhine to the towns of Flanders. It was probably at the press of Colard Mansion, in a little room over the porch of Saint Donat's at Bruges, that Caxton learnt the art which he was the first to introduce into England.

CHAPTER XI

EDUCATIONAL RESULTS OF THE REVIVAL

OF LEARNING

THE Readings contained in this chapter illustrate the educational results of the Italian Revival of Learning, as shown in the changes in the schools in Italy, France, Germany, and England. Beginning with the court schools of Italy, the resulting reform of education gradually extended to northern lands. The largest amount of space is given to the results in England and to the work and character of the English grammar school, because we in America drew our early educational ideas and practices direct from England. The Boston Latin School, founded in 1635, was a direct descendant of the English grammar schools and English educational traditions.

The first selection (135) is from the tractate by Guarino da Verona on the teaching of the new literatures, and in this he describes the method employed so successfully by his father in his Italian court school. He also lays down his new dictum as to the fundamental importance of a knowledge of Greek and Latin for the educated man. The second selection (136) describes the course of study at the French college of Guyenne, at Bordeaux, one of the leading exponents of the new humanism in France. The third selection (137) outlines the course of instruction which Sturm, employing the new humanism, finally evolved for his famous classical gymnasium at Strassburg. These two furnish an interesting comparison.

The introduction of humanistic studies into the English secondary schools was largely due to Colet, through the re-founding of Saint Paul's School in London, in 1510. This school, though at first bitterly opposed, soon established the type for nearly all the English grammar schools founded or reorganized thereafter. The extracts from Colet's Statutes for the school (138 a-c) are given to show the character of the provisions he made for the new school. The introduction of the new learning into England was also greatly aided by the English court, and the selection from Ascham (139) is given to show Queen Elizabeth's deep in

terest in the new studies. For Colet's school Lily wrote a new type of Latin Grammar. This became a famous textbook and continued in use for centuries, and the Introduction contributed thereto by Colet is reproduced (140) to show his kindly interest in good learning.

Even before the new humanistic type of school had been introduced into England some efforts at securing schools directed by university-trained teachers, instead of clerics, had been made, of which the school established by William Sevenoaks is a good example. His will is reproduced (141) to show the type of school he wanted to establish. The chantry grammar school founded by John Percival (142), and the efforts of the city authorities of Sandwich to provide a grammar school (143), both illustrate the interest such new-type schools had awakened in England.

The course of study for Eton College, one of the largest and best-endowed of the English grammar schools, as reproduced (144), shows how thoroughly the new humanistic studies had made a home for themselves in the larger grammar schools within half a century after Colet's re-foundation of Saint Paul's; while the description by Adam Martindale (145) of the instruction he received in a small country grammar school, about 1635, is interesting as showing how thoroughly the new learning had by that time penetrated to even the small and remote grammar schools of England. It was in 1635 that the Boston Latin School, the first Latin grammar school in America, was founded by English settlers, most of whom had been educated in these English grammar schools. Our educational traditions for secondary education thus go back, through the English-type Latin grammar school, directly to the Italian Renaissance.

After a time the new humanistic studies began to lose their earlier importance as cultural studies, due in part to a change in teaching methods. The emphasis now came to be placed upon drill and intellectual discipline instead of the humanistic spirit, and in consequence the schools in time became formal and lifeless. This came to be particularly true of such instruction in the hands of the Jesuits, though it extended to secondary education in all lands and among all creeds. The description of such formal instruction by the Jesuit Campion (146) illustrates well how formal drill and minute analysis of the old authors had replaced the earlier humanistic culture.

135. Guarino on Teaching the Classical Authors

(A letter; trans. by Woodward, W. H., in his Vittorino da Feltre, pp. 161-72. Cambridge, 1897)

Battisto Guarino was the son of Guarino da Verona (13741460), and in a lengthy letter, under date of 1459, he, describes The Order and the Method to be Ob

served in Teaching and in Reading the Classical Authors, as then being carried out by his father in his famous school at Ferrara. By way of preface he says:

In offering this short Treatise for your acceptance, I am fully aware that you need no incentive to regard the pursuit of Letters as the most worthy object of your ambition. But you may find what I have written a not unwelcome reminder of our past intercourse, whilst it may prove of use to other readers into whose hands it may fall. For I have had in view not only students anxious for guidance in their private reading, but masters in search of some definite principles of method in teaching the Classics. Hence I have treated both of Greek and of Latin Letters, and I have confidence that the course I have laid down will prove a thoroughly satisfactory training in literature and scholarship.

Guarino begins the letter with a discussion as to the nature of the schoolmaster, and then passes to a consideration of methods of teaching Latin, which study he says "is so important that no one who is ignorant of it can claim to be thought an educated man." Vergil, he says, should be learned by heart. He then proceeds:

§3. I have said that ability to write Latin verse is one of the essential marks of an educated person. I wish now to indicate a second, which is of at least equal importance, namely, familiarity with the language and literature of Greece. The time has come when we must speak with no uncertain voice upon this vital requirement of scholarship. I am well aware that those who are ignorant of the Greek tongue decry its necessity, for reasons which are sufficiently evident. But I can allow no

doubt to remain as to my own conviction that without a knowledge of Greek, Latin Scholarship itself is, in any real sense, impossible. I might point to the vast number of words derived or borrowed from the Greek, and the questions which arise in connection with them; such as the quantity of the vowel sounds, the use of the diphthongs, obscure orthographies and etymologies. ... The Greek grammar, again, can alone explain the unusual case-endings which are met with in the declension of certain nouns, mostly proper names, which retain their foreign shape; such as "Dido" and "Mantus." Nor are these exceptional forms confined to the poetic use. But I turn to the authority of the great Latins themselves, to Cicero, Quintilian, Cato and Horace: they are unanimous in proclaiming the close dependence of the Roman speech and Roman literature upon the Greek, and in urging by example as well as by precept the constant study of the older language. To quote Horace alone:

"Do you, my friends, from Greece your models draw,
And day and night to con them be your law."

And again,

"To Greece, that cared for naught but fame, the Muse
Gave genius, and a tongue the gods might use."

In such company I do not fear to urge the same contention.

Were we, indeed, to follow Quintilian, we should even begin with Greek in preference to Latin. But this is practically impossible, when we consider that Greek must be for us, almost of necessity, a learned and not a colloquial language; and that Latin itself needs much more elaborate and careful teaching than was requisite to a Roman of the imperial epoch. On the other hand, I have myself known not a few pupils of my father he was, as you know, a scholar of equal distinction in either language who, after gaining a thorough mastery of Latin, could then in a single year make such progress with Greek that they translated accurately entire works of ordinary difficulty from that language into good readable Latin at sight. Now proficiency of this degree can only be attained by careful and systematic teaching of the rudiments of the Grammar, as they are laid down in such a manual as the well-known one of Manuel Chrysoloras, or in the abridgement which my father drew up of the original work of his beloved master. . . . Our scholar should make his first acquaintance with the Poets through Homer, the sovereign master of them all. For from Homer our own poets, notably Vergil, drew their inspiration; and in reading the Iliad or the Odyssey no small part of our pleasure is derived from the constant parallels we meet with. Indeed we see in them as in a mirror the form and manner of the Æneid figured roughly before us, the incidents, not less than the simile or epithet which describes them, are, one might say, all there. In the same way, in his minor works