The Age of Erasmus. P. S. Allen
heard during his last year, on the festivals when the head master lectured to the whole school together.
A few years later the school numbered 2200 boys. It is difficult to us to imagine such a throng gathered round one man. There were only eight forms, which must therefore have had on an average 275 in each; and even if subdivided into parallel classes, they must still have been uncomfortably large to our modern ideas. On the title-pages of early school-books are sometimes found woodcuts which represent the children sitting, like the Indian schoolboy to-day, in crowds about their master, taking only the barest amount of space, and content with the steps of his desk or even the floor. Some idea of the character of the teaching may be derived from the experiences of Thomas Platter (1499–1582) at Breslau about thirty years later. 'In the school at St. Elizabeth', he says, 'nine B.A.'s read lectures at the same hour and in the same room. Greek had not yet penetrated into that part of the world. No one had any printed books except the praeceptor, who had a Terence.1 What was read had first to be dictated, then pointed, then construed, and at last explained.'2 It was a wearisome business for all concerned. The reading of a few lines of text, the punctuation, the elaborate glosses full of wellnigh incomprehensible abbreviations; all dictated slowly enough for a class of a hundred or more to take down every word. Lessons in those days were indeed readings. For a clever boy who was capable of going forward quickly, they must have been great waste of time.
At Deventer Erasmus began with elementary accidence. The books which he first mentions, Pater meus, a series of declensions, and Tempora, the tenses, that is the conjugations of the verb, were probably local productions of a simple nature which never found their way into print. From this he proceeded to the versified Latin grammars which mediaeval authorities on education had invented to supersede the prose of Priscian and Donatus; metre being more adapted to the learning by heart then so much in fashion. 'Praelegebatur Ebrardus et Joannes de Garlandia', he says: a line or two was read out by the master and then the commentary was dictated—the boys writing down as much as they could catch. Let us see the kind of thing. Here are some extracts from the Textus Equiuocorum of John Garland, an Englishman who taught at Toulouse in the thirteenth century.
Latrat et amittit, humilis, vilis, negat, heret:
Est celeste Canis sidus, in amne natat.
'Firstly it is a thing that barks': three verses of quotation follow.
'Secondly it loses; canis being the name for the worst throw with the dice': one verse of quotation.
'Thirdly it is something humble: David to Saul, "After whom is the King of Israel come out? after a dead dog? after a flea?"
Fourthly it is something contemptible: Goliath to David, "Am I a dog that thou comest to me with staves?"
Fifthly it denies, like an apostate: "A dog returned to its vomit."
Sixthly it adheres.' But here the interpreter goes astray under the preoccupation of the times: 'heret significat hereticum et infidelem; hence "It is not good to take the children's bread and cast it unto dogs, that is to heretics and infidels."
Seventhly it is a star; hence are named the dog days, in which that star has dominion.
Eighthly it swims in the sea; the dog fish.'
The qualities of the dog are also expressed in this verse: 'Latrat in ede canis, nat in equore, fulget in astris. Et venit canis originaliter a cano—is.' So Garland, or his commentator, abridged.
Of sal he says:
Est sal prelatus, equor, sapientia, mimus,
Sal pultes condit, sal est cibus et reprehendit.
Here again there is a full commentary; but the only interpretation that we need notice is the first, 'Salt denotes a prelate of the Church; for it is said in the Gospels, Ye are the salt of the earth.' When he composed these lines, Garland must surely have had his eye on ecclesiastical preferment.
Another line is interesting, as illustrating the confusion between c and t in mediaeval manuscripts:
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