ABSTRACT
The translation of authors in the country Grammar School is described by Brinsley as toilsome for the teacher and not very effective for the pupil. ‘I am fain,’ says Spoudeus, ‘to give every lecture (i.e. reading or in this case translation) myself: or if I appoint (boys from) the forms above to give them, I am compelled to hear the giving of them. And so I have as great a trouble when they construe false, to direct them right, that it were as much ease to me to give them, myself.’ But there was a worse case, viz. that of many poor country schoolmasters who found it difficult to translate, themselves, in propriety of words, phrase and sense. How, then, could these secondary school pupil-teachers —these ‘boys from the higher forms’—be expected to do the work adequately?
