ABSTRACT
Though the grammar schools were controlled externally by ecclesiastical authority (placed at the service of the King as Head of the Church), and internally, by the religious principles and doctrines with which the minds of parents and schoolmasters of the Elizabethan and Stuart periods were saturated, it must not be supposed that the original purpose of the grammar schools to teach Latin grammar was overlooked in the presence of the absorbing issues of religious teaching. Naturally, to some extent, and in some directions, the classical aims were modified. Thus, Laurence Humphrey, the returned exile, President of Magdalen College, the Oxford college with specially puritanic tendencies, made a determined protest against the reading of Ovid and other authors ‘in whom they study strange tongues to the decay of godliness.’ Humphrey’s suggested Latin course, which may be taken as that of a representative Puritan of the learned type in Elizabeth’s reign included: precepts of rules of grammar in an abridged form; Cicero’s Epistles, and those Colloquies of Erasmus and of Castellion [a French educationist in Geneva in the time of Calvin who turned the chief Scriptural stories into dialogue form for the teaching of Latin]. The latter was chosen ‘timely to sow the seeds of godliness and virtue in their tender hearts.’ Then followed Terence, ‘but with riper years and judgment. If any filth be intermeddled let the teacher use sounder authors as treacle [i.e. an antidote] to expel it. Nor would I yield Terence this room but for I saw Cicero so much esteem him, who took not the least part of eloquence of him, as Chrysostom of Aristophanes the eloquence of the Attic tongue, a poet nevertheless both nipping in taunts and wanton in tales. … Not little helpeth it, even at first, to learn them Greek and Hebrew, preposterously do all Universities, schools and teachers that contrary it. For about the bush run they to arts, who understand not the original tongues.’ Humphrey’s book (The Nobles) was first published in Latin (as Optimates) in 1560. Appropriately to its Swiss cast of thought, it was published at Basle. It is worth noting that it is one of the books printed in the transition stage of English, which was not as yet employed by scholars writing to scholars in England. It was therefore first written in Latin, and translated into English, as an afterthought, for a public of readers hitherto unreached. This public was chiefly those newly taught to read for the purpose of religious instruction and edification.
