sept pseaulmes, Ung Donast, Ungs accidens, Ung Caton, and Ung Doctrinal.”[1]
Another famous Grammar was the Græcism of Ebrard, written in 1212. It was still in use at Deventer when Erasmus was at school there in 1476,[2] and was popular in the Parisian schools until the end of the fifteenth century.[3] This work,[4] a bulwark of linguistic training in the fourteenth century, commences with a metrical treatise on grammatical forms, each of which is labelled with a Greek name. This is followed by chapters nominally on the declensions and the conjugations, but really on the exact meanings of words that resemble one another. Its editor, Johannes Vincentius Metulinus, who had a high opinion of its merits, introduces it as follows:—
Hic liber Ebrardi Celebris: doctique magistri
Græcismus fons est: arida corda fovens.
Cujus in irriguo tu margine sisteris: a quo
Sumere grammatices plura fluenta potes.[5]
Here is a sample of the draughts of grammar that he who stands on the brink may quaff. In chap. i., De figuris, we are informed that:
Sincopa de medio tollit quod epenthesis auget:
Aufert apocope finem quem dat paracope.
Pages of this stuff had to be learned by the unfortunate scholar, nor was his case much better when he came to the grammar proper. In chap. xvi., under the heading De verbis secundæ conjugationis, he was given the following information:—
Hortibus insideo: pius medicus assidet egro; (sic)
Subsidet his caro: presidet ille solo.
Obsidet hic muro: considet ille loco,
- ↑ ‘La vie privée d’autrefois; Écoles et Collèges, par Alfred Franklin,’ p. 153.
- ↑ ‘Prælegebatur Ebrardus et Joannes de Garlandia. Vita Erasmi. Erasmo auctore.’
- ↑ ‘Les colloques scolaires du seizième siècle. Massebieau, p. 21.
- ↑ ‘Libri Ebrardi Greciste.’ (Adv. Lib. Edin. No date or place.) Massebieau quotes an edition of 1487.
- ↑ Preface ad init.
