“the potencyal mode,” and the “subjunctyf mode.” A heavy burden for the boy who cannot yet conjugate Amo.
That it is in English and, from the book-fancier’s point of view, its rarity claim notice for Linacre’s Grammar,[1] but otherwise this work is not superior to other Grammars of the age. In company with those previously mentioned it is scarcely worthy of remark by the side of the Grammar[2] written by Cardinal Wolsey for his school at Ipswich. An almost touching simplicity breathes through the pages of his little volume, showing the great Cardinal in a most pleasing light as the sypathiser with blundering boyhood. In the preface he confesses that Grammars exist in abundance, but he considers them unsuitable for beginners, for whose need he therefore takes it upon himself to cater. “In which lytel boke I have left many thynges out of purpose, consydering ye tendernes and smal capacite of lytell mynds.” He then proceeds to state the rudiments of grammar in the simplest way imaginable. Musa is declined in full, and the conjugations of the regular verbs are given at length. The inevitable “seven genders” make their appearance, it is true, but no time is wasted over them. This Grammar does not appear to have been as popular as its contemporaries, still it is quite the best written for beginners before the Vestibular Grammar of Comenius.
In Scotland, Latin appears to have been the medium through which the rudiments were learned, though vernacular grammars were not unknown. In 1528 John Vaus, master of the Grammar School at Aberdeen, published a Grammar[3] a large part of which is in Scotch; and there is in existence
- ↑ ‘Linacri Progymnasmata grammatices vulgaria. Emprynted in London on the sowth syde of paulys by John Rastell, with the privylege of our most suverayn lord Kyng Henry the VIII. graunted to the compyler thereof.’
- ↑ ‘Rudimenta grammatices et docendi methodus, non tam scholæ Gypsuichianæ per reverendissimum Thomam Cardinalem Eborem feliciter institutæ quam omnibus aliis totius Angliæ scholis præscripta. Peter Treveri. 1529.’
- ↑ ‘Rudimenta puerorum in artem grammaticam per Joannem Vaus Scotum.’ Paris, 1528.
