current of feeling in favour of the vernaculars. In England the use of the English language in learned works found a strong upholder in Peter Levins.[1] In the Preface to his Pathway to Health (1587) he avers that those who think that such books should be written in an unknown tongue, and thus hide the knowledge of health from the people, are guilty of “malice exceeding damnable and devillish.” Some years previously (1570) Levins had brought out an English-Latin dictionary with the title Manipulus Vocabulorum. “This,” he tells us in his Preface, “I brought out for conscience sake, thinking that when I have bene long conversant with the schooles and have from tyme to tyme lamented to see the youth of our country (in the studies of the Latin tong) lacke such little instruments as this fit and needful for their exercises, and saw no man set his hand to the same, I was bound for the portion of my small talent to do somewhat therein.”[2] If Levins thought that his was the first English-Latin dictionary he was mistaken, as nearly 100 years before (1499) Pynson had printed the Promptuorium parvulorum sive clericorum.[3] But the English used in this lexicon was the Norfolk dialect, and the work was more suitable for older students than for boys.
To the Latin grammars written in English reference
- ↑ According to Anthony à Wood, Levins taught a Grammar School.
- ↑ A quotation from this dictionary may be of interest. It is arranged, not alphabetically, but in accordance with the termination of the words, forming in fact a kind of rhyming dictionary; e.g.
Coste
The frost
A ghoste
An hoste of men
An hosteSumptus -us
Gelu -us; hoc Erigus
Spiritus -us. Larva
Exercitus
Hospes, hospitis, etc. - ↑ ‘Promptuorium parvulorum sive clericorum. Auctore fratre Galfrido Grammatico dicto. 1440.’ A short extract will indicate its nature:—
Byryele
Byrthe
Byschelle
BysshopeSepulchrum, tumulus
Nativitus, partus
Modius, chorus, busellus
Episcopus, antistes, pontifex, presul
