has already been made, and as regards arithmetic, Tonstall tells us that there was scarcely a nation that did not possess a vernacular treatise on that subject.[1] If further proof is necessary that Latin had never become so fashionable in England as on the continent it can be found in the Governour of Sir Thomas Elyot, and in Ascham’s Scholemaster. Ascham seems to have been apprehensive that scholars on the continent might think an English setting somewhat undignified for so academic a theme as Education, and in a letter to Sturm at Strasburg he instances the uncultured condition of England as his excuse. He was writing “for Englishmen and not for foreigners,”[2] and wished to be understood. In France, where the Latin of the Renaissance had taken a far stronger hold, Montaigne had advanced precisely the same reason for writing his essays in French. He was addressing a French and not a European audience. Rabelais had chosen the language that they despised as an instrument for the abuse of pedants and scholastics. In the Collége de France, founded in 1529, Francis I. had ordained that the lectures should be given in French and not in Latin. Peter Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée) Latinised his name and wrote in Latin, but this did not prevent him from bringing out a French Grammar in 1562.[3] A cursory glance at the list of their publications would not lead us to suppose that Robert and Henry Estienne give much thought to their native language. Yet Robert Estienne published his Traicté de la Grammaire Française in 1569, and his son Henry gives us to understand that French was already ousting all other languages as a refined medium of expression. “It is proverbial,” he tells us, “that the Italians bleat, the Spaniards groan, the Germans howl, and the
- ↑ Nulla pene natio est quæ non eam artem vulgi lingua scriptam habeat. De arte supputandi.—De arte supputandi, Preface.
- ↑ Et quia meus hic Præceptor non e Græcia, non ex Italia accersitus est, sed in hac barbara insula natus, et domi intra parietes meos altus est, propterea barbare hoc est Anglice loquitur. . . . Nostris non alienis, Anglis non exteris scribo.—Letter to Sturm.
- ↑ Published by André Weckel at Paris.
