try to talk Latin, cannot keep it up for three consecutive words.”[1]
It was to remedy this state of things that Cordier compiled, under the title De corrupti sermonis emendatione, a French-Latin manual of useful phrases, arranged under a variety of headings. The Latin is not always of the most academic type, but the sentences were doubtless useful to boys whose vocabulary was limited. Thus, in chap. v., under the heading Beneficiorum, officiorum, et gratificandi, we find “Tu mas faict ung grand plaisir,” Magno me affecisti beneficio. Vehementer me oblectasti. Pergratum mihi fecisti.” Chapter ix., under the heading Cedendi, concedendi, obsequendi, gives us a remark that only a very priggish boy could have used—“Je confesse que tu es meilleur grammarien que moy,” “Grammaticæ scientiam tibi concedo.” More in sympathy with school-boy nature is the joyful announcement, “Le régent nous a rien baillé à estudier,” “Præceptor nihil dedit nobis ad studiendum” (chap. xix.) That the most renowned schoolmaster of the sixteenth century should render “Je vouldroye que tu disse cela de bon coeur” by “Ego vellem quod tu istud diceres de bono corde” is startling to those who live in an age when the practice of talking Latin, entailing, as it must, much monkish inaccuracy, has fallen into disuse.
Of more importance than this phrase-book were the Colloquies by various authors, so much used in schools, en late the end of the eighteenth century. These represented conversations between school-boys or young students, and were intended to be learned off by heart, and thus to supply the student with a stock of phrases suitable for use in every-day life. Occasionally, indeed, these dialogues outstripped themselves. Those of Erasmus are conversations of great literary and philosophic merit, and are on this account often unsuitable for school-boys. They were, however, extensively used, and, together with the
- ↑ Nostros autem cum suis condiscipulis aut Gallice semper garrire, aut si Latine loqui tentarent non posse tria verba Latina continuare.—‘Commentarius puerorum,’ etc.
