dialogues of Vives,[1] were recommended as an extra study in the Pansophic school. This is the only occasion on which Comenius alludes to the Colloquies. It is, indeed, surprising that he makes so little mention of what must have been one of the most important instruments in the process of teaching conversational Latin.
More practical than either of the above-mentioned works were Maturin Cordier’s dialogues.[2] Cordier did not publish these till 1564, when he was quite an old man. The choice of words and phrases speaks of a long life spent in intelligent teaching, while the vivid descriptions of the life and conversation of the typical school-boy show that Cordier, kindly and observant, did not confine his interest in his pupils to the hours of class-instruction. The anxious parent or schoolmaster desirous to obtain the best Colloquies possible had indeed a long list to choose from. Sturm, to whom Latin conversation was the most important element in education, published his Neanisci in 1570, a set of Dialogues that no longer survives since the burning of the library at Strasburg.[3] Even Mosellanus, Professor of Greek at Leipzig, published a Pedology[4] in 1517, though some persuasion had been necessary before he consented to compose it. “For a long time,” he writes in his preface to John Polyander, headmaster of St. Thomas’ School, who had asked him to write some colloquies, “I resisted your request, as you know, partly because the importance of my occupations made me disdain this work, doubtless useful, but humble and almost mean in appearance, and partly because, not being used to it, I found it difficult to play the part suitably, since I saw that for this kind of comedy a man must become a child once
- ↑ Linguæ Latinœ exercitatio. Pub. in 1539.
- ↑ ‘Colloquiorum scholasticorum libri quattuor ad pueros in sermone Latino paulatim exercendos Maturini Corderii. Lugduni excudebat Thomas de Straton. 1564.’
- ↑ L. Massebieau, ‘Les Colloques Scolaires du seizième Siècle et leurs Auteurs,’ p. 61.
- ↑ ‘Pædologia Petri Mosellani Protegensis, jam denuo in puerorum usum diligenter ædita et recognita. Moguntiæ, 1521.’ (Mass. p. 81.)
