dialogues of his own composition treating of Mexico and its institutions.[1] Though Colloquies in the strict sense were lacking, it must not be imagined that the English school-boy of the sixteenth century was without a convenient hand-book of phrases. The Vulgary of Stanbridg[2] gives a list of useful sentences, and these the scholars were doubtless made to learn by heart with a view to using them in their daily conversation:—
| Good morowe. | Bonum tibi hujus diei sit primordium. |
| I was set to schole when I was seven years olde. | Datus eram scholis cum septennis eram. |
| What part singest thou? | Qua voce tu cantas? |
| It is evyll with us when the master apposeth us. | Male nobiscum est cum præceptor examinat nos. |
It is difficult to imagine a boy eulogising one of his “chums” with the remark, “He is born to drink well, both on the faders side and moders side”; but Stanbridge duly provides for the emergency—“Ex utraque parentum parte aptus ad bibendum nascitur.” Even for the sententious scholar proverbial expressions are given—
He is an evyl coke that cannot lycke his own lyppes.
Fatuus est coquus qui nescit lambere labra.
Of a more pretentious though less practical nature was the Vulgary of William Horman,[3] headmaster of Eton. Horman cannot be congratulated on the selection of his phrases, which are arranged under thirty-seven heads. “Put not your trust in a bunglar of printer’s craft,” “Mancipem libraria officinæ ne sequaris,” is not good material for the
- ↑ ‘Tres dialogos Latinos que Francisco Cervantes Salazar escribió è imprimió en México en dicho año. Los reimprime, con traducion Castellana y notas, Joaquim Garcia Icazbalceta.’ Mexico, 1875. (Mass.)
- ↑ The copy in the British Museum is bound up with the ‘Accidentia ex Stanbrigiana editione, nuper recognita et castigata lima Roberti Whitintoni Lichfeldensis. Wynkyn de Worde. 1528.’
- ↑ ‘Vulgaria viri doctissimi Guil. Hormani Cæsariburgensis. Apud inclytam Londini urbem, 1519.’
