OCRed data provided
for searching only. ERASMUS LAID THE EGG; HIS TEXTBOOKS ns
filthines may be more forcible then the cater-poyson to be vsed against it he addeth that hee would not graunt him this place neither in their education, but that Tullie had made good account of him, and profited in eloquence by himg. Now the same reasons, that, in ehoise of autours to be read by vs, exclude so fine a Poet, and send vs unto purer fountaines of good literature: doe likewise in the practise of style, the frame of speech, and imployment of memorie, exclude such points and matters as Terence is excluded for, and commend vnto vs more commendable arguments to exercise our wittes, our tounges, our penises in:"
If gold rust, what will iron do; if Terence is excluded, what hope for Plautus or any plays at all? Rainolds says that Quintilian
would haue no amatorie poimes, neither Comedies, no not Menanders, that is, the best of all to be read by his youth: you as if Phaedras amorous speech expressed by Seneca were nothing without a peeve of menstruous cloths sowed to it, doe occasion yours to make them selves familiar and well acquainted with Plautus, one farre beneath the best . . . He would haue his youth to commit most excellent thinges and wordes to memorie; you pester yours with filth, such filth in Rivales (I am ashamed to reherse it) as can not be matched, I thinke, sure very hardly, throughout all Plautus.u
Both Terence and Plautus are now roundly condemned, the first unqualified condemnation, I believe, of Terence so far known for England. As we shall see, the grammar school statutes and curricula with one accord prescribe Terence, though he was in various ways inoculated.
Rainolds has made the most of Humphrey's hesitation upon Terence, and we may feel certain that if there had been other unfavorable opinions in England Rainolds was not the man to over-look them. No doubt here is the worst that to 1599 had been said on the subject. Prynne in 1633 joins together the lists of Becon and Rainolds, who with Humphrey head his list of authorities. So far as I can find, his other authorities before 'boo simply give general prohibitions against naughty books, etc., but do not specify authors. Yet I do not claim to have made an exhaustive search, for I confess sympathy with the boy's excuse in Harman's Vulgaria, "I can not but nappe / whyl he precheth."
Some of these condemned authors I have not found mentioned in the statutes and curricula at all, as Tibullus, Propertius, and Gallus. Nor do I find De Arte 21mandi by Ovid, though the De Tristibus, mentioned by the Privy Council with disapproval, is nearly as popu-
¹ Rainoldes, J., Th'overthrow of Stage-Plays (1599), pp. i 2-24 w Cf. Isaiah XXX, ss and Geneva comment.
¹ Rainoldes, Stage-Mayes, pp. tai-rss.
[ Volume
One ] 
