OCRed data provided
for searching only. lar as the Metamorphoses, and Clarke tells us early in the eighteenth century that these two were still the customary works for beginning poetry.65 Of the others, Terence was universally taught, though variously inoculated. The wanton and unhonest Martial also managed to make himself indispensable as the master of the epigram, and even Catullus is required at Eton and Westminster. Catullus in the texts of the time was likely to mean also Tibullus, Propertius, and Gallus, since the four were frequently printed together; and we do not need Stockwood to tell us what the boys would under such circumstances do. It is likely, therefore, that Becon and Stockwood are correct in saying that these authors were at times at least easily accessible to the grammar school boys. It is evident that a simile re-corded by Robert Cawdray in i6oo puts the attitude of the school-masters rather aptly,
As in slaughter, massecres, or murther, painted in a Table, the cunning of the Painter is praysed, but the fact it selfe, is vtterly abhorred: So in Poetrie wee follow elocution, and the proper forme of words and sentences, but the i!1 matter we doo worthily despise as
Further, between the fully approved list as given by Erasmus and the fully disapproved as phrased by Becon and Stockwood, there was also an intermediate group from which, as we shall see from time to time, selections were sometimes made; but these are the chief.
Here is but the merest sketch of what the English grammar school in its genesis at Paul's and elsewhere owed to Erasmus. Doubtless, also, Erasmus himself owed a great deal in the original shaping of his ideas to Colet and other Englishmen. We should not be content with this sketch, for it was through the grammar school curriculum as shaped by Erasmus that his soul went marching on, in spite of the narrower zeal of the reformers, to propagate and mould that Renaissance which is distinctive of England. Without Erasmus, we might have had the John Milton of popular concept, but not William Shakspere.
It should now be apparent that the sixteenth-century school-master under the tutelage of Erasmus and others knew what he wanted to attain, and perfected his methods accordingly, to give systematic and cumulative drill upon all phases of his desired objective. There was nothing haphazard or unconsidered about him. In
66 Clarke, Jahn, An Essay Upon the Education of Youth in Grammar-Schools (1720), pp.
44-45.
56 Cawdray, R., A Treasorie or Store-hose of Similies (16aa), p. 538.
[ Volume
One ] 
