OCRed data provided
for searching only. helped translate Aesop into Latin, and suggests several themes from him. He had placed Terence first among classical Latin authors, as he is being put first in this curriculum. Wolsey is indeed echoing the very words of Erasmus upon Terence. This class now takes up Lily on the Genders of Nouns, which is in Latin. By the third form the work is solely in Latin, and a classical author can be used. The Latin pump has been primed.
In the fourth class, Virgil follows Terence, as in Erasmus. It will be remembered that Erasmus uses both of these authors to illustrate how authors should be taught. Again Wolsey insists upon careful oral reading. Lily on the Preterites and Supines of irregular verbs serves for grammar, but is not to occupy the most precious part of the day. Wolsey follows Erasmus in his insistence that formal gram-mar is not of supreme importance. Here is the lower school.
The boys are now ready to place the chief emphasis upon authors for imitation, where Erasmus thought it should be placed. So the guiding principle in the upper school is types of literature. Naturally, epistles come first, and as naturally Cicero's select epistles serve as models for "acquiring a rich and copious Stile of Language." This for the fifth class.
The sixth studies History, with Sallust and Caesar's Commentaries as the authors. It is only now that the boys polish off their formal grammar with a study of the Lily-Erasmus Latin summary of the eight parts. Hitherto, Lily's Rudimenta in English has enabled them to learn the grammar of their authors. They also master now defective and anomalous verbs; in fact, heteroclites of all kinds. Lily had intended to supply a text on heteroclites, and Robertson did so; but no text is here mentioned. It will be noticed that grammar has in this system followed the authors as Erasmus had insisted. So the boys get the necessary minimum for beginning work, learn from their authors, and finally consolidate their information. Thus gram-mar is spread out over practically the entire curriculum instead of being concentrated in the lower school.
With the grammar rules proper completed in the sixth form, the seventh class takes versification for its rules and studies poetry, with the Epistles of Horace, and Ovid's Metamorphoses and Fasti as the models. It will be remembered that the order of Erasmus was Terence, Virgil, Horace. So it is here, though Horace is placed much later in the curriculum. Erasmus does not place Ovid in his list, but elsewhere he envisions the teaching of Ovid. These authors serve as
[ Volume
One ] 
