OCRed data provided
for searching only. commends the Eton system of teaching this first part, and this
address continued to give the same advice for about three centuries.
Perhaps it is worth noting in this connection that it was allegedly
the uniform grammar which fired John Palsgrave, one of King
Henry's Chaplains and quondam schoolmaster of his bastard son, in
1540 to make his contribution to better grammar school method by preparing the very Christian play of .slcolastus in such a way as to aid pupils in acquiring both better Latin and better English,
1 wyshed, that vnto this mach expedient reformation of your schole maisters vnstayd libertie, which hytherto haue taught such grammers, and of the same so dyuers and sondry sortes, as to euery of theym semed best (and was to their fantasies mooste approued: myght therto also folowe and succede one stedy and vnyforme maner of interpretation of the latyn authours into our tonge, after yt the latyn principles were by your graces youth ones surely conned and perceyued as
So Palsgrave is interested fundamentally in getting established a uniform method of translation into English. Apparently his con-
temporaries were not enthusiastic, for no method was prescribed and no other edition of his book was called for. Most schoolmasters were intensly interested in preventing their students from using English at all, rather than in teaching them to use it well. English was for the most part an unavoidable evil to be tolerated no more than absolutely necessary; Latin was the thing.
This work of his upon Acolastus Palsgrave called an English Ecphrasis. The title page sums up the kinds of materials to be found in it.
The Comedye of Acolastus translated into oure englysshe tongue, after suche maner as chylderne are taught in the grammer schole, fyrst worde for worde, as the latyne lyeth, and afterwarde accordynge to the sence and meanyng of the latin sentences: by shewing what they do value and counteruayle in our tongue, with admonitions set forth in the margyn, so often as any suche phrase, that is to say, kynd of spekyng vsed of the latyns, whiche we vse not in our tong; but by other wordes, expresse the sayd latyn maners of speakinge, and also Adages, metaphores, sentences, or other fygures poeticall or rhetorical do require, for the more perfyte instructynge of the lerners, and to leade theym more easilye to see howe the exposytion gothe. and afore the second sceane of the fyrst acte, is a brefe introductory to haue some general knowledge of the dyuers sortes of meters vsed of our auctour in this comedy. And afore Acolastus balade is shewed of what
ar Fullonius, G., loannis Palsgrave Londoniensis, Erphrasis Anglica In Comoediam Acolasti (1540), U. M. *1 ao5 from B. M.-C. 34. f. 2; S. T. C. 11470.
[ Volume
One ] 
