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for searching only. 448 SMALL LATINE AND LESSE GREEKE
grammar was supposed to be memorized by the end of the third form, with some review in the fourth. This was the usher's work in the lower school. Then came the master's work in the upper school with the final three or four forms, though the usher did the necessary grammatical drill with the fourth form. With the fourth form, the boys took up the study of the Latin authors as literature, and at-tempted to imitate them. The instructions for study at Eton about 156o are typical. The boys in the fourth form and above were to gather from their readings
flowers, phrases, or locutions of speaking; likewise antithets, epithets, synonyms, proverbs, similitudes, comparisons, histories, descriptions of time, place, persons, fables, merry jests, schemes, and apothegms.
Susenbrotus gave them the names and descriptions of these various rhetorical figures, etc., which they were to gather. They also learned the rules for verse, and wrote both poetry and prose. The Eton boys -of whom Kempe had been one-were thus approaching their authors from the point of view of rhetoric, and performing the operations which Kempe demands. So are all the other schools which give any inkling of what they are about, as the reader will see by referring to the statutes from which we have quoted. Considerably before the Eton curriculum of about 156o the English grammar schools knew very definitely what they wanted to do, and had come to the fundamental organization of the curriculum and the general methods of teaching which they were for some centuries to retain. Refinements there were, but refinements merely on the old curriculum and methods of teaching.
In this system for the sixteenth century, we have seen that Terence and Cicero were the foundation stones. There is no mystery about the source of Englishmen's knowledge of Terence and the critical lore upon drama which surrounded him.
The English grammar school, of course, had its relations to the continental grammar schools; but with those we are not here concerned. It is English practice in which we are interested, and not general educational history. But it should perhaps be noticed here that before the final third of the sixteenth century, practically all the textbooks used in the English grammar schools, except the Latin grammar, came from the continent. Even in the final third of the century the texts printed in England are nearly always mere re-prints of continental editions. Especially the texts specifically in-tended for grammar school are likely to be reprints of or adapted
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