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Brinsley thought Terentius Christianus much safer. After the boys have mastered these authors with the help of grammatical translations, they will then be able to master advanced authors by the aid of properly annotated editions. So Brinsley gives advice "for the higher Schoole-Authors; as Horace, Persius, and the like," including Juvenal. From constructions, Brinsley proceeds naturally to parsing these authors, thence to making Latin without barbarity.
Brinsley is now ready for extended compositional forms, the first of which is the epistle, to be written, of course, imitatively from Cicero, using the collection of Sturmius. The second compositional form in prose is the theme, using Aphthonius eventually as the basic text. The third compositional form in prose is the oration, but since Brinsley does not believe in dignifying the grammar school exercise with that name, he treats it merely as a form of theme. Having treated the prose forms, Brinsley next turns to the making of verse upon the model of Ovid or Virgil. These compositional forms are those provided for by Erasmus, and follow the conventional order. Only Brinsley, as throughout, is striving to simplify the work for the boys.
Brinsley then discusses various technical processes, such as examining and correcting exercises, answering questions in grammar, rhetoric, and Tully's Offices, taking part in grammatical disputations, pronouncing properly, and speaking Latin fluently and correctly. Next comes a chapter upon teaching Greek, followed by another on how to understand and remember any moral matter, and the discussion upon authors and processes.
It will be seen that Brinsley uses for the most part the regular sixteenth century authors and texts as they had evolved from the time of Erasmus, and that he uses the conventional processes and compositional sequences, treating them much in the order of Erasmus. He is, however, a "methodist," interested fundamentally in techniques of teaching. So he accepts the conventional curriculum, and spends his time meticulously and systematically considering the best modes of presentation. His presentation of the customary wrong way, and his advocacy of the only possible right way, namely his own, give us the means usually of interpreting the suggestions and allusions found in the sixteenth century curricula. For these methods are seldom novel; usually Brinsley selects what he regards as the best of the current methods and polishes it to his own taste. We shall, therefore, find Brinsley quite useful in certain later stages of our work.
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