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for searching only. ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;558 SMALL LATINE AND LESSE GREEKE
school, devoted to grammar proper, in three or four years. The key text on which the lower school was founded is Lily's Latin grammar. Shakspere shows knowledge of both the Shorte Introduction, or the "accydence2& princypalles of gramer" in English, and the Brevissima Institutio, or the grammar proper in Latin. The Shorte Introduction in English he should have mastered by the end of the first year in gram-mar school. The Brevissima Institutio, with exception of prosody and figures, he should have mastered by the end of the third year, with some review perhaps in the fourth. So by the end of 1575 at furthest Shakspere should have had a thorough mastery of his Latin grammar.
The instructions prefixed to the Latin grammars indicate the general methods by which it was to be taught. They provide that the boy first should master thoroughly the declensions and the conjugations in the Shorte Introduction. This should not take more than a quarter of a year, we are told. Then the boy must master the Con-cords, which follow in the Shorte Introduction. Stockwood very aptly puts the purpose of the rules of construction as
To teach which of these eight parts of speech may most aptly and fitly in making of Latin, or construing of Autors be ioined togither, and agree the one with the other in some certaine properties, or else be gouerned and as it were ruled the one of the other.4
The boy first learned his parts, and must thenceforth be able to parse anything. Then he learned construction, both concords and rules of government, which enabled him to construe his Latin for translation into English, or to translate his English into Latin. Here are all the fundamental processes in their necessary relationships. So the instructions to the grammar provide that the boy shall continue to rehearse his grammar parts, "espe[ciallly the daily declynyng of a verbe, and tournyng hym into [all fashions." With parts mastered and Concords learned, the boy must begin making Latin to illustrate these his English rules. He will not then continue the same method in memorizing the rules of construction in the Shorte Introduction in English nor the Brevissima Institutio, the second part of the grammar, in Latin. Instead, he now begins making Latins, and memorizes each
i We may permit Minsheu, John, The Guide Into Tongues (r627, personal) to define "Accidence, or Introduction for Grammar, so called it Lat. Accidentia, quia in ea tractantur quaecunque accidunt Nomini, Pronomini, Verbo, Participio, & caeteris orationis partibus: vt Nomini accidunt Specks, Figura, Numerus, Casus, Genus, Declinado, Comparatio. Pronomini accidunt Species, Numerus, Casus, Genus, Declinatio, Persona, Figura. Verbs accidunt, Genus, Modus, Tempos, Figura, Species, Persona, Numerus, Conjugatio, &e. rotator edam Introductio Grammaticae." See above, pp. 204-5.
4 Stockwood, John, 4 Plaine And Easie Laying open, etc. (1590), p. Bir.
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