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time the rule needed from the Shorte Introduction. For this purpose, the teacher selects "some prety book[e] wherin is conteyned not onely the eloquence of the tungue, b[ut] also a good playne lesson of honestee and godlynesse." He gives a sentence in English translation, which the boy turns into Latin, learning or repeating any rule of the grammar which may be required in the operation. When the boy has attained the exact phraseology of the original, he then takes the book to construe and parse his sentence. Thus the boy learns to write Latin and at the same time stores his mind with moral matters.
As a matter of fact, the rules themselves carry a minimum of illustration. Thus a possible procedure was that at Rotherham before Hook's day. There the boys first merely read the Accidence. Then they memorized it. Finally, they learned to parse and construe upon the illustrations given in the rules of the Shorte Introduction. In that way, they first mastered the parts, then the construction, both con-cords and rules of government, after which they learned to apply their knowledge in construing and parsing. This furnished the mini-mum, which could then be supplemented as needed.
In I 59o, John Stockwood, sometime schoolmaster at Tonbridge, in d Plaine ~?nd Easie Laying open of the meaning and understanding of the Rules of Construction in the English Accidence has given a very good idea of how contemporary schoolmasters proposed to impress the Shorte Introduction indelibly upon the minds of the boys through drill in applying their rules.
And I haue the rather made chaise to deale with the English rules, bicause it is the first thing that the Accidentiaries do enter into, after they haue learned their eight parts of speech, and as it were the foundation of all the rest of the Grammar building, the which being well laid, they shall be the better able to proceed to the vnderstanding of Latin Authors.'
Stockwood emphasizes especially the use of the examples to make the rules clear, "nothing is omitted, that any way cocerneth the fitting of euery example to euery rule throughout the whole rules of construction."' So drilled, the boy had not much chance to forget.
Hints on practice generally seem to indicate that the schoolmasters followed the method of Tonbridge under Stockwood and of Rotherham before Hook in memorizing the whole of the Shorte Introduction and seeing that the boy knew how to apply the rules to the examples in the rules themselves. But whether the boy memorized the rules
Stockwood, Rules of Construction, p. Aar. 6 Stockwood, Rules of Construction, p. A3v.
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