OCRed data provided
for searching only. CHAPTER XXVI
LOWER GRAMMAR SCHOOL: SHAKSPERE'S CONSTRUCTIONS; SENTENTI.IE PUERILES, AND CATO .
BESIDES THE GRAMMAR ITSELF, Shakspere also shows knowledge of several other conventional books and processes which accompanied it in the lower forms. As Kempe would say, the grammar furnished the precepts. The second step, examples, would be found in the accompanying Latin authors, who were studied for "constructions." By query and answer, Stockwood brings out this the proper sequence.
What is next to be done, after that you haue once perfectly learned the eight parts of speech set downe in your Accidence?
1nswer. We do then commonly, and for the most part vse to enter into the rules of construction, that we may be able to learne some easy Autor in the Latin toong, meetest for the capacitie and vnderstanding of yoong beginners.'
This is, of course, the order prescribed in the preface to the grammar itself.
, So Brinsley also speaks of "construction, which is the first thing that our children enter into, after their Accedence, and Rules";4 and the curricula show that his statement is correct. Brinsley sought to procure
the perfect knowledge of their Accedence and Grammar rules first, and then the practice of that golden rule of construing, together with Grammatical) Translations of the first ordinary schoole Authours, framed according to the same rule, if they be translated rightly in propriety of words, phrase and sense.a
Brinsley has himself sketched the genesis and evolution of his own solution as embodied in the golden rule and grammatical translations, tracing it from Ascham, "Master 4skarns Schoolmaster whom I principally esteeme and propound."' He then sums up Ascham's system of double translation as derived from Cicero's De Oratore,s and claims that his own grammatical translations perform the same things for ordinary schools more surely and speedily. Ascham in-
Stockwood, Rules of Construction (1590), p. I.
! Brinsley, Ludus Laterarius (16'27)r p. 29.
4 Brinsley, Ludus Literorius (16'27), p. 91. 4 Brinsley, Consolation, p. 32.
' Ascham also alleges the authority of Pliny the Younger (Ascham, Scholemaster (1570), PP. 34r and v).
[ Volume
One ] 
