OCRed data provided
for searching only. ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;ERASMUS LAID THE EGG; DE RATIONE STUDII 77
upper division under the master, devoted to rhetoric as then conceived, together with some logic, but all founded on grammar.
He who wishes to understand the principles upon which the sixteenth-century grammar school was founded in England would be very unwise to begin anywhere else than with Erasmus. To what ex-tent these principles were original with Erasmus is of little moment for our present purpose. The important thing is that through the authority of Erasmus English grammar schools became grounded upon these principles, and from them slowly continued to evolve. First we examine the systematic theory as presented in the De Ratione Studii. A first sketch of the present form appeared in a collection at Paris under date of October 2o, 1511, to be sold "a lohanne Granion." The essay itself is dated "Londini Idibus Martiis," and has a prefatory letter to Guilielmus Thaleius, who seems to have been responsible for its getting into print. This edition is an unauthorized one, apparently from papers left by Erasmus in Italy in 15o8.4 This form of the essay is dated by Professor Allen as perhaps as early as 1497. At least, it represents the views of Erasmus many years before 1511. An edition of July 15, 1512, attached to the first edition of De Copia,s changes the dedicatee to Petrus Viterius, who seems to have been the actual person originally addressed. In the mean time, the whole work had been revised stylistically, and in some sections enlarged. The last third had been especially expanded under the heading De Ratione Instituendi Discipulos, to become three-fourths of the final form. With a few small verbal differences, this is the form printed in the Opera Omnia (1703-06), which I have used as a basis of translation a
But this final form had itself been prepared a considerable time before publication in 1512. Under date of September 13, 1511, Erasmus wrote a letter to Colet enclosing an epistle, De Ratione Studii. Erasmus feared Coles might not approve of the program contained in the epistle,
' Allen, P. S., Opts Epistolarsm Des. Erasmi Raterodami, Vol. I, pp. 121, 193-194, etc. Allen, Opts Epistolartm, Vol. I, p. 193.
The British Museum has permitted a photo-facsimile of its edition of 151 t to the Library of the University of Illinois, the Bibliotheque Mazarine one of the edition of 1512, and the Bodleian one of the revised edition of 1514. In the meantime, Mr. J. F. Larkin under my direction has established a critical text of the work and has made a translation into English as his master's thesis in the Graduate School of the University of Illinois (Larkin, James Francis, Erasmus' De Ratione Studii: a Critical Edition and Translation, with Introduction and Explanatory Notes, 1941). After completing his work independently, Mr. Larkin has examined my excerpts in detail, and in a few instances I have corrected my translations in accordance with his text. He has now written his doctoral dissertation upon, "Erasmus' De Ratione Studii: Its Relation-ship to Sixteenth Century English Literature."
[ Volume
One ] 
