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only of instructing (instituere) the boy to read, but of overseeing his behavior generally (monere.) Instruction was in strictness the duty of the father, and many eminent Romans did in fact teach their own children; Augustus, for instance, to some extent; Cato, altogether. Although the latter had a slave for the purpose of instructing his boys in grammar, he himself taught his son reading, swimming, and other exercises, on the principle that a father could manage a son better than a slave. Still, there were many teachers who instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic, for which last the boys used small tablets. Such a teacher was called ludimagister. Every school was called ludus, but the reading-school, (didaoxaλsiov) ludus sive taberna literarum; where there was often a booth, pergula. Quinctilian advised to furnish letters of bone or some suitable material, for children to use in learning to read, quad tractare, intueri, nominare jucundum sit infantiae.

In reading, which was usually commenced before the seventh year, the Romans as well as the Greeks appear to have used the syllabic method; for Quinctilian treats not only of the single letters, their characteristics and relations to each other, to syllables and words, but has many clear references to it as an established practice. "The smaller children strive to learn the elements and syllables; and one of the older ones repeats them to them, clearly, and one at a time; so that it is particularly necessary to have regard to the elocution of teachers and of the larger scholars." Evidently, a clear and correct elocution was reckoned of great importance. After single letters, syllables and words, they learned to write longer ones, and verses; which were perhaps repeated over by the older ones and spoken after them by the younger.*

*

The diffusion of books being so much more costly and difficult than in our days, the learned usually read very much less material than now, but learned more by hearing; and good readers were therefore more and more required in the schools. Longer extracts than are now made were dictated, and surprising quantities of them learned by heart and retained in the memory. The saying was universally received, that men must read much; not many books. According to Quinctilian's school dialogues, the rudiments of grammar were taught along with reading; etymology, definition, parts of speech, inflection, &c. The apparatus for writing was a wax tablet, written upon with a sharp-pointed stylus or pencil. Wax was used to facilitate corrections. Instruction in reading seems to have been given twice a day.t

* In the time of the Romans, there were schools of mutual instruction.

1 See Cramer's Hist. of Ed, and Instr. among the Ancients, Vol. I, p. 433, &c., (1832)

The grammarian Kallias composed a theory of grammar in verse, or an A B C book in the form of a drama.*

The prologue, as the part first spoken by the chorus, gave the twenty-four letters in their order, and then the mode of using and combining them in words, which is their principal use. Then came a chorus of A B Ab, in verse, and to a melody which was the same to all the syllables; so that the seventeen consonants and seven vowels were figuratively represented as being paired together in a choral manner, or in antistrophic chanting.

After this followed a discourse relating to the vowels, in which, as was done for each letter in the prologue, each successive vowel was distinguished by a paragraph or sort of punctuation mark, so that it and its length were easily discernible.

After the vowels came the other divisions of the letters; the long and short vowels probably coming first, then the mutes, liquids, &c., apparently with a verse to each letter, as in the prologue. Interspersed with these exercises was given the practice in syllabizing, arranged according to the classes of consonants, or according to the place of the two consonants of a syllable, whether before, after, or on each side of the vowel, from Alpha to Omega; an extensive field for choral exercises.

That Kallias really arranged the A B C in a dramatic form, for use in the boys' schools, there seems to be sufficient reason for believing, when we consider how much of the life of the Greeks, and especially of the Athenians, was passed in entertainments, and how their lively plastic nature found its greatest pleasure in dramatic exhibitions. As with the old, so with the young; and the boys, by name and by a sort of flimsy imitation, probably brought the school into some similitude to the beloved theater. The author also knew the dryness of the fundamental principles of language, and sought to conceal it by an artistic treatment.

An especial reason for a dramatic presentation of the letters may be found in the fact that just about the time of Kallias, i. e., A. C. 403, under the archon Euclides, the new or Ionic alphabet, which is that of our tragedy, was introduced, which added to that before in use, the Cadmean or Phoenician, two long vowels, three double consonants, and three aspirates. Archinus, who introduced the Ionic alphabet into Athens, procured a decree of the people that all teachers should teach it in their schools. Such being the case, it was not at all unreasonable that Kallias should seek an expeditious way of introducing the new alphabet amongst both old and young.

* See Welcker's A-B C-book of Kallias in the form of a chart in the Rhenish Museum of Philology.

In the library at Muuich, there is an A-B-C-book (of a few leaves) of the fifteenth century, with illustrations, by a master-hand, and at Milan there is another adorned with miniatures by Leonardo da Vinci, in 1496.

The

When the Primer—(Primareus,) a little book containing the offices of the Roman Catholic Church, [which from its being the most common book in the monasteries, as well as because it contained prayers which the young and old were required to know, became the manual of the school as well as of the altar. and for this purpose was prefaced with a few leaves devoted to the Alphabet, and to words of one and two syllables]-came to be printed both in Latin and in German for religious instruction, its scholastic use was continued. “Child's Little Primer" by Luther, with the Lord's Prayer, the Commandments, Creed, and Catechism, was one of the earliest and most popular school books in the Protestant schools. Several of the great educational reformers of a later day began at the beginning by improving the A-B-C-books. Basedow at Magdeburg, adopted a constructive method of teaching the letters, by presenting them made in gingerbread—then rewarding success in remembering the name by gift of the substance. This founder of Philanthropinism should be held in everlasting and grateful remembrance by A-b-c-darians. The earliest illustrated printed alphabet and Primer in German, dates back over two hundred years, and was composed by Bienrod, a school officer in Wernigerode. The letter A, symbolized by the Ape feeding on an Apple and rhymes thus,

The Ape is then a funny beast

When on an Apple he doth feast.

In England the ecclesiastical and royal gate to learning was by the Primer and the Horn-book—the latter being simply the first leaf of the Primer pasted on wood and protected by transparent horn. In 1534, a “Prymer in Englyshe with certain Prayers, and Goodly Meditations, very necessary for all people that understand not the Latyne tongue," was printed by John Byddell. In 1545, King Henry VIII. ordered an English "Form of Public Prayer," or "Prymer to be printed," "as set forth by the Kinge's Majestie and his Clergie, to be taught, lerned and red; and none other to be used throughout all his dominions." This little book, besides prayers, contains several psalms, with lessons and anthems in English. This Primer, with various additions, in some editions with the Catechism prepared by Cranmer "for the singular commoditie and profyte of Childe and Yong People" and in others, with a page or two devoted to the alphabet, and words of one and two syllables, was used in schools and families as the first book of instruction with children.

The Horn-book of Queen Elizabeth's time, according to a specimen in the British Museum, consisted of a single leaf about two inches long by one and a half wide, commencing with a cross, which thus serves to designate the first row, followed by the alphabet in small and large letters, which the vowels, and their combinations with the consonants, the Lord's Prayer, and the Roman (not the Arabic) numerals, -the whole covered with horn. Ben Johnson refers to this manual of children. Shakspeare in "Love's Labors Lost," describes the Schoolmaster Holafernes-"He teaches boys the Horn-books," and in Richard III., one of the characters,

-hearkens after prophecies and dreams,

And from the cross-row plucks the letter G,
And says a wizard told him that by G

His issue disinherited should be."

Timbs in his "School Days," has the following paragraphs on the Horn-hook.

Cotgrave has, "La Croix de par Dieu, the Christ's-crosse-rowe, or horne-booke, wherein a child learnes it;" and Florio, ed. 1611, p. 93, "Centuruola, a childes horne-booke hanging at his girdle."

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Education," speaks of the "ordinary road of the Hornbook and Primer," and directs that "the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments he should learn by heart, not by reading them himself in his Primer, but by somebody's repeating them before he can read."

Shenstone, who was taught to read at a dame-school, near Halesowen, in Shropshire, in his delightfully quaint poem of the Schoolmistress, commemorating his venerable preceptress, thus records the use of the Hornbook:

"Lo; now with state she utters her command;

Eftsoons the urchins to their tasks repair;

Their books of stature small they take in hand,

Which with pellucid horn secured are

To save from finger wet the letters fair."

Cowper thus describes the Hornbook of his time:

"Neatly secured from being soiled or torn
Beneath a pane of thin translucent horn,

A book (to please us at a tender age

'Tis called a book, though but a single page)

Presents the prayer the Saviour designed to teach,

Which children use, and parsons--when they preach."

Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools, 1784.

We have somewhere read a story of a mother tempting her son along the cross-row by giving him an apple for each letter he learnt. This brings us to the gingerbread alphabet of our own time, which appears to have been common a century and a half since.

"To master John the English maid

A Hornbook gives of gingerbread;

And, that the child may learn the better,

As he can name, he eats the letter."-Prior.

An anecdote illustrative of Lord Erskine's readiness is related-that, when asked by a judge if a single sheet could be called a book, he replied, "The common Hornbook, my lord."

In "Specimens of West Country Dialect," the use of the Hornbook is thus shown:

"Commether, Billy Chubb, an breng the hornen book. Gee ma the vester in tha windor, you Pal Came!-what! be a sleepid-I'll wake ye. Now, Billy, there's a good bway! Ston still there, and mind what I da zâ to ye, an whaur I da point. Now; criss-cross, girt â, little â—b-c-d. That's right Billy; you'll zoon lorn the criss-cross-lain-you'll zoon auvergit Bobby Jiffry-you'll zoon be a scholard. A's a pirty chubby bway-Lord love'n!"

John Britton, who was born in the parish of Kington St. Michael's Wilts, in 1771, tells us, in his "Autobiography," that he was placed with a schoolmistress. "Here," he writes, "I learnt 'the Christ-cross-row' from a Hornbook, on which were the alphabet in large and small letters, and the nine figures in Roman and Arabic numerals. The Hornbook is now a rarity." Such a Hornbook we have engraved. It was met with in the year 1850, among the old stock of a bookseller at Peterborough, in Lincolnshire, and is thus described: Its dimensions are 9 by 5 inches. The alphabet, &c., are printed upon white paper, which is laid upon a thin piece of oak, and is covered with a sheet of horn, secured in its place by eight tacks, driven through a border or mounting of brass; the object of this horn-covering being to keep the "book," or rather leaf, unsoiled. The first line is the cross-row; so named, says Johnson, "because a cross is placed at the beginning, to show that the end of learning is piety."

The Hornbook was not always mounted on a board; many were pasted on the back of the horn only.

Such was the rudeness of the "dumb teacher" formerly employed at the dame-school, and elsewhere. It was, in all probability, superseded by Dr. Bell's sand-tray, upon which the children traced their own letters. Next came the "Battledore" and "Reading-made-Easy;" though the Spelling-book is considerably older than either. The Battledore, by the way, reminds us of a strategy of tuition mentioned by Locke: "By pasting the vowels and consonants on the sides of dice, he has made this a play for his children, whereby his eldest son in coats has played himself into spelling."-Timb's "School Days," &c.

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