*sity of California uthern Regional ibrary Facility UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES Our Colonial Curriculum 1607-1776 BY COLYER MERIWETHER, Ph. D. (J. H. U.) Author of Hiitory of Higher Education in South Carolina, Date Maiamune and hisEmbassj to Rome, Etc. /78// WASHINGTON. D. C. CAPITAL PUBLISHING CO. 1907 1908 Stack Annex Cage TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I. EIJSMENTARY COURSE. Page. Religion the Keynote in Our Colonial Education, ... 15 Bible the Real Primer Then, 17 Education of the Indian, 21 Education of Girls, 23 General Elementary Course, 25 A B C Darians, 28 Hornbook, 29 New England Primer, 32 Reading, . . . . 33 Spelling, 34 Writing, 34 Ciphering, 36 "Free Schools," 36 Teachers and Books, 37 What Was Accomplished ? 38 Vestibule to College, 39 CHAPTER II. THE; GENERAI, coi4 '" . o rt w5 c o:s O rt *T3 w O WPuQ WP-.Q ijTS g *5jjB s "jjj * fcJ.2.2 rt Zj A> IM Arithmetii Geometry. Astronom Disputes. sill U S *-" ^H s r 9 o rt <> " s CO The General College Course. 53 "LAWS" FOR 1642. A It will help to an understanding of the above to take a short survey of the rules of 1642. There were nineteen of them, every one bearing upon religion and conduct except five, impressing it upon the young student that it is "the main end of his life and studies to know God and Jesus Christ," that he hall pray in secret for guidance and shall read the scriptures twice daily, keep away from men of "ungirt and dissolute life" andrepeat sermons whenever called upon to do so in the Hall. As for the literary side of his career, he is to be admitted to college when "able to read Tully, or such like classical authors extempore and make and speak through Latin in verse and prose sua (ut aiunt) marte and decline perfectly the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the Greek tongue." During his subsequent stay at the university he and his fellows shall "never use their mother tongue" except when specially allowed on some pub- lic occasion. Finally, he shall receive his first degree when "able to read the original of the Old and New Testaments into the Latin tongue and to resolve them originally" if his conduct has been satisfactory. He A\411 get his second de- gree, the master of arts, when he can make a "summary of logic, natural and moral philosophy, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, and is ready to define his theses or positions withal skillful in the originals as aforesaid," if again he has behaved himself properly. 65 Many of the early emigrants to New England had un- doubtedly studied at some of the English universities and it was unavoidable that the new course should be largely a copy of the old ones, that they themselves had gone through. Of the first comers to Massachusetts one in thirty, it is said, 98 J. Quincy, History of Harvard, Vol. i, page 515. Quincy has these rules also in Latin, pages 577-79, both the English and Latin being official he says on page IQ3. The same are contained in the First Fruits of N. E., Vol. i, Colls, of the Mass. Hist. Soc. 54 Our Colonial Curriculum. was a graduate of the English Cambridge. 66 As pioneers facing the severity and roughness of life in a new landy transferring civilization across the Atlantic to a home amid wild forests, harassed by barbarous natives, they of necessity would develop an independence of judgment and a readiness of adaptation that would show themselves in education and in all walks of life. But a comparison of the plan with what we can learn of the parent institutions in Europe will dis- close a variation of appearances but very likely no substan- tial difference in principles. While at Dublin, at Edinburgh, at Oxford we come across the name Aristotle, this great Stagirite must unquestionably be retained either directly or indirectly through some of his commentaries in the terms logic, ethics, politics, and physics. Similarly Porphyry, a brother Grecian, was extracted under some of the general titles. Not as many Greek authors are named as at Dublin and Edinburgh, but it is possible the same were studied. As with them little is said about Latin as that tongue was to be as familiar as the vernacular in both cases. In all there were Hebrew and other Semitic languages, rhetoric, dia- lectics, and the perpetual disputations. In all there was lit- tle mathematics and still less of real science. In all, on both sides of the Atlantic, the star of purpose was religion. THE COURSE IN 1655. It was not at all likely that there could be much develop- ment in two decades in a subject that had shown almost no change for centuries, but it is of some signficance to note that there were some modifications in the way of greater definiteness. For admission, we learn from the fuller body of laws in 1665, that Virgil or other "such ordinary classical authors" was added to the list in Latin, and the New Testa- ment, Isocrates, and "the minor poets or such like" in Greek. ** M. L. Lough, page 17, Vol. i, Transalleghany Hist. Mag., Oct., 1901. The General College Course. 55 There were other similar points mentioned, but nothing of important modification from the earlier forms. 67 The Gre- cian Isocrates, here first met with, is another link in the Atlantic chain as he appears in the course at Westminster Academy, England, in i625. 68 THE COURSE IN 1690. More than a half a century later we see the same original body, only its anatomy is a little more accurately described under the official title of "A PARTICULAR ACCOUNT OF THE PRESENT STATED EXERCISES ENJOYNED THE STUDENTS. "The first year the Freshmen recite the classick authors learn't at school viz., Tully, Vergil, Isocrates, Homer, with the Greek testament and Greek catechism, Dugard's or Farnaby's rhetoric and the latter part of the year the Hebrew grammar and Psalter, Ramus's and Burgersdicius's Logick. "The second year the sophomores recite Burgersdicius's logick and a manuscript called the New Logick extracted from Legrand and Mr. (?) Copland (?). Wollebius on Saturday, and in the latter part of the year Herebord's Meletemata continuing still most part of the year recitations in the forementioned Greek and Hebrew books and dispute on logical questions twice a week. "The third year the Junior Sophisters recite Herebord's Meletemata, Mr. Morton's Physicks, Dr. More's ethick, a sistem of geography, and a sistem of metaphysicks, Wolle- bius divinity on Saturday and dispute twice a week on physical and metaphysical and ethical questions. "The fourth year the senior sophisters recite Alsted's geometry, Gassendus's astronomy, goe over the arts, viz., "Proceedings of Mass. Hist. Soc., Vol. 14, pages 207-215. 88 Public Schools, page 92, published, Edinburgh and London, 1867 (pages VIII, 414), by the author of "Etoniana." 56 Our Colonial Curriculum. grammar, logic and natural philosophy, Ames Medulla, and dispute once a week on philsophical and astronomical questions." 69 But this is official and consequently dry. A gossipy, news- paper account of the present day, we can never have but we come the nearest towards it, so far as can be learned from the data now available, in the account of Cotton Mather, an ecclesiastical pedant and hence doubly tiresome, but it is the best we have of anything like a living picture of the school room in Harvard at the time, about 1700, in his Magnalia. COTTON MATHER'S ACCOUNT. When a pupil had learned at the grammar school so as to be able to "read any classical author into English, and readily make and speak true Latin, and write it in verse as well as prose; and perfectly decline the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the Greek tongue, they were judged capable of admission in Harvard Collidge; and upon the examination were acordingly admitted." After admission they "read out of Hebrew into Greek from the Old Testament in the morning, and out of English into Greek from the New Testament in the evening," then they were instructed in the Hebrew language and tutors led them through all the liberal arts, e're their first four years expired;" "And in this time they had their weekly decla- mations on Fridays in the Collidge Hall, besides public dis- putations." Then in June for three weeks, as candidates for degrees, they stood on Mondays and Tuesdays in the Hall for anyone to examine their skill in the languages and sci- ences which they now pretended unto:" this was called "sitting of solstices." But at commencement, "formerly the second Tuesday in *Page 31, "Harvard College Papers, Vol. I, 1650-1763," Mss. In Harvard Archives. The General College Course. 57 August, but since, the first Wednesday in July," they "held their act publicly in Cambridge" for getting the degree of "bachelor." Their "orations" addressed to "all persons and orders of any fashion then present" "with proper compli- ments, and reflections were made on the most remarkible occurrentes of the preceding year : and these orations were made not only in Latin but sometimes in Greek and in Hebrew also ; and some of them were in verse, and even in Greek verse, as well as others in prose. But the main exercises were disputations upon questions wherein the re- spondents first made their theses." Those who had studied three years after their first degree got the master's degree upon "exhibiting synopses of the liberal arts, by themselves composed, now again publicly disputed on some questions of perhaps a little higher elevation." 70 THE COURSE IN 1726 AND LATER. During this little more than a quarter of a century, making allowance for a difference of phraseology, it can be said there was absolutely no change in the course. Even the same text-book authors are mentioned and the same descrip- tive terms for the various subjects. 71 But by 1740 either new authors had been chosen or the names of the regular ones were printed, as we find Ward's mathematics, Gordon's geographical grammar, Gravesande's philosophy, Euclid's geometry, Brattle's logic, Watt's logic, and Locke's human understanding. 72 We also learn about this time something of the studies for entrance. Some candidate who afterwards developed into a preacher, Holyoke, has left the scope of what was required TO Cotton Mather, Magnolia Christi Americana, 1702, Volume 2, page 10 of the 1820 reprint. " J. Quincy, History of Harvard, Vol. i, page 441. w Peirce, History of Harvard, page 237. 58 Our Colonial Curriculum. of him as follows : Twenty-four lines of the second JSneid of Virgil, fifteen lines of the third, Cicero's second and third Catiline orations, twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew in the Greek testament and the twelfth chapter of Luke in the Greek testament. Besides a theme was given to each one to develop, perhaps outside, to be handed in after several days. He records three at this particular instance: Labor improbus omnia vincit. Sapientia praestat viribus. Semper avarus eget. THE METHOD. Like her European prototype, Harvard had the tutorial system by which each instructor generally led his classes in all the subjects. It was only after very patient reasoning with the innate conservatism of the human nature in the gov- erning body that in 1767 the teachers were assigned to subjects so that one had Latin, another Greek, another logic, metaphysics, and ethics, and another mathematics and the sciences. Perhaps the means did not allow of this division sooner, it is still more doubtful whether the students were ripe enough for this step in the earlier stages. Nearly one- half a century after the opening of her doors, the man with the best means of observing could say that the college was in "a low sinking state." 73 Something over two decades fol- lowing he could refer to the pupils as "forty or fifty chil- dren," hardly mature enough to appreciate his learned ex- positions of the scriptures, or at least less worthy of his efforts than his church of some 1,500 attendants. 74 But the passion for progress, for learning, for culture, was un- quenchable. No matter what the obstacle, no matter how meagre the appliances, the institution climbed upward and 73 Increase Mather's Diary, page 317, Vol. 3, Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings. 74 J. Quincy, History of Harvard, Vol. i, page 96. The General College Course, 59 steadily carried onward the torch, flickering at times, that still lighted the path for her neighbors. YALS A DUPLICATE OF HARVARD. The founders of Yale had thus alongside of them a pat- tern, and when they opened their doors just at the beginning of the eighteenth 'century it was the most natural and the most sensible thing for them to model their course as nearly like that of Harvard as possible and to keep it so through- out the colonial times. 75 Even at the end of our struggle with England the youth at Yale were still having their for- mal disputations, their forensics, and the same subjects as their brethren in Cambridge and almost the same textbooks, going through the same mill for admission. To make the parallel still more striking there were the same kind of criticisms of the standard being low. There were also stric- tures on the curriculum showing a very keen insight into the future. Just before the outbreak of our hostilities with the motherland one of the tutors sarcastically referred to the whole scheme as the "progress of dullness," denounced the emphasis laid upon ancient languages and declared the metaphysical hair splitting of little advantage in any busi- ness or profession in life" and called for the teaching of English. 76 What an eye he had for piercing the veil ahead as it was at least one hundred years before his demands for practical discipline in English talking and writing were heard by the educational authorities. WILUAM AND MARY. Although amid a slightly different geographical and so- cial environment, William and Mary college is cast in the same educational mold as her sister in New England. Per- 75 W. L. Kingsley, Hist. Yale, Vol. i, page 25, also Vol. 2, page 496. 78 W. L. Kingsley, Hist. Yale, Vol. i, page 98. 60 Our Colonial Curriculum. haps she represents a return to the original source for both more than the influence of Harvard. The ruling class here still looked across the Atlantic for its customs and for its models. England was still "home" to them just as it is to-day to the colonists in Australia though separated from their parent land by more than twice the distance the Vir- ginian was. Those who could afford it sent their sons for schooling across the waves. School masters in England looked for patronage in the colonies and some kept their advertisements in the Virginia papers. In the grammar school for the institution it was the announced purpose that the boys should follow in the steps of their brother pupils in the corresponding training centers of England. But coming from the same fountain head the stream was practically the same as that in New England. There was the same aim of breeding ministers, of inculcating religious truths, of studying philosophy, the ancient languages, and sciences, of disputations and declamations and, still more analogous, of christianizing the Indian. 77 As foreshadow- ing Virginian supremacy in the public affairs of the coun- try, greater emphasis was laid upon law and politics at an earlier date than elsewhere in this country. In some respects this southern effort approached its medieval model closer than any other in America. The management attempted to ingraft upon this material ener- getic democracy one of the most distinctive marks of an ecclesiastical hierarchy. Just seVen years Before the first shock of arms the board of visitors resolved that when one of the instructors got married his place should be consid- ered vacant because "engaging in marriage and the con- cerns of a private family" was "contrary to the principles on which the college was founded and their duties as pro- fessors." 78 77 Beverly, History of Virginia, page 88. 78 History of William and Mary, page 45, Murphy edition, 1870. The General College Course. 61 But in spite of their adherence to the old world, in spite of their desire to tread the same paths, time and place were against them. One of the professors had to admit, in 1724, that "the nature of the country scarce yet admits of a pos- sibility of reducing the collegians to the nice method of living and studying observed in Oxford and Cambridge." 79 y OTHER INSTITUTIONS. Besides these three there were seven more born in our colonial period but as they were young and as their courses were as far as they could make them only modifications of those offered by the three elder sisters, it is unnecessary to go into the details of what they presented. Besides the data is not so full and not so minute. In those respects the pioneer of them all is at the front. HARVARD THE GREATEST OF Au,. Not only does Harvard furnish the fullest account of her life but she had the fullest life to describe. She started first and she long held undisputed primacy in achievements and influence. The most varied activity, the fullest intel- lectual feast, the most capable adaptation, the readiest recep- tiveness and at the same time the safest judgment are to be found here, at this, the oldest, the largest, and the greatest of all the institutions of learning ,in the new world and among the greatest in the, whole world. A MORE DETAILED STUDY. But even with Harvard in colonial days, as compared with the present the course was not only meagre in range but also meagre in description, and it is necessary to go much wider and deeper than the formal terms to see what was really taught, to learn what interpretation was put upon 78 Hugh Jones, State of Virginia, page 27. 62 Our Colonial Curriculum. the different subjects offered. With us college cata- logues and study schemes do not always accurately por- tray what is done in the class rooms. Difficult as it is now to acquire this knowledge except by actual experience, it can be easily imagined how enormously greater is the task for a period two hundred years ago in a new land with all of the human energies devoted to the question of reducing the obstacles of nature rather than of training the human mind. CHAPTER III. ANCIENT LANGUAGES. LATIN, GENERAL VIEW. Through the centuries the mighty tread of the Roman legion has echoed in the sonorous phrases of the Latin tongue. Massive in its structure, merciless in its gram- matical rigidity, it embodies the very spirit of Rome which first taught the world how to be ruled by formal law. Just as there had been a preliminary struggle of Greek and Roman for mastery, so there had been a conflict between the two languages as to which one should be the transmuter to the succeeding generations of the life and thought of the classic days. In both cases the city on the banks of the Tiber won. Other rivals had bowed at the touch of Latin imperiousness, just as other peoples had yielded to the Roman standard. 80 Rome was the mistress of the material world, Latin be- came the mistress of the intellectual world. The very force of inheritance made her sway supreme. She had gathered up the entire knowledge of the preceding ages. Through traveller, through historian, through dramatist, Greece had garnered the best gems of the eastern nations, these in turn she had passed on to her neighbor beyond the Adriatic. The experience that Rome had added was already now locked up in her speech. The rise of the Christian church, the centralizing of all power in this seven hilled town placed in her hands what has been through all ages the most potent factor in marshalling the emotions and shaping the sentiments of humanity. Latin became the handmaid of religion. The church though not the exclusive agency in establishing schools was active in education, carrying down 80 Gibbon, Vol. i, page 44, Milman edition, 1858. 64 Our Colonial Curriculum. deep the foundations of her control. 81 The decrees were issued in Latin, the priest delivered his message through it, it was the voice of the soul in its yearnings for higher life. It breathed the grace and pity of the Redeemer and spoke the terrors of revelation. It was the key to the prob- lem of existence. It explained the past, it soothed the pres- ent, it revealed the future. It pointed the way for the be- liever, it barred the road for the heretic. It was the princess of the trio of divine dialects. 82 Its noble duty was to pre- pare the sacred men of the church who were to look after the eternal welfare of mankind. 83 It not only vanquished Greek but for a long period it stifled all the vernacular of Europe. Through all these cen- turies it was the only sphere for the mind, all European achievements and learning were in this dress. It was the medium for scholars, it was the instrument for officials. Whatever germs of international law and diplomacy can be discovered were budded upon this philological tree. The lawyer used it in his documents, it was indispensible to the physician. It was not only handy to the more elevated call- ings but the daily operations of life were carried on in this atmosphere. The messenger of the courts performed his tasks in it, it furnished the merchant with the names of his wares, the musician trusted it in his mastery of sound, it appeared on the ledger of the bookkeeper, the architect re- lied on it in his plans. It was the universal medium for letter writing, bearing the tender messages of the lover, the familiar items of relatives and friends, the weighty utter- ances of governments and the solemn deliverances of the clergyman. The querulous complaints and the insistent pleadings for more money of the son in a far off university 81 Laurie, Rise of Universities, page 108, claims that the church did not found universities any more than it founded chivalry. M Eggleston, Transit, page 129, quotes Laing. 81 C. Wase, page 45, Consid. Free Schools, calculates there were some 15,000 of these "ecclesiastics." Ancient Languages. 65 were also buried in the masses of Latin missives. In fact everyone who wanted to be in touch with his fellows through the aid of words, either written or spoken, had to have a certain facility and command of Latin. The artist and the philosopher were impressed with its vastness and its mightiness. In the court of Charlemagne was a famous picture representing the seven liberal arts with grammar as queen, knife in right hand for erasing errors and thong in left to show supremacy. John Locke, seer as he was, fell under her spell. Profound in his grasp he could point out the weaknesses of education in his day but he seemed afraid to lay a profane hand upon Latin which he says "I look upon as absolutely necessary for a gentleman." Perhaps at heart he felt the hollowness of this view but even he did not feel strong enough to set himself up against the prevailing custom. He goes on to say "Latin and French, as the world now goes, are by everyone acknowledged to be necessary." 84 The good Mo- ravian bishop Comenius had a noble conception of making Latin "the means of inter-communication for the instructed of every nationality," a dream of a world language that even to the present we see still unfruited. A touch of the humor- ous is added to this ponderous subject when a schoolmaster in Virginia chided his student to grapple with the intricacies of this discipline by telling him that "he will never be able to win a young lady of family and fashion for his wife" unless he can trip easily and skillfully through the moods and tenses of Latin. 85 Down to the immediate present we find the testimonials of profound thinkers to the value of this study. Latin and Greek are considered the embryology of our civilization, "the humanities," because they are the fountain head of all art, science, and jurisprudence. 86 To 14 R. H. Quick's Locke, pages 138, 171. "Fithian, Journal, page 125. "J. K. F. Rosenkranz, page 278 of his Philosophy of Education. 5 66 Our Colonial Curriculum. one of the most prolific American educational writers, Latin reproduces "the political atmosphere of Rome" with her conception of law, and social organizations, revealing "this Roman spirit in its intimate and characteristic form." 87 To the Italian humanist it was " the portal of all knowledge whatsoever," the guide for right living. 88 The whole case was condensed into a nugget by Quintilian hundreds of years before. To him grammar was literature. LATIN CONVERSATION. As the gateway of all knowledge men had to turn to Latin. Tradition suggested this step, practice needed it, culture called for it, authority ordered it. It was far easier to use this tool ready to hand than to fashion one from their own native speech, and even after the edge of the latter had been sharpened, from mere force of habit, they still clung to this classic language. It must be got in its three-fold en- tirety, reading, writing and talking. There was a passion for oral skill in it and before the eleventh century Latin conver- sation books for the ordinary events of the day had to be memorized by the pupils. All of education was directed to this end. In the sixteenth century the Strasburg gymnasium had ten classes, all in Latin. 89 The most famous school- master of that time "wanted to restore the language of Cicero, and Ovid and to give his pupils great power of ele- gant expression in that language." He was downcast and wailed because a German of eighty couldn't talk Latin as well as Cicero did at twenty. 80 In England the same ambition reigned in the academies. At Harrow, and at Westminster even to 1800, far more 87 Universities and Their Sons, page 17. 88 Vittorino, page 144, by W. H. Woodward, Cambridge, Eng., 1897. * F. V. N. Painter, History o f Education, page 160. 80 R. H. Quick, Essays on Educational Reformers, page 27. Sturm is meant. Ancient Languages. 67 stress was laid upon the colloquial command of Latin than upon rules of conduct. A false pronunciation brought down a lively flogging but a liar escaped. 91 At the universi- ties on both sides of the ocean nothing was to be heard in the class room or out of it except these sounds generated on the Mediterranean. In Paris it was imperative that the applicants state their cause in Latin without a French word. 92 In Edinburgh the regulations sought to cover the entire existence of students as it was enjoined upon them to speak Latin both in the schools, in the close, in the fields, and in all other places where they were together and "none is to be found speaking Scotch." 93 Their formal exercises, even those for recreation, had to be performed in the same medium. In many institutions Latin plays were given, both the ancient ones and original ones composed at the time. All this fiery zeal for grasping another tongue leaped to America. English was felt to be a kind of poor relation that no one wanted to associate with an intruder in high com- pany. Children at one time in New Haven who bothered the master by spelling in English were sent home. It mat- tered not what the nationality was, there was the same fanaticism for Latin. A Dutch burgomaster in New York desired instruction for the youth in that most useful lan- guage, Latin. 94 The stinging epithet of "asinus"' was ap- plied to the dull boy who had to use English in order to be understood. 95 THE GOAL FOR ALL. The securing of this linguistic vehicle was the object of all, both in the college and in the lower schools. Following w Public Schools, page 319. ** H. Rashdall, Univs. Mid. Ages, Vol. 2, page 595. M Grant, Edinburgh, page 140. ** C. L. Brodhead, History of New York, page 640. "Eggleston, Transit, page 215. 68 Our Colonial Curriculum. Harvard, Yale even as late as 1720 required "scholars in their chambers and when they are together shall talk Latin," no English to be allowed except as a special privi- lege. 96 Half a century after this, at William and Mary, the faculty had voted that "the students in the philosophy schools shall speak Latin declamations of their composi- tions, and that by two of them in rotation this exercise shall be performed in .the chapels immediately after evening service every second Thursday during term time." 97 This action was most likely very agreeable to many of the gentry there. A hundred years earlier one of them had provided by will. that a person be "bought" to teach his son English or Latin but the parent expressed his preference for the latter. 98 About the time that this Virginia planter was so much concerned over Latin for his offspring, the salutatory at Harvard consisted of more than 2,000 Latin words. 99 Here within a decade of the sundering of our ties with England a fund had been subscribed to provide prizes for those who "excelled in the knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, and in elocution or just pronunciation or action. 100 It is well known that the elementary schools, provided for generally by law in New England were mainly to teach Latin. As far back as 1677 Connecticut decreed that every "county town" should keep such a school. Just seven years later the trustees of the New Haven grammar school re- ported on the facilities for instructing "hopeful youth in the Latin tongue and other learned languages so far as to pre- pare such youth for the college." 101 This fondness sur- ** W. L. Kingsley, History of Yale, Vol. 2, page 496. "History of the College, page 43. 88 Virginia Magazine of History, Vol. 2, page 236. M Harvard College Papers, Vol. i, page 45, Mss. Of course all on religion and morality. 100 Harvard College Papers, Vol. 2, page 7, Mss. 101 Barnard's American Journal of Education, Vol. 4, page 710. Ancient Languages. 69 vived even the stress and agony of separation from the motherland. Just five years before the close of the century Leicester Institute wanted the exhibition to consist of Greek, Latin and English orations. 102 It was not until thirty years later that Massachusetts repealed that old statute enforcing the establishment of schools for teaching Latin, but even with the light of recent progress in their eyes the lawmakers still bound seven towns to these Roman bonds. It was not until this date that they began to use the term "high school" instead of Latin school. 103 This fever has burnt in European veins 2,000 years and all the cooling effects of modern languages and modern sciences have not entirely reduced it. The Jesuits still talk it and the brethren of every nationality communicate with each other by means of it. To-day they have fat little con- versation volumes up to date in Latin terms for all new ideas introduced into English by the enormous develop- ments in science and numerous inventions. One of the later ones appears under the authorishp of S. W. Wiley, though it is really a conversation book of the whole order. 10 * So thoroughly are they drilled in Latin that it becomes a second speech for them, conversing in it with the greatest ease. But they give up eight entire years, with the exception of one hour daily, to this language, and then keep up their practice in it for the balance of their days. One of the latest and most interesting survivals of it is to be observed in one of the most remarkable American educational institu- tions, the Catholic University of America founded within the last quarter of a century at Washington, D. C. Here it is expected to be used in the Latin Seminar. 105 1M Barnard's American Journal of Education, Vol. 28, page 799. 103 T. Davidson's History of Education, page 245. 104 S. W. Wiley, Guide to Latin Conversation, 1892, i8mo, over 500 pages. He got out another edition, smaller, "How to Speak Latin." "" Year Book, for 1903-1904, page 70. 70 Our Colonial Curriculum. THE PATHS TO THE APEX. "Grammar was studied for years in order to learn to speak and write Latin correctly; dialectic in order to use it logically; and rhetoric in order to handle it oratori- cally." 106 As far back as we can trace the teacher started with lecture and dictation so as to give the pupil the mor- phology of Latin. The grammar proper was studied in the dialectical method, by a round of arguments pro and con on questions picked out for this trial of verbal strength. Under these four formal methods was the problem tackled ; by dictation of words and inflections, by comment upon pas- sages, by disputations upon extracts, and by exercises on accent and pronunciation. Then came the reading, along with both these went talking and writing. In the early cen- turies, simple narratives, such as Phaedrus or Valerius Maximus were chosen, mainly from post-classical writers rather than those of classic days but these, especially Cicero and Sallust, were eventually included. The process was al- most microscopic. The particular passage was treated word by word as to meaning, connection, style, arrange- ment, allusions, and comparisons with other writers. The students took notes and gradually evolved a grammar and a vocabulary each for himself. The method goes back to the days of Plutarch who has samples of this same kind of work. 107 STURM'S COURSE BEFORE 1600. This great architect of education had an elaborate scheme in his ten year gymnasium at Strasburg. Though prolix it is worth space as illustrating one of the best ideals in continental Europe about the beginning of the modern era. "* F. V. N. Painter, Hist. Educ., page 165, quoting from Raumer, a noted German investigator. 107 W. H. Woodward's Vittorino, page 210. Also Erasmus, Vol. I of Works, page 527. Ancient Languages. 71 In his lowest class, that for beginners, he had the Latin declensions and conjugations with some reading and writ- ing. In the second year this routine was followed with the memorizing of Latin words and the irregular grammatical forms. In the third the same core is found with composition, ex- ercising on Latin verses, following Cicero's letters of style. In the fourth came syntax and the application of the grammatical rules from Cicero's letters with writing and translations into German. In the fifth Cicero was translated and a start was made in Latin poetry and in Jerome's letters. In the sixth a number of new words were added, versifi- cation and mythology were taken up and Virgil was yoked with Cicero as material to be translated into German and to serve as the basis for composition and declamations. In the seventh came Horace besides the other authors in the previous years, with numerous exercises in composition and a minute study of style. In the eighth composition, translation and conversation were continued using such authors as Plautus and Terence. In the ninth the same painful attention to composition, translation, conversation, and style, with much memorizing and reciting of these ancient authorities. Formal rhetoric and dialectics were included. In the tenth the same general outline was followed with the addition of weekly dramatical entertainments in Latin. The only language at all in the school besides Latin was Greek, with a mere modicum of German, but neither one of these received more than a fraction of the attention given to Latin. Of course voluminous notebooks were required to be made by the pupils. 72 Our Colonial Curriculum. ROGER ASCHAM'S NOTIONS. At about the corresponding period there was in England a very quaint and pregnant writer on education. It is well worth while to glance at his ideas which though not differ- ing very materially from the practice on the mainland gives us another side to this question and enables us more safely to comprehend its limits. He directed that the teacher should explain very carefully the portion selected and parse it entirely. After an interval the pupil is to be examined upon this lesson, also making a translation of his own book into Latin. This the master is to go over with him, criticising, correcting, and pointing out in what respects it differs from the great model left by Cicero. He insists that notes shall be made under such formal heads as propriety in the choice of words, metaphors, synonyms, variations in meaning, an- tonyms and phrases. He epitomized the whole progress of learning a language under the six heads; translatio, para- phrasis, metaphrasis, epitome, imitatio, and declamatio. 108 WHAT WAS DONE AT WESTMINSTER. It has not been possible to find for any American institu- tion such a full account as we have of Westminster at about the time that the Mayflower cast anchor at Plymouth. It is very likely that some of the early settlers went through the routine at this institution. It is the safest kind of a deduc- tion that what was done here was followed as closely in the new colonies as the difference of condition would permit. The following may be considered in fact a picture of the Latin course in the new world with some inevitable varia- tions. Hence this deserves proper setting for our purpose. There are only two years covered but they are sufficiently typical. 108 Ascham, The School Master. Metaphrasis, changing verse to prose. Ancient Languages. 73 In grammar the boys regularly recited pages from Lilly, being called out from a circle of 14 or 15 standing in front of the teacher and one taking up where the other had left off. Again others would be called forth to make extempore verses or to expound some given passage, but all had to be ready to recite from memory. They were liable at any time for extempore translations into Latin to give an account in this tongue of any exercise previously studied. At some time in the morning session the teacher would faithfully ex- pound some selections in the method indicated above and in the afternoon his work had to be returned to him by the students with the most exact construction and application of grammatical rules and full explanation of rhetorical figures. And later in the day they had to recite literally a section of definition or of proverbs and sentences specially arranged for this purpose by the teacher. Constantly they were to be prepared to transfer from any one of these three languages into any other; Latin, Greek or French, in prose or in poetry. And a still more difficult thing was to make prose or verse upon some theme given them the day before. All were under the eyes of monitors who kept them strictly to the speaking of Latin. A form of punishment that has come down to the present day was to repeat long portions from the classical authors. On Saturdays they wound up the week's toil with declamations in one of these ancient languages. The requirement of talking Latin in the class room was retained to i8oo. 109 THE TRANSIT To AMERICA. To these virgin shores, to these forest wilds, were im- ported the same riot of the intellect for Latin speech and the same monumental effort to acquire this medium and the same machinery for advancing towards this aim. All wanted to talk it and consequently all were to read it, to write it, 109 Public Schools, page 171. 74 Our Colonial Curriculum. to pore over every line and word and letter of the Roman writers. There were to be in regular succession accidence, syntax, construing, parsing, composition, versification, con- versation, declamations and the same frightful burden of memorizing pages upon pages of both grammar and text. William and Mary was frank in avowing her imitation of the English school for she exacted the same authors adopted in the schools of England. Buried in the charter and stat- utes of the colleges and schools, in the outlines of study, and in the other historical data, we come across the same proper names on both sides of the Atlantic. We find &sop, Cor- derius, Caesar, Tully (Cicero), Ovid, Virgil, Horace, Eras- mus, Eutropius, Juvenal, Persius, Terence, Sallust, Nepos, and other Latin writers besides the established grammars of Priscian and Donatus which had stood the wear of ages, finally Lilly, the most widely used one for several centuries. But American progressiveness while appropriating also made additions. There is a most notable one, the leader in its influence among our Latin helps issued in America. This was the "accidence" of Ezekiel Cheever, a little i8mo of something over a hundred pages, showing the steady growth in the importance of the English tongue as it is in that language. It is a very happy condensation of the elements of Latin grammar. But these books are anatomy only that needs the flesh of actual teaching if we are to see what was really done. Fortunately we have a CLASS ROOM SCENE. "Circumspicite," called out the teacher, and immediately the little heads in front of him would be turned from side to side of the room. "Imitamini sutorem" and instantly those who understood would begin to draw threads as the cobbler does in sewing shoes. Again he would begin to draw the picture of a lion, but Ancient Languages. 75 placing a beak on it instead of a head. At once some voice would be heard, "non est leo, leones non habent rostrum." Thus he would hold the attention of his class by either making figures on the board or by describing some object and having them to draw their conclusions in Latin. As for instance, pointing to the eyes or the fingers or giving them commands so that they would bark like a dog or roar as a wild beast. Thus has good luck preserved for us and investigation presented us this realistic scene of a German school towards the latter part of our colonial period, reviv- ing conditions for us almost as realistically as the vitagraph and phonograph could. 110 This was not a detached example but was the growth of a long series of experiments and was, of course, wafted to America, there to be reproduced. MATERIAL HELPS. These results were possible because there had been a chain of text-books linking back through time. Early in the middle ages were Latin conversation books, at first in manu- script only. Some of the most important series were evolved by the Jesuits. One of this brotherhood had a very pro- found plan. He wanted to get a short cut so he prepared a series of brief sentences, some 1,200 in all, composed of all the root words in the language so arranged that no word would be used a second time aside from the simple connec- tives. He very thoughtfully appended an index so that any word could be readily found. The following specimen will be a fair sample of the whole : Dum malum comedis juxta malum navis, "de malo commisso submalo vetita meditare," or "while thou eatest an apple near the mast of a ship think of the evil committed under the forbidden apple tree." 111 110 E. L. Kemp, page 266, describing the school founded by Base- dow, in his History of Education, 1902. m R. H. Quick, Essays on Educational Reformers, page 161. 76 Our Colonial Curriculum. This quotation typifies both the Latin and the religion of the volume. ADOPTED BY COMENIUS. This innovation was seized upon by that comprehensive reformer in educational methods. He improved on the no- tion, and got out his "Orbis pictus," probably the first illus- trated school book among European peoples. He himself had wandered through the mazes of the formal Latin grammar, and felt hot indignation against all teachers as tyrants, and torturers, with the grammar as their chief agent of cruelty. He wanted to save others from what he had suffered, by smoothing the steep ascent, making it so gentle that the top could be reached almost without conscious effort. He designed a little book of several hundred com- mon Latin words with enough of the paradigms to allow of the making of very simple sentences. A second volume was to meet the needs of youths, containing 8,000 words, with some rules of grammar at the end. The third was fitted for the next age above, consisting of treatises and more diffi- cult phrases, to teach elegance of diction. The fourth was to be a thesaurus made up of extracts from the classical authors themselves, showing great variety of expression and of idoms. By ringing the changes on the 800 vocables in 1,000 sentences classified under 100 heads, he believed that the original idea of the Latin root words would easily and permanently find lodgment in the brain of his pupils, and that they in turn by innumerable combinations would be provided with an instrument of speech that would super- sede their mother tongue and would make into one family all the educated persons of the western world. Each would be "obambulans bibliotheca," "a. walking library." Paradise would thus be regained, he thought. Ancient Languages. 77 AMERICAN IMPORTATIONS OF THE IDEA. During the first quarter of the eighteenth century there appeared at Boston, in a book of some seventy pages, "sen- tences for children," which had been originally gathered out of sundry authors by Colman and put into English by Charles Hoole so as to soften the entrance into this Roman atmosphere. It is made up of simple sentences, none over a line in length, in parallel columns, with religion as the chief color through the whole. In one page of thirty-five lines the word God appears twenty-eight times, not counting pro- nouns. Corderius had been the popular stuff for cutting such pat- terns from in the seventeenth century. There is one speci- men of this sort running up to some 400 pages, with the two languages in parallel columns. Just at the opening of the nineteenth century so insistent is the strain after Latin that a new edition of Corderius appears in New Hampshire, a very forunate circumstance for us as it carries us back to the very beginnings of our colonial education. It is a series of 100 conversational les- sons on simple everyday matters, and the following will put before us about as thoroughly as can be done what was actually attempted in Latin lessons during our early years on this continent. 1 3th Chapter. A. Abiit tuus Pater? B. Abiit. A. Quota Hora ? B. Prima pomeridiana. A. Quid dixit tibi ? B. Monuit me multis verbis ut turerem diligenter. A. Utinam facias sic? B. Faciam, deo juvante. A. Deditne tibi pecuniam ? 78 Our Colonial Curriculum. B. Ut solet fere. A. Quantum? B. Nihil ad te, etc. 3$th Chapter. A. Quot annos natus es ? B. Tredecim, ut accipi a matre. Quot annos natus es tu ? A. Non tot. B. Quot igitur? A. Duodecim. B. Sed quotum annum agit frater? A. Octavum. B. Quid ais ? liquitur Latine ? etc. " 2 This early love still lingers with us. Some of the terms are changed, our mistress has modified the trimmings a little, there may be a different shade of color for the ribbon, but she is the same fascinator to a dwindling group of educators that she was practically to the whole number of admirers centuries ago. One of the latest and most popular of these conversational incentives to the study of Latin is Sauver's "Talks with Caesar," 1878, constructed along practically the same lines as Comenius trod, but the 200 years had drilled at last some wisdom into the heads of educators. Sauver has not the slightest intention of dealing with daily concerns, he modestly connes himself to repetitions of Caesar's vocabu- lary so as to hasten acquaintance with that author. FORMAL GRAMMAR. As a means to an end and as an instrument of distinct mental discipline in its days Latin grammar, with its numer- ous cases and verbal endings, can be traced back to the sunny days of the mistress of the ancient world. There were ponderous helps of this sort and even Julius Caesar found m Colloquies of Corderius, Portsmouth, N. H., 1810. Ancient Languages. 79 time amid the demands of his epoch-making life to pen a treatise upon nouns and verbs. But this study, as we con- ceive it now, really reaches to about the fourth century, to Donatus, who continued to be the main authority in this field until he was later in the middle ages superseded in part by Priscian. Both of these were replaced by the verses of Alexander de Villa Dei in his Doctrinale. Grammar was largely in the inducive stage as there were no formal rules usually such as were made later. All three differ as much from their modern successors as a tree trunk does from the cabinet into which it is finally fashioned. Of course all were entirely in Latin. There was no arrangement of paradigms as we now see them, but instead there were directions as to the endings in declina- tions and conjugations. The rules of syntax were largely the addition of Priscian and he and his followers seemed to be ambitious to multiply the rules as fully as possible, one of them rising to the height of 500 rules, with numerous exceptions. On the other hand, religious devotees, like Gregory the Great, were opposed to all rules as shameful restraints on the Holy language. 113 Ordinarily these books were dictated by the master to the pupils to be learned by heart. Even the stagnation of the middle ages could not prevent efforts at improvement. One of the most notable of these was a series of text-books devised by the reformer, Philip Melanchthon, whose Latin Grammar passed through over fifty editions and whose other works were largely used for nearly two centuries. An influence was, perhaps, wafted over to him from England from WILLIAM LILLY, who had made the pilgrimages fashionable at that time, had studied in Italy and had wandered to Jerusalem and was con- m S. G. Williams, Medieval Education, page 59. 8o Our Colonial Curriculum. sidered well accomplished in all the arts and sciences of his day. "He set forth a grammar which is universally taught all over England," said the old English author Fuller. So acceptable was it to the pedagogues that its fame reached the ears of King Henry, and with the very humane desire to smooth the road of learning as much as possible for the maturing minds of youth, a royal decree commanded that Lilly alone should be studied within the realms of Eng- land. 114 It was the foundation for lesser men to build upon and for a century or so afterwards nearly all of the gram- mars show traces of William Lilly. Locke seemed rather inclined to sneer at such dominion and declared that people "stick to it as if their children had scarce an orthodox education unless they learned Lilly's grammar." 118 It may be that Lilly was wise far beyond his generation and long since saw the value of cooperation, as some editions of his books at least had the assistance of Colet and Erasmus. He may be said to mark the end of the old era and to usher in the new one of to-day. One of his editions, bearing date about a decade before the Pilgrim Fathers landed in Massachusetts, does not vary to any great extent from the newest ones now. He has the eight parts of speech, ety- mology, classes of nouns, paradigms, etc. He has syntax and he winds up with a third division, very common at one time, of prosody. Of course it is all in Latin. It may be because of this ancient dress that a Virginia youth sarcas- tically referred to it as "insipid and unintelligible book," but in later years, with more maturity of judgment, re- verses his view and thought it "a complete grammar and an excellent key to the Latin language." 116 m Fuller's Church History of Britain, Book 5, Section i, page 13. m R. H. Quick's Locke, page 139. 118 Va. Hist. Register, Vol. 3, page 145. Ancient Languages. 81 EZEKIEI, CHEEVER'S ACCIDENCE. "He taught us Lilly and he gospel taught" is the double cord that sounded through the ninety odd years of Boston's most famous school master. For a while he literally used Lilly and then he wrote his simple little treatise, which al- though having 125 rules was a very primer of clearness and brevity by the side of its predecessors. Part of the task of transferring Lilly had already been done by John Brinsley. the greatest school master of King James's reign, who had himself transfused Lilly into a textbook of his own, but Cheever's adaptation was a still further improvement. It is most probable that he also got inspiration from Roger Ascham, whose Scholemastcr mounts to the level of pure literature. This little volume passed through some eighteen editions before the Revolutionary War and was popular with teachers even for some time after that. It is, of course, in English, and the most important difference between it and any gram- mar of the present day is its lack of illustrations of the rules of syntax. It is hardly creditable that so well-balanced a man was carried away by the fad of conversation, at least there are not much signs in his pages of yielding to this weakness as he hammers the skeleton of the language into his pupils. He did it successfully too, as there is testimony that the youth he sent up to Harvard were exceptional in their fitness for the Latin requirements. 117 He makes no boastful announcement of what he can ac- complish, although there were examples before him almost equal to what we can now read in the circulars of cor- respondence schools or even in patent medicine advertise- ments of the results to follow from the use of certain aids. A few years before Cheever was born a Londoner had got 117 Cotton Mather's Funeral Sermon on Cheever. 6 82 Our Colonial Curriculum. out "a practical grammar or the easiest and shortest way to initiate young children in the Latin tongue," promising that a child of seven years old may learn more in three months than his elder brothers could learn in twelve by the ordinary method. But none of these short cuts to knowledge for Cheever, only steady tramping along the well-beaten path for this experienced leader. But he was hardly learned enough for the colleges and the youth at these centers still mouthed over Priscian and Donatus, which were thought more profund. But through the centuries, after packing away the rules of grammar in the memory, there came the question of applying them so as to train in the power of creation. COMPOSITION AIDS. After Gutenberg opened the eyes of the world to the possibilities of movable type, numbers of Latin helps came upon the market. Their compilers were in dead earnest in trying to substitute Latin for their daily tongue. They fashioned equivalents for all of the ordinary terms of the time, endearing epithets, vulgar words, as well as more dignified phrases. Not even the wildest Latin maniac of the present would venture upon the flights of those early days. J. Garretson, ''school master," gravely set the boys such tempting morsels as these to be turned into Latin : "My dear cousin offered me a kiss." "The pretty boy sits between the pretty girls." 118 There were other implements for this "wooden handi- craft," such as Bucklerina's "Thesaurus of Poetical Phrases." sylva synonimorum (forest of synonyms), and descriptions by periphrases. "* Pages 12, 16 of his English Exercises. Ancient Languages. 83 DICTIONARIES. Monumental toil was expended in trying to get the Latin complement for every English color. Naturally Cicero's writings were the favorite hunting ground for such prizes. Thomas Drax turned to that everlasting "mouther" of an- cient days for "a rich store-house of proper, choice and ele- gant Latin words," running up to 519 pages. He found thirteen Latin phrases for "to frame or make a speech," but for the idea of uttering words in general he inserts thirty Latin expressions. The very top-notch of all, a regular drag net for the whole scheme, was Holyoke's Dictionary, in three parts. Hardly any one will dispute that these "phraseological explications" are the "most complete and useful of any that was ever yet extant in this kind." It is a wilderness almost as thick as that of a French idiomatic dictionary at the present. He has 150 pages, four columns each, 50 English items to the column, or a total of 30,000 English terms run into Roman molds. He is recklessly prodigal in the riches he presents. He has 26 illustrations of "cut off," and 23 for "dead" though "dead easy" is not in the list, perhaps not in existence at the time. There are 27 for "shoot," and we are disap- pointed, although hardly justified, in expecting him to repeat how some Roman sneered at Cicero's readiness to "shoot off his mouth." For "shirt" there are four, and here again we fail to find some of our vigorous talk, such as we can easily imagine Brutus used in the famous quarrel scene with Cas- sius when he begged him not to "tear his shirt." He doesn't give us the Roman for "a gay old bird," but he conies next to it when he translates "an old lubber playing the boy." Here are 40 expressions typifying "old," but "old maid" is not there, perhaps because she did not exist in Roman days. He does have "charta virgo," and almost gives us the newest manifestation in this direction when he puts "a manly 84 Our Colonial Curriculum. woman" into Virago, nearly equal to our "bachelor girl." Thus he goes on ranging over the gay, the solemn, the humorous, the slangy, and the obscene. There are plenty of the last that these pages would not possibly bear, but exactly the kind of talk that boys use among themselves to-day when they think no older person is by to hear their vulgarity. This is one of the most significant things in the entire volume and throws a flood of light upon the awful strain that men made in those days to adopt Latin as the living speech. TSXTS. The roots of all these plants went down into the soil of the Latin authors, Cicero, Virgil, Seneca and other succes- sors under the Christian skies. The originals were used really and literally, but as men fell back from the inaccessible heights of universal Latin speech these pills were sugar- coated with notes. No great advantage to the learner at the start as they were in the Latin of the editor himself, but even this was a concession to the rising tide of common sense in education. Hardly anything better could be achieved so long as these volumes were studied not for lit- erature or for the thought in them, but simply as material for grammar and conversational exericses. PONIES. These nimble capering animals have rather a long pedi- gree and very early there were famous men not ashamed to back them. Even that sedate bachelor, John Locke, openly advocated an amble upon these four-footed beasts. He went further and got out an interlineary of ^sop's Fables. 119 He had successors too for Corderius, and Cicero, the latter by that universal genius whom Carlyle has dubbed the "father of all the Yankees," Benjamin Franklin. " R. H. Quick, Educational Reformers, page 238. Ancient Languages. 85 Some of the editions differ very little from to-day, being as full and as thin, and as aggravatingly useless on the difficult places, but profuse on the easy passages, as in those we find now. There were some also with special vocabularies and indexes. But the bulk were hard, dull, and, with notes in Latin, as unattainable and vexatious as a feast visible but not tangible. All methods for typographical disposition of notes were in use, both at the sides of the page, at the bottom, and at the end of the volume. There was also that modern trick of parallel columns for the translations and literalness to the extent of being almost word for word. DID THEY GET WHAT THEY WERE AFTER? Yes, at least some of them did in a measure, especially the professional educators such as those hairsplitting school men. It is largely the fashion to laugh at the barbarisms of those authors but it is very often a reflection upon the critic himself as he does not understand their habitual abbrevia- tions and very often he has trouble to decipher their cramped characters. "The medieval schoolmen sinned no more against pure Latinity than the modern scientific writer sins against English undefiled." 120 Thus the testimony of a competent investigator runs in favor of these much abused people. He goes further and declares "so far as grammati- cal errors are concerned there are few or none." The speci- mens of poor work that are often given, Leach thinks, are "the sad hash made by ignorant modern transcribers." Some of the devotees of the time almost attained the acme of their effort, they almost knew more Latin than they did of their native speech. In the time of Henry VIII Palsgrave reports to his Majesty that there were some at the universi- ties who had profited in the Latin tongue and could write "an epistle latin like and thereto speak Latin" and had at- tained to a "comely vein in making verses." In fact he goes 130 A. F. Leach, English Schools, page 106. 86 Our Colonial Curriculum. on they had become so apt in Latin that they were not able to express themselves easily and naturally "in their vulgar tongue," but he thought this very favorable as he consid- ered Latin "the very chief thing that the schoolmaster should travail in." 121 A PRIG PRODUCT. Such loftiness above the common herd was pretty sure to swell some heads outrageously. D'Ewes is a sample as we are told that at 15 he made themes, "large and solid" and verses lofty and of several kinds all of which he carefully embalmed in exercise books, not counting nearly 300 Latin and Greek verses that he also ground out. He could com- placently record "scarce met with any Latin author, prose or verse, which I could not interpret at first sight" and he also modestly says that he was "able to discourse somewhat readily in the Latin tongue" and trip up his university in- structor who was spouting Latin to the class. In some three weeks he made "divers lyric odes" with "anagrams and epigrams," all in an off-hand sort of way as a mere play for him without omitting any of his regular tasks. As if all this was not enough to disgust any reader he piles on it that none of this work was "very troublesome" except "the Greek sapphics." There is one saving point in this auto- biography, he says he did not print all of his effusions for which we should be properly thankful. 122 How WAS IT IN AMERICA? Considering the differences in conditions and allowing for the keener material demands of a frontier home the English colonies were reduced photographs of the old world. There in Palsgrave, in report of Bureau of Education for 1902. 122 D'Ewes (1602-1650), "beau-ideal of an antiquary; with no mas- culine tastes or interests :" narrow minded, without common sense. Diet. Nat. Biog., Vol. 14, page 450. Ancient Languages. 87 was the same violent prolonged yearning for Latin and practically the same measure of victory. Cotton Mather could record very early "the public declamations in Latin and Greek" which the Harvard youth were accustomed to make, as it seemed to him with considerable credit to them- selves and to the institution. 123 He himself, naively, seems to have written Latin with a more flowing pen than he did English. He narrates how he found out that those devils who were responsible for the witchery which eventuated in such a horrible manner understood not only Latin but also Greek and Hebrew. He set a trap for the demons by talk- ing in first one then the other of these languages to some afflicted -case, thus proving that the poor wretch understood him in each instance while under the spell of the evil spirits. 124 President Stiles, of Yale, was very ready to give certifi- cates of proficiency in Latin to graduates of Harvard. Of Rector Elisha Williams, class of 1711, Stiles says, "he spoke Latin freely and delivered orations gracefully and witn ani- mated dignity." 125 Timothy Cutler, Harvard 1701, "was a noble Latin orator" and "spoke Latin with fluency and dignity and with great propriety of pronunciation." 126 Stiles himself handled Latin "with great ease" though a sav- ing clause follows to the effect that he made minor mis- takes. 127 DEMONS OF DISCONTENT. With practically all the schools babbling at it, with the clergy preaching in it, with the great Lord Bacon disdaining to use any other vehicle for his philosophical ideas, with books being constantly written in it, with virtually all litera- m Mass. Hist. Soc. Colls., Vol. i, page 243. J " His Magnolia, Vol. 2, page 464, Drake edition of 1853. '* W. L. Kingsley's History of Yale, Vol. i, page 57. "F. B. Dexter, Sketches, page 272. ir W. L. Kingsley, History of Yale, Vol. i, page in. 88 Our Colonial Curriculum. ture in this garment, there should have been the calm of the morning in the intellectual world, but there was not. In- stead of such peace,the shafts of censoriousness were flying keen and thick. There were doubts, questionings, grumb- lings, criticisms, sneers, and all manner of ugly fault-find- ings not only with the subject, itself but with the method of learning it and with the shrivelled fruits of failure that came from it. There were especially heavy growls of dissatisfaction with the hard, dry, tedious grammar method of approaching the task. A few observers saw the torture of packing away endless rules and countless exceptions in the cells of the brain. Lubinus, theologian though he was, thought that the ingenuity of the devil had been used to find the best way not to learn Latin, that some ill-omened monks had first de- vised it so that nothing could come of it except "Ger- manisms, barbarisms, solecisms, mere abortions of Latin, dishonorings and defilements of the tongue." 128 The oral method, he declared was the key to the situation, as cooks and scullions got more knowledge of modern tongues by mixing with the natives than students got of Latin by years of grinding. Martin Luther had a rough tongue and he could take a swipe with it at the ecclesiastical armor of protection. "Is it not pitiable," he raspingly asked, "that a boy has been obliged to study twenty years or longer to learn enough bad Latin to become a priest and read mass ?" 129 He struck a basal cord there which sounded far away in time and space. A German innovator, Ratich, took a noble stand when he openly advocated attention to the mother tongue, rather than such overwhelming stress upon Latin and Greek. In the same country a prince protested against the bondage of Latin and urged German and the sciences instead. Comenius looked in the same direction. 128 S. S. Laurie, Educational Reformers, page 155. ia * L. Seeley, page 166 of his History of Education. Ancient Languages. 89 LOCKE AND MILTON. But he and many others including Locke all had serious misgivings about this new departure, they all thought that it would be best to keep this dead speech for the use of the cultivated class. Milton also had his doubts about the matter. But he and Locke agreed in this that if it was to be acquired the general method was frightfully wasteful in time and energy. Milton sneered at the modicum of tiresome scrapings, the few tags, that the pupils got in one year. Both of them denounced the making of themes, verses, and orations. Locke saw through the whole thing and he felt the emptiness of the entire performance. He said it was all nothing but learning words, "a very unpleasant business both to young and old." 130 He also praised the talking method as the readiest road to the disagreeable goal. With all his acumen and philosophical depth he blundered just like his contemporaries in looking on Latin as a living thing instead of a painted mechanism. The glamour of tradi- tion and the sanctity of sacerdotalism clogged and blunted the sharpest wits of the time. BORROWED PLUMAGE. But not all were deceived. There were a few glittering rapiers thrust through this gaudy mask finding only hollow- ness within. Montaigne said that the boys of the day were only asses loaded with other people's learning, and forced to keep the path by dint of blows. 131 That profound seer, Comenius, could see pretty straight and he glanced along the same line when he rapped the schools that they did not "train minds as saplings which grow from their own roots, but, on the contrary, have taught their scholars to attach to themselves branches plucked down elsewhere," and like 130 F. V. N. Painter, History of Education, page 220. m J. W. Adamson,Pioneers of Modern Education, page 72. 90 Our Colonial Curriculum. crow, "to dress up in borrowed plumage," 132 When John Webster, made his onslaught upon education in general, in England, certainly he did not spare Latin as, to him, it was a brake upon the attaining of true knowledge. All these blows and clash of strife, these skirmishes and onsets, in time made an impression, very slowly at the hoary centers of conservatism, but more swiftly towards the cir- cumference. There was a kind of university extension in London about 1600, lecture courses in divinity, law, sciences as then understood. There was a concession to this swell of opposition as these lectures were delivered in Latin in the morning but in English in the afternoon. 133 In the i8th century the leaven had worked a little more, and professors in the universities began gradually to use their mother tongue in their classes. AMERICA FAIXS IN LINE. The very air of our forests must have carried a kind of freedom into the lungs. We were three thousand miles from the old world and the chain of conservatism neces- sarily got a little weak. Franklin, Rush, Sower, were among the bravest of us to raise their voices against this devotion to Latin. The same spirit went into the university In 1763, an instructor at Harvard offered a plea, not to give up the classics, but to improve the method of learning them. He urged the use of English in some of the exercises, and he fought the compulsory making of verses unless the pupil showed some pastoral ability in that direction. 134 A few years later a student wanted to drop both his Greek and Latin authors so that he could put more of his strength upon divinity branches. 136 Still deeper had the light pierced, |**J. W. Adamson, Pioneers, page 166, quoting from Comenius's Didacta. 188 Jno. Stow, Survey, page 65. m Quincy, History of Harvard, page 406, Vol. 2. "" Harvard College Papers, Vol. 2, page 65, manuscript. Ancient Languages. 91 even many years before this. A little after 1700 a memorial had come to the authorities of the Boston Latin School pray- ing for less Latin or quicker means of obtaining it. Poor blundering fellows doubtless, not of the elect class of cul- ture and learning, but nevertheless in an awkward sort of fashion, almost like an ignorant man trying to describe a deep-seated pain, they uttered their grievance. "Accord- ing to the methods used here there are many hundreds of boys in this town * * * never designed for a more liberal education, have spent two, three and four years or more of their early days at the Latin school which hath proved of little or no benefit to their after accomplish- ment." 136 ONLY A SMATTERING. These blunt fellows in Boston about summed up the matter correctly, showing decidedly more judgment than the gener- ality of their educated superiors. More than a century before they voiced their indefinite ache, a shrewd English- men had declared "there is no one thing, that hath more, either dulled the wits, or taken away the will of children from learning" than their efforts to make Latin. 137 Even if we jump much farther ahead from this point we find the same views. Far down in the i8th century a school teacher, the author of a Latin prose composition in very wide use, bemoaned the little ground covered after all the labor spent upon the effort to learn Latin. "Liberal translations" was the medicine that he prescribed for the slow progress. It seems a mere travesty upon sense that this author felt it necessary to cast a dart of sarcasm at that requirement that boys should talk Latin among themselves before they have attained any tolerable skill in the language. "Absurd" he denominated this practice. He would not say that the "ready and proper use of the Latin tongue" was not attain- 186 Philips Brooks, Oration, page 43. OT Roger Ascham, page 185 of his works, edited by Wright, 1905. 92 Our Colonial Curriculum. able at school but he does come out flat-footedly thus "I never yet knew so much as one instance of its being attained there * * * or indeed anything like it." 188 Early in the 1 8th century it must have rapidly declined in use. One little evidence is sufficient for us here. Hollis, who en- dowed a professorship of divinity at Harvard, begged in 1722 that the letters sent from America to him should be put into English as "it is now by disuse too troublesome to me to understand the beauty of Latin." 139 DID THE BOYS TALK LATIN? Many of their fathers wrote it at one time, in fact all edu- cated ones who wished to keep company with their class did so, but it is rather safe to say that the boys at school did not use this tongue in their everyday intercourse with each other any more than the average boy at school today talks French or German away from the conversation class in these subjects. The universities, the statutes, the faculties, the regulations, all pompously demanded this exercise and then the authorities had the awful problem before them of en- forcing the rule. Some of the most dignified of the institu- tions had to appoint spies, "lupi" or wolves, to report any infractions of the discipline, to haul up the "vulgarisantes" for dropping into their vernacular when away from the hearing of the teachers. The English universities were just as unsuccessful. The great biographer of Milton, Masson, had no doubt that before many years had elapsed after the promulgaton of the statutes for the University, great relaxa- tion of strictness had taken place so that there was very little security that the boys would talk Latin away from the classroom. Wigglesworth who got his diploma from Har- vard in 1661 regretfully jotted down in his diary about the "boldness to transgress the college law in speaking Eng- "* Page 289 of the 2Oth edition of his Latin Prose Composition. "* Harvard Archives, Hollis Letters and Papers, page 29. Ancient Languages. 93 lish." 140 There is still stronger proof about the failure to have this Italian dialect imported into America. In 1680 a couple of New Yorkers, Dutchmen, visited Harvard as one of the sights of the locality and they came across a number of boys smoking and yelling in a room. These two strangers were anxious to learn something of this American school and not being able to use English they tried Latin but they took pains to note down in their journal the boys "could hardly speak a word of Latin," so the poor inquirers could learn almost nothing of the surroundings. 141 As we come farther and farther from the early mist of colonial days we find more and more slackness in these Latin require- ments. Less than two decades before the battle of Bunker Hill there is a report of a committee that the students at Harvard did very little in the way of publicly using Latin, either in prose or verse or in translation. 142 AVERAGE ACQUIREMENT. It is hazardous to generalize on any matter of human en- deavor continued for more than a century and a half but the main results of this intense devotion to Latin can be substan- tially indicated. As for Latin conversation among the youth in colleges that can be dismissed summarily as an al- luring myth of no more solid foundation than the wild claims that we can hear nowadays of fond admirers who proudly boast that their Latin professor can make extem- pore Latin speeches as eloquent and as ornate as ever Cicero did, if he should try, but of course he never does. There is no evidence that the average boy during the morning time of our existence in the new world could any more use Latin colloquially than his brother today can converse in French or German after having finished the usual grammar course 140 Sibley, Harvard Graduates, Vol. i, page 267. 141 Memoirs of the Long Island Historical Society, Vol. 2, page 385. 142 Quincy, History of Harvard, Vol. 2, page 128. 94 Our Colonial C'urriculum. in these subjects at a college of medium grade to-day. If he could construct a few simple sentences of more than half a dozen words in length with any facility at all, it is very likely he was considered a prodigy among his companions. For the general run of pupils it was not much better in writing this language. There were prose compositions, there were also translations from English into Latin as regu- lar exercises, there were Latin declamations and salutatories on formal occasions, but that the ordinary youth could ex- press themselves with the pen with any degree of ease and correctness is a proposition not to be maintained for an in- stant. There were Latin books composed, just as now there are Americans who occasionally write a German or French paper but they are usually very careful to get a na- tive from those countries to revise their communications. They in turn do the same for their classes. Even then when these instructors have had in many cases the benefit of resi- dence in Europe for several years, how many of their stu- dents can make a decent dress for their thoughts in ink without the most laborious use of grammar and dictionary ? Two centuries and more ago the advantages of getting Latin were far less than these modern tongues and the quotum of attainment was still more unsatisfactory. They did then as they do now, they ground out the stiff formal exercises, with a rare instance of connected discourse in Latin. A few even made Latin verses but practically all went no farther than the disconnected sentences illustrating some grammati- cal principle. As for reading Latin authors, not much more is to be said. How many could appreciate the eloquence of Cicero, the sublimity of Virgil, the wit of Horace, or the condensed ex- pression of Tacitus? We can only judge from the course they took among the Latin writers. We have already noted the names of the chief authors in use but it may not be a useless duplication to repeat some of these. The Boston Ancient Languages. 95 Latin school, and a private academy of probably the same grade had the following in their list : Cheever's Accidence, The Colloquies of Corderius, Aesop's Fables, Caesar, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Virgil's Aeneid, Cicero's Orations, some- thing of Horace, Eutropius, Castalio's Dialogues, Lilly's Grammar, and some prose composition. The curriculum was the same practically in these two institutions and so was the refreshing frankness with which announcement is made of the benefits from translations of several of these authors. Some of them were even in paral- lel columns and very likely there were interlinearies. These helps are not to be condemned, in fact they are to be com- mended, but their presence in the course does not indicate a very intimate acquaintance with the language that started from the banks of the Tiber. This is to be said however, that the number of names speaks for a comprehensive feast for secondary schools but then just as now there was an overlapping of college and the training school below. In fact we have testimony from a pupil passing through this private academy about the time of the revolutionary war before he was fifteen and being admitted to Harvard im- mediately with so much credit to himself that he was confi- dent he knew as much Latin as the boys in the senior class. 143 There is no ground for suspecting that he was puffed up with his own achievement as it was not at all a difficult bar to be leaped for getting into college at that time For a number of years a boy could walk into Yale with Vir- gil, Cicero's Orations, and some skill in writing Latin. In 1742 Harvard exacted in an examination for association in her work thirty-nine lines in the Aeneid and some extracts from two of Cicero's Catiline Orations. 144 Even for grasping the mere thought of these ancient vol- umes the bulk must have been painfully incompetent. For 1W Common School Journal, Vol. 12, pages 311-315, Oct. 15, 1850, Boston, Mass. 144 Peirce, Hist. Harvard, page 238. 96 Our Colonial Curriculum. imbibing the spirit, for breathing the flavor of these master- pieces they must have been hopelessly in the dark. To-day we are embarrassed with grammars, lexicons, dictionaries of reference and allusions, histories, philological investiga- tions of all kinds, and still the keenest and strongest among us will not trust his own powers in a quotation but will hunt up the passage in a translation. With the meagerest appli- ances, without libraries, without any of that mass of knowl- edge that the most indefatigable research has given us for a century or so, how could the student of those early years get anything but the barest, dryest husks of life and knowledge ? With only a modicum of conversation, a smattering of prose composition, a residuum of interpretation, inferior per- haps in all three respects, but certainly in the last to what is accomplished at the present day, a very interesting prob- lem comes up as to how the student of today with a multi- plicity of subjects gets as much in Latin as his forefathers did who gave almost their whole time to that branch. In our colleges to-day Latin will absorb only one-fourth or one- fifth of the pupil's energy and yet he will go as far in it as his forerunners did who gave all of their power to that task. It is not possible that the natural ability today is three or four times as great as it was two centuries ago. Is the teaching that much better or are the books and libraries that much improved? It is a .very interesting line of thought and a partial solution is to be found in the extra emphasis laid upon matters then that are now no longer regarded. Theology was a great absorbent then of mental effort and her handmaid, disputation, helped vigorously to dissipate the brains and time of students. But these two do not cover the entire puzzle. Combined with the enhanced effectiveness of the teacher and the more liberal supply in the laboratory and the libraries they may uncover the most of the causes for this enormous difference but there still remains a vague bal- ance. The finer educational environments from infancy Ancient Languages. 97 onward may partly remove that or wholly so but there still is a fascination of speculating whether heredity gives us more brain power than it did the infant far back in the past. THE FAILURE OF THE EFFORT. The most monumental endeavor in all history to establish a universal speech came to naught. Scholars supported and urged the plan, the schools adopted it, the writers and think- ers were enthusiastic for it, the powerful influence of gov- ernment was invoked in its behalf, it had the sanction of the church, the weight of authority favored it the whole realm of the intellect was given over to it, and yet only broken fragments of it survive the defeat. Nor was there any better success in substituting Latin for any of the native languages. It could not even hold what was left of form to it as an inheritance. The people in its very home, in Italy, and its neighbors, France and Spain, refused to lay aside the verbal shapes they had gathered from infancy and exchange them for the terms that had been their ancestors'. With the German, and Dutch, and Eng- lish, this literary alien was received still more coldly. Nor is it to be marvelled that this imperial mistress was baffled. The task was one of infinite and incredible difficulty. The impressions of infancy, the associations of childhood, twine and grow into the very innermost fibres during our plastic stage and give us the rootlets from which our instincts spring. The trainings of after life may smother these for a time but they last till the end. The will is powerful and may twist and distort but it can never eradicate these deepest bonds of our nature. Aside from mere unreasoning con- servatism,- both calm judgment and good policy were with the unthinking masses. Their own speech was not as de- veloped as Latin, it did not have the grammatical forms, it was not reduced to a system, but it had what Latin did not 7 98 Our Colonial Curriculum. have, it had the breath of life, it was an organism shooting up its tendrils and sending down its roots, growing, expand- ing into the luxury of twigs and leaves and flowers. The scheme was a failure, and in spite of the noble names con- nected with it, in spite of the beautiful sentiment running through it, it deserved to fail. Perhaps there is not in all the weary landscape of the past a single instance of one language supplanting another on a large scale except by the spontaneous action of the great body of the people affected themselves. Such a transforma- tion comes, if it comes at all, insensibly, by gradual swap- ping of terms, but above all by the scattering of the popula- tion throughout a wide extent so that each individual is sur- rounded and washed by the ebb and flow of the other lan- guage. This kind of modification is going on under our eyes in this country everyday and has gone on for a century past. A few enthusiasts in Japan were once intoxicated with the idea of getting English as the medium for the Japa- nese. .The minister of education, Vicount Mori, deliberately argued for this substitution. He was justified to some ex- tent in his fancy. Japanese compares with English about as early German or English compares with Latin. So far as accurate fitting of forms goes English is superior to Japa- nese just as Latin was to English. But Vicount Mori over- looked the frightful agony of learning another speech even though it might be better than the original. No serious trial was made to carry his speculation into effect but even the mention of it most likely had some part in offending the conservative element to such an extent that his assassination soon came. We are thus left after twenty centuries of experiment just as we were when the great intellectual leaders set out for an organ of communication for the learned. With the advance of the nations we are in one sense worse off than they were, there are now many more respositories of knowledge, mak- Ancient Languages. 99 ing the task of keeping up with the progress of the world far more troublesome than then. But there seems one ray of consolation, that one of all these stubborn opponents of Latin may finally so spread as to be a virtual speech for the educated. This happy result if it comes at all will come through the play of natural forces and not through any deliberate effort. Conquest, colonization, travel, and beyond all, trade, will accomplish a million times more than argument and reason. The competition for material gain may do what the greatest beneficence of religion and au- thority were helpless to bring about. But if this linguistic millennium ever dawns, its coming will not be assisted very much by the body of teachers. From the very nature of their labor teachers are conserva- tive. They have to deal with the past, sorting over and re- arranging the mountains of accumulated knowledge so as to simplify the process of assimilation by young minds as much as possible. Their thoughts are with the past, they love the road that has been traveled. It is a wrench to their notions to take up something new. The oldest of all the gilds of the brotherhood, the Latin teachers, are the hardest to move. Latin has been fighting a losing battle for two hundred years but that narrowing band of devoted souls follow their banner with fanatic faith. They still mumble and mouth about the spirit of old Rome, the culture, the fountain head of so much of our knowledge. Their logic is poor, their observation faulty, their common sense shrivelled. This inner ethereal sanctum of the ancients is to be entered by painful pounding along the hard desolate path of declension and conjugation and dull syntax, and all to be accomplished within a few years by dictionary and grammar translation of selections from two or three authors. The mists of an- tiquity are still in their keeping, they are still powerful to affect the conduct and decision of college authorities. Latin is yet an entrance requirement in practically all of our loo Our Colonial Cuiriculum. higher institutions. Humor and ponderous solemnity do not go together. If they did this little tag end of the Roman speech would have been dropped at the college gate years ago, and neither would the windy battle of empty words and terms ever have raged over the proper pronunciation of Latin. The schoolman could never tell how many angels could stand on the point of a needle, can the advocates of Roman pronunciation know anything more about how the Latin words sounded to Roman ears? GREEK. Greek was an elder peeress sister to Latin, one of the three "linguae elegantes et ingenuae," the fountain head of "art, literature, and science," forming with her companion the double thread from which our civilization today has been spun. It was the source of "literary and philosophical views of the world." 145 Notwithstanding these noble associations, this classical scion fell into disfavor because of the taint of heresy, and the Greek language for ecclesiastical purposes was abandoned by Latin Christendom in the 8th century when the great schism arose between the eastern and west- ern churches. Only the most elementary acquaintance is to be found with this tongue except on the part of some indus- trious monks. There is record of an occasional professor- ship in this branch during the middle ages. 146 But it was not until the first faint streaks of humanist revival that any serious attempt was made at the scholastic study ot this early Creech. THE BEGINNING IN ITALY. To aaly belongs the credit of leading in this culture, and in her schools were to be found Homer, Herodotus, Xeno- phon, Isocrates, Thucydides, Demosthenes, Plutarch and ** Universities and Their Sons, Introduction by W. T. Harris. ""H. Rashdall, Universities in Middle Ages, Vol. 2, page 459. Ancient Languages. 101 some of the Greek church fathers. A schoolmaster of the period promised to turn out pupils proficient at understand- ing these writers after twelve months' instruction but we are at liberty very seriously to doubt his word. 147 THE GERMAN START. Father northward, in Germany, after the chains of bond- age were stricken from the intellect under the lead of Martin Luther, there are also evidences of leaning towards Greek in the educational work. Melanchthon provided for it in his far reaching scheme, even to the extent of having Greek plays to be acted by the pupils. He himself was here as in other fields very proficient and prepared a Greek grammar when only sixteen of which there were very many editions. RECEPTION IN ENGLAND. The infection fled to England but it met with almost the fierce opposition that an insidious disease, such as smallpox, arouses. It is true John Locke very placidly thought that it was necessary for a scholar as being the foundation for all our learning but of no advantage to a gentleman, and even the learned kept it for only a short time. There was room provided for it in the school statutes of Henry VIII but no stress laid upon it. When it asked introduction at Oxford in the early part of the i6th century there was a bit- ter fight against this new comer by the students who jibed, sneered, ridiculed, abused and even fought with stave and fist against the applicant. Sir Thomas Moore, who died such a pathetic martyr's death, protested against this bar- baric treatment and finally the king came to his aid and the royal influence was cast in favor of the fugitive to the ex- tent of allowing those who desired to take up this study. 148 But for nearly a century it was scarcely recognized at Cam- 14T Vittorino, by W. H. Woodward, page 225. 148 J. B. Mullinger, Vol. i, page 525 of his University of Cambridge. IO2 Our Colonial Curriculum. bridge. There is a faint record of two people about 1600 in one of the colleges being able to understand it. 149 It was indeed difficult to get instructors as there were so few who were at all proficient in this language, but by the time of Milton the Greek authors were read in fragments. 150 Along with Latin and Hebrew, it was one of the three languages to be spoken so the statutes ran. THE FAINT INFUSION IN AMERICA. Even before 1700 we can find such an unusual author as Isocrates in the list for Harvard along with the others such as to be found scattered in Italy, Germany, and England, with Yale a close second in this respect, but they meant very little if we are to trust some individual testimony. Far down to the Revolution, Josiah Quincy could note that the requirement for Greek entrance was "slight and superficial" covering Gloucester's Greek grammar, with ability to con- strue the four gospels. 151 And that too, even when Harvard possessed a font of Greek type which was lost by fire in 1764. At Yale Baldwin discloses the "pony" rides in Homer at a little earlier time than this. 152 The freshman was ex- pected to have read the new testament, and perhaps in the subsequent four years he did very little more in Creek. 153 An imposing appearance is before us of classes skipping nimbly from Greek to Latin, to English, to Hebrew, and then back again, but a very level-headed Yale president has most likely marred this lovely illusion when he suggests that about all the high-sounding phrase means is the parrot-like recitation of corresponding passages that had been picked out beforehand by the tutor and required to be memorized "* Thomas Baker, St. John's, page 191 ; Cambridge, England, 1869, 2 vols. 150 Masson's Milton, Vol. i, page 66. 151 American Journal of Education, Vol. 32, page 873. 132 W. L. Kingsley, History of Yale, Vol. i, page 444. 153 W. L. Kingsley, History of Yale, Vol. 2, page 500. Ancient Languages. 103 for exhibition purposes perhaps. 154 Most likely this is what President Dunster, of Harvard, meant, in 1649, when he wrote to London about the remarkable proficiency of his students in translating from Hebrew and Chaldee into Greek. 165 WHAT THE SECONDARY SCHOOL DID. If it was only a snack in the higher ranges what more than a bite was to be expected in the lower? There were certain authors mentioned in the curriculum of the Boston Latin School and its partner, Lovell's Private Academy. In the eight years of the former the students "dipped into Xenophon and Homer." 150 In its yoke- fellow there are listed Ward's Grammar, Greek Testament, and two books of the Illiad, with the pleasant confession of a translation, Latin or English. Fur- ther, as a postscript, we are informed by a sincere student, "this was all my Greek education at school." 187 VIRGINIA VIEW. It was the ambition of the educators in this southern colony to reproduce the schools across the water, but Greek must have been the fag end for these efforts. There is not much data to go upon, but one or two witnesses do let in some light upon the estimate of Greek. Two years before Thomas Jefferson penned his immortal paper, a private tu- tor amuses us by his account of how some of his boy pupils swore at Homer and wished that he had him there in Vir- ginia so that he could kick him as he had been told that Homer invented Greek. 158 Possibly this is a blunt out-crop- 54 T. D. Woolsey, in Kingsley's Yale, Vol. 2, page 406. Publications of American Jewish Hist. Soc., No. 2, page 75. 158 Otis, a student, gives this evidence. ""Common School Journal, Vol. 12, page 311, Oct. 15, 1850, Bos- ton, Mass. 158 Fithian's Journal, page 91. IO4 Our Colonial Curriculum. ping of that tough fibrous boy nature that luckily survives all of the fads of parents and pedagogues and school boards, but it may also be an index to the little time given up to Greek. Six years later a youth wandering from Williams- burg to Harvard was graciously permitted to enter without the Greek requirement on the ground that Greek was not taught at Williamsburg. 159 It is not to be inferred that the Virginia men and women were behind their relatives in the colder climes northward, as we are aware that not only Jefferson, but many of his compeers knew this language in the conventional way of the times, but there is a foretaste of the higher education of woman today in the knowledge that Margaret Wythe had of Greek which she put to good use in leading her son George through the mazes of this old-world tongue. 160 AIDS IN STUDYING GREEK. The Greek grammars of the period were fully up to the standard of Latin, and in fact some of them would almost serve at the present day. In dictionaries there was much greater deficiency than in Latin. In fact nearly all of the Greek was learned through the medium of Latin. The notes on the authors if there were any were usually in this Roman garb. To some extent the study of Greek was really another method of approaching the Latin problem. THE SUM TOTAL. A mere taste of three or four Greek authors at most, with a tolerable facility in the four evangelists of the new testa- ment is about as much as the average student got of that royal feast prepared in that little peninsular in southern Eur- ope centuries ago. All the prodigal wealth of literature, of philosophy, of art that are now at the command of college "* Calendar, Vol. 2, page 140, Mss., Harvard Archives. 180 William and Mary Quarterly, Oct., 1897, page 77. Ancient Languages. 105 students were unknown by him. Theology insisted on a mo- dicum and scholarship asked for a tag end. When these two were satisfied the matter was ended. HEBREW. Hebrew was ranked as the third of the "elegantes et in- genuae linguae," but from sanctity of religion considered the highest of the trio, and also was the least studied. All European languages looked up to it as the mother of ton- gues and each was ambitious to trace its lineage even to the speech in the Garden of Eden. Proselytism was the purpose of the first efforts towards teaching it. It was urged in the middle ages that this language should be taught at the uni- versities in order that the Jews might be converted. The modern study of it may be said to date from about the I7th century, the stimulus being contributed by Reuchlin who published a Hebrew grammar. There are some traces of in- struction in it, but the rudiments only in Oxford and Cam- bridge, although the statutes required it as one of the three languages to be used colloquially by students. It was only in keeping with the religious atmosphere at the daybreak of our existence that attention should be drawn by the watchman on the higher points towards this sacred dialect. "How" asked one of these higher souls, "can the redeemed enjoy the thrilling music of Heaven unless they can understand the words that the angels use?" a horrible deprivation of spiritual delight. As usual, enthusiasm lacked common sense. The unregenerate did not care to come to the banquet even when the road was made plain. A teacher was employed in the Hopkins Grammar School by the mid- dle of the seventeenth century for the triune care of Latin, Greek and Hebrew so that the youth could be prepared to enter college. But the hard practical sense of the early pioneers, full of energy and animal spirits, did not appre- io6 Our Colonial Curriculum. ciate the glories of Hebrew. The poor tutors at Harvard had a stony path to tread. OBJECTION To THE STUDY. Wigglesworth records in his diary on August 29, 1653: "My pupils all came to me this day to desire they might cease learning Hebrew ; I withstood it with all the reason I could, yet all will not satisfy them." All teachers will appre- ciate his unhappy predicament in trying to thrust down the throat of his pupils food that they rebelled against. From sorrow he rapidly dropped into anger and abuse. Less than six months later he begins to refer to "the obstinate unto- wardness of some of my pupils in refusing to read Hebrew," and "spirit of unbridled licentiousness," that "will be the ruin of the whole country ;" here again another instance added to the million of the absurd lengths to which the en- thusiast in any department in life can go, all the more ridic- ulous when his zeal is linked with religious fervor. But he does not effect anything in the way of improvement as he goes on to jot down "pupils forward negligence in the Hebrew still much exercises me." 161 JUDAH MONIS. Here in many other cases Harvard was the scout for edu- cational advance. After teaching Hebrew almost since her foundation, she first established a professorship of the orien- tal languages and Hebrew in 1764. Judah Monis, a con- verted Jew rabbi, born in southern Europe, an emigrant to America in 1720, had been in charge of these branches for many years. The course was not compulsory and only a few took up the class. It was perhaps for this that he resigned in 1761. Three years later the full chair was put into effect and Professor S. Sewall was placed in charge. 162 Monis 1M Sibley, Vol. i, page 265, of Harvard Graduates. 1M Peirce, Hist. Harvard, page 231. Ancient Languages. 107 prepared a grammar of the Hebrew language which was ordered to be obtained by all of the sophomores and fresh- men at a cost of 14 shillings a copy. In this same enactment on September 30, 1735, freshmen were required to attend Hebrew instruction at the beginning of the last quarter and all other students to attend this work "at such times and so often as the corporation shall determine. 103 President Lev- erett has preserved this description of the work: "one ex- ercise in a week shall be the writing the Hebrew and Rab- binical, the rest shall be in this gradual method, i. Copying the grammar and reading. 2. Reciting it and reading it. 3. Construing. 4. Parsing. 5. Translating. 6. Composing. 7. Reading without points." 164 It was perhaps in part due to the influence of Monis that Greenwood, in the first Ameri- can arithmetic in existence has tables of scripture measure of length and capacity such as: 4 fingers' breadth make I hand's breadth. 2 hands' breadth make I span. 2 spans make i cubit, etc. also on capacity he has 4 logs make i cab. 3 cabs make i hin, etc. WHAT WAS DONE AT YALE. On the early periods we have scanty information but thanks to that cheerful and voluminous diarist Stiles, we can make up a pretty fair picture of Hebrew study about the middle of the i8th century and onward. Stiles overflows with abounding earnestness in the Hebrew cause. He tells of "writing a sermon in Hebrew on Ezra." 185 He formed a voluntary class in Hebrew but with what success we do not 188 Harvard Archives, Mss. College Book, No. i, page 206. 144 J. Quincy, History Harvard, II, 442. 188 Ezra Stiles's Diary, Vol. 3, page 243. log Our Colonial Curriculum. know. Without being ungratful to his memory, there may be a dim suspicion that the boys cared no more for it at Yale than they did at Harvard. He had made it an obligation on the freshmen when he became president in 1777, and at the end of the scholastic term two years later he confided thus in his diary : "this month the freshmen have recited Hebrew to me. I began with the alphabet and carried the whole class through more or less according to their arrivals. I divided them into two parts one have receited the first part of the second Psalm; the other and principal part have finished translating the seven first Psalms and parsed the first and part of the second Psalms. I do not find that any class has been carried through one-half so much these many years." 186 Freedom of choice was about this time allowed as Hebrew was "disagreeable to a number" as Stiles himself admits. But although the influence of the man and the office was great to induce twenty-two out of thirty-nine to ask for Hebrew even the little that was accomplished was a rem- nant. By 1775 the subject was almost extinct at Yale as the seniors only worried through two or three of the Psalms in Hebrew after a fashion." 167 But even the honor of being instructed by the president of the institution was not enough to sustain the interest although he insisted that all classes should study this divine speech. Towards the end of the cen- tury we have it from an old student as follows : "we learned the alphabet and worried through two or three Psalms after a fashion ; with most of us it was mere pretense," and this too even with all the students gazing upon the president as a very monument of proficiency "in Hebrew as well as several other Eastern dialects." 168 18 * Stiles's Diary, Vol. 3, page 350. 167 W. L. Kingsley, History of Yale, Vol. 2, page 500. 1M Mason, page n. Ancient Languages. 109 HEBREW GRAMMARS. Just as with Greek Hebrew was really subservient to Latin originally as the grammars were cast in that form. In that repository of old textbooks which is a mecca to all students of pedagogical history in this country and also in- despensable for the investigator of nearly every branch of American history, the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Mass., are several of these Hebrew grammars which it is hardly worth our while to do more than refer to here. One of the oldest goes back three years before 1600, London, being yoked with Chaldee, and garbed in Latin. There we also find one by Bennet, perhaps the first in Amer- ica, being dated 1731 in the third edition, also couched in Latin. We come across one in manuscript, very clear hand, in English, but without date, comprising 100 pages, being an evidence very likely of strict attention to the subject in part and a rather slender pocketbook in another part. The most widely used of all, it is rather safe to say, is the one by the Harvard man, Monis, a copy to be seen in the Bos- ton Public Library. This appeared in 1735, ninety-four pages square octavo, "for use of the students of Harvard," "being an essay to bring the Hebrew language into English." Another Harvard teacher, Israel Lyons, some third of a century later, puts his imprint upon a volume of 83 pages, octavo, with a sketch of Hebrew poetry. Like Monis he has "praxis" or exercises of translation in both ways. There are other examples of these grammars but they are practically all the same, being only tedious duplications of each other pretty much as Latin grammars are at the pre- sent day. The substantiate are the same and in these cases they hardly go beyond the rudiments. The whole subject of Hebrew was a harmless hobby of religionists so far as af- fecting the current of the student body or life. It was a waste of time but hardly more so than many branches at college today, and, then as now, it came at a period when leisure 1 10 Our Colonial Curriculum. had just as well be put upon an intellectual puzzle as drawn away in idle chatter and destructive games and pranks. CHAU>EE AND SYRIAC. These two other Semitic dialects are mentioned in the course of study of Harvard university shortly after the foundation of the institution was made, the former appear- ing- in the list of second year studies and the latter in the third year. They are not noted in any subsequent announce- ments, nor has any light been thrown upon their pedagogical use aside from filling space, looking large and sounding learned, soothing the pardonable pride of some scholarly in- structor and pleasing the vanity of some one or two students that may have studied them very briefly. The same kind of scholarly display can be observed in the catalogues of insti- tutions a few years ago that put down Sanskrit as one of the studies offered. CHAPTER IV. THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY. Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and other ancient languages were to the medieval educator only keys for unlocking the inner court of humanity. As other subjects were added to the slow path of development they also were merely supplementary aids for penetrating to the very core of life, for understand- ing our existence and for leading us to the other world. Grammar, or Latin, though dealing with pagan poets and church fathers in the effort to write and speak as they did, was for the early teacher only a process of sharpening the mind so that it could "grasp the right sense of the divine words." 189 Prosody was necessary for appreciating the Psalms, rhetoric for admiring the beauty of the Holy Fathers, dialectics to enable the minister to meet and van- quish heretics, arithmetic for unfolding the mystery of the "numbers and measures" mentioned in the Scriptures, ge- ometry for the circles told of in the description of the ark and the temples, music and astronomy for use in the divine service. Theology indeed comprehended philosophy and em- braced within its horizontal sweep the whole stretch of knowledge. It of course was based originally on the Bible and then secondarily on the early writers. The method of teaching it was very routine, chiefly to copy, compile, and abridge, to compare passages with one another so as to distill the very essence of their meaning. Dialectical skill was whetted to a keen edge because the basic authority was not allowed to be doubted. Later under the pioneering advances of Aquinas and Scotus theology passed into the Metaphys- ical stage, an attempt to reconcile the deductions of the sources with the dictates of reason. im F. V. N. Painter, History of Education, page 101. H2 Our Colonial Curriculum. Where everything converges to one center it perhaps seemed unnecessary to make a special head of that point, or perhaps there were not means for paying special atten- tion to this subject, but at any rate it was nearly a century after the founding of Harvard University before there was established a regular chair of theology. It was in 1720 that Thomas Hollis, the generous English friend of the needy institution, provided by donation for "a professor of divin- ity to read lectures in the halls of the college unto the stu- dents." 170 There were to be two lectures weekly on "posi- tive and controversial divinity," on "church history, on Jew- ish antiquity," also to cover "cases of conscience" and "crit- ical exposition of Scripture." Hollis himself was very lib- eral in his views and only stipulated that the Bible was the perfect rule of faith and manners., but when the authorities sought to carry out the terms of his gift discussion broke forth as to the requirements of faith, and the upshot of it all was the absurd test of a belief in the divine right of in- fant baptism before one could hold position. The lecture was to be preceded by a short prayer and the general scheme was based upon the similar work at the University of Edinburgh. Of course this subject had been in the Harvard curricu- lum from the start. In the earliest published scheme, in 1643, we find "divinity catechetical," but thus far it has not been discovered what was actually done. It is a safe pre- sumption that nothing more was attempted than a very sys- tematic drill upon the main doctrines of formal theology, with the chief events of Biblical history. AT EDINBURGH ONE HUNDRED YEARS BEFORE. The rise of protestantism invigorated education in Scot- land, above all religious education, because if a man was to save himself by his own interpretation of the Bible it was 170 Quincy, History of Harvard, Vol. I, page 239. Theology and Philosophy. 113 the most solemn duty of life to know what was in the Bible. Even as far back as the middle of the i6th century stress was laid upon theology as one of the important branches of study. With Greek and Hebrew as the base, five years were given to" divinity, both testaments being carefully gone over. 171 Less than two decades later divinity students had first to complete four years in the university proper and then take two years additional in their own subject. Soon the en- thusiasm of the authorities mounted up so high that a beautiful scheme was unfolded of four years covering He- brew, Chaldee, Syriac and Greek so as to wring the last atom of thought from the Holy word by a comparison of these different versions. The crown of the plan was a series of lectures on systematic divinity. 172 On this foundation, by 1600, Robert Rollock developed a famous school of theology, one of the earliest of the times. He included the germs of all divisions of the subject. He dictated analyses of certain portions of the Bible, he dis- cussed general religious topics, he dipped into the contro- versies with the established church, and he pointed out the application of principles to practice. A score of years later, in 1620, the first chair of theology was established at Edin- burgh by the separation of the duties of the holder from those of principal, the two having been combined up to this time. The burden was not a heavy one as the incumbent had to give two public lectures weeklv hold "disputes" of his classes once weekly, public "disputes" one a month, have private exercises in Latin, and instruct in Hebrew regularly. Private beneficience was aroused so that donations to the extent of some 1500 pounds came for the endowment of the chair. 178 There was no substantial change for nearly m Grant, University of Edinburgh, Vol. I, page 63. m Grant's Edinburgh, Vol. i, page 93. m Grant's Edinburgh, Vol. i, page 334; also Vol. i, page 210; Vol. 2, page 280. 8 j 14 Our Colonial Curriculum. another century, until 1702 when a chair of ecclesiastical history was added. Fervent zeal had thus experimented with this course of study. Its energy however either relaxed or was turned into other channels, as the learned historian of the institution remarks that for the next 150 years practically no modifica- tion or improvement is to be noted. It was still in its vigor when Hollis turned to it largely as his model for the design he had to found such a chair in the new world. So far as we can judge from the meagre data to be had now there was but slight difference between the essentials of the two on both sides of the Atlantic. Both had the Semitic lan- guages as preparatory, both exacted the reading of the Bible in these original tongues, both called for critical and textual study, and both had history. PETER LOMBARD. But the theology at both, as well as at all other medieval institutions rested upon that wheel horse, Peter Lombard, who died about the middle of the I2th century. His book of "sentences" is the bed rock lying far beneath the mass of commentators that reared themselves upon him. The aim of this giant was to systematize all of the Christian teachings. A job of infinite difficulty he set himself to har- monize the Bible with all of the deliverances of the church fathers, so as to extract the very marrow of knowledge in every department. 174 He has a couple of hundred proposi- tions, each one of which he puts through his logical ma- chine in the way of expounding, amplifying and proving. He shied at nothing, not hesitating to plunge into those snares of trinity, and of predestination. He is really in- genious on the latter, drawing a distinction as fine as a fila- 174 H. Rashdall, Vol. I, Universities in the Middle Ages, page 57. Also Mullinger, Cambridge, page 59. "Sentences" does not mean a grammatical term but the "opinions or tenets" or "truths" or "deliv- erances" of the authorities. See Mullinger, pages 7, 59. Theology and Philosophy. 115 ment between predestination and fore-knowledge. What the deity himself is going to do is, to Lombard, predestina- tion ; what the deity knows is going to happen is fore-know- ledge, a very soothing pacification of omniscience and free- dom of the will. OTHER AUTHORS. Of the men indebted to Lombard for their method and of commentators on the scriptures, there are myriads, but it is necessary for us to take only a few of the more leading ones in use in America. Nonnus and Duport whose names we see in the courses of study in American institution, had Latin paraphrase and metrical versions of certain parts of the scripture, the former of some of the new testament, and the latter of the Psalms. But it is of those who attempted to apply logic and scien- tific precision to theology that we find the greatest literary monuments. Heereboord's Meletemata is an ambitious sweep over the whole realm of the known, seeking to con- nect everything with the theological center. A fat quarto does Richard Blome produce about 1700 by the translation of Anthony LeGrand's Body of Philosophy according to DesCartes. It is two others though that give us the fullest foliage, William Ames and John Wollebius. Ames was some 100 years earlier than Wollebius, and it is to him that Hollis perhaps owes his expression "cases of conscience." Ames's volume devotes its first part to this particular topic. It is really a reproduction of Lombard as the title to one of the parts reads: "the marrow of sacred divinity drawn out of the Holy Scriptures and the interpreters thereof and brought into method." He has a most elaborate outline of some fif- teen pages containing such topics as these : "that which may be known of God or his back parts," "God and His essence," "efficiency of God," "creation," special guberaation of an- Our Colonial Curriculum. gels and men," "man's flesh," "end of world," "virtue," "time of divine worship." Very likely with the first virus of science working in the veins of education came a yearn- ing for something more systematized and condensed hence Wollebius, translated by Ross. 175 A cast-iron logical tree in his treatise, springing from the great tap root that "God is a spirit existent eternally in himself * * * an entity * * incomprehensible * * * without beginning, without end, without change." With this pregnant premise he goes on with all the placidity of a machine man to crawl over every branch, .twig and leaf that can possibly evolve from such a profound depth. He even laboriously settles to his own satisfaction that "marriage is honorable." Natural prompt- ings are at conflict with his basic notions. He wishes to defend war, and yet there are certain passages very trouble- some to get over still he settles the matter that it was "pleasing to God, and profitable to the state," and is lawful, because a captain and centurion are mentioned in the new testament as among the faithful. BITING COMMENTS. In his slashing attack upon the education of his day in general John Webster gave a few sounding whacks at the- ology. To him it was "but a confused chaos of needless frivolous, fruitless, trivial, vain, curious, impertinent, knotty, ungodly, irreligious, thorny and hel-hatc'ht disputes, altercations, doubts, questions and endless j anglings, multi- plied and spawned forth even to monstrosity and nauseous- ness." 176 He is no mere railer snapping and snarling at something he dislikes, but a man of sense and rapier-like in- sight, although it is not very discernible that he exercised any immediate influence upon the pedagogics of his day. There are some things that cannot be taught no matter how 175 W. L. Kingsley's Hist. Yale, Vol. 2, page 499. "'John Webster, Examen Academiarum, page 15. Theology and Philosophy. 117 sympathetic and skillful the master, and all those things of the spirit are in the realm of the unteachable. Growth in grace, the purification of the inner life, the elevation of the soul, the gazing upward with the eye of faith, these are matters for each individual to struggle for himself, too ten- der, too holy, for the rude hand of any outsider to seek to direct and to mold. Webster very quaintly but very cor- rectly puts it when he says: "men and academies have un- dertaken to teach that which none but the spirit of Christ is the true doctor of." He almost shrieks out with pain against what he feels was a travesty upon the best part of life, upon the religious nature of man due to this senseless dip into metaphysics. He shouts that "from this putrid and muddy fountain doth arise all those hellish and dark fogs and vapours that like locusts crawling from this bottomless pit have over-spread the face of the whole earth, filling men with pride, inso- lency and self-confidence, to aver and maintain that none are fit to speak, and preach the spiritual, and deep things of God, but such as are indeed with Scholastick and man's idol- made learning, and so become fighters against God and his truth and prosecutors of all those that speak from the prin- ciple of that wisdom, that is from above, and is pure and peaceful""'' John Webster is a melancholy example of a man crying in the wilderness and not being heard by his fellows. But little heed was paid to his warnings, and the schools con- tinued to struggle after the impossible. What a mountain of vain effort, what a weary desert of sad toil might the schools have been saved from if they had listened, but men's eyes were turned in this direction and nothing could stay their feet except the hard impassable wall standing across their path. There is one comforting thought however that though slower and more stupid than dumb cattle humanity 1TT John Webster, Examen Acadcmiarum, page 12. Our Colonial Curriculum. does in the end learn its lesson. Slowly the tired gaze was turned in another direction and less and less attention paid to theology until it dropped from the regular college course entirely. No longer is it compulsory in any of the 700 in- stitutions of higher learning in this country, although a few do provide Biblical study as an elective. This does not mean to say though that the subject has lost its interest and its power. On the other hand it has gained. No longer forced down unwilling throats it has now been raised to the dignity of a profession, and has its special school just as law and medicine in which those who are going to devote their life to it may receive the discipline that it requires in addition to the regular college course. In common with education in general there has been a great enrichment of the subjects in theological schools. All of the essentials of two centuries ago have been retained, to them have been attached developments that most likely not even the prejudiced minds at that time dreamed of. Notably among such new branches are the courses on philosophy of religions and comparative religions. The historical branches also have been 1 very much increased and enlarged. In phil- lology and exegesis there has been a most marked advance. LOGIC. "The use of this iron key is to open the rich treasury of the Holy Scriptures," thus imprinted John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians, on the title pages of his Logic Primer in 1672, one of the earliest of all the efforts in print for the salavation of the red men. He was simply in line with the entire trend of the schools for the centuries past. To all educators logic was the handmaid of religion, and guide post along the path to Paradise. Instead of putting his strength upon induction and deduction and upon termin- ology, he very soon began to discuss such matters as "Gen- tiles," "elect," "saving," and other phases of theology. With Theology and Philosophy. 119 her elder sister, logic and theology were almost the only subjects in the medieval universities. Every student had to be "aut logicus aut nullus" either logician or nothing. 178 To the teacher of those days, in the sphere of the intellect it was the center from which everything radiated. One of the authors at a later date summed up his entire volume in the title ''Logic or the right use of reason in the inquiry af- ter truth." 179 To the Italian humanist it was the "guide and aid to the study of other sciences," it assisted to "exposi- tion, precision, connection, and clearness." 180 Such sway spread far and long survived, even the master pens of liter- ature yielding allegiance. Far down into the iQth century that queer child of genius and opium, DeQuincy, could see but three methods of training a young man. Logic he ranks first, with languages and the arts of memory following but not the dimmest gleam of any science. But these earnest educators ought not to be judged too harshly in their emphasis upon this branch of study. Their premise once accepted they were well fortified in their posi- tion. The whole of pedagogics at the time and for hundreds of years before was based upon implicit trust in authority. That source as has been said was the Bible. The problem then was very simple. Here in these pages is the totality of intellectual achievement both past and future, it is only nec- essary to get the correct meaning by analyzing and combin- ing the notions which common language brings. 181 These extravagant estimates upon the importance of logic were perfectly legitimate deductions and her omnipotence re- mained and had to remain until the foundation stones were disturbed and men accepted additional fountains for the in- tellectual sources. Throughout these years a synonym was 178 J. B. Mullinger, Cambridge, page 355. m Isaac Watts, Fourth English Edition, 1731. M W. H. Woodward's Vittorino, page 60. m Whewell, History of Inductive Science, Vol. l, page 230. I2O Oui Colonial Curriculum. in frequent use, dialectics, as though one word was not suf- ficient for the majesty of this monarch. ARISTOTLE. The giant of the European intellect reached his long strong arm of mental monopoly into every indentation of thought. Either directly or through dilutions and distilla- tions he ruled in every school and class room. He had epitomized all the world of knowledge in his day and after the revival of classical study his sway was pro- found and overwhelming. The pious, plodding monk who denied sun spots because he could not find any reference to them in Aristotle is a ridiculous but true instance of the do- minion exercised by this great Grecian. It was the same homage in all other branches. In the physical sciences in- stead of observing under their eyes the scholars and investi- gators pored over the pages of Aristotle. John Baptist Porta has recorded some of the most monstrous and absurd deductions and directions for scientific experiments to be found in all dignified literature, and yet to him nothing was to be rejected or even questioned if he could find it in Aris- totle. BREAKING THE SPELL OF THE STAGYRITE. Like the sudden bursting of a bomb-shell on a quiet day must have been the defiance of Peter Ramus as he stood be- fore his faculty of the university of Paris in 1563 declaring as his thesis for the master's degree "Quaecumquae ab Ar- istotle dicta essent commenticia esse" whatever was said by Aristotle is false. 182 All day this youthful David battled with the classical Goliath, finally winning his honor with applause. A rude shock it was to the smock conservatism of the pedagogues when this immature champion shattered "J. B. Mullinger, Cambridge, Vol. 2, page 404. Also Wadding- ton's Ramus, page 29. Theology and Philosophy. 121 the infallibility of one of the monarchs of the mind. The onset was too sudden, too radical, too destructive. The crust was broken into fragrants, but the adherents of the Grecian got even with this upstart for disturbing their ser- ene security. They did not attempt to match intellectual weapons with him, but they hushed his voice by physical vio- lence. He fell victim to their brutish rage in the massacre of St. Bartholemew less than a decade afterwards. But he had pierced a way for the prisoners of authority to escape. He was a John the Baptist for DesCartes and Bacon. Without his epochal assault they could hardly have moved forward. There is one large volume including virtually all of what he accomplished in pushing forward the march of knowl- edge. Humanity did not know much then, it was no great task to restate all that was to be found in books. He es- sayed this and gathered data under such heads as gram- maticae, rhetoricae, dialeticae, physicae and meta-physicae and mathematicae. The first ranges over into what we now know as phonetics, and is a rather thorough discussion of the deep principles of speech. There is considerable philo- sophical speculation of no great value scattered through it. The name of his antagonist appears on nearly every page. 183 His LOGIC. His logic only is of interest for our purpose. A small book it was, duo decimo, really might be called "logic made easy," an eminently popular compendium. 184 This modest little essay was a kind of Martin Luther reformer for the province of scholarship in those times. But it is a curious instance of the flightiness of even grave ponderous school teachers that such frightful hubbub should be aroused over a M The title of this work runs, "Scholae in liberates artes : quarum eknchus est proxima pagina. MDLXXVIII (1578)." 184 J. B. Mullinger, Cambridge, Vol. 2, page 406. 122 Our Colonial Curriculum. slight thing. Men in the heat of conflict seem incapable ex- cept in very rare instances, of judging an event or circum- stance in its true relations. It is only after the fires have smoldered into cold ashes when the historian far removed from the purposes of the hour comes forward with his scales and his microscope and carefully weighs the residuum. When the event has lost all of its interest for the great mass of us then the student of the past went over it and compared the two, finding that there was no great difference between them, that Ramus was really only a popularizer of Aristotle. He had simplfied the original and had done a good work to that extent. He himself thought he was warring upon Ar- istotle instead of being simply a convenient edition for him. But no matter what modifications he made, what wrath he called forth, what blood was shed in the strife, his logic and his fame soon went to the limits of the western hemis- phere. Melanchthon transported his teachings to Germany, Milton got out his version of the book, with a sketch of Ramus and with prolix notes, within a century a Harvard graduate blessed "the incomparable P. Ramus, "the grand Mr. Ramus in grammar, rhetoric, logic." 185 AN ENGLISH EDITION. About a half century after his death, 1626, Antony Wot- ton put Ramus into English dress as "the art of logick gath- ered out of Aristotle, and set in due form, according to his instructions, by Peter Ramus, Professor of Philosophy and Rhetorick in Paris and there martyred for the Gospell of the Lord Jesus, with a short exposition of the Praecepts by which any one of indifferent capacity may with a little pains attaine to some competent knowledge and use of that noble and necessary science." The whole is a very faithful parallel of the Latin, which ""Thus wrote Leonard Hoar to his nephew Josiah Flint, then a freshman at Harvard, on March 27, 1661. Theology and Philosophy. 123 begins with "Quid fit logica? Logica est ars bene ratiocin- andi. Eodemque sensu dialectica saepe dicta est." "What is logic? Logic is the art of reasoning well. In the same sense dialectics is frequently used." The entire volume is as formal and methodical as a Puri- tan sermon and no doubt it was as interesting to many of his hearers. To him the entire subject breaks into two great heads, invention and judgment. The following taken from his book without the awkwardness of so many quotation marks will serve as a fair sample of the spirit of his book. Invention deals with the finding out of arguments, show- ing us the places where we are to fetch the proofs, while judgment is a part of logic touching the disposing of argu- ments that we may judge well. An argument is that which hath a fitness to argue something. One of the important principles in logic is the distinction between cause and ef- fect. Cause is that by force whereof the thing is, as Mars and Illia, the father and mother of Romulus, were efficient causes of him. Effect is that which cometh of the cause as eloquent orations were the effect of Demosthenes and Tully. The subject is that to which something is adjoined, the adjunct is that to which something is subjected. Now having these matters settled all means of agreement are cause or ef- fect or subject or adjunct. He then goes into quite a treatment of the different kinds of arguments as opposites, contraries, adversatives, contra- dictories, equals, the greater, the less, the unlike, etc. In the second book, devoted to judgment he discusses axioms, or sentences, defining different sorts as simple, compound, general, special, then he gives considerable space to the syllogism which he says is a discourse wherein the question is so disposed with the argument that if the antece- dent be granted it must necessarily be concluded. The ele- ments of this instrument of logic he grasps very firmly and explains very simply, treating of the major and minor prem- ises and the conclusion. 124 Our Colonial Curriculum. i OTHER AUTHORS. It is a long line of ancestry that logic can claim. The great schoolmaster of Charlemagne, Alcuin, got out a book made up of questions and answers, largely abstracted from Isi- dore, who in turn had borrowed from Boethius and Augus- tine. Lombard's ice-like sentences were also material for the chopping machine of logic. Melanchthon really dipped into the subject in his works on rhetoric and ethics besides his larger works on logic proper. There were also Keckerman who was both awfully pro- lific and dull, Enfield, who really wrote very sensibly on the history of philosophy ; Heereboord, Gassendi, Wallis, Brere- wood, Ames and Watt. There are two others of more spec- ial mention, Brattle and Burgersdicius, both of them in rather wide use among our colonial ancestors. They are a triplet with Ramus, only they are much more similar than triplets ordinarily are. Burgersdicius was honored with an editor, Heereboord who smothered his subject under his own verbiage in a way common with the average editor. All three have substantially the same arrangement, following the same general scheme, treating syllogisms practically alike, giving examples from the Latin versification of "Bar- bara celarent," etc. All discuss the different phases of the syllogism and all wind up with reflections upon method. Some use question and answer, all are in Latin but there is an English translation of Ramus and perhaps of Brattle. AMERICAN MANUSCRIPT EDITIONS. Old customs like old people usually die slowly. For ages, before the invention of printing, textbooks were passed down by dictation. Even after Gutenberg had placed man- kind under his obligation paper was still dear. Under these two influences American students often made their own books as the words fell from the lips of the teacher. The Theology and Philosophy. 125 zeal of antiquarians has unearthed a fair number of these almost entirely in New England. There is one of Brattle's Logic by Joseph McKean in Harvard, with the date of 1765 on it although Brattle had come from the printer's hand seven years earlier. Still earlier, from the hands of a graduate of 1651, there is a manuscript in the keeping of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society in Boston, by Michael Wiggles- worth, based on Ramus. In fact he copies Ramus almost literally but adds comments of his own. He must have been a very industrious and ambitious pupil, perhaps not more so than his fellows, but at any rate there has come down to us in his Latin a resume of nearly everything given at college such as dialectics, physics, metaphysics, with a specimen of oratory of his own. A close second to him was Abraham Pierson who after- wards became President of Yale, and, to the torture of inves- tigators, has left a small manuscript volume in the most cramped hand and contracted Latin that has unfortunately survived the ravages of time. He and Wigglesworth evi- dently followed practically the same authorities as in many places they do not differ so widely. He also ranges over the entire curriculum including logic. Education for ages past was tested at the conclusion of the course by a thesis to be maintained by the candidate. The same idea continues today in the essays for the bach- elors, while the same word and the same principle are act- ually to be seen in conferring the degree of doctor of phil- osophy. These short supreme tests then are an index to the whole course of study. One or two illustrations of the earliest at Harvard will indicate some of the conceptions of logic. For instance: Universalia non sunt extra intellectum. Universals are not above the intellect. 126 Our Colonial Curriculum. Dialectica est ominum artium generalissima. Logic is the most comprehensive of all the arts. Methodus procedit ab universalibus ad singularia. Method proceeds from generals to particulars BEXLUM INTESTINUM LOGICUM. This is the sarcastic summary of the whole study of logic in the schools in medieval days, by that frank critic John Webster, the Englishman, "A civil war of words, a verbal contest, a combat of cunning craftiness, violence and alterca- tion * * * trifling, jeering humming, hissing, brawling and the like * * * no regard had to the truth," this is the in- dictment that he brings against logic. Even more satiric is he on Aristotle whom he contemptuously dubbs "the secre- tary of the universe," and "heathen" who "makes God an animal in his metaphysics and chained him to the exterior superficies of the highest Heaven." Rather narrow pre- judice on the part of Webster to attack Aristotle on the in- tellectual side by wielding the weapon of theological passion but very likely due to the influence of Peter Ramus. There is no good in it to him, only "a vaporous and airy sound of words," even the best original systems leaving the intellect "nude and unsatisfied." Of the hundreds that acknowledged Locke as a master perhaps not one would recognize Webster. But this tower- ing philosopher, and this harsh judge swallowed up in the fogs of the past, have the same estimate of the value of the school logic. Locke seemed to think it was hardly worth his deliverances as he gave but little attention to it seeing but little advantage in it as the skill of reasoning well was not to be acquired by the study of rules, and reasoning was founded on something else than the predicaments and predicables, and men do not learn how to think by memor- izing a system of figures of speech. Theology and Philosophy. 127 THE DECAY OF THE SUBJECT. These two men, the prominent and the insignificant, were seers of the future. The schools did not regard them as such, there has been no conscious acknowledgement of their pro- phetic insight, but logic has dwindled almost to a point in the required curriculum of the best institutions of today. A short course of half a year or in some instances even less, a little handbook of a couple of hundred pages and the stu- dent can get that condition checked off from his list. So far are we from the stern demands of the medieval days that everyone must be a logician or nothing, that many now graduate without more than a smattering of a few logical terms. ETHICS. With an enviroment of piety for the schools, an atmos- phere of theology for the teachers, with a saturation of every subject by religion, it was not necessary for much strength to be devoted to formal courses in moral philosophy. Its principles were inculcated in every recitation practically, its very soul was in the air of the lecture and the recitation room. From the first day in school it was filtered into the minds and hearts of the pupils. The Bible was to be read daily, prayers were to be put up, the catechism was rigor- ously taught and searching interrogations were made of all on the preceding Sunday's sermon. This was the regular procedure on up to the college and in some instances even in the walls of this higher institution. But in the higher levels of the educational path ethics was dignified as a regular branch of instruction. There were textbooks for it and a prescribed stretch was to be covered. Though coming rather late in our period, in 1765, still Pres- ident Thomas Clap's little volume is fairly typical of the spirit of this pedagogical division. "Moral virtue in a con- formity to the moral perfections of God * * * * God is a 128 Our Colonial Curriculum. being infinite and absolutely perfect." So there in a seed is a whole plant of moral philosophy. The problem was sim- ple just analyze perfection, learn its attributes and culti- vate them in your own person. The whole question then be- comes one of simple deduction and division, merely an ex- position of what qualities are wrapped up in our conception of perfection. Of course different men would follow a different road and reach a different goal, all starting out with this as- sumption. In the main President Clap confines himself to very safe generalizations, all impressive and almost colorless, accepted by almost anyone, but we get some insight into his personality by his discussion of lying. He tried to crack that everlasting nut as to whether it is ever right to tell a lie. He uses a very pointed illustration of a man fleeing from a madman and rushing into a house and immediately afterwards coming out by another exit. I tell the madman that I saw his victim go into the house but I don't tell him that the poor hunted wretch came out again. The madman rushes in and while searching through the building his prey has ample time to escape. Have I told a lie? I stuck to the facts though I did not give him all of them. The mad- man made a mistake in his inference. The casuist and hair-splitter might be inclined to raise some doubts about the quality of this morality by taking the argument back to my intent when I spoke to the lunatic, but nothing of these fine distractions does President Clap waste his time upon. He cannot for one instant accept any other basis than the one he lays down for morality. He rides over those who attempt to set up any other sanction for conduct as happiness, or benevolence or reason, or moral fitness for things. His treatise was in use for nearly a third of a century at Yale although for a time, during the Revolutionary War, work was largely suspended en this subject. Theology and Philosophy. 129 OTHER CHRISTIAN MORALISTS. It is only a thin volume of some 66 pages that he uses for the development of his ethical views. Not much college time was given to it and that usually in the latter two years of the course. There were others of similar character that were also studied. Wollebius who had written so fully on theology also provided something for ethics. Ames, one of the theological authors, had a magazine of material for ethics in his "cases of conscience" in which he made a wide circuit over zeal, faith, sanctification, fortitude, temperance, marriage, conscience, death, etc., each one being ticketed with a text from the Bible. He evidently was not with St. Paul on the question of marriage The advanced female thinkers of today would hardly read him with much enjoy- ment as he unfalteringly inculcated the subjection of wives to their husbands. In the first third of the i/th century it was hardly to be expected that the scientific dawn had reached him. At any rate he seriously doubted some of the tendencies of science holding that some things we ought not to try to know since God in his wisdom has not revealed them to us, and there is nothing left us to do but acquiesce in his will. All of them are formal little essays not made up of argument but of rigid statements with scripture refer- ences. MORE'S MANUAL. There were other authors of a different shade who, with- out openly admitting it, seemed desirous of uniting pagan principles with the Biblical teachings. Aside from Locke in use at Yale for a short time, the best example of this class was Henry More who put forth his enchiridion ethicum in London in 1679. A rather stiff, ponderous edifice of Latin did he erect, frequently reaching back to Aristotle for a stick of timber, a handful of mortar, or a brick or two. 9 130 Our Colonial Curriculum. The general outlines of his structure and the framework of it are very like that old Grecian's product but the Rev. Mr. More in no sense intends for you to believe that he has sub- stituted this "Heathen" for the Bible. He lets it be seen that he looks upon the Hebrew volume as the essence of his book, but the classical reasoning might be a very helpful supplementary wing to the divine revelation. His architectural lines mount from this base that "ethica est ars bene beateque vivendi," or ethics is the art of living well and happily. This consummation depends first upon knowing what happiness is and second knowing how to ac- quire it. Happiness is pleasure, but perfect happiness de- mands some external goods. Happiness depends on virtue which is a quality of the soul enabling it to dominate brute instincts and bodily desires to such an extent as to attain the best. Of these passions some are good and some are bad, but a long list of them does he glance over, such as hope fear, love, hatred, anger, cupidity, audacity, emulation, cowardice, pusillanimity. On the opposite side are the vir- tues which he also ranges over such as prudence, sincerity, patience, affability, hospitality, gratitude, candor, etc. About one-third of his effort was devoted to the means of acquiring happiness after knowing what it was. This brings him to the question of freedom of the will and here he stands very firmly for individual right of choice. SOME HARVARD THESES. Though we jump from 1776 to 1700 and then to 1642, to the first year of the oldest college in America, we find even at this educational daybreak in our land that the ideas of these authors were all being laid before the students. In these subjects that the graduates were to develop in public we come across the same general notion. Voluntas est formaliter libera. The will is properly free. Theology and Philosophy. 131 Justitia mater omnium virtutum. Justice is the mother of all the virtues. Juveni modestia summum ornamentum. The highest ornament for a young man is modesty. Honor sequentem fugit, fugientem sequitur. Honor flees from the pursuer, it follows the fleeing. Nulla est vera amicitia inter improbos. There is no true friendship between the wicked. 186 ARISTOTLE THE PEDAGOGICAL FATHER OF ETHICS. As material for mental growth among the young, Aris- totle was a great storehouse for the medieval miners to work in. He was taken up and outlined, divided, sub-divided down to a sentence or even a phrase, or word so that the very last dripping of meaning could be extracted from a particular point and then the same process could be ap- plied to the others. For some of the humanists Cicero was preferred to the Greeks as having absorbed their results and restated them in a clearer manner. 187 Like a vast deal of the teaching then it was very wooden-headed, being mostly memorizing of the stoic tenets. It was largely literary and not practical but that was a defect common with substan- tially all education. There was in this subject the same jangling and snarling of ideas that was to be found in nearly everything taught in the schools then. There were censors also, pretty fairly represented by Locke and Webster here as in logic. Locke considered the Bible sufficient without any of this repetitious reproduction. This with the practice of virtue and reflection upon Cicero he felt to be sufficient. Webster was hand in hand with 'his condemnation. He saw "* Proceedings of Mass. Hist. Soc., Vol. 4, page 442, 1858. UT W. H. Woodward's Vittorino, page 59. 132 Our Colonial Curriculum. nothing "practicable" in the teaching, it accomplished nothing except to make the subject "facilely disputable, but difficulty practicable." 188 Here also as in logic there has been a wearing away of the course until in some of our colleges a youth may win his degree without having opened the pages of a textbook in ethics. Even those which require it practically have only a modicum. Does this mean less faith in it or less need for it? Is it no longer of value as an educational performance or has the standard of conduct become so high that it is super- fluous to teach ethics ? Have we imbibed these principles so that they are a part of our everyday living and consequently feel it a waste of time to philosophize upon something that is with us in every action. PHILOSOPHY. If possible this term was even more indefinite in medieval days than it is at present. To some it meant logic, to some it meant theology, to others it was the "mater omnium artium," the mother of all the arts, or the "knowledge of all things whether divine or human, their laws and their causes." 189 Again it was sometimes narrowed to the history of philosophy or to metaphysical speculations. For several centuries the whole world of the intellect was divided into three portions as natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and metaphysical philosophy. In the University of Edinburgh logic and metaphysics were yoked as "rational and instru- mental philosophy," the first furnishing the basis of investi- gation and the second furnishing the appartus for carrying on the search. 190 Lx>gic thus became "the art of arts, the science of sciences," 191 really the basis of all intellectual de- 188 John Webster, Examen Academiarum, page 87. 189 W. H. Woodward's Vittorino, page 223. 180 Grant, University of Edinburgh, Vol. i, page 273. 191 Compayre's Abelard, page 180. Theology and Philosophy. 133 velopment and the circumference of all intellectual achieve- ments. Occasionally other conceptions were added and we find such combinations as moral and political philosophy, the latter subject covering in a general way the whole notion of government, especially as represented in the Roman writers. 192 METAPHYSICS. With a constant effort to unify all thought it was inevita- ble that the thinkers should get down to metaphysics, or the sub-stratum on which all of the world might be considered as resting. The constant dialectical disputations assisted this tendency, especially when the contestants began to apply this method to theology. From this the same spirit spread to the other branches until the most material subjects of thought interested men's minds as manifestation of an under- lying substance. One of the best illustrations of this general drift is the handbook of meaphysics by Henry More, 193 which he calls a dissertation on incorporeal things. His pages are sprinkled with figures and diagrams just as we see in a modern book of physics to-day dealing with such mat- ters as the pressure of the atmosphere, gravity, magnetism, the planets, their size, their distance, the nature of light and colors, plant and animal life and similar topics. Still the atmosphere of metaphysics is through it all as he is con- stantly trying to trace these down to their origin in spirit. The influence of Aristotle is clearly apparent as More lays the foundation for Aristotle's ten categories in substance or being, seeking to go down to the very root of all matter. A similar author to More also used in American colleges is Heereboord who seeks out the very boundaries of all knowl- edge. 194 "* Grant, University of Edinburgh, Vol. i, 274. This- was the case in this institution in 1741. 198 Enchiridion Metaphysicum, London, 1671. M Meletcmata Philosophica, 1665, quarto. 134 Our Colonial Curriculum. THE RISE OF SCIENCE. In these metaphysical conceptions of the observational and experimental sciences we have a rather solid beginning for the later work in these fields. But this general theological robe for a long time was wrapped around the apparatus and laboratory of the scientific investigator. Emancipation came slowly. While still fired with this ambition to unify all knowledge many attempts are to be found at combining all thought in one book. Anthony LeGrand is a fair example of these philosophizers. His "Entire Body of Philoso- phy" 195 contains logic, theology, demonology, physics, spec- ulative and natural philosophy of the world and heavens, the four great bodies of the earth, water, air, fire, living things in general, man physically and spirtually, esthetics, natural history including both plants and animals / and a dis- cussion as to whether animals have souls. William James Gravesande, coming afterwards, repre- sents a slight advance as he entitles one of his works "Mathematical elements of natural philosophy." 196 He ac- knowledges his debt to Sir Isaac Newton and along the same grooves are the teachings of Martin, who was used as a textbook at Yale for twenty-eight years. 197 His phi- losophy springs from medieval pietism as he announces it is "greatly subservient to revelation especially that of the Christian religion and easily accounts for or removes most of the difficulties and disputations about it." Saturated with this religious cordial he drifts to what we understand as physics to-day, covering such matters as electricity, the working of a pump, the use of a microscope and other topics in that field. He was succeeded at Yale by Enfield who also included in ""In Latin, 1680; English, 1694. "* Latin originally, translated into English and published 1738, London. 197 Stiles, Diary, Vol. 3, page 312. Theology and Philosophy. 135 his wide grasp the history of philosophy. This is really a pretty full detailed history of the subject by a man of some power of individual thought as he shows rather scant respect for some of the vague speculations of philosophers. But when he comes to science proper in his "Institutions of Natural Philosophy" 198 he becomes an unfortunate rever- sal to the age-long credulity of his predecessors. He sneers at the experimentalists because so few of them ever become philosophers and it is these gentlemen alone that arrive at general truths. Chemistry for him has no attractions as not sufficient data had been gathered for him to digest into his system. Naturally he is deductive almost entireU in his dis- cussions and has propositions almost as formal and as exact as the steps of a proposition in geometry. Starting with the nature of matter he ranges over all of the present branches of physics such as mechanics, pneumatics, optics, then going as far as astronomy. In the last we begin to see a faint ray of the modern scientific spirit on the subject of comets. Here he advances no theory and is not over- whelmed with amazement at the appearance of these mys- terious bodies in the heavens. He is a type of the univer- sal genius as he dipped into biography, history, elocution, hermeneutics, and also preached funeral sermons. THE SHAFTS OF A CRITIC. Though he had so far as can be judged now but little more influence upon the prevailing conceptions than a gentle whisper has against an enwrapping fog bank, John Webster let fly his darts at these formless metaphysical notions. To him they were "so many monstrous, fruitless and vain chim- eras * * * fit for nothing but to ensnare and entangle * * * * vain dreams filling and feeding the fancy * * * * the assistance of its twin logic (both sisters of the same mother NOX) * * * * poisonous cockatrice eggs that it hath U8 An edition came out in London in 1785, large square octavo. 136 Our Colonial Curriculum. hatched, * * * * as little purpose as the disputes DE LUNA CAPRIMA, or moonshine in the water." 109 RHETORIC. With all of the intellectual energies devoted to so formal a study as Latin for centuries, with minute attention paid to every turn of a phrase and every form of a word, with the keenest analysis of all of the machinery of speech, rhetoric was a necessary development and the great Roman orator and stylist was the original exemplar. It was to Cicero then to Livy and to other Latin authors, then past these to Aristotle, that the school masters pointed their students for the best specimens of prose writings. It was, instead of being merely academic as with us at present, a very practical matter to the medieval student. He had to know the proper forms for drawing up legal documents, state papers, busi- ness communications, items of affairs, social letters, and all other means of expressing ideas upon paper in an authori- tative way. To be a secretary f o some learned man, or to carry on the correspondence of some baronial lord, or to transmit the measures of the church, required a certain knowledge of the proper routine channels for the matters to go forward in. It was one of the most direct and useful re- sults of medieval training to be able to conduct such trans- actions in the usual style. It is to this early period that we can now trace all of the elements of the ordinary missives that pass through our mails. Those laborious toilers centuries ago had hammered out the divisions that we now unconsciously cast our thoughts into whenever we wish to fold our ideas into a neat package enclosed in an envelope to-day, such as salutatio, captatio, benevolentia, narratio, petitio, and conclusio. 200 It will be noted that this roughly corresponds to the parts that m john Webster's Examen Academiarum, page 84. 200 S. S. Laurie, Rise of Universities, page 60. Theology and Philosophy. 137 textbooks of rhetoric at the present day break up a letter into, namely, heading, salutation, address, body, conclusion and signature. Finally all of these different items as they had been pain- fully raked together through the preceding ages were re- arranged and beaten down into simple manuals of rhetoric containing the elements very largely in the form of defini- tions. It is such textbooks as these that we find in the colonial institutions. Two of the best illustrations are Wil- liam Dugard and Thomas Farnaby. Both of these were very popular, and one of them went up as high as the four- teenth edition at least. Dugard's was only a primer of some thirty or forty pages duodecimo, but in these limits he covered elocutio and pronunciatio so as to give some direc- tions about the management of the voice and of the limbs in the way of gestures, all in the approved method of that day by question and answer. He had all of the figures of speech such as synecdoche, metonymy, simile, metaphor and the other less common ones. Farnaby covers the same ground but has more in the way of illustrations and examples, ap- proaching more nearly to the rhetorics that were in such wide use half a century ago. In fact if such a book as Quackenbos should be sweated down from its ordinary swollen stage until only the thinly clothed skeleton remains we should then have a very fair picture of the colonial rhetoric. CHAPTER V. GEOGRAPHY, HISTORY AND MODERN LANGUAGES. Columbus was the greatest inspirer for the study of geography that the western world has ever known. Until he made his momentous voyage across the Atlantic men's minds were circumscribed to the little European area and its shadowy limits. That brief outline of pedagogues, the seven arts of the trivium and quadrivium, hardly provided for geography at all but it was really wrapped up in mathe- matics. Capella covered the field in the sixth book of his encyclopedia which was almost the same as geometry, deal- ing with the mathematical features of the earth. Later on there were compends of ancient and modern geography in use at some of the universities, notably, Edinburgh. 201 The impetus from the nautical pioneering of Columbus and his successors echoes in Sebastian Munster's Cosmo- graphic, a type of simplicity, childishness and pedanticism almost universal in all books of the time touching upon nature. 202 Besides his account of the sailing trips of Colum- bus and Vespucius, he branches out rather luxuriantly on East India and the nearby islands, all under a number of small heads such as Of the adamant stone otherwise called the diamant. Of the cannabals which eat men's flesh. Of the Islands of Bornei. A few expressions culled from his description of the Island of Sumatra will give far better than any other way a miniature of his general style. Thus he goes: "four kings crowned with diamonds; * * * exceed all other 201 Grant, University of Edinburgh, Vol. i, page 266. * a Originally in Latin, but in English in 1553 in London, reprinted in part at least by E. Arber in 1895. Geography, History and Modern Language. 139 men in bigness of body ;* * * one hundred years of age ; * * * inhabitants are great fishers on the sea ; * * * whales seem like unto hills; * * * sometimes swallow whole ships with the men." Of the products he dilates widely on the pepper tree. The alligator to him is a snake with four legs. But it is when he goes into a logical explanation of some matter that he exhibits his scholarship and his weakness. He wanted to settle whether people lived in the torrid zone or not. He falls back upon the ancients first raking through the list of them including Silvius, Eratosthenes, Polybius, Posidomius, Homer, Macrobius, Albertus, Ptolomeus, Pliny, all in less than two dozen lines. As for his own views he is as illusive as a doubtful diplomatist, admitting and qualify- ing and bolstering up on the other side with wonderful nimbleness yes, it is hot there, but then shade is thick there ; "wilderness and desolate places there," but also much moisture and dew; any how it is a wide space there and besides Pliny says travellers went there before his time and that there were cannibals there. And that is about as near as Munster commits himself to deciding disputes. The teacher had to come to systematize these rubbish piles of knowledge. Keckerman one of the great arrangers of the time, put his hand to the difficulty. He turned out a wooden headed product, tedious and formal, mostly defini- tions, all in a series of statements, usually numbered, with- out logical connection or orderly development, in Latin of course. But a translation of one or two items will illustrate his results "a river is either steady or torrential, a river is steady which glides with equal flow." His first half is largely of this sort but his second has descriptions of differ- ent countries, scarcely more than their boundaries and the nautral features of land and water. He also was fascinated by the idea of the tropics but he took the ground that whoever lived there in America were terrible cannibals. 140 . Our Colonial Curriculum. LeGrand is another sample of the amusing groping ignorance with regard to natural phenomena. He wanted to unlock the puzzle of no rain in Egypt and he did so by going down to mother earth and declaring that the ground was of "such close and compact texture as not to have pores large enough for the transmission of vapors." We get another insight into his mind when he seeks to show why rain drops are round. His metaphysics and his theology come to his assistance because, he says, heavenly globuli pound on these drops so as to drive all the parts towards the center, while the globuli within are always butting outwards and thus these two get a round shape to the drop. The air of course is always full of these globuli flying about in all directions and they are less liable to hit spherical bodies than jagged ones. NOT MUCH GEOGRAPHY IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS. Though the innocent cause of great development in this branch, America could not spend much energy upon the study of it. It is doubtful whether it was much more than a pleasant recreation around the fire-side at home for the youth of the land until they reached the higher grades of the common school or entered the colleges. Even there scant attention was its portion. The Boston preacher who re- vived such pleasant flavors of pre-Revolutionary schools and Noah Webster who can be so safely accepted both were unable to remember any geography in their youthful school days. So it was in Pennsylvania according to the educa- tional historian of that state. 203 But there was deep interest in the matter among some at any rate. There was much ingenuity in devising orreries and planetariums, some of them of great size and intricacy. 308 Common School Journal, Boston, Mass.,Vol. 12, page 312, Oct. 15, 1850. Barnard's Journal, Vol. 26, page 195. Wickersham, Edu- cation in Penn., page 201. Geography, History and Modern Language. 141 President Clap of Yale made such an apparatus for his insti- tution "to represent the motions of all of the celestial bodies." According to the specifications of it it seems to have had a globe for the sun in the center and wire orbits around that with balls on them for planets. These again were encircled with small globes for satellites. There were also some attachments for comets and eclipses and all of this mechanism cost less than twenty shillings or five dol- lars at present. 204 While the branch was not dignified with a space to itself in the curriculum, instruction was often afforded under mathematics or astronomy. It was very easy to connect with either one of these subjects by starting out with the earth as a planet. Whether for this reason or not there was no lack of text- books, which are to be found preserved in American libra- ries and the only sensible conclusion is that there must have been use for them in the schools. In addition some are named in the courses of study. One of the earliest was Clark's "New Description of the World." 205 This is not at all a poor book especially for the times, composed of simple descriptions of the different coun- tries, the physical features, the people and the products. He is not a mere lifeless copyist as witness one quotation on the Indians of Florida: "The women upon the death of their husbands cut their hair close to their ears and not marry again until it has grown sufficiently long to cover their shoulders (a very commendable way if used amongst us to prevent our over hasty widows who are frequently provided beforehand.)" Another a few years after was by Hubner, "New and Easy Introduction to the Study of Geography," 206 all in ** American Magazine, Jan., 1744, page 202. 108 London, 1712, I2mo, pages 220. "* 1742, I2mo, 271 pages. 142 Our Colonial Curriculum. question and answer as he thinks that "the most excellent as it is the most natural" way. As a consequence of following that plan he shows but little more sequence or reason than a parrot does in shouting out expressions it has learned. GORDON'S GEOGRAPHICAL GRAMMAR. But perhaps the one most widely known and adopted throughout our colonies was "geography anatomized or the geographical grammar, being a short and exact analysis of the whole body of modern geography after a new and curious method," by Pat Gordon, M. A., F. R. S. 207 But this is not one-tenth of what Mr. Gordon crowded in his little page. Farther on he unblushingly introduces his vol- ume as "a compendium of the true fundamentals of geogra- phy digested in the various definitions, problems, theories, and paradoxes; with a transient survey of the surface of the earthly ball as it consists of land and water," and still farther he assures us that all of his work has been "collected from the best authors and illustrated with divers maps." The whole book is broken into five parts as follows : first all those terms necessary for the right understanding of the globe; second all those pleasant problems performable by the artificial globe; third, divers plain geographical theorems deducible from those problems; fourth, paradoxi- cal positions in matters of geography or a few infallible truths in masquerade which may appear to some as the greatest fables ; fifth, transient survey of the whole surface of the terraqueous globe. He elaborates each one of these. Among his terms he de- fines zones, poles, equator, islands, mountains, etc., covering twelve pages. Under his problems he has such as "to know by the globe when the great mogul and the czar of Muscovia sit down to dinner." These problems run up to forty-eight in all. ** London, 1730, 8vo, pages 416, I2th edition. Geography, History and Modern Language. 143 His forms mount to forty-one fairly typified by such as "to all places lying between the torrid zone the sun is duly vertical twice a year ; to those under the tropics once ; but to those in the temperate and frigid never." Again "in all places lying under the same semi-circle of the meridian, the hours of both day and night are always the same in one as in the other." He tells us that some of his geographical paradoxes are amazing and we can readily imagine the stupefaction on the faces of some boys when they met this example : "there is a certain place of the earth, at which if two men should chance to meet, one would stand up right upon the soles of the other's feet, and neither of them should feel the other's weight, and yet they both should retain their natural pos- ture." Another, "there is a certain place in the Island of Great Britain where the stars are always visible at any time of the day, if the horizon be not overcast with clouds." He has forty-five of these gems for both teacher and pupil to try their wits upon. But he assures us that though they may appear as fables yet there is no demonstration in Euclid more unfallibly true than these paradoxes. The bulk of his entire book is given up to descriptions of the different countries under the heads of situation, name, air, soil, armies, commodities, rareties, archbishoprics, bish- oprics, religion, universities, manners, language, hygenic conditions, but his most characteristic topics are manners and rareties. Under manners a few crumbs will give some taste. Of the Muscovites (Russians) he says "men of a vigorous and healthful condition * * * a rude deceitful and ignorant sort of people * * * a piacular crime * * * to search after knowledge * * * brutish temper and stupidity." The Dutch are "reckoned none of the politest sort of people either in thought or behavior * * * singular 144 Our Colonial Curriculum. neatness of their houses * * * wonderful genius to a laudable industry." The Japanese are "generally of a tall stature, strong con- stitution, and fit to be soldiers * * * naturally ambi- tious, cruel and disdainful to all strangers." It might be remarked here that although written nearly two hundred years ago he managed to hit off some of the prevailing traits of character that these nations have shown since then. Under the head of rareties he finds in Russia a strange "melon" that grows a skin and wool just like a lamb so that no man can tell the difference between the two. New Eng- land has a rare Troculus bird with "sharp pointed feathers in his wings by darting which into the wall of a house he sticks fast and rests securely" but so grateful is he to the landlord that he always leaves behind in his nest a bird as thanks for the use of the property. It took some years of this kind of geography before America developed authors of her own. The first and the most famous of these was Jedediah Morse but for the pur- pose of this study he is hardly available as his book did not appear until after the Revolutionary war. It is said that he was stimulated to do this as a correction of the errors in a popular book by Guthrie, some of whose editions at least appeared in London. The temperament and style of Guth- rie are indicated by the following extract on Connecticut: "The men, in general throughout the province, are robust, stout and tall. The greatest care is taken of the limbs and bodies of infants, which are kept straight by means of a board ; a practice learnt of the* Indian women, who abhor all crooked people ; so that deformity is here a rarity. The women are fair, handsome, and genteel, and modest and re- served in their manners and behavior. They are not per- mitted to read plays nor can they converse about whist, quadrilles or operas ; but it is said that they will talk freely Geography, History and Modern Language. 145 upon the subjects of history, geography, and other literary subjects." 208 HISTORY. 'fPw. In the first course of study that we have or Harvard, there sits history serene and confident as any of her sisters in the intellectual galaxy but what was actually included in this term, or what was done in the class rooms, there is almost nothing to be learned. Negative evidence is very tricky to trust but if a long laborious search yields no results we are reasonably justified in believing that there was very little history taught. A century and a half afterwards we have the word of that veteran of letters, Noah Webster, that in the schools so far as he knew them before the Revolution there was no history. 209 ' The pioneer prospector along this belt, H. B. Adams, who was also one of the first to intro- duce modern methods of historical study into America, found also no pedagogical nuggets of history in Harvard, and consequently throughout the colonial period as he found substantially no advance of this subject at Harvard for nearly two centuries after her foundation. 210 But our ancestors had appreciation of this muse. We know our public men were rather diligent courtiers. Jef- ferson, Adams, and others not so prominent, showed con- siderable acquaintance with certain events of the past. Adams drew from this arsenal considerable munitions in de- fense of our triple division of government, going back with sure tread to Grecian experiments in republican government. There were instances also in the educational profession. Fisher is a specimen of ho4p history was often one of the ingredients in the intellectual hodge-podges so cherished ** Guthrie, Geographical Grammar, London, 1792, page 797. 209 Barnard's Journal of Education, Vol. 26, page 195. 810 History in American Colleges and Universities, U. S. Bureau of Education, Circular No. 2, 1887, page 15. 146 Our Colonial Curriculum. for hundreds of years. In his "Young Man's Best Compan- ion" he gives up twenty pages on remarkable events and short abstracts of the past. He smelted English history down to a few words for each reign, dealing out such tit- bits as the one on Edward third that he built the castle of Windsor, and one about Mary that in her time a barrel of beer with the cask included cost only six pence, but he was not altogether wooden-headed, he had some spice in him, he declared that the people of England during the Cromwell era were "stark mad with bigotry and enthusiasm." 211 Infinitely higher and more helpful to the real cause of history were the histories composed by such men as Mather, Bradford and Hutchinson, in New England, and Jones and Stith in Virginia. Professor Hugh Jones down in William and Mary wrote a history of Virginia by 1722, the pro- fessorial progenitor of the theses and monographs that have burst forth with such prodigality in the last quarter of a century. Within a score or so of years he was followed by Rev. William Stith, perhaps the second of these pioneers. 212 THE LIGHT FROM EUROPE. There was the weight of tradition, the endorsement of in- heritance, and the solemn advice of the seer in favor of this subject. Textbooks running back to the 5th century were at hand. Orosius at that time had condensed the annals of the universe and later his pages became the school history of the middle ages. The humanists, with their taste for beauty and ease naturally preferred those authors with fa- cility of style who could inculcate lessons of right conduct especially in public affairs. They went back to classical days, doubting no statement provided it was couched in elo- quent language and disdaining such vulgar propinquity as history nearer to them than three or four centuries. 211 Page 329. a * William and Mary Quarterly, Jan., 1898, page 179 Geography, History and Modern Language. 147 Locke looked upon history as "the great mistress of pru- dence and civil knowledge," the proper study for "a gentle- man or a man of business." But unless the pupil learned something from it of value in molding his character or in shaping his deeds he had far better put his thoughts upon something else. A mere bundle of facts, to Locke, was just as unprofitable even though about Caesar or Alexander as so many baseless statements about Robin Hood, or the seven wise masters. But words of wisdom fell on heedless ears with such text- books as were provided, even though a lectureship had been established in Cambridge as early as 1628, with the stipula- tion that the incumbent should be well grounded in Latin and Greek and should have neither wife nor child. There were books packed with figures, tables, and genealogical trees, looking such heaps of confusion at the present day as brush piles in a new ground and serving about the same end, only incumbrances to be burned as quickly as possible. Dry, dogmatic, uttterly dull and uninteresting, indigestible except for the strongest stomach, even if there had been time in the curriculum for this study, only the most hardened antiquarian could feel any real interest in the matter. It goes almost without saying that they were all steeped in the prevailing theology, tracing all the past back to "the slime of the earth" that Adam was supposed to have been created of. 213 ENGUSH. Latin was an imperious beauty that strove to monopolize the whole stage in the drama of learning. She was not en- tirely successful but she did crowd her English sister over into the obscure corners for a long time. There were gal- lant admirers for English who vainly tried to stay the tide of neglect and contempt. Mulcaster who was born a little 113 Two good examples are J. H. Alsted, Thesaurus Chronologiae, 1650; and Helvicus, Chronology, 1687. 148 Our Colonial Curriculum. more than a third of a century after Columbus discovered the new world, stood up manfully for his mother tongue. "But why not everything in English, a tongue in itself both deep in meaning and frank in utterance? I do not think that any language whatsoever is better able to express all subjects with pith and plainness," 213 Locke was still warmer in his praise of English, still more insistent that it is English an English gentleman should chiefly cultivate because that is the language he will have constant use of. Let scholars toil over Latin and Greek and other foreign languages but a child should be taught the speech that he will have to constantly work with the balance of his days. Regretfully he found this branch universally neglected because teachers thought it below their dignity to attend to the every-day expression of their pupils. Latin and Greek were the only linguistic forms worthy of peda- gogical notice, as English belonged to the "illiterate vulgar." Forestalling the future by some two cetnturies this bachelor, who had almost never known a mother's tender care, who had scarcely any playmates in his youth, almost outlined the present course in English that has been so developed and emphasized in the last quarter of a century. He urged the advantages of narratives and he called for the application of the precepts of rhetoric, sorrowing that the little learners of his day had never yet learned how "to express themselves handsomely with their tongues or pens in the language they are to always use." This facility, as he very clearly saw, was to be acquired "not by a few or a great many rules given, but by exercise and application according to good rules, or rather patterns, until habits are got." 215 After amplifying the importance of story telling for giving ease of style he points out the usefulness of letter writing, but with rare good judgment condemns all straining after effect, limiting the m Mulcaster, Educational Writings, Oliphant edition, page 189. 218 R. H. Quick's Locke, page 163. Geography, History and Modern Language. 149 whole matter to the purpose of expressing "their own plain easy sense." Strange it was to him that this indubitable duty had been overlooked while the brain was racked with Latin themes and verses, but he resignedly remembers that "custom has so ordained it and who dares disobey," besides many of the teachers were unfit for the task, and even of those who were of sufficient skill their efforts would all be nullified by the ignorance of the parents at home. GRAMMARS. The writer and the thinker were not alone in their de- fense of the vernacular. The eloquence of the pen and the wisdom of the sage were reinforced by the practiced rules of the grammarian. It can hardly ever be known whether J. Wharton, one of whose books is now in the American Antiquarian Society, having been printed in London in 1655, was ever used in American schools, but it is a fair presump- tion that either it was or it furnished the basis for subse- quent ones. At any rate, at that early date, so impressed was he with the good of this educational subject that he issued his English grammar "containing all rules and directions necessary to be known for the judicious reading, right speak- ing, and writing of letters, syllables and words in the Eng- lish tongue, very useful for scholars before their entrance into the rudiments of the Latin tongue." Manfully does he back up Locke in calling for the exercise of good English as well as of good Latin, as it is capable of any "scholar-like expressions." But the mold of medievalism is still upon him as he sets forth his efforts to aid the study of Latin so as to assist a boy in turning English into Latin. His 109 pages are largely taken up with rules for spelling and with ex- plaining the parts of speech, but he avoids that grammatical 'snare of the subjunctive mood. Neither does he have syntax or rules of parsing. 150 Our Colonial Curriculum. Nearly three-quarters of a century later a more ambitious attempt is put in type, "a grammar of the English tongue, with the arts of logic, rhetoric, poetry, etc., also useful notes giving the grounds and reasons of grammar in general." 216 This contains the elements of syntax without parsing, with- out formal rules, really an essay in philology, arguing very stoutly against the Latinizing of English grammar. A decade later there comes from the press another that was thumbed by American children, Isaac Watts's third edi- tion in 1776, of "the art of reading and writing English." Although nearly two centuries old the heart of the teacher to-day will warm towards Watts because he speaks so feel- ingly of the bad spelling in his day "how wretchedly is it practiced by a great part of the unlearned world." We are prepared then to know that the most of his strength was laid upon this torture, with some portion to reading, which with him was really our elocution of to-day. Of the same horizontal comprehensiveness is Benjamin Martin's "introduction to the English language and learning in three parts." 217 He also covers logic, which he divides into the old four classes of preception, judgment, reasoning, disposition. With this as the center he radiates over all knowledge. Our animosity to the mother country had not yet reached a violent stage or we should most probably have objected to the word British as a part of the title of "an essay in four parts towards speaking and writing the English language grammatically and inditing elegantly." 218 The author fol- lows the prevailing custom for school books, of question and answer, giving up half a page to the parsing of one noun. All of these yielded very submissively in popularity to Lowth, several of whose editions are to be found in that a * London, 1714, I2mo, 264 pages. *" London, 1776, i8mo, pages 228. ** London, 1768, i2mo, pages 155, second edition. To be found in the J. C. Brown library, Providence, R. I. Geography, History and Modern Language. 151 treasure house for pedagogical history in Worcester, Mass., one as late as 1771 from London. 219 In spite of her ardent admirers even here at the very dawn of the upheaval that was to usher in the nineteenth century this English beauty is still shrinking and trembling in the side scenes. Lowth apologizes for writing an English gram- mar, but he plucks up courage when he thinks that "English hath been considerably polished and refined, its bounds have been greatly enlarged" during the past two centuries so that it deserves some treatment in book form. He is very simple, free from philological cob-webs and theories, without elab- orated reflections and intricate tables, having none of the sixty odd rules into which grammar later effloresced. His specimens of parsing at the end differ only slightly from similar exercises of twenty years ago, omitting questions and leaving out reasons. All in all not a bad guide along this new path. LITTLE ATTENTION IN AMERICA. But even the largest of these grammars was only a short intellectual meal and it is not certain that many schools had even this morsel. Just before the Revolution Lovell's Latin school in Boston, Mass., provided for English composition in the translation of Caesar's Commentaries. 220 This same witness testifies that he had learned some grammar in Dil- worth's spelling book, but that generally in the secondary schools there was no formal teaching of this subject. Later when he went to college he was put into Lowth. Mason, who has left reminiscences of Yale, though in the period after the Revolution, says almost no pains were taken with English in the college at that time. He himself was quite deficient along with others in this branch, but still he 218 12mo, 160 pages. ** Common School Journal, Boston, Mass., Vol. 12, page 311, Oct. IS, 1850. 152 Our Colonial Curriculum. past through college with good success, being among the first of his class. 221 Noah Webster, in 1840, glancing back over his earlier days, could find no traces of English grammar in the schools before the Revolution. 222 Still from the earliest beginnings some clear thinkers realized the educational value of English. It was studied to some extent in the Hopkins Grammar School of New Haven more than a decade before 1700, because it was then that a committee of the trustees reported that only those boys were to be admitted for learning English books who could spell and had begun to read. Then they were prepared to "perfect their right spelling and reading." 223 Down in Virginia was the same solicitude manifested. Professor Hugh Jones, mathematics, in William and Mary, in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, followed in the steps of Montaigne and Milton in providing the best training for gentlemen. He prepared short treatises, one of them "a short English Grammar." Unfortunately so far as can be learned no copy of this is in America, though the British Museum catalogues one. As one of the first in America, and perhaps the rarest now, some bibliographical details, enough to show the spirit of the work would hardly be amiss here, especially when the settlement of the locality in which the work was composed is being celebrated so fully. Reliance has to be put on the great English library in London, which is the only possessor of a copy in existence so far as this investigation has gone. Most trusted hands have transmitted the following descrip- tion 224 of the one in the British Museum, in addition to the 221 Mason, page n. 222 Barnard's Journal, Vol. 26, page 195. 228 Barnard's American Journal of Education, Vol. 4, page 710. 224 The great authorities on European Americana, B. F. Stevens & Brown, 4 Trafalgar Square, London. Geography, History and Modern Language. 153 title which runs thus in the catalogue, "An Accidence to the English Tongue" Contents of the Division and Use of English Grammar page I Of the Characters and Sounds of English Let- ters " 2 Of the Correction of our Alphabet 3 Of the Organs of Speech and Formation and Use of Great and Small Letters " 6 Observations upon the Vowels and Consonants . . ib Of the Tangs, Brogues and English Tones and Dialects " 1 1 Of the Methods of Learning the True Sound of English Syllables and Spelling " 13 Page 13 treats of "The Northern Dialect, which we call Yorkshire "The Southern, or Sussex Speech "The Eastern, or Suffolk Speech "The Western or British Language "The Proper, or London Language." The book consists of 86 pages in all, made up thus : Half- title, two pages, unnumbered ; title, two pages, unnumbered ; Dedication (to Her Royal Highness Wilhelmina Charlotte, Princess of Wales, dated at end April 22, 1724), paged III-V; Contents, VI-IX; page X unnumbered and blank; Text, pages i to 69; pages 70-72, numbered, contain list of books printed for John Clarke. This is followed by a blank leaf unnumbered, the signatures are A to G, 6 in sixes, with a blank leaf at end in addition. The title page describes Hugh Jones as "lately mathematical Professor at the Col- lege of William and Mary at Williamsburg in Virginia, and Chaplain to the Honorable the Assembly of that Colony." It was "printed for John Clarke at the Bible, under the Royal Exchange." It has woodcut initial letters at chapter 154 Our Colonial Curriculum. openings, with woodcut ornaments at head or tail pieces at chapter divisions. The British Museum copy is in an old red morocco binding (contemporaneous) gilt tooled border, with central gilt ornaments. It differs considerably in philological flavor from "Young Man's Best Friend," which was a general catch-all of all the branches of education and learning from the alphabet to rules of health for both young men and young women. Although in the middle of the seventeenth century, he had to pay his devotions at the altar of Latin. In the midst of legal and business forms and recipes of all sorts he sand- wiches ancient mythology. A more ambitious aspiration than all of these comes to light in the manuscript materials of Harvard University, just four years after the close of the seventeenth century. The authorities ordered the establishment of "a professor of philology. 225 This advanced idea doubtless never got beyond paper as the massive two volumes by one of Harvard's presidents give no treatment of the instance. Indirectly though, especially in Harvard, some of the best English teaching war carried on in a practical way. As the dominion of Latin was gradually narrowed, declamations, and orations were publicly made in the mother tongue. There were also dialogues with careful translations from Latin sources. The college authorities yearned for "grace- ful elocution" before a body of hearers and the trustees would appoint committees for the purpose of passing upon these exhibitions. After ten years of such insistence it was required that there should be two such entertainments yearly, covering dialogues, forensic disputations and all other exercises that would stand as specimens of the student's proficiency. 226 Of the history of English literature, of its master pieces, ** Harvard College Papers, Vol. i, No. 36. 828 Quincy, History of Harvard, Vol. 2, page 124. Geography, History and Modern Language. 155 such as Shakespeare and Milton, there is no hint. There is almost as little odor of compositions. The memorizing of rules of grammar, lifeless parsing, with a mere breath of linguistics proper and phonology, about contained the sum total of requirement in formal English. But the constant swapping of Latin and English expressions was in itself a most excellent discipline in the native speech. And when we add the set addresses, either in argument or from the pulpit or platform, we have the rudiments for substantially all improvement in daily speech. It was in these translations and in the minute pondering of the massive eloquence of the ancients that the orators of the first period of American his- tory got their strength and vigor, their deep grasp upon the foundations of human influence. FRENCH. For school purposes the foreign modern languages hardly existed up to a century ago. If a man's own linguistic medium was beneath his notice in the class room, still more so was the speech of those with whom he was either at war or at enmity for generations past. The merchant, the trav- eller or the servant who wished to accompany his master across the boundary, might tolerate these barbarous jargons just as he might put up with strange cooking and outlandish customs, all for his own benefit, but that there might be any- thing in them for his own improvement and inward devel- opment, why only the most enlightened among them had reached that upper level of appreciation and culture. Still there might be a few curious souls, or what is much more probable, a few practical persons, who might either wish to wander abroad or to follow up an investigation in another dialect, and for these the study of French was permitted at the English universities as far back as the thirteenth century. John Locke pleaded for French and John Webster derided the attainment of these other languages as useless labor. 156 Our Colonial Curriculum. His discriminating eye could see nothing in the procees except the possession of a dozen symbols for one idea. The whole thing to him was an intricate labyrinth wherein a boy "is continually royling like a horse in a mill and yet makes no great progress." 22i But truly, if a man wanted to get the marrow of one of these other literatures or if he wanted to provide himself with another set of words for trade, why then it would be well to learn something of French. The grammatical method though was a "guilty path of confusion and perplexity." Like a spark on a bare plain of darkness is the experiment with a French tutor at Harvard in 1735, Langloissorie, who held a very subordinate post there to give training in this Latin off-shoot. But to the Puritan he was a Frenchman and therefore dangerous to piety and morality. He was charged with heretical performance in his classes and there was much disturbance of heart among the faithful peda- gogues lest his unorthodox pronouncements had found lodgment in the immature minds. He was investigated, cleared of the charge, but it was felt safest that he be re- moved. About a decade previous, Hollis, who was such a warm friend of colonial education, had gagged at the idea of French books in the college library although he thought that such ought to be "esteemed in a public library" as so many "very valuable books in history and philosophy are written in French." 228 An old student of Harvard, recalling his years there, records that French was allowed as an extra at Harvard, fees being charged on the quarterly bills as books were. 229 It is farther southward, where the colleges were of slower growth for various reasons, in Virginia, that we are to place the honor of founding the first chair of modern 227 Webster, Examen Academiarum, page 21. 228 His letter, Harvard Archives, Hollis papers and letters, page 58, 1718-74- 229 J. L. Sibley, letter to S. A. Eliot, Dec. 21, 1849. Geography, History and Modern Language. 157 languages in America. Not much data is available, really, this fact is nearly all that we have, except the additional one of the name of the first occupant, Charles Bellini, of Italian extraction, who came over two years before the outbreak with England, at the very end of the period intended for this investigation. 230 Some ten or twelve years later there issued from the press in Boston a French grammar by John Mary, an instructor at Harvard. 231 It is almost like looking at the portraits of the ancestors to the third or fourth gen- eration of persons to-day and pointing out the great resemb- lance that has been handed down through these successive steps. Not so exact in details and not so amplified in illustra- tions as French school grammars to-day, but in the body of principles and in the general treatment substantially the same. As compared with what is done in this tongue in our schools to-day and as compared with what was done in Latin in medieval days, the course in French almost van- ishes to a speck, so little was there done in it. 180 William and Mary Quarterly, Jan., 1898, page 181. *" 1784, 141 pages. CHAPTER VI. MATHEMATICS. As with a child so with a race, the mental qualities of memory and imitativeness are the first to be developed. Speech, words and phrases are the earliest acquisitions of the individual and of the entire group of human beings. Latin absorbed all energies, filled all moments, supplied all intellectual food. Science of numbers, except in the rudi- ments, was of very slow development. For practical pur- poses the digits had to be evolved, counting was a necessity. Next to these were the demands of religion for keeping track of the great ecclesiastical epochs. For centuries the chief incentive for studying mathematics was the desire to calculate the time of Easter and the festival days. The two great school authorities of the middle ages, Cas- siodorus and Capella, had but little more of mathematics than a few definitions mingled with superstitious absurdi- ties about virtues of certain numbers and figures, Cassio- dorus occupying only a few pages. 232 The universities of the time had only a mere smattering of the subject. Oxford up to 1300 covered only a little of Euclid. The Italian humanists regarded a man who knew Euclid as a prodigy of the intellect. The universities in that peninsula in some cases had geometry as an extra, for which special fees were charged. Roger Bacon, who spanned a large portion of the thirteenth century, complained that very few went be- yond the fifth proposition of the first book of Euclid. For long periods after him the six books were considered a stupendous mountain for one to climb. But there was progress, slow, and painful, and almost wholly along the lines for usefulness in daily life. By 1750 Edinburgh Uni- ^Hallam, Literature of Europe, Chap, i, Paris edition, 1837. Mathematics. 159 versity offered trigonometry, logarithms, surveying, fortifi- cations, dialling, conic-sections, theory of gunnery, with astronomy and some allied physical branches. ARITHMETIC. The eldest of the mathematical family, because the most practical, a trait of character imparted to it by the Egyptians, is arithmetic. The second most distinguishing feature of it was its fondness for formal rules and its contempt for reason, as it was ordinarily presented in the schools for a long time. Its early range was very limited, scarcely extending farther than nursery puzzles of the present day. Alcuin. the great educator for Charles the Great, contains problems designed to excite the curiosity and to whet the wits and to furnish amusement for the boys of his day. How, he asks, can you kill three hundred pigs on three days, killing an odd number each time? After allowing his hearers to sharpen their teeth on this nut for a time, he naively informs them that it cannot be done. Many of his other examples are like that one, familiar to all small children among us, such as two geese before two geese, two geese behind two geese, and two geese between two geese, how many are there in all ? But for our colonial ancestry, an indefatigable investigator ranks the Hornbook as our earliest arithmetical primer since it had Roman numerals. 233 To go beyond this, generally, each child had to make his own manuscript book from the dictation of the teacher as printed books were a great rarity among us up to the eighteenth century. Trade and the counting room set the pace. Arithmetic was only a means of getting along in the world, of bartering and dealing with your fellowmen, of maTcing money, but it was without edu- cational value. In the arrangement of subjects for the common schools the words usually ran "writing and arith- 133 F. Cajori, Teach, and Hist, of Mathematics, page n. 160 Our Colonial Curriculum. metic." The great light among arithmetical authors, Cocker, wrote more books on calligraphy than on numbers. The facilities were very scanty, no blackboards, no slates ; instead cheap paper, often only the margins, blank leaves of day books, backs of letters, even birch bark, with ink made from the maple tree and copperas, were forced into duty. A little mastery of figures was sufficient for the pedagogue. If he could enumerate the minutes in a year or the inches in a mile he was competent to instruct in this branch. He was hardly expected to tackle anything but integral num- bers, but if he could handle fractions and make excursions into the rule of three he was a marvel. Only admitted geniuses got beyond these. Often in the boys' school the whole thing was shunted off to the evening, while spelling, reading, and writing proudly occupied the day. The method was simple and it has not died out yet. It is still to be found on the frontiers and it was common three or four decades ago in those sections that were educationally backward. The teacher curtly gave out "sums" and each pupil strained his very vitals to solve them. If he got the correct answer, which his master decided by looking at a "key," he was given another or pased on to some other subject. We can almost hear now the childish voices piping around the teacher's desk, six, eight, ten, or fifteen of them as the boys group around calling out the answer that each had found. An eagerness, a feverishness with each to get his work passed upon, the whole mass of voices punctured and streaked at times with a querulous complaint of the unlucky stupid ones that they could not see through the matter at all. They were even more insistent than their fellows for fear they might be sent back to their seats forbidden again to seek the shade of the trees outside, in summer, or the sunny side of the rough cabin in winter, to go over the painful path again. It was in fact almost a passion in some schools. Nearly every other branch was excluded. "To understand Mathematics. 161 figures well, we reckoned the height of learning," so runs the testimony of a Virginia preacher only a score or so of years before the Revolution. 23 * If it was such a mighty strain for the boys it was only natural that the girls were saved from such efforts. The road was too rocky, the heights too inaccessible for feminine feet and hence while the boys were taught reading, writing and arithmetic the girls had reading, writing and sewing. To the colonial men it was much easier to thread a needle and to sew a seam than to "do sums" and also required far less mental ability. There were few women teachers in those days, but what there were were gallantly excused from im- parting arithmetic. The average colonial would as soon have expected a woman "to teach the Arabic language as the numerical science." 286 CHIEF TEXT-BOOKS. We can learn the subjects in these early schools, we can get the remininiscences of some of the students in their after life, often in old age, we can draw upon our imaginations to revive scenes for us, but there was no phonograph in those days, nor was there the realistic newspaper reporter sitting in a corner to jot down what occurred. A text-book is not the ideal mirror for reflecting the actual education. Even now the difference between the book and the instruc- tion in the class rooms is often a mighty gorge. But in the absence of the other infallible data, which we can never get, the text-book is one of our safest guides in reviewing the past. Happily there were not many of these and specimens of each still survive. Only six of those in common use in elementary schools did those earnest pioneers, Cajori and ** D. Jarratt, page 24, of his life. *"W. Burton, page 152, District Schools. ii 1 62 Our Colonial Curriculum Wickersham find. They are worthy of rather full picture of their title pages with some other facts as follows : 1 A primer or spelling book containing "Roman numerals, lessons in the fundamental rules of arithmetic and weights and measures, a perpetual almanac" (Wickersham, 194) by George Fox, founder of Soci- ety of Friends, published in 1674 in England, republished at Philadelphia, 1701, at Boston, 1743, and Newport, 1769: Not much used outside of Friends. (In Pennsylvania Historical Society). 2 "The American Instructor, or Young man's Best Companion, containing spelling, reading, writing, arithmetic, in an easier way than any yet published and how to qual- ify any person for business without the help of a master," by George Fisher, printed in Philadelphia, 1748, by Franklin and Hall, also had bookkeeping: rules for mechanical calculations, gauging, dial- ling, and many recipes and directions for various things. 3 James Hodder "Hodder's arithmetick, or that necessary art made most easy," in London, 1661, American edition from 25th English in Boston, 1719. 4 Coffer Konst, by Pieter Venema, Dutch Teacher who died about 1612. English translation in New York in 1730 apparently second oldest arithmetic printed in America. Mathematics. 163 5 Cocker's Arithmetic, really published by John Hawkins, and hence may be under his name: after death of Cocker, in 1667 in England, American edition in 1799 in Philadelphia. 6 Thomas Dilworth Schoolmaster's Assistant first in London 1744 or 1745, reprinted in Philadelphia in 1769; then others. It will help us to get acquainted with these by knowing some of their predecessors. One of the most prominent was Record's "Arithmetic or the crown of arts." 23