writing of Latin prose and verse may be made not only a comparatively easy, but an attractive and invigorating discipline.

In order to give full effect to the improved methods, they both recommend a rearrangement of the classes, which in many existing schools seem to have been rather loose and straggling. Instead of a number of thin and irregularly sized classes, they urge the careful distribution of the pupils into compact and co-ordinate forms, and they show how a well-arranged system of classes and class-work will help to concentrate, economise and turn to the best account the teaching power of the school. Hoole goes into minute details as to the number of forms, and the work done in each. Brinsley often speaks of the lower and upper schools, and the authors read in them: and when the school was divided into six forms, each of these sections would contain three. Sometimes he speaks of the lower, the middle, and the upper school, and these sections would contain two or three classes each, according as the school was divided into six or nine forms. But whatever the number of forms, there is no difference whatever in the books used, and the authors read, at each stage of the pupil's progress. On this point both reformers are highly conservative. They even maintain that a book so unfitted in many ways for elementary use as Lily's Grammar must still be retained and taught in its integrity. This feature makes their list of school-books and authors not only instructive, but directly available, in the way of evidence, for the purpose in hand. They describe an established curriculum in which, as I have said, there would be hardly any change of importance since the days of Shakespeare's youth.

Brinsley gives a less detailed and co-ordinate enumeration of school-books; but his list is valuable, not only from its earlier date, but as an introduction to the fuller account supplied by Hoole. The difference between them arises from the fact that Brinsley nowhere attempts a full or formal enumeration of the books in use, but simply refers to them incidentally in connection with his own labours, and the improved methods of teaching he expounds and enforces. Hoole, on the other hand, gives, as I have said, two lists: one of the books used in the classes of Rotherham Grammar School early in the beginning of the seventeenth century, the other of the works used in the different grammar schools throughout the country. In the lower school the first class was of course engaged for a time in mastering the accidence and the rules of Lily's Grammar, and the bitterest complaints are made of the time usually wasted in the process. When the pupils had acquired some command over the grammatical elements, and advanced towards construing, Brinsley gives the following, as the list of authors read in the lower school: "Pueriles Confabulatiunculae, Sententiae Pueriles, Cato, Corderius' Dialogues, Esop's Fables, Tully's Epistles gathered by Sturmius, Tully's Offices, with the books adjoined to them, the De Amicitia, De Senectute, and the Paradoxes, Ovid's de Tristibus, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Virgil ". He also mentions, as helps at this stage, Drax's "Manual of Phrases," the "Flores Poetarum," and Cicero's "De Natura Deorum". In the upper school, while Ovid and Virgil are still read, he mentions among the more difficult authors taken up, Plautus, Horace, Persius and Juvenal. In reading these he recommends all

the helps which can be had, and enumerates the critical texts and commentaries that are likely to prove of the greatest service. In the higher forms, however, the boys are largely occupied in writing Latin epistles, Latin themes and verses, and in the rhetorical as well as the grammatical study of the Latin poets and prose writers. Hoole's first list is of books and authors commonly used in the grammar schools of the country. But, side by side with this, he gives another list, headed "Subsidiary Books," those which may be valuable for use and reference at each stage of the progress. Of this double list he speaks as

follows:

"The Authors which I prescribe to be used are partly classical, which every scholar should provide for himselfe, and because these are constantly learnt in most Grammar Schools I appoint them to be read at such times as are usually spent in Lessons. The Subsidiary Books are those which are helpful to children in performing their tasks with more ease and benefit; and, because all the scholars will not have like need of them, and they are more than any one will desire to buy, these should be laid up in the Schoole Library, for every Form to make use on as they shall have

occasion."

To save space, I shall give only the list of books and authors commonly read in the grammar schools. The first form is occupied with the accidence and the "Sententiæ Pueriles"; the books in use in the second

form were "Lily's Grammar," Cato's "Maxims," "Pueriles Confabulatiunculæ," and the Colloquies of Corderius; in the third form, in addition to the grammar and Latin Testament, Æsop's Fables, the Dialogues of Castelio, the Eclogues of Mantuanus, and the Colloquies of Helvicus; in the fourth form, in addition to the Testament and grammar, the "Elements of Rhetoric,"

Terence, "The Selected Epistles of Cicero," Ovid's “De Tristibus," and "Metamorphoses," and Buchanan's Psalms; in the fifth form, in addition to the "Elements of Rhetoric," Livy's Orations, Justin, Cæsar, Florus, the Colloquies of Erasmus, and Virgil; in the sixth form, Horace, Juvenal, Persius, Lucan, Plautus, Martial, Cicero's Oations, and Seneca's Tragedies. The list of authors in the sixth form is rather a long one; but it would seem that while Horace, Juvenal, and Persius were thoroughly read, the others were only read in selected portions. On this point Hoole says, in his own detailed account of the work in this form: "As for Lucan, Seneca's Tragedies, Martiall, and the rest of the finest Latin poets, you may do well to give them a taste of each, and show them how and wherein they may imitate them, and borrow something out of them. Mr. Farnbie's notes upon them will be helpful; and Pareus or Taubman upon Plautus will make that some merry comedies of his may be easily read over".

To complete the evidence supplied by Hoole, I will give in his own words his account of the books and authors used in the Rotherham Grammar School before he became head-master. This second list is indeed of far higher interest and value for the purpose of this paper than the first, as it gives a vivid picture of the work actually done in the various forms of a country grammar school while Shakespeare was still alive. As will be seen, Hoole gives these details mainly for the purpose of showing that he had proposed no change in the course of instruction, but simply in the methods of teaching and school management :

"That none may censure this Discovery which I have made to be an uncouth way of Teaching, or contrary to what had been afore

time observed by my Predecessors of Rotherham School (which is the same that most Schole-Masters yet use), I have hereto annexed their method, just as I received it from the mouth of some Scholars who had been trained up therein all their time at that Schoole and hence sent to the University; before I came hither to be master.

"The custom was to enter boyes to the Schoole one by one, as they were fit for the Accidents and to let them proceed therein severally, till so many others came to them, as were fit to be ranked with them in a form. These were first put to read the Accidents, and afterwards made to commit it to memory; which when they had done, they were exercised in construing and parsing the examples in the English Rules, and this was called the first form: of which it was required to say four Lessons a day but of the other forms, a part and a Lesson in the fore-noons, and a Lesson onely in the after.

:

"The second form was to repeat the Accidents for Parts; to say fore-noons Lessons in Propria quae maribus, Quae genus, and As in praesenti, which they repeated memoriter, construed and parsed; to say an after-noon's lessone in Sententiae Pueriles, which they repeated by hart, and construed and parsed; they repeated their tasks every Friday memoriter, and parsed their Sentences out of the English.

"The third form was enjoyned first to repeat two parts together every morning, one out of the Accidents and the other out of that forementioned part of the Grammar, and together with their parts, each one was made to form one person of a verb Active in any of the four Conjugations: their fore-noons Lessons were in Syntaxis, which they used to say memoriter, then to construe it, and parse onely the words which contain the force of the Rule; their forenoons lessons were two dayes in Aesop's Fables, and other two dayes in Cato; both which they construed and parsed, and said Cato memoriter; these Lessons they translated into English, and repeated all on Fridayes, construing out of the Translations into Latine.

"The fourth form having ended Syntaxis, first repeated it, and Propria quae maribus, etc., together for parts, and formed a person of a verb Passive, as they did the Active before; for Lessons they proceeded to the by-rules, and so to Figura and Prosodia; for afternoon lessons they read Terence two dayes, and Mantuan two dayes,