ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION.

THE Treatises which form the present volume are interesting in several points of view. Their importance in a philological sense, as monuments of the languages which prevailed at different periods in this island, is evident at the first glance, and need not be dilated upon. They are curious records of the history of Education; and, above all, they are filled with invaluable materials for illustrating the conditions and manners of our forefathers at various periods of their history, as well as the Antiquities of the Middle Ages in general. The history of Education is a subject which is now deservedly attracting more attention than was formerly given to it. It is certainly not uninteresting to trace the various efforts which were made, at all periods of the middle ages, to simplify and render popular the forms of elementary instruction, and the several modifications which these forms underwent.

The groundwork of all school-learning was the knowledge of the Latin language; and the first tasks of the young scholar were to learn the elements of the Latin grammar, to commit to memory words and their meanings, and to practise conversation in the Latin tongue. It was this practical application of the language which contributed very largely to its corruption, for the scholar began by making himself acquainted not with the pure Latin diction of classical books, but with a nomenclature of words—many of them extremely barbarous-which it had then become customary to apply to objects of ordinary use and occurence. The lessons were given by word of mouth, as boys could not in those times be accommodated with books; but they had slates, or roughly made tablets (tabulæ), on which they wrote down the lesson in grammar, or the portion of vocabulary, from the lips of the master, and, after committing it to memory,

erased the writing, to make place for another. The teacher had necessarily his own written exemplar of an elementary Latin grammar, as well as his own written vocabulary of words, from which he read, interpreted, and explained. The old illuminations of manuscripts give us not unfrequently pictures of the interior of the school, in which we see the scholars arranged, with their tablets, before or round the teacher, who is dictating to them. In the earlier periods of Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons, the study of the Latin language was pursued with extraordinary zeal and proportionate success, and our island was celebrated for its learned men; but as time passed on, various circumstances combined to produce a general neglect of learning, so that king Alfred complained, in the latter part of the ninth century, that very few of his subjects could translate from Latin into their mother tongue. "So clean," he said, "was teaching ruined among the English people, that there were very few even of the ecclesiastical order, southward of the Humber, who could understand their service in English, or declare forth an epistle out of Latin into English; and I think there were not many beyond Humber." It may be observed, that in the earlier period, the Northumbrian kingdom was the great seat of learning. "So few such there were," Alfred adds, "that I cannot think of a single instance to the south of the Thames when I began to reign. To God Almighty be thanks that we now have any teacher in stall."

Some of the causes of this decadence in the study of Latin among the Anglo-Saxons belonged probably to a change which had taken place in the social condition of the country, and were not to be overcome. Our great-minded Anglo-Saxon king intimates that his countrymen began to prefer books translated into or compiled in their own language to Latin compositions, and his own example in labouring upon such translations, or causing others to labour upon them, contributed no doubt to give permanence to this very natural taste. Nevertheless, the study of Latin was revived in England with some success during the tenth century, and it was increased by the intercourse between the English and continental scholars. Still this study was by no means general, and at the end of this century and beginning of the next, the labours of the two Alfrics in translating and compiling in English show sufficiently the neglect of the study of Latin

1 Swæ clæne hio was offeallenu on Angelcynne þæt swide feawa wæron behionan Humbre be hiora þeninga cuðen understondan on Englisc, ordefurðum an ærend-gewrit of Lædene on Englisc areccean; and ic wene bætte noht monige begiondan Humbre næren. Swæ feawa hiora

wæron, þæt ic furðum anne anlepne ne mæg gebencean, be suðan Temese þa þa ic to rice feng. Gode ælmihtogum sie benc, þætte we nu ænigne on stal habbað lareowa."-King Alfred's Preface to the Translation of Gregory's Pastorale.

even among the English clergy, which is confirmed by the complaints of the Norman ecclesiastics after the conquest. It is to these two distinguished scholars that we owe the first elementary school-books that are known to have existed in the English language-a Latin grammar (compiled and translated from Donatus and Priscian) and Latin-English vocabularies.

It is singular how soon our forefathers began to exercise their ingenuity in arranging their elementary books-and more especially the vocabularies-in forms calculated to be most attractive to the learner, or to enable him more easily to commit them to memory. The first of the treatises printed in the present volume, which had passed successively through the hands of the two Alfrics, the archbishop and his disciple, is compiled in the form of an interesting and very amusing dialogue, so contrived as to embody a large number of the words of common occurrence in the ordinary relations of life. It is written in Latin, but accompanied with a continuous interlinear gloss in Anglo-Saxon, precisely on the plan of the modern elementary books of the Hamiltonian system of teaching, to which it has been more than once compared; but it possessed one striking difference, which must not be overlooked-that the old AngloSaxon treatise was glossed for the assistance of the teacher, and not, as in the modern books of this description, for the learner. In fact, it is evident that at this time the schoolmasters themselves were very imperfectly acquainted with the Latin language, and that they found it necessary to have books in which the English meaning was written above or beside the Latin word, to enable them to explain it to their scholars. It was this same ignorance which rendered it necessary to have vocabularies, or lists of Latin words, with the translation attached to them-such as those which form the bulk of the present volume. In the earlier and better period, no doubt the teacher had such lists merely in Latin, or glossed only in cases of difficulty, and he was sufficiently learned in the language to explain them himself; but now the schoolmaster required to be reminded himself of the meaning of the Latin word. Nor was this all; for, besides the very incorrect and corrupt manner in which the words are frequently written in these manuscript vocabularies, in many instances the Latin word is wrongly interpreted. Several instances of such blunders may be pointed out in Alfric's "Colloquy;" and others occur frequently in the AngloSaxon vocabularies, some of which are indicated in the notes.

1

1 Some of these are curious. At p. 95 1. 10 occurs the adverb solum, which the glossator has translated as an adjective,

instead of an adverb. On p. 97, the merchant speaks of selling merchandise carius, dearer, than he bought it; but

These vocabularies appear to have been numerous during the later Anglo-Saxon period, and those which remain differ considerably from each other. I have included in the present volume all that are now known to exist. The last of them brings us down to at least the middle of the twelfth century, after which we lose sight of similar vocabularies, until we reach the fifteenth century.

The Anglo-Norman period presents us with a new description of vocabulary, in which the words, still kept together in their different classes, are collected into a sort of continuous discourse. Of these, the earliest, and in many respects the most curious, is that by the celebrated scholar, Alexander Neckam, in which the principal operations and professions of life are enumerated and described in a familiar style. Neckam, singularly enough for an ecclesiastic, begins with the kitchen, describes its furniture and implements and their several uses, and treats of the articles of food and of the methods of cooking them. He then turns to the possessor of the house, describes his dress and accoutrements, when remaining at home or when riding abroad, and introduces us in the sequel to his chamber and to its furniture. The chamber-maid is next introduced to us, with her household employments; and we are taken to the poultry-yard, with a chapter on the cooking of poultry and fish, and on the characteristics of good wine. We are next taught how to build a feudal castle, to fortify it, to store and to defend it; and this leads us naturally to the subject of war in general, and to arms, armour, and soldiers. From this we return to matters of a more domestic character-to the barn, the poultry - yard, and the stable, and to that important occupation of mediæval domestic life, weaving. The occupations of the country follow, and the author explains the construction of carts and waggons, the process of building an ordinary house, and its parts, the various implements and operations of farming, and the construction and use of the plough. We turn rather abruptly from agriculture to navigation, and are instructed in the different sorts of ships, and in their parts and the articles with which they were usually stored. The tools, qualifications, and duties of the medieval scribe, the operations of the goldsmith, and a copious enumeration of ecclesiastical furniture, complete this curious treatise.

The similar treatise of John de Garlande, composed in the earlier half of the following century, differs very much from its predecessor in details

the Anglo-Saxon interpreter has translated as though it meant more beloved, evidently not understanding the phrase to which it belongs. Again, on p. 93,

speaking of the fisherman's art, he evidently did not know whether the Latin hamus meant the hook or the bait.

and arrangement. Its author occupies himself more with the objects which meet the eye in the interior of a great city (Paris), than with feudal or agricultural life. After giving, by way of introduction, a description of the human body and its various parts and members, he proceeds with a long list of trades and manufactures, and the various articles made or sold, such as the hawker who carried shoes and other articles of leather for sale on a pole, the girdle-makers, saddlers, shield-makers, bucklemakers, dealers in needles and other such articles, makers of bridles, hucksters, frobishers (or furbishers), the shopkeepers of the Grand-Pont, glovers, hatters, bowyers, makers of brooches and clasps, bell-makers, coblers, cordwainers, furriers, street criers, menders of cups, itinerant dealers in wine, sellers of cakes, regraters, bakers, pie-makers, cooks, changers, minters, goldsmiths, clothiers, linen-drapers, apothecaries, carpenters, wheelwrights, cart-makers, millers, armourers, fullers, dyers, tanners, smiths. At this point, John de Garlande interrupts his list of trades, to describe the house of a citizen (probus homo) and its furniture, which is followed by the different implements necessary to a scholar, or clerk. John de Garlande then proceeds to give the learner a list of his own wardrobe. A rather quaint account of the ecclesiastical library of a priest follows, with his apparel, and the implements belonging to the service of the church. We return from the church very abruptly to the stable, and then we have a list of the various domestic implements belonging to the mistress of the house, with descriptions of the occupations and employments peculiar to women-weaving, needlework, &c. The account of a poultryshop in the Parvis of Notre Dame furnishes an occasion for giving a list of domestic fowls; that of the fowler, for an enumeration of wild fowls; and that of the fisherman, for a list of fish. In the chapters following, John de Garlande enumerates the domestic animals he had seen in the fields, the wild ones he had met with in the king's forest, the plants and herbs which grew in his own garden, the fruits in his orchard, and the shrubs in his grove; he gives a description of his own hall, an enumeration of the ships he had seen at sea, of the various tortures of the martyrs which were suggested to his mind by the fear of shipwreck, of the jongleurs, minstrels, dancing girls, &c., who performed at the feasts of the rich, of the punishments reserved for sinners, and of the joys of the blessed.

The close of the thirteenth century introduces us to a document of a novel character, although still similar in plan. It is written in verse, no doubt that it might be more easily carried in the memory, and, instead of being intended to teach the Latin language, its purpose was to teach French to the children of the English nobility and gentry. Accordingly,