The Grammar of English Grammars, page 88 by Gould Brown
<< Return to Title Details & Download89
cal refinement, and the relative estimation of the two studies, Latin and English grammar, became in a great measure reversed. Lily was an Englishman, born at Odiham,[6] in Hampshire, in 1466. When he had arrived at manhood, he went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; and while abroad studied some time at Rome, and also at Paris. On his return he was thought one of the most accomplished scholars in England. In 1510, Dr. John Colet, dean of St. Paul's church, in London, appointed him the first high master of St. Paul's School, then recently founded by this gentleman's munificence. In this situation, Lily appears to have taught with great credit to himself till 1522, when he died of the plague, at the age of 56. For the use of this school, he wrote and published certain parts of the grammar which has since borne his name. Of the authorship of this work many curious particulars are stated in the preface by John Ward, which may be seen in the edition of 1793. Lily had able rivals, as well as learned coadjutors and friends. By the aid of the latter, he took precedence of the former; and his publications, though not voluminous, soon gained a general popularity. So that when an arbitrary king saw fit to silence competition among the philologists, by becoming himself, as Sir Thomas Elliott says, "the chiefe authour and setter-forth of an introduction into grammar, for the childrene of his lovynge subjects," Lily's Grammar was preferred for the basis of the standard. Hence, after the publishing of it became a privilege patented by the crown, the book appears to have been honoured with a royal title, and to have been familiarly called King Henry's Grammar.
5. Prefixed to this book, there appears a very ancient epistle to the reader, which while it shows the reasons for this royal interference with grammar, shows also, what is worthy of remembrance, that guarded and maintained as it was, even royal interference was here ineffectual to its purpose. It neither produced uniformity in the methods of teaching, nor, even for ins