39
possible to secure an income for the Master by deed. Under the Reformation, Somerset's Commission found that the School Master had 10 pounds yearly by patent; the school was well conducted, and was not confiscated." {50a}
Baconians can compare the yearly 20 pounds (the salary in 1570-6, which then went much further than it does now) with the incomes of other masters of Grammar Schools, and thereby find out if the Head- Master was very cheap. Mr. Elton (who knew his subject intimately) calls the provision "liberal." The Head-Master of Westminster had 20 pounds and a house.
As to the method of teaching, it was colloquial; questions were asked and answered in Latin. This method, according to Dr. Rouse of Perse School, brings boys on much more rapidly than does our current fashion, as may readily be imagined; but experts vary in opinion. The method, I conceive, should give a pupil a vocabulary. Lilly's Latin Grammar was universally used, and was learned by rote, as by George Borrow, in the last century. See Lavengro for details. Conversation books, Sententiae Pueriles, were in use; with easy books, such as Corderius's Colloquia, and so on, for boys were taught to SPEAK Latin, the common language of the educated in Europe. Waifs of the Armada, Spaniards wrecked on the Irish coast, met "a savage who knew Latin," and thus could converse with him. The Eclogues of Mantuanus, a Latin poet of the Renaissance (the "Old Mantuan" of Love's Labour's Lost), were used, with Erasmus's Colloquia, and, says Mr. Collins, "such books as Ovid's Metamorphoses" (and other works of his), "the AEneid, selected comedies of Terence and Plautus, and portions of Caesar, Sallust, Cicero, and Livy."
"Pro-di-gi-ous!" exclaims Mr. Greenwood, {51a} referring to what Mr. Collins says Will had read at school. But precocious Latinity was not thought "prodigious" in an age when nothing but Latin was taught to boys--not even cricket. Nor is it to be supposed that every boy read in all of these authors, still less read all of their