CHAPTER VI SCHOOL-BOOKS The most worthless book of a bygone day is a record worthy of preservation. Like a telescopic star, its obscurity may render it unavailable for most purposes, but it serves in hands which know how to use it to determine the places of more important bodies. A. de Morgan, 1847. W HEN any scholar could advance beyond hornbook and primer he was ready for grammar. This was not English grammar, but Latin, and the boy usually began to study it long before he had any book to con. A bulky and wretched grammar called Lilly's was most popular in England. Locke said the study of it was a religious observance without which no scholar wast orthodox. It named twenty-five different kinds of nouns and devoted twenty-two pages of solid print to declensions of nouns; it gave seven genders, with fifteen pages of rules for genders and exceptions. Under such a régime we can can sympathize with Nash's outburst, "Syntaxis and prosodia! you are tormentors of wit and good for nothing but to get schoolmasters twopence a week." It was said of Ezekiel Cheever, the old Boston schoolmaster, who taught for over seventy years, "He taught us Lilly and he Gospel taught." But he also wrote a Latin grammar of his own, Cheever's Accidence, which had unvarying popularity for over a century. Cheever was a thorough grammarian. Cotton Mather thus eulogized him : "Were Grammar quite extinct, yet at his Brain The Candle might have well been Lit again." : There was brought forth at his death a broadside entitled The Grammarian's Funeral. A fac-simile of it is here given. Josiah Quincy, later in life the president of Harvard College, wrote an account of his dismal school life at Andover. He entered the school when he was six years old, and on the form by his side sat a man of thirty. Both began Cheever's Accidence, and committed to memory pages of a book which the younger child certainly could not understand, and no advance was permitted till the first book was conquered. studied through the book twenty times before mastering it. The hours of study were long — eight hours a day and this upon lessons absolutely meaningless. He The OR, An ELEGY compofed upon the Death of Mr. Fohn Woodmancy, formerly a School-Mafter in Boston: But now Published upon the DEATH of the Venerable E Mr. Ezekiel Chevers, The late and famous School-Mafter of Boston in New-England; Who Departed this Life the Twenty-first of August 1708. Early in the Morning. In the Ninety-fourth Year of his Age. Ight Parts of Speech this Day wear Mourning Gowns Volo was willing, Nolo fome-what ftout, By him a Mournful POEM fhould be made. Such Nouns and Verbs as we defective find, What Syntax here can you expect to find? Sic Maftus Cecinit, Benj. Complon. The custom was in Boston -until this century -to study through the grammar three times before any application to parsing. Far better wit than any found in an old-time jest book was the sub-title of a very turgid Latin grammar, "A delysious Syrupe newly Claryfied for Yonge Scholars yt thurste for the Swete Lycore of Latin Speche." The first English Grammar used in Boston public schools and retained in use till this century, was The Young Lady's Accidence, or a Short and Easy Introduction to English Grammar, design'd principally for the use of Young Learners, more especially for those of the Fair Sex, though Proper for Either. It is said that a hundred thousand copies of it were sold. It was a very little grammar about four or five inches long and two or three wide, and had only fifty-seven pages, but it was a very good little grammar when compared with its fellows, being simple and clearly worded. The fashion of the day was to set everything in rhyme as an aid to memory; and even so unpoetical a subject as English Grammar did not escape the rhyming writer. In the Grammar of the English Tongue, a large and formidable book in fine type, all the rules and lists of exceptions and definitions were in verse. A single specimen, the definition of a |