Characteristics of Vives as a Writer of Dialogues
Vives’ characteristics have been well described by Bömer, who says: “In the dialogues of Vives we constantly have the pleasure of listening to conversations rich in thought, made spicy at the right moments with pointed wit, so that we are obliged to make an effort to understand the separate words.” It may be added that Vives is always desirous to help forward the cause of learning, yet, on occasion, he can detach himself from his learning and become a boy among boys. He has a strong sense of humour. He can tell a joke against himself, as for instance about his gout,11 or again about his singing.12
Vives as a Precursor of the Drama
It might, with some ground, be urged that Vives and other writers of school dialogues are the precursors of the drama. For not only are there touches of wit and humour in the conversations, but there is a considerable amount of characterisation in the interlocutors. The right person says and does the right thing, and situations are sometimes hit off exquisitely with an epithet. It is clear that a training in following the school dialogues in the generation preceding the xxxviiiElizabethan dramatists may have had a distinctly preparative place in rendering the dialogue of the drama more familiar and attractive as a literary method. For a preparation in the power of audiences following the dialogues of the Elizabethan drama may be regarded as requiring an explanation, when we remember that the interest in and concentration on the dialogue was more urgent than now, owing to the absence of scenery and the other visual effects to which we are accustomed. The element in the drama which is conspicuous by its absence in the school dialogues is the plot. Yet in the school dialogue there is a definite method of construction observed. In the old methods of Latin composition, wherever there is a thesis, the writer must have regard to the sequence of the introduction, the narration, the confirmation, confutation, and the conclusion.
With regard to the school training towards the appreciation of the drama in the Tudor age, it must be remembered that the school-play was a recognised institution, especially the acting of the old plays of Terence, Plautus, and eventually of Greek tragedies. The school dialogue, it should be noted, was one of the earliest of school text-books, and its object, as already stated, was to train the child in readiness of expression in the speaking of Latin. The study of rhetoric followed, and this included not only the study of apt figures of speech in Latin conversation, but also the accompaniment of right gestures of the face, hands, and body. Hence it will be seen that the grammar schools of the early part of the sixteenth century paved the way for an intelligent appreciation of the Elizabethan drama. For the drama not only requires writers; to some extent an intelligent response is necessary in the spectators, at any rate when the plays involve the intellectual elements characteristic of the later part of the sixteenth-century drama in England.
Some Educational Aspects of Vives’ Dialogues
It is remarkable that an elementary text-book for teaching boys to speak Latin should raise so many fundamental questions in the theory of education. But any presentation of the Dialogues of Vives would seem to be incomplete which left unconsidered such points as Vives’ idea of the school, of the school-games, of nature study, of the use of the vernacular in the school, and Vives’ view of the relation of religion and education.
Vives’ Idea of the School
We learn from another book of Vives, the De Tradendis Disciplinis (1531), that the “true academy,” as he calls his ideal school, is “the association together and fellow sympathy of men equally good and learned, who have come together themselves for the sake of learning, and to render the same blessing to others.” Vives suggests that to such a “school” not only should boys go, but also men. He suggests that “even old men, driven hither and thither in a great tempest of ignorance and vice, should betake themselves to the academy as it were to a haven. In short, let all be attracted by a certain majesty and authority.” Further, Vives informs us that in this academy it would certainly be best to place boys there from their infancy, “where they may from the first imbibe the best morals, and evil behaviour will be to them new and detestable.” We thus see that “the academy” combines our so-called elementary, secondary, and university education. The idea of the continuity of education is thus firmly conceived by Vives, and, in addition, the action and reaction of different ages of the individual scholars of the academy on one another. Nowadays, we realise that the association togetherxl of those with the same limitations, e.g., orphans, the blind, the deaf, may be a necessary evil, but that every progressive educational effort should be made to help all those who suffer from such limitations to become capable of taking their places amongst the normal pupils. But Vives goes much further; with him, it is a defect in education to isolate the young from the old, the old from the young. If all be bent on learning and scholarship, the differences of age disappear as clearly as the differences of rank and wealth.
It is necessary to bear in mind this conception of the academy in reading the school dialogues, for we have in them little children learning their alphabet13 and the elements of reading14 and writing,15 and we have also the youths (at our undergraduate stage) going on their academic journey on horseback from Paris to Boulogne. This reminds us of Milton’s sallying forth of students “at the vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, and it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to go out and see her riches and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.”
And we have the student of mature age, in his dressing-gown, at midnight, pursuing his classical meditations. Thus infancy, youth, manhood, all stages, come into the conception of education. Education is a continuous process lasting throughout life, and for Vives the educational institution of “schools” should embody and make facilities for the achievement of that idea. In passing, it should be remarked that John Milton, in his Tractate of Education (1644), and John Dury (1650), in his Reformed School, advocate what we may call the Vives-Academy view of school!16 It must occur xlito every reader of Vives’ De Tradendis Disciplinis as highly probable that Milton’s hurriedly dashed-off and eloquent tractate was written after a fairly recent perusal of Vives’ book.
Games
The treatises on education in Tudor times have scarcely been surpassed by any later works in their treatment of physical education and advocacy of games. Particularly is this so in England, for in that period were published Sir Thomas Elyot’s Gouvernour (1531), Roger Ascham’s Toxophilus (1545), and Richard Mulcaster’s Positions (1581). But outstanding in their importance as these works were, Vives in his School Dialogues makes an interesting supplementary contribution.
Vives shows the value of “play” as an underlying spirit of school work, for the school is a form of “ludus” or play.17 The little child, Corneliola, learns the alphabet “playing,” as indeed children had done at any rate from the days of Quintilian. Indeed, one of the most charming pictures of children provided by Vives is in Dialogue VI., which describes the mother, the boys Tulliolus, Lentulus, Scipio, and the little girl Corneliola, on the return from school of the boys, as they engage in children’s play and discussion of it. The games named in that dialogue are the games of “nuts,” “odd and even,” dice-play, draughts, and playing cards. Vives passes over the question of the moral obliquity of dice-playing and card-playing, though much was said in the Tudor period with regard to them.18
Vives represents the school-boys playing dice and cards for counters, and in the case of the cards for money. But substantially he gives the picture of the play without combining a sermon. In passing, perhaps it is permissible to call attention to the pun in Dialogue XXI., where the Latin word charta is taken up ambiguously in the meaning of “map” as well as of “card.” The discovery of America in 1492 was comparatively recent in 1539, and much interest was felt in geographical questions. It is a great mistake to suppose that the classical scholars like Vives were so wrapt up in meditations on antiquity that they did not realise the significance of contemporary events, and that educationalists were not eager to turn current incidents to use in the class-room.19 An interesting example of the fascination of Vives in geographical discoveries is to be found in the dedication of the De Tradendis Disciplinis to the renowned King John III., King of Portugal, in which he relates the splendid deeds of the Portuguese in travel and discovery, which bring glory to descendants and the obligation to live up to their standard of achievement. In Dialogue XII., in the description of the entrance-hall of a house, a map is referred to in which “you have the world newly discovered by the Spanish navigations.”20
But educationally more important than any description of the games of the period described by Vives is the statexliiiment made by him of the laws which should regulate all play. The account is given in Dialogue XXII. Vives describes his native city of Valencia by sending three characters, Borgia, Scintilla, Cabanillius, on a promenade through the streets. They come to a public tennis-court, where the game of tennis is described. They proceed to the Town Court of Justice, whereupon one of the characters, Scintilla, is requested to state the laws of play which he has previously mentioned a teacher, by name Anneus, had written on a tablet which he had hung in his bed-chamber.
The six laws of play according to Anneus are:—
1. Quando Ludendum? The Time of Playing.—This should be when the mind or body has become wearied. Games are to refresh the mind and body, not for frivolity.
2. Cum Quibus Ludendum? Our Companions in Play.—These should be those who bring to the game no other purpose than your own, viz., that of thorough rest from labour and freedom from mental strain.
3. Quo Ludo? The Sort of Game.—It must be known well by all the players. It must serve for both bodily and mental recreation. It must not be merely a game of hazard.
4. Qua Sponsione? As to Stakes.—Small stakes are justifiable if they increase interest in exercise without producing excitement or anxiety of mind. Big stakes do not make a game; they introduce the rack.
5. Quemadmodum? The Manner of Play.—Win and lose with absolute equanimity. No game should serve to rouse anger. No oaths, swearing, deceit, sordidness.
6. Quamdiu Ludendum? Length of Play.—Until one is refreshed and the hour of serious business calls.
Nature Study
It has already been mentioned that Vives supplies a dialogue describing an academic journey.21 Two of the characters thus discourse:—
Misippus. Look how softly the river flows by! What a delightful murmur there is of the full crystal water amongst the golden rocks! Do you hear the nightingale and the goldfinch? Of a truth, the country round Paris is most delightful!
Philippus. How placidly the Seine flows in its current.... Oh, how the meadow is clothed with a magic art.
Missippus. And by what a marvellous Artist!
Philippus. What a sweet scent is exhaled.... Please sing some verses as you are wont to do.
Then Vives introduces some lines by Angelus Politian praising the joy of peaceful, silent days which pass by without the agitation of ambition and the allurement of luxury, with blamelessness, though we work as with the labour of the poor man. Again22:—
Bambalio. Listen, there is the nightingale!
Graculus. Where is she?
Bambalio. Don’t you see her there, sitting on that branch? Listen how ardently she sings, nor does she leave off.
Nugo. (As Martial says) Flet philomela nefas. (The nightingale bemoans any injustice.)
Graculus. What a wonder she carols so sweetly when she is away from Attica where the very waves of the sea dash upon the shore, not without their rhythm.
Then Nugo tells the story of the nightingale and cuckoo.23 One more instance. Several boys are out for a morning walk:—
Malvenda. Don’t let us take our walk as if in a rush, but slowly and gently....
Joannius [after contemplating the view]. There is no sense which has not a lordly enjoyment! First, the eyes! what varied colours, what clothing of the earth and trees, what tapestry! What paintings are comparable with this view?... Not without truth has the Spanish poet, Juan de Mena, called May the painter of the earth. Then the ear. How delightful to hear the singing of birds, and especially the nightingale. Listen to her (as she sings in the thicket) from whom, as Pliny says, issues the modulated sound of the completed science of music.... In very fact, you have, as it were, the whole study and school of music in the nightingale. Her little ones ponder and listen to the notes which they imitate. The tiny disciple listens with keen intentness (would that our teachers received like attention!) and gives back the sound.... Add to this there is a sweet scent breathing in from every side, from the meadows, from the crops, from the trees, even from the fallow-land and neglected fields.
Wine-drinking and Water-drinking
There can be little doubt even from the descriptions of feasts in the School Dialogues of Vives, as well as of Mosellanus and Erasmus, that drunkenness was not uncommon even amongst teachers in the Tudor period.24 Vives distinguished himself by boldly advocating the claims of water against those of wines and beer. In Dialogue XI., “Getting dressed and a Morning Constitutional,” we read [speaking of the food for breakfast, after the walk]:—
Malvenda. Shall we have wine to drink?
Bellinus. By no means,—but beer, and that of the weakest, of yellow Lyons, or else pure and liquid water drawn from the Latin or Greek well.
Malvenda. Which do you call the Latin well and the Greek well?
Bellinus. Vives is accustomed to call the well close to the gate the Greek well; that one further off he calls the Latin well. He will give you his reasons for the names when you meet him.
J. T. Freigius, who is always ready to supply what Vives omits, gives in his commentary the reasons for Vives. The Greek well is the well close to the gate, because the Greek xlvilanguage is closer to the sources of language; the “Latin” well, for similar reasons, is further off from the gate.
In Dialogue XVII., called “The Banquet,” we read:—
Scopas. Don’t give one too much water (i.e. in his wine). Don’t you know the old proverb, “You spoil wine, when you pour water into it”?
Democritus. Yes, then you spoil both the water and the wine.
Polaemon. I would rather spoil them both than be spoiled by one of them.
But it is in Dialogue XVIII, on “Drunkenness,” that Vives specially launches his thunderbolts against excessive drinking. With the institution of lessons on temperance in schools under some Local Education Authorities in England, we have a return to the methods of Vives. For in the school dialogue referred to we have the matter put very strongly, and probably Vives’ statements would not prove unacceptable to modern teachers of this recently re-introduced subject. After describing the moral effects of drunkenness, one of the characters says: “Who would not prefer to be shut up at home with a dog or a cat than with a drunkard? For those animals have more intellect in them than the drunkard.” Another character remarks: “When you drink, you treat wine as you like. When you have drunk, it will treat you as it likes.”
The Vernacular
It is surprising to find that though Vives, in 1538, produced his School Dialogues for the purpose of teaching children to speak Latin, and though he regarded early and thorough acquaintance with Latin, both for purposes of speaking and writing, as the very mark and seal of a well-educated man, there was no learned man of his age who went so far in advocacy of the importance of the teaching inxlvii the vernacular of the pupil at a still younger age. As this constitutes one of the grounds upon which the pre-eminence of Vives as an educationalist would be rested, as for instance in comparison with Erasmus, it may not be altogether irrelevant to quote here the translation of a passage from the De Tradendis Disciplinis explaining Vives’ views on this subject.
“The scholars should first speak in their homes their mother tongue, which is born with them, and the teacher should correct their mistakes. Then they should, little by little, learn Latin. Next let them intermingle with the vernacular what they have heard in Latin from their teacher, or what they themselves have learned. Thus, at first, their language should be a mixture of the mother-tongue and Latin. But outside the school they should speak the mother-tongue so that they should not become accustomed to a hotch-potch of languages.... Gradually the development advances and the scholars become Latinists in the narrower sense. Now must they seek to express their thoughts in Latin, for nothing serves so much to the learning of a language as continuous practice in it. He who is ashamed to speak a language has no talent for it. He who refuses to speak Latin after he has been learning it for a year must be punished according to his age and circumstances.”25
So much for the pupil’s knowledge of the vernacular. Still more emphatically Vives speaks with regard to the necessity of a thorough knowledge of the vernacular by the teacher.
“Let the teacher know the mother-tongue of his boys, so that by this means, with the more ease and readiness, he may teach the learned languages. For unless he makes use of the right and proper expressions in the mother-tongue, he will certainly mislead the boys, and the error thus imbibed will accompany them persistently as they grow up and xlviiibecome men. How can boys understand anything sufficiently well in their own language unless the words are said with the utmost clearness. Let the teacher preserve in his memory all the old forms of vernacular words, and let him develop the knowledge not only of modern forms, but also of the old words and those which have gone out of use, and let him be as it were the guardian of the treasury of his language.”26
The Educational Ideal of Vives
It has been usual to enter to the credit of the Protestantism of John Sturm and Maturinus Corderius the educational ideal of pietas literata. No doubt the seventeenth-century Huguenots of France and the Puritans of England were distinguished by this double educational aim of piety and culture. But it was characteristic also of the earlier Catholic world of Erasmus and of Vives. Rising above the ordinary level of the scholars of the Italian Renascence, Erasmus and Vives had higher sympathy and delight in children. Erasmus dedicated his Colloquia or Dialogues (in 1524) to the little child John Erasmius Froben, the son of the renowned publisher Froben of Basle. “You have arrived,” he says, “at an age than which none happier occurs in the course of life for imbibing the seeds of literature and of piety.... The Lord Jesus keep the present season of your life pure from all pollutions, and ever lead you on to better things.”
So, too, in 1538, Juan Luis Vives dedicated his School Dialogues to a child, the eleven-years-old boy—Prince Philip.
Both Erasmus and Vives believed in early training in religious instruction. Vives writes as follows on religious education: “Who is there who has considered the power and loftiness of the mind, its understanding of the most xlixremarkable things, and through understanding love of them, and from love the desire to unite himself with them, who does not perceive clearly that man was formed, not for food, clothing, and habitation, not for difficult, secret, and vexatious knowledge, but to develop the desire to know God more truly, to participate in His Divine Nature and His Eternity?... Since piety is the only way of perfecting man, and accomplishing the end for which he was formed, therefore piety is of all things the one thing necessary. Without the others man can be perfected and complete; without this, he cannot but be most miserable.”27
In one passage Vives remarks that the strength of religion is developed by its exercise rather than by any theoretical knowledge. For this reason, when meals are described in the School Dialogues, we find some form of grace, before and after the meal, duly said. The tone of the Dialogues is reverential. A. J. Namèche says28 that in the Dialogues “Vives brings a sense of decency, respect for morals, the fear so laudable of doing any violence to the innocence of young people. We know well enough that Erasmus is far from being irreproachable in this respect, and that his language is free sometimes even to the extent of cynicism.” Without wishing to follow Namèche in the comparison of the moral aspects of Erasmus and Vives in their dialogues, a claim may be made for both that they were eager advocates in the joining of piety with culture, and that both Erasmus and Vives, each in his own way, did valiant work in endeavouring to raise the standard of manners and morals as well as to promote piety in young and old.
There can, however, be no doubt that Vives deserved the high reputation which he received of reverence for the morals lof youth. Peter Motta is full of enthusiasm for Vives in this respect. In the Preface to his Commentary on Vives’ School Dialogues, Motta says: “By reading other books such as those of Terence and Plautus, you can undoubtedly get extracts which show the fruit of eloquence. But who can avoid seeing that in them you will find incitements to vices, and stumbling blocks to morals? Now, in our author Vives, you will find little flowers of Latin elegance which he has brought together from various most renowned authors, whilst there is nothing in his work which does not seem to suggest even the Christ, or at least the highest morality and sound education.” This may be regarded as the exaggerated language of an admirer, but the reverential tone of Vives is clear enough, reminding one of Vittorino da Feltre, of whom it was said that he went to his teacher’s desk each day as if to an altar.
Vives’ Last Dialogue: The Precepts of Education
Vives lays down twenty-four Precepts of Education. Some critics have thought such precepts out of place in a book written for boys. But Vives has done all he could to interest boys on their own level. He has always retained the boy in himself, and has spoken from the fulness of his heart, as a boy, in the dialogues. And as he parts company with boys in these dialogues, he wishes, as all true, older human beings must wish, for once at least to give of his best to the young. He will give back to the boys who have followed him through the Dialogues (as a teacher who is a “good sort”) a full reward for their trouble. He will pay them the compliment of treating them seriously.
This seems a right instinct. It is not priggish (as some seem to think) to give of a man’s best to a boy or to boys atli the right moment. When once a boy is sure there is “the boy” in any man he knows, there is no camaraderie he delights in such as that which allows him to see a little of the man,—to jump, so to say, on the man’s mental shoulders to catch a better glimpse of the far distance.
When John Thomas Freigius—grown up into the classical scholar—looks back, in his Preface to his edition of Vives’ School Dialogues, he says: “As a boy, I so loved Luis Vives that not even now do I feel my old love for him has faded away from my mind.” Perhaps the last dialogue, with its twenty-four precepts, did not cause the love of Freigius for Vives, but the love being there, it continued in spite of having to read the precepts. Anyway, Vives, who had turned aside from the weighty problems of learning and literature, where he belonged to the great triumvirate of writers of his day—enthroned by contemporary judges by the side of the great Erasmus and the great Budaeus—stated the precepts which, in his view, should guide, not only his book of dialogues and the schools, but all stages of culture. Boys brought up on these precepts, and retaining them as principles of education in their later life, might perhaps have cheered the heart of Vives by showing that he had abstained from his higher studies to some purpose when he wrote his School Dialogues.
At any rate, for the modern reader, there is the satisfaction of knowing, when he reads the School Dialogues of Vives, that he is reading a work which won the approval of children. With all our modern advance, of which of the writers of our text-books to-day would present-day children say as much as was said of this sixteenth-century scholar, who merely wrote a text-book to help boys of the Tudor Age to speak Latin!—“As a boy I so loved Luis Vives that not even now do I feel my old love for him has faded away from my mind.”
NOTE
The short summaries or headings to each dialogue in the text are translations from the edition of Vives’ Dialogues by John Thomas Freigius, published at Nürnberg, 1582. After each dialogue Freigius provides a commentary, by far the most complete of any commentator on Vives’ book, giving illustrative quotations and notes on obscure points, and giving references to the ancient sources from which technical expressions were taken by Vives. The headings of the sub-sections of each dialogue as given in the present translation are taken from Freigius. They are not a part of the original text of Vives.
The above is the most scholarly and thorough edition of the Dialogues, but it may be noted that Dr. Bömer29 has distinguished over one hundred editions of the book, showing its popularity not only in the sixteenth century but its continued interest in still later generations of the study of Latin speech.
TUDOR SCHOOL-BOY LIFE
I
SURRECTIO MATUTINA—Getting up in
the Morning
Beatrix Puella, Emanuel, Eusebius
Dialogue (Latin—colloquium, collocutio, sermo) is so called from διαλέγεως, in which sort of composition Plato was the first to delight. In this first dialogue or discourse (sermone) there are laid down five duties, which should be performed carefully in the morning by youths and boys, viz. to rise betimes (because early morning is the friend to studies), to dress, to comb the hair, to wash, to pray.
Beat. May Jesus Christ awake you from the sleep of all vice. O you boys, are you ever going to wake up to-day?
Euseb. I don’t know what has fallen on my eyes. I seem to have them full of sand.
I. Getting Up
Beat. That is always your morning song—quite an old one. I shall open both the wooden and the glass windows, so that the morning shall strike brightly on your eyes from both. Get up! Get up!
Euseb. Is it already morning?
II. Dressing
Beat. It is nearer mid-day than the dawn. Emanuel, do you want another shirt?
Eman. I don’t now need anything. This is clean enough. I will take another to-morrow. Please give me my stomacher.
Beat. Which? The single thickness or the double thickness?
Eman. Which you like. I don’t mind. Give me the single thickness so that I may be less heavy for playing ball (pila) to-day.
Beat. This is always your custom. You think of your play before your school-work.
Eman. What do you say, you stupid! When school itself is called play (ludus).
Beat. I don’t understand your playing with grammar and logic (grammaticationes et sophismata).
Eman. Give me the leathern shoe-straps.
Beat. They are torn to pieces. Take the silken ones as your schoolmaster has ordered. What now? Will you have the breeches and long stockings as it is summer?
Eman. No, indeed. Give me only the long stockings. Please, fasten them for me.
Beat. What! Have you arms of hay or of butter?
Eman. No, indeed. They are sewn together with threads. Alas! what straps (i.e. points) have you given me, without supports and all torn!
Beat. Don’t you remember that yesterday at dice-playing you lost the others altogether?
Eman. How do you know?
Beat. I observed you through a chink in the door as you were playing with Guzmanulus.
Eman. Oh! I beg that you won’t tell the teacher.
Beat. No, but I will tell him if ever you call me “ugly” again, as you are accustomed to do.
Eman. What if I call you greedy?
Beat. Call me what you will, but not ugly.
Eman. Give me my shoes.
Beat. Which? Those with the long straps (i.e. sandals)?
Eman. Those covered against the mud.
Beat. Against the dry mud, which they call dust. But thou doest well, for on the open road the strap gets broken and the buckle lost.
Eman. Put them on, I beg.
Beat. Do it yourself.
Eman. I cannot bend myself.
Beat. You could easily bend, but your laziness makes it difficult, or have you swallowed a sword as the mountebank did four days ago? Are you now so delicate? What will happen to you as you grow up?
Eman. Tie a double knot—for it is more elegant.
Beat. Certainly not, for then the knot would be loosened at that point and the shoe would fall from your foot. It is better either to have a double drawing tight or one knot and one loop. Take your tunic with long sleeves and your woven girdle.
Eman. No, certainly not that, but the leathern hunting girdle.
Beat. Your mother forbids that; do you wish to have everything according to your own caprice? And yesterday you broke the pin of the clasp!
Eman. I could not otherwise unbuckle it. Then give me that red one made of linen cloth.
III. Using the Comb
Beat. Take it, put your French girdle on. Comb your head first with the thinner, then with the thicker teeth, place your cap on your head, so as not to throw it to the back of your head, as is your custom, or on to your forehead down to your eyes.
Eman. Let us at last go out.
Beat. What, without having washed your hands and face!
Eman. With your worrying curiosity you would have already plagued a bull to death, let alone a man. You think you are clothing not a boy, but a bride.
IV. Washing
Beat. Eusebius, bring a wash-basin and a pitcher. Raise it to a fair height; let the water drop out rather than pour it from the stopple. Wash thoroughly that dirt from the joints of the fingers. Cleanse the mouth and use water for gargling. Rub the eyelids and eyebrows, then the glands of the neck under the ears vigorously. Then take a cloth and dry yourself. Immortal God! that it should be necessary to admonish you as to all these things, one by one, and that you should do nothing of your own thought.
Eman. Ah! you are too much of a boss and too rude!
V. Prayer
Beat. And you are too shrewd and pretty a boy. Come, give me a kiss. Kneel down before this image of our Saviour and say the Lord’s Prayer and the other prayers, as you are accustomed, before you step out of your bedroom. Take care, my Emanuel, that you think of nothing else while you are praying. Stay a moment, hang this little handkerchief on your girdle, so that you can blow and clean your nose.
Eman. Am I now sufficiently prepared, in your opinion?
Beat. You are.
Eman. Then not in my opinion since at last I am in yours. I will dare make a wager that I have taken up a whole hour in dressing.
Beat. Well, what even if you had taken two? Where would you have gone if you hadn’t? What were you going to do? I suppose to dig or to plough?
Eman. As if there were a lack of something to do.
Beat. Oh, the great man! so keenly occupied in doing nothing.
Eman. Won’t you go away, you girl sophist? Go, or I’ll shy this shoe at you or tear the veil off your head.
II
PRIMA SALUTATIO—Morning Greetings
Puer, Mater, Pater—Boy, Mother, Father
In this dialogue there are three parts: the first contains the mutual salutations expressed in the morning when the little charms of early childhood are skilfully displayed. The second part contains the sport of a boy with a dog. The third gives a conversation with this boy concerning the school, the opportunity for which arises from the incident with the little dog.
I. Morning Salutation
Boy. Hail, my father! hail, my mother dear (salve mea matercula)! I wish that this may be a happy day for you, my little brothers (germanuli). May Christ be propitious to you, my little sisters!
Father. My son, may God guard you and lead you to great goodness (ingentes virtutes).
Mother. May Christ preserve you, my light. What are you doing, my darling? How are you? How did you rest last night?
Boy. I am very well and slept peacefully.
Mother. Thanks be to Christ! May He grant that this may be constantly so!
Boy. In the middle of the night I was roused up with a pain in the head.
Mother. It grieves me sorely to hear that (me perditam et miserrimam)! What do you say? In what part of the head?
Boy. In the forehead.
Mother. For how long?
Boy. Scarcely the eighth of an hour. Afterwards I fell asleep again, nor did I feel anything further of it.
Mother. Now I breathe again; for you took away my breath.
II. Playing with the Dog
Boy. All good to you! Little Isabel, prepare my breakfast. Ruscio, Ruscio, come here, jolly little dog! See how he fawns with his tail and how he raises himself on his hind legs. What are you doing? How are you? Hullo, you, bring a bit or two of bread which we may give him, then you will see some clever sport. Won’t you eat? Haven’t you had anything to-day? Clearly there is more intelligence in that dog than in that crass mule-driver.
III. The Father’s Little Talk with his Boy
Father. My Tulliolus, I should like to have a talk with you soon.
Boy. Why, my father? For nothing more delightful could happen to me than to listen to you.
Father. Is thy Ruscio here an animal or a man?
Boy. An animal, as I think.
Father. What have you in you, why you should be a man and not he? You eat, drink, sleep, walk, run, play. So he does all these things also.
Boy. But I am a man.
Father. How do you know this? What have you now, more than a dog? But there is this difference that he cannot become a man. You can, if you will.
Boy. I beg of you, my father, bring this about as soon as possible.
Father. It will be done if you go where animals go, to come back men.
Boy. I will go, father, with all the pleasure in the world! But where is it?
Father. In the school.
Boy. There is no delay in me for such a great matter.
Father. Nor in me. Isabel, dear, do you hear, give him his breakfast in this little satchel.
Isabel. What shall it be?
Father. A piece of bread and butter, and dry figs, or pressed, not dried, grapes, as an additional dish—for fresh grapes besmear the fingers of boys and they spoil their clothes—unless he should prefer a few cherries, or golden and long plums. Hang the satchel on his little arm, so that it shall not fall off.
III
DEDUCTIO AD LUDUM—Escorting to School
Pater, Puer, Propinquus, Philoponus Ludimagister—Father, Boy, Relative, Philoponus the Schoolmaster
Philoponus.—This name, so worthy of a teacher, has been rightly and wisely bestowed by the author. For the true teacher ought to be φιλόπονος, that is, φίλος τοῦ πονοῦ, a lover of labour, and by his diligence and assiduity to give satisfaction to his pupils. But Philoponus is, moreover, the proper name of the Greek interpreter of Aristotle.
Consultation as to a Teacher
Father. Make the holy sign of the cross.
Son. Lead us ignorant ones, O most wise Jesus Christ, Thou most powerful, lead us most weak!
Father. Inform me, I beg, thou who art most versed in the study of letters, who in this school is the best teacher of boys?
Prop. The most learned is a certain Varro; but the most industrious and the most upright is Philoponus, whose erudition, moreover, is not to be despised. Varro has the best frequented school, and in his house he has a numerous flock of boarders. Philoponus does not seem to delight in numbers, but is content with fewer boys.
Father. I should prefer him. That must be he walking into the hall of the school. Son, this is, as it were, the laboratory for the formation of men, and he is the artist-educator. Christ be with you, master! Uncover your head, my boy, and bow your right knee, as you have been taught. Now, stand up!
Philoponus. May your coming be a blessing to us all! What may be your business?
Father. I bring you this boy of mine for you to make of him a man from the beast.
Philoponus. This shall be my earnest endeavour. He shall become a man from a beast, a fruitful and good creature out of a useless one. Of that have no doubt.
Father. What is the charge for your instruction?
Philoponus. If the boy makes good progress, it will be little; if not, a good deal.
Father. That is acutely and wisely said, as is all you say. We share the responsibility then; you, to instruct zealously, I to recompense your labour richly.
IV
EUNTES AD LUDUM LITERARIUM—Going to
School
Cirratus, Praetextatus, Titivillitium, Teresula (An Old Woman, A Woman Seller of Vegetables)
The names of the interlocutors in this dialogue for the most part signify something serious and ancient. Cirrati pueri were those boys who wore their hair curled and crisped. Krausz Haar. For the cirrus is an instrument devised for the curling of hair.
Martial: