d 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 instruction in a dead language, entirely prevented the old manual
from becoming diverse in its different editions. The style also may serve
to illustrate what I have elsewhere said about the duties of a modern
grammarian. "As for the diversitie of grammars, it is well and profitably
taken awaie by the King's Majesties wisdome; who, foreseeing the
inconvenience, and favorably providing the remedie, caused one kind of
grammar by sundry learned men to be diligently drawn, and so to be set out,
only every where to be taught, for the use of learners, and for the hurt in
changing of schoolemaisters." That is, to prevent the injury which
schoolmasters were doing by a whimsical choice, or frequent changing, of
grammars. But, says the letter, "The varietie of teaching is divers yet,
and alwaies will be; for that every schoolemaister liketh that he knoweth,
and seeth not the use of that he knoweth not; and therefore judgeth that
the most sufficient waie, which he seeth to be the readiest meane, and
perfectest kinde, to bring a learner to have a thorough knowledge therein."
The only remedy for such an evil then is, to teach those who are to be
teachers, and to desert all who, for any whim of their own, desert sound
doctrine.

6. But, to return. A law was made in England by Henry the Eighth,
commanding Lily's Grammar only, (or that which has commonly been quoted as
Lily's,) to be everywhere adopted and taught, as the common standard of
grammatical instruction.[7] Being long kept in force by means of a special
inquiry, directed to be made by the bishops at their stated visitations,
this law, for three hundred years, imposed the book on all the established
schools of the realm. Yet it is certain, that about one half of what has
thus gone under the name of Lily, ("because," says one of the patentees,
"he had _so considerable a hand_ in the composition,") was written by Dr.
Colet, by Erasmus, or by others who improved the work after Lily's dea