e following definition of "pronoun," taken
from a book intended {664} for beginners, published in 1499? "Pronomen
. . . significat substantiam seu entitatem sub modo conceptus
intrinseco permanentis seu habitus et quietis sub determinatae
apprehensionis formalitate."

That with all these handicaps boys learned Latin at all, and some boys
learned it extremely well, must be attributed to the amount of time
spent on the subject. For years it was practically all that was
studied--for the medieval trivium of grammar, rhetoric and logic
reduced itself to this--and they not only read a great deal but wrote
and spoke Latin. Finally, it became as easy and fluent to them as
their own tongue. Many instances that sound like infant prodigies are
known to us; boys who spoke Latin at seven and wrote eloquent orations
in it at fourteen, were not uncommon. It is true that the average boy
spoke then rather a translation of his own language into Latin than the
best idiom of Rome. The following ludicrous specimens of conversation,
throwing light on the manners as well as on the linguistic attainments
of the students, were overheard in the University of Paris: "Capis me
pro uno alio"; "Quando ego veni de ludendo, ego bibi unum magnum vitrum
totum plenum de vino, sine deponendo nasum de vitro"; "In prandendo non
facit nisi lichare suos digitos."

[Sidenote: Reformation]

Though there was no radical reform in education during the century
between Erasmus and Shakespeare, two strong tendencies may be discerned
at work, one looking towards a milder method, the other towards the
extension of elementary instruction to large classes hitherto left
illiterate. The Reformation, which was rather poor in original
thought, was at any rate a tremendous vulgarizer of the current
culture. It was a popular movement in that it passed around to the
people the ideas that had hitherto been the possession of the few. Its
first effect, indeed, together with that of {665} the tumults that
accompanied it, was for the moment unfavorable to all sorts of
learning. Not only wars and rebellions frightened the youth from
school, but men arose, both in England and Germany, who taught that if
God had vouchsafed his secrets to babes and sucklings, ignorance must
be better than wisdom and that it was therefore folly to be learned.

[Sidenote: Luther]

Luther not only turned the tide, but started it flowing in that great
wave that has finally given civilized la