d used by all parties immediately, he conveyed a considerable
amount of liberal religious and moral instruction with enough wit to
make it palatable. Luther, on Melanchthon's advice, notwithstanding
his hatred for the author, urged the use of the {668} _Colloquies_ in
Protestant schools, [Sidenote: 1548] and they were likewise among the
books permitted by the Imperial mandate issued at Louvain.

The method of learning language was for the instructor to interpret a
passage to the class which they were expected to be able to translate
the next day. Ascham recommended that, when the child had written a
translation he should, after a suitable interval, be required to
retranslate his own English into Latin. Writing, particularly of
letters, was taught. The real advance over the medieval curriculum was
in the teaching of Greek--to which the exceptionally ambitious school
at Geneva added, after 1538, Hebrew. Save for this and the banishment
of scholastic barbarism, there was no attempt to bring in the new
sciences and arts. For nearly four hundred years the curriculum of
Erasmus has remained the foundation of our education. Only in our own
times are Latin and Greek giving way, as the staples of mental
training, to modern languages and science. In those days modern
languages were picked up, as Milton was later to recommend that they
should be, not as part of the regular course, but "in some leisure
hour," like music or dancing. Notwithstanding such exceptions as
Edward VI and Elizabeth, who spoke French and Italian, there were
comparatively few scholars who knew any living tongue save their own.

[Sidenote: University life]

When the youth went to the university he found little change in either
his manner of life or in his studies. A number of boys matriculated at
the age of thirteen or fourteen; on the other hand there was a
sprinkling of mature students. The extreme youth of many scholars made
it natural that they should be under somewhat stricter discipline than
is now the case. Even in the early history of Harvard it is recorded
that the president once "flogged four bachelors" for {669} being out
too late at night. At colleges like Montaigu, if one may believe
Erasmus, the path of learning was indeed thorny. What between the
wretched diet, the filth, the cold, the crowding, "the short-winged
hawks" that the students combed from their hair or shook from their
shirts, it is no wonder that many of them fell ill