Read Ebook: Tudor school-boy life: the dialogues of Juan Luis Vives by Vives Juan Luis Watson Foster Translator

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Ebook has 521 lines and 83973 words, and 11 pages

STYLE

CHARACTERISTICS OF VIVES AS A WRITER OF DIALOGUES

Vives' characteristics have been well described by B?mer, 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, or again about his singing.

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 Elizabethan 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.

SOME EDUCATIONAL ASPECTS OF VIVES' DIALOGUES

VIVES' IDEA OF THE SCHOOL

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 alphabet and the elements of reading and writing, and we have also the youths 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."

GAMES

The six laws of play according to Anneus are:--

NATURE STUDY

It has already been mentioned that Vives supplies a dialogue describing an academic journey. Two of the characters thus discourse:--

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. Again:--

Then Nugo tells the story of the nightingale and cuckoo. One more instance. Several boys are out for a morning walk:--

WINE-DRINKING AND WATER-DRINKING

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 language is closer to the sources of language; the "Latin" well, for similar reasons, is further off from the gate.

THE VERNACULAR

"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."

"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 become 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."

THE EDUCATIONAL IDEAL OF VIVES

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 remarkable 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."

VIVES' LAST DIALOGUE: THE PRECEPTS OF EDUCATION

NOTE

TUDOR SCHOOL-BOY LIFE

Dialogue is so called from ?????????, in which sort of composition Plato was the first to delight. In this first dialogue or discourse there are laid down five duties, which should be performed carefully in the morning by youths and boys, viz. to rise betimes , to dress, to comb the hair, to wash, to pray.

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.

PATER, PUER, PROPINQUUS, PHILOPONUS LUDIMAGISTER--Father, Boy, Relative, Philoponus the Schoolmaster

PRAECEPTOR, LUSIUS, AESCHINES, PUERI--Teacher, Lusius, Aeschines, Boys

This dialogue contains a division of the letters into vowels and consonants.

TULLIOLUS, CORNELIOLA, LENTULUS, SCIPIO

NEPOTULUS, PISO, MAGISTER, HYPODIDASCALUS

In this dialogue Vives treats of a banquet. The division into five parts:--

Jentaculum } Prandium } An enumeration Merenda } of different kinds. Coena } Comessatio }

He describes convivial disputations.

But when we go into the country for the sake of our minds , then we have milk, either fresh or congealed, fresh cheese, cream, horse-beans soaked in lye, vine-leaves, and anything else which the country house affords. The chief meal begins with a salad with closely-cut bits, sprinkled with salt, moistened with drops of olive-oil, and with vinegar poured on it.

To take you to the banquet, without the master's permission, would be ill breeding; and he who should so bring you would draw on himself from his fellow-disciples nothing less than reproach and shame. Stop a minute. Will you, sir, permit with your good favour, that a certain boy known to me should be present at our meal?

Here, you, Gangolfus, don't wipe your lips with your hand or on your cuff, but wipe both lips and hands with your napkin, which has been provided you for the purpose. Don't touch the meat, except on that side which you are about to take yourself. You, Dromo, don't you observe that you are putting your coat-sleeves into the fat of the meat? If they are open, tuck them up to the shoulders. If they are not, turn them or fold them to the elbow. If they slip back again, fix them firm with a needle, or what would be still more suitable for you, with a thorn. You, delicate little lordling, you are reclining on the table. Where did you learn to do that? In some hog-stye? Eh! you there, put him a little cushion for him to lean on. Prefect of the table, see that the remains of the dinner don't get wasted. Put them away in the store-room. Take away first of all the salt-cellar, then the bread, then the dishes, plates, napkins, and lastly the table-cloth. Let each one clean his own knife and put it away in its sheath. You there, Cinciolus, don't scrape your teeth with your knife, for it is injurious. Make for yourself a tooth-pick of a feather or of a thin sharp piece of wood, and scrape gently, so as not to scar the gum or draw blood. Stand up all of you and wash your hands before thanks are returned. Move the table away, call the maid that she may sweep the floor with the broom. Let us thank Christ. Let him who said grace return thanks.

NUGO, GRACULUS, TURDUS, BAMBALIO

In this dialogue Vives puts forth nineteen little narratives suited to the age of childhood and as it were the progymnasmata of eloquence. The names also of the interlocutors are neatly fabled.

There has not been for many weeks a more zealous overseer, one who would rejoice so much to pass on charges against any one to the master.

Nihil conscire sibi, nulla pallescere culpa.

But be quiet! I will immediately put him to rout.

... transversa tuentibus hirquis.

PHILIPPUS, MISIPPUS, MISOSPUDUS, PLANETES

In this dialogue are contained those matters that pertain to horses and peregrinations, concerning which see as a whole, Grapaldus, lib. 1, cap. 8, and Volaterranus, lib. 25, philologiae. We place the kinds one by one, according to their nomenclature, primarily for the sake of boys.

GENERA EQUORUM

CURRUS

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