r\/rt-:K\rTiES, SCHOOLS, STUDENTS. 



poet and grammarian mentioned! very favourably by Suetonius; 6th, a 

 Doctrinal, or Latin grammar, taken from the great work of Priscianus, a 

 grammarian of the fourth century, and made into Leonine verse (the last 

 syllable of each line rhyming with the middle syllable) as a help to the 

 memory, by Alexander" de Ville-Dieu, who in 1209 was a distinguished 

 teacher in the Paris schools. 



These works, although intended for primary instruction, were also meant 

 to give the pupils some elementary knowledge of the Latin tongue, which, 

 in almost general use during the Middle Ages, was at once the language 

 of the Church, of letters, and of sciences, and was the common idiom 



Fig. 25. The Schoolmaster, after a Drawing by Soquand (1528). 



amongst all Christian nations. This will explain how it was that Latin 

 was not only taught, but spoken, to the exclusion of the vulgar tongue, in the 

 Universities, the colleges, and the principal schools. It was not until later, 

 when the modern spirit had propagated amongst the people a multitude of 

 new ideas and sentiments difficult to translate literally into Latin, that the 

 struggle began between the language of the ancients and the living tongues 

 a long and eventful struggle, which, after heroic efforts in favour of the 

 beautiful language immortalised by the masterpieces of the ancient classic 

 writers, ended in Latin being finally relegated to the list of dead languages. 

 It is interesting to note what efforts were made by the University of Paris, 

 by the imposition of fines and punishments, in the fifteenth, and even up to 



