Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/138

 daily conversation of a boy, and “Jacent hæc in caliganti vetustatis recessu” is but a clumsy translation of “These matters be out of my mynde.”

The foregoing pages give the reader some notion of the books that a good school might have possessed in the century preceding the publication of the Janua, and no commentary is necessary on the contrast that they bear to those of Comenius. Grammars are diffuse, complicated, and overburdened with unnecessary matter. Phrase-books are haphazard compilations often ill-suited to the end in view. In every case exclusive attention is paid to form; any actual information about the world in which he lives the scholar may pick up for himself. If he satisfies the spirit of pedantry by mastering the seven genders he is not prevented from using his powers of observation as much as he pleases; but he is not encouraged or helped to do so. The Colloquies, it is true, conveyed some definite information, but they were primarily intended as phrasebooks, and between them and the systematised exposition of nature in the Janua a very great gulf is fixed.

We should now wish to give a slight sketch, and it must necessarily be a very slight one, of the essays towards the creation and organisation of schools that form the historical background to the life efforts of Comenius. Ours will not be the received method of the comprehensive history of education. Of Rabelais, of Montaigne, of Erasmus, of Vives we shall make no mention. Like Ascham and Locke they dealt with the training of the “young gentleman,” and stand in no relation to schemes for the education of the people. For the same reason we shall pass over the great teaching corporation of the Jesuits. In many ways their methods of instruction have never been surpassed. For the organisation of boardingschools a body of priests starts with a very great advantage, and solves with comparative ease the grave questions of discipline that always confront the directors of such institutions. The usher, who is at the same time an acolyte, gains a degree of dignity to be obtained in no