Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/54

 “The Palace of Oratory” is to repeat the same material in oratorical form, the phrases used being adapted from Cicero, Quintilian, and Seneca; while the “Palace of Poetry deals with the same subjects treated in verse. The verses are not to be original, but are to be taken from the classic poets. In this way Rossie in England had written a life of Christ with lines taken from Vergil.

The culminating point in this series of graduated school-books is the Thesaurus. This is a collection of extracts from classic writers dealing with the subjects of the Janua. For all these books suitable lexicons are to be compiled, and a Latin grammar is to be written for use with the Janua. As a further assistance to the use of the Thesaurus he proposes a Clavis Intellectus Humani, in which the subject-matter is to be arranged in “a certain general proportion” with reference to the relation in which things, the concepts of things, and language, stand to one another.

These books are to be spread over the six years devoted to the Latin School as follows: for the Vestibulum six months is sufficient, and for the Janua a year; for the Palatium a year and a half is allowed, leaving the remaining three years for the study of the authors.

Then follow some general remarks on teaching, after which come some special rules for the use of the classbooks.

From the use of the Vestibulum the boy must learn to read Latin words with the proper accent and to write what he knows with fluency; he is also to master the rudiments of grammar and syntax. As a help to writing, some of the Latin sentences should be printed faintly (green is recommended as a suitable colour), and over this the boy may write in black ink.

The Vestibulum is to be read through ten times, and