einer Schulstunde in Alt-England findet sich in dem Drama: How a Man may choose a good Wife from a bad1), II, 1:

Enter Amindab, with a rod in his hand, and Boys with their books.
Amin. Come, boys, come, boys, rehearse your parts,

1. Boy. Amin.

And then, ad prandium; jam, jam, incipe!

Forsooth, my lesson's torn out of my book.
Quae caceris chartis deseruisse decet.

Torn from your book! I'll tear them from your breech.
How say you, Mistress Virga, will you suffer

Hic puer bonae indolis to tear

His lessons, leaves, and lectures from his book? 1. Boy. Truly, forsooth, I laid it in my seat,

Amin. 1. Boy.

2. Boy. Amin.

While Robin Glade and I went into campis
And when I came again, my book was torn.
O mus, a mouse; was ever heard the like?
O domus, a house; master, I could not mend it.
O pediculus, a louse; I knew not how it came.
All toward boys, good scholars of their time;
The least of these is past his accidence,
Some at qui mihi; here's not a boy
But he can construe all the grammar rules.
Sed ubi sunt sodales? not yet come?
Those tarde venientes shall be whipp'd.
Ubi est Pipkin? where's that lazy knave?
He plays the truant every Saturday;
But Mistress Virga, Lady Willow-by,
Shall teach him that diluculo surgere
Est saluberrimum: here comes the knave.
Enter Pipkin.

Pipkin. Etiam certe, you ask me where I have been, and I say quomodo vales, as much as to say, come out of the alehouse. Untruss, untruss! nay, help him, help him!

Amin.

1) A pleasant conceited Comedie, Wherein is shewed how a man may chuse a good Wife from a bad. As it hath bene sundry times acted by the Earle of Worcesters Seruants. London Printed for Mathew Lawe, and are to be solde at his shop in Paules Church-yard, neare vnto S. Augustines gate, at the signe of the Foxe. 1602. 4o. Old Plays, IX, 26.

Pip.

Amin.
Pip.

Amin.

Pip.

Anim.

Pip.
Amin.

Pip.

Amin.

Pip.

Amin.

Pip.

Quaeso, praeceptor, quaeso, for God's sake do not whip me:
Quid est grammatica?

Not whip you, quid est grammatica, what's that?

Grammatica est, that, if I untruss'd, you must needs whip me upon them, quid est grammatica.

Why, then, dic mihi, speak, where hast thou been?

Forsooth, my mistress sent me of an errand to fetch my master from the Exchange; we had strangers at home at dinner, and, but for them, I had not come tarde; quaeso, praeceptor! Construe your lesson, parse it, ad unguem et contemnato to, I'll pardon thee.

That I will, master, an 'if you'll give me leave.

Propria quae maribus tribuuntur mascula dicas; expone, expone. Construe it, master, I will; dicas, they say propria, the proper man quae maribus, that loves marrow bones mascula miscalled me.

A pretty, quaint, and new construction.

I warrant you, master, if there be marrowbones in my lesson, I am an old dog at them. How construe you this, master, rostra disertus amat?

A good construction on my empty stomach; Master, now I have construed my lesson, my mistress would pray you to let me come home to go of an errand.

2. Boy. Vitrum glass, spica grass, tu es asinus, you are an ass. Precor

Amin.

tibi felicem noctem.

Claudite jam libros, pueri: sat, prata, bibistis,

Look, when you come again, you tell me, ubi fuistis.

He that minds trish-trash, and will not have care of his rodix,
Him I will be-lish-lash, and have a fling at his podix. [Exeunt Boys.]

An den Schluß unserer Erörterungen stellen wir einen Auszug aus der werthvollen Abhandlung: What Shakespeare Learnt at School (Fraser's Magazine Nov. 1879 May 1880, by Thos. S. Baynes.)

Professor Baynes erörtert zunächst die Frage: What was the course of instruction in a provincial grammar school like that of Stratford-upon-Avon? Bezug nehmend auf Furnivall, Athenaeum for October 7, 1876.

Baynes will ermitteln

the different grades of progress, the forms into which the schools were commonly divided, and the books that a boy would usually read in making his way from the lowest to the highest. I shall endeavour to throw some light on these points by means of two works once widely known, but now forgotten. The clder of these is the Ludus-Literarius, or Grammar Schoole, of John Brinsley, published in the year 1612. The expanded title: Shewing how to procede from the first entrance into learning, to the highest perfection required in the grammar schooles, with ease, certainly, and delight both to masters and schollars: only according to our common grammar and ordinary classical authours' sufficiently illustrates the

main design of the treatise.

Brinsley belonged to a band of educational reformers, including among others Mulcaster, Drury, Coote, and Farnaby, who against the dominant influence of usage and tradition strove to give more directness, vitality, and power to the school teaching of their day.

Ein zweites reformatorisches Werk, auf welches Prof. Baynes sich bezieht, war: A New Discovery of the old Art of Teaching Schoole: in foure small Treatises; concerning, A Petty School, The Usher's Duty, The Master's Method, and Scholastick Discipline: Shewing how Children in their playing years may Grammatically attain to a firm groundedness. in an Exercise of the Latine and Greek Tongues. Der Verf. Hoole war 1610 geboren, sein Werk erschien zwar erst 1659, war aber 23 Jahre zuvor geschrieben.

Hoole reflects the later impulse given to Protestant education by the labours of Comenius (Orbis Pictus).

Ueber die bei Hoole und bei Brinsley verzeichneten Schulbücher spricht Baynes dann weiter:

Brinsley gives a less detailed and coordinate enumeration of schoolbooks;... Hoole, on the other hand, gives two lists: one of the books used in the classes of Rotherham Grammar School early in the beginning of the seventeenth century, the other of the works used in the different grammar schools throughout the country. In the lower the first class was of course engaged for a time in mastering the accidence and the rules of Lily's Grammar, and the bitterest complaints are made of the time usually wasted in the process... Brinsley gives the following, as the list of authors read in the lower school: Pueriles Confabulatiun

culae, Sententiae Pueriles, Cato, Corderius' Dialogues, Esop's Fables, Tully's Epistles gathered by Sturmius, Tully's Offices, with the books adjoined to them, the book De Amicitia, De Senectute, and the Paradoxes, Ovid De Tristibus, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Virgil. In the upper school... Plautus, Horace, Persius, and Juvenal.1)

Im 3. Theil seiner Abhandlung (May 1880) untersucht Prof. Baynes hauptsächlich die Frage, welche Bekanntschaft Shakespeare's mit den lateinischen Klassikern aus dessen Werken sich nachweisen lasse.

1) Furnivall, Introduction to The Babee's Book, Early English Text Society, gives some extracts from Brinsley.

Die Baco-Gesellschaft.

Nebst einigen Exkursen über die Baco-Shakespeare-Affaire

von

F. A. Leo.

Krankheiten, welche aus anderen Ländern zu uns hereingetragen werden, verlieren, wie ich früher schon bei gleicher Gelegenheit andeutete, ihren perniciösen Charakter erst, wenn sie domesticirt sind. Die Bacokrankheit ist glücklicherweise auf dem Punkte, es zu werden! Eine Baco-Gesellschaft hat sich gegründet! Folgendes ist die statutarische Form, auf der sie sich aufbaut:

The Baconian Society.

To the Editor of the Literary World.

Perhaps your readers may be interested in the announcement that the Baconian Society of London is organized — like the Camden Society, the Parker Society, and others — to preserve, by reprinting and study, the remains of English Literature associated with the era its title represents, and not by any means exclusively, to find a Baconian authorship for the Shakespearean Plays. A paragraph to the latter effect which has gone the rounds of our American press, has already done the society harm in some quarters. I am authorized to state that although the platform of the society is as yet tentative, the scheme of its operations will be mainly as follows:

I. To elucidate the real character, position, and genius of Francis Bacon, as philosopher, lawyer, essayist, and poet.

II. To inquire, on the strictest principles of scientific investigation, what was the influence of Bacon on the spirit of his own and succeeding times, and what the tendency and result of his writings.