Note 15 — Chapter I · CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. (Boys.)

Let us glance at a few of the school books then in vogue. First of all is one of the immortal Cocker, 'according to' whom all correct calculations should be made. Although he had been long dead (since 1677), his works lived after him; and there were also other works on Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, and the use of the Globes. (By the way, a pair of 9-in. diam. globes only cost a guinea.) There were Latin Dictionaries, Lilly's Latin Grammar, and an abridgment of it for the use of Blackheath School. There was that English Grammar which 'Isaac Bickerstaff' (Steele) puffed up so: 'That as grammar in general is on all hands allow'd the foundation of all arts and sciences, so it appears to me that this grammar of the English tongue has done that justice to our language which, 'till now, it never obtained;' and there was 'A Guide to the English Tongue, by Thos. Dyche, schoolmaster in London,' the second edition of which was published in 1710, but which has been so popular that a revised edition of it was published as late as 1816; and there were any quantity of books on writing—notably the 'Paul's Scholar's Copy Book, by John Rayner,' immortalised in Tatler 138. The writing of the age was very good—and many are the specimens of elaborate caligraphy in the 'Bagford Collection': for unassuming and yet good writing, perhaps, however, the best are in Harl. MS. 5995, 211, &c.[15] In the eighteenth century penmanship was held in higher estimation than now, and in 1763 W. Massey published 'The Origin and Progress of Letters,' in which he gave the lives of the most famous writing masters during the preceding hundred years. He mentions some half-dozen or more, as living in Anne's reign, but Charles Snell seems to have been the most famous.