Latin grammar, so likewise did those of all succeeding mediaeval generations, thereby holding themselves to at least a homogeneity, though not an unvarying uniformity, of usage. Evidently, however, the method of grammatical instruction had to vary with the needs of the learners and the teachers' skill. The Romans prattled Latin on their mothers' knees; and so, with gradually widening deflections, did the Latinized provincials. Neither Roman nor Provincial prattled Ciceronian periods, or used quite the vocabulary of Virgil; yet it was Latin that they talked. Thenceforward there was to be a difference between the people who lived in countries where Romance dialects had emerged from the spoken Latin and prevailed, and those people who spoke a Teuton speech. Although always drawing away, the natal speech of Romance peoples was so like Latin, that in learning it they seemed rather to correct their vulgar tongue than to acquire a new language. So it was in the Christian parts of Spain, in Gaul, and, above all, in Italy, where the vulgar dialects were tardiest in taking distinctive form. Nevertheless, as the Romance dialects, for instance in the country north of the Loire, developed into the various forms of what is called Old French, young people at school would have to learn Latin as a quasi-foreign tongue. Across the Rhine in Germany boys ordinarily had to learn it at school, as a strange language, just as they must to-day; and every effort was devoted to this end.[1] It was not likely that the grammars composed for Roman boys, or at least for boys who spoke Latin from their infancy, would altogether meet the needs of German, or even French, youth. Yet only gradually and slowly in the Middle Ages were grammars put together to make good the insufficiencies of Donatus and Priscian.
The former was the teacher of St. Jerome. He composed a short work, in the form of questions and
- ↑ Cf. Specht, Geschichte des Unterrichtswesens in Deutschland, etc. (Stuttgard, 1885), p. 75 and passim.
Yet how soon and with what childish prattle youths might begin to speak and write Latin is touchingly shown by a boy's letter, written from a monastic school, to his parents. It just asks for various little things, and its superscription is: "Parentibus suis A. agnus ablactatus pium balatum": which seems to mean: "To his parents, A, a weaned lamb, sends a loving bah." This and other curious little letters are ascribed to one Robertus Metensis (cir. A.D. 900) (Migne 132, col. 533).
