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APPENDIX 6: LEONICENUS AND LILY
Omnibonus Leonicenus published his Latin grammar at Venice in 1473.(1) Entitled De octo partibus orationis, it is an accidence of about 33,000 words; much of the instruction is given in the popular form of dialogue between Magister and Discipulus.
There are three works sometimes spoken of as ‘Lily's grammar’; the account below does not attempt to discriminate the contributions of Lily, Colet, Erasmus, and others.
1. A syntax(2) (latine, constructio) of about 44,000 words, dedicated to Thomas Cromwell. This book has nothing in common with Leonicenus but the words octo partes orationis.
2. Brevissima institutio,(3) a summary of all grammar (accidence, syntax, prosody) in about 23,000 words. It contains no dialogues, but several series of mnemotechnic hexameters, including the well-known Propria quae maribus. This is the book whose title page bears the words ‘quarn solam Regia majestas in omnibus scholis docendam praecepit.’(4)
3. A short introduction,(5) covering (in English) roughly the same material as 2, and generally bound with 2. This is the book containing the passage beginning ‘Articles are borrowed of the pronoun, and be thus declined’.(6)
In the Universal Magazine for 1747(7) appeared an unsigned article that pretended to expose to the gentle reader the history and mystery of printing. The valuable part of the article is appropriated (without acknowledgement) from Moxon;(8) in the historical section, not taken from Moxon, we read on page 28 a eulogy of early Italian founders:
The Gothic alphabet, as it most resembled the MSS. of those times, was the first attempt; then some of the Italian printers introduced the Roman alphabet, and, in a short time, brought it to that perfection, that, in the beginning of the year 1474, they cast a letter not much inferior to the best types of the present age; as may be seen in a Latin grammar, written by Omnibonus Leonicenus, and printed at Padua, on 14 January, 1474, from whom our grammarian Lilly has taken the intire scheme of his grammar, and transcribed the greatest part thereof, without paying any regard to the memory of his author.
Luckombe(9) copied this eulogy without essential alteration; and from Luckombe it made its way into Goold Brown, Institutes of English grammar, p. xi:
The Printer's Grammar, London, 1787, speaking of the art of type-foundery, says: “The Italians in a short time brought it to that perfection, that in the beginning of the year 1474, [page 217:] they cast a letter not much inferior to the best types of the present age; as may be seen in a Latin grammar, written by Omnibonus Leonicenus, and printed at Padua on the 14th of January, 1474; from whom our grammarian, Lily, has taken the entire scheme of his grammar, and transcribed the greatest part thereof, without paying any regard to the memory of this author.” See also the History of Printing, 8vo. London, 1770. This is the grammar which bears upon its titlepage: Quam solam Regia Majestas in omnibus scholis docendam praecepit.
The refutation by Lupton(10) of the charge that Lily drew on Leonicenus confounds the confusion attendant on the many editions of Lily by inexplicably citing the Monthly Review for 1747 instead of the Universal Magazine; the Monthly Review was founded in 1749.
Poe's notice(11) of Lily contains nothing that is not in Goold Brown, except the imaginary (and imaginative) detail that Lily [page 218:] appropriated a definition of grammar from Leonicenus: Leonicenus gives no such definition. It is not clear whether Brown had looked into Lily, or was aware that Lily's grammars (and all sixteenth-century grammars) were grammars of the Latin tongue; the placement of the word Latin in Poe's statement, from Murray, who derived it from Lily . . . and who appropriated it . . . from the Latin grammar of Leonicenus’ suggests the false inference that Lily published an English grammar.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 217:]
1 printed by Jacob Rubens, alias Jacobus Gallicus.
2 De octo orationis partium constructions libellus, &c. (edited by Erasmus); many editions from 1515 to 1595.
3 Institutio compendiaria totius grammaticae, &c., London, 1542. The title Brevissima institutio, seu ratio grammatices cognoscendi, begins to be used in 1557.
4 This privilege derives from a proclamation of Henry VIII (1540), commanding Lily's grammar only, everywhere to be taught, for the use of learners, and the hurt in changing of schoolmasters; and was continued by a proclamation of Edward VI (1548).
5 An introduction of the eyght partes of speche, &c., London, 1542. The title A short introduction generally to be used begins to be used in 1557.
6 A short introduction, 1557, p. 8; idem, 1572, folio A5 verso. Cf. Shakespear, The merry wiues of Windsor, 4.1.
7 The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, &c., vol. [1], pp. 27-33, 60-62.
8 Joseph Moxon, Mechanick exercises: or the doctrine of handy-works. Applied to the art of printing. London, 1683, 2 vols. What we have seen is the edition by Theo. L. De Vinne, New York, 1896.
9 [Philip Luckombe], A concise history of the origin and process of printing; with practical instructions to the trade in general: Compiled from those who have wrote on this curious art. London: Adlard & Browne, 1770, pp. 4-5.
10 Joseph Hirst Lupton, Notes and Queries 2:441-442, 461-462, 1880; and DNB s.v. Lily, William.
11 p. 48, text opposite notes 17-19; and p. 95, text opposite notes 18-19, above.217
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - JAG68, 1968] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - EAP: The Rationale of Verse — a preliminary edition (Greenwood)