3.  Few writers on grammar have been more noted than WILLIAM LILY and LINDLEY MURRAY.  Others have left better monuments of their learning and talents, but none perhaps have had greater success and fame.  The Latin grammar which was for a long time most popular in England, has commonly been ascribed to the one; and what the Imperial Review, in 1805, pronounced “the best English grammar, beyond all comparison, that has yet appeared,” was compiled by the other.  And doubtless they have both been rightly judged to excel the generality of those which they were intended to supersede; and both, in their day, may have been highly serviceable to the cause of learning.  For all excellence is but comparative; and to grant them this superiority, is neither to prefer them now, nor to justify the praise which has been bestowed upon their authorship.  As the science of grammar can never be taught without a book, or properly taught by any book which is not itself grammatical, it is of some importance both to teachers and to students, to make choice of the best.  Knowledge will not advance where grammars hold rank by prescription.  Yet it is possible that many, in learning to write and speak, may have derived no inconsiderable benefit from a book that is neither accurate nor complete.

4.  With respect to time, these two grammarians were three centuries apart; during which period, the English language received its most classical refinement, and the relative estimation of the two studies, Latin and English grammar, became in a great measure reversed.  Lily was an Englishman, born at Odiham,[6] in Hampshire, in 1466.  When he had arrived at manhood, he went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; and while abroad studied some time at Rome, and also at Paris.  On his return he was thought one of the most accomplished scholars in England.  In 1510, Dr. John Colet, dean of St. Paul’s church, in London, appointed him the first high master of St. Paul’s School, then recently founded by this gentleman’s munificence.  In this situation, Lily appears to have taught with great credit to himself till 1522, when he died of the plague, at the age of 56.  For the use of this school, he wrote and published certain parts of the grammar which has since borne his name.  Of the authorship of this work many curious particulars are stated in the preface by John Ward, which may be seen in the edition of 1793.  Lily had able rivals, as well as learned coadjutors and friends.  By the aid of the latter, he took precedence of the former; and his publications, though not voluminous, soon gained a general popularity.  So that when an arbitrary king saw fit to silence competition among the philologists, by becoming himself, as Sir Thomas Elliott says, “the chiefe authour and setter-forth of an introduction into grammar, for the childrene of his lovynge subjects,” Lily’s Grammar was preferred for the basis of the standard.  Hence, after the publishing of it became a privilege patented by the crown, the book appears to have been honoured with a royal title, and to have been familiarly called King Henry’s Grammar.