5.  Prefixed to this book, there appears a very ancient epistle to the reader, which while it shows the reasons for this royal interference with grammar, shows also, what is worthy of remembrance, that guarded and maintained as it was, even royal interference was here ineffectual to its purpose.  It neither produced uniformity in the methods of teaching, nor, even for instruction in a dead language, entirely prevented the old manual from becoming diverse in its different editions.  The style also may serve to illustrate what I have elsewhere said about the duties of a modern grammarian.  “As for the diversitie of grammars, it is well and profitably taken awaie by the King’s Majesties wisdome; who, foreseeing the inconvenience, and favorably providing the remedie, caused one kind of grammar by sundry learned men to be diligently drawn, and so to be set out, only every where to be taught, for the use of learners, and for the hurt in changing of schoolemaisters.”  That is, to prevent the injury which schoolmasters were doing by a whimsical choice, or frequent changing, of grammars.  But, says the letter, “The varietie of teaching is divers yet, and alwaies will be; for that every schoolemaister liketh that he knoweth, and seeth not the use of that he knoweth not; and therefore judgeth that the most sufficient waie, which he seeth to be the readiest meane, and perfectest kinde, to bring a learner to have a thorough knowledge therein.”  The only remedy for such an evil then is, to teach those who are to be teachers, and to desert all who, for any whim of their own, desert sound doctrine.

6.  But, to return.  A law was made in England by Henry the Eighth, commanding Lily’s Grammar only, (or that which has commonly been quoted as Lily’s,) to be everywhere adopted and taught, as the common standard of grammatical instruction.[7] Being long kept in force by means of a special inquiry, directed to be made by the bishops at their stated visitations, this law, for three hundred years, imposed the book on all the established schools of the realm.  Yet it is certain, that about one half of what has thus gone under the name of Lily, ("because,” says one of the patentees, “he had so considerable a hand in the composition,”) was written by Dr. Colet, by Erasmus, or by others who improved the work after Lily’s death.  And of the other half, it has been incidentally asserted in history, that neither the scheme nor the text was original.  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, 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.”  The historian then proceeds to speak about types.  See also the same thing in the History of Printing, 8vo, London, 1770.  This is the grammar which bears upon its title page:  “Quam solam Regia Majestas in omnibus scholis docendam prcaecipit.”