… 2, 3, 4 – Cato’s Couplets, Trivium, Quadrivium

(what follows is parsed from Cato’s Distichs which can be found in the links to the right. Cannot be ignored as an influence on Shakes or indeed any educated european early modern).

He passed on up to the grammar school where now his studies were to be
those of the trivium, comprising grammar, rhetoric and dialectics or logic,
and the quadrivium, consisting of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy.

For the earlier stages of this curriculum the textbooks used were a grammar and a first reader, and until long after our modern times had been ushered in by the Renaissance and the Reformation, Cato’s Moral Distichs was this first Latin reader.

Throughout the early centuries of the Middle Ages schoolbooks were scarce and possession of them was restricted to the masters. By them the subject matter was dictated to their pupils who were required to commit to memory both grammar and reader.

Even after textbooks had come to be so plentiful that the schoolboys could own them, they were still required to commit to memory much or most of what was studied in the schools.

Caxton in England brought out versions of it. That famous publisher who himself translated it from a French edition into English gave as his reason for doing this,

“It is in my judgment the best book to be taught to young children in school,
and also to the people of every age it is full convenient if it be well understanded.” (lol)

In France a parody had been written in the fifteenth century, and in 1605 an English parody was printed,
entitled the School of Slovenrie or Cato turned wrong side outwarde.

Its use in the great English public schools was prescribed by various statutes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries so that it did service in Eton, Westminster, Durham, Sandwich, St. Bees, Bangor and Harrow.

Cardinal Wolsey directed that it be used in Ipswich School which he founded in 1528.
Richard Mulcaster, 1531-1611, for twenty-five years head master of the famous Merchant Taylor’s School, and later master of St. Paul’s, objected to the distichs on the ground that the ethical teaching they contained was too old for boys.

Cato’s Distichs
De Moribus
with a Numerical Clavis and Construing and Parsing Index

The First shewing by Figures, answering to each Word in every Line, in what Order the Words
ought to be looked in the Index, to be Construed into good Sense.

The Second containing all the Words in them digested into an Alphabetical Order, together
with the English, and a Grammatical Praxis on each Word referring to the Rules in Lily’s Grammar.

To which is added. An English Translation of Erasmus’s Commentaries on each Distich. For the Use of Schools.

In a Method so Easy, that Learners of the meanest Attainment in the Latin Tongue may be enabled to Construe and Parse their Lessons with Ease to themselves, and without Trouble to their Teacher.

The Sixth Edition, corrected and improved

By N. Bailey.

London : MDCCLXXI

Printed for G. Keith, S. Crowder, B. Law, and C. and R. Ware.

Marlowe in his Jew of Malta makes Barabas soliloquize in terms of one of Cato’s sayings. Illustrations of these sorts could be multiplied to heap high the testimony to the service of this medieval Cato to English literature.

All over Europe there exist today very many manuscripts in the Latin and translations of it into the dialects and vernaculars of feudal France, of Holland, the Engadine, Italy, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, Roumania, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Ireland and Wales. There are Greek versions and both Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman.

Caxton brought out four English editions, the earliest in 1477, and his successor Wynkyn de Worde one or two more.

While there is nothing certainly suggestive of Christianity in these verses, their pagan flavor was so slight
as to constitute no disqualification, nor do they reveal any special philosophic traces.

What the author seeks most to inculcate is prudence, caution, self-possession,
shrewd adaptation to circumstances, courage, moderation and self-control.

The distichs here presented in translation comprise the common or usual collection made up of four books, of forty, thirty-one, twenty-four and forty-nine two line verses.

Books II, III and IV have each a special preface in verse; this seems to have been lost as to I.

The collection as a whole is preceded by a group of fifty-six very short proverbs in prose, most of them
of but two words each in the Latin, and before these is a brief introduction, also in prose. It seems very certain that both this introduction and the prose proverbs are of different and later authorship than the distichs themselves

THE COMMON COLLECTION OF DISTICHS

[When I noticed how very many go seriously wrong in their
manner of living I concluded that I must apply a corrective to
their belief and take counsel of the experience of mankind in
order that they may live most gloriously and attain honor.

Now I will teach thee, dearest son, in what way thou mayest
fashion a rule for thy life. Therefore, so read my precepts that
thou mayest understand them, for to read and not to under-
stand is equivalent to not reading.

BOOK II

[If it chances that thou desirest to learn farming, read Virgil.
But if thou strivest rather to know the potency of herbs, Macer
tells thee of this in his poems.

If thou wishest to know about the Roman and Punic wars,
enquire of Lucan who tells of the combats of Mars.

If it takes thy fancy to love something or to
learn by reading how to love, have recourse to Naso.

But if thy chief desire is to live wisely, hear what thou canst learn
about those things through which an old age free from vice is
produced.

So come and learn by reading what wisdom is.]

BOOK IV

[If thou wishest to lead a life free from cares, cling not to
faults which injure character.

Remember that these precepts must be read often by thee.
Thou wilt find in them a teacher through whom thou wilt be able to transform thyself.]

(Look what thy memory cannot contain
commit to these waste blanks and thou shalt find
those children nurs’d delivered from thy brain
to take a new acquaintance of thy mind) Sonnet 77

49. Dost ask why I this form of verses choose?
Know brevity did bid me couplets use.