English in Latin Guise: A Note On Some Renaissance Textbooks

The balance between Latin and English in 16th and 17th-century school grammars is of particular interest in the light of textbooks such as Joshua Poole's English Accidence (1646), which could be described as a grammar of Latin entirely in English. The aim of such books was to make the study of Latin grammar easier for beginners. But the classroom procedures they reflect must also have added precision to the pupils' views of the structural differences between Latin and English, and contributed to the pupils' understanding of the structure of their mother tongue.