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Updated: May 18, 2025
It was a consolation to him, while his adversaries were breaking Priscian's head as fast as the Duke, their master, was breaking his oaths, that his own syntax was as clear as his conscience. The feeblest commissioner was James-a-Croft, who had already exhibited himself with very anile characteristics, and whose subsequent manifestations were to seem like dotage.
He never more complained unjustly that Dominick broke Priscian's head, seldom called him Irish plockit, and once would have flogged a Welsh boy for taking up this cast-off expression of the master's, but the Irish blockhead begged the culprit off. Little Dominick sprang forward rapidly in his studies: he soon surpassed every boy in the school, his friend Edwards only excepted.
It was a consolation to him, while his adversaries were breaking Priscian's head as fast as the Duke, their master, was breaking his oaths, that his own syntax was as clear as his conscience. The feeblest commissioner was James-a-Croft, who had already exhibited himself with very anile characteristics, and whose subsequent manifestations were to seem like dotage.
But they are bound to speak decent English, unless, indeed, they are rough old campaigners, like General Jackson or General Taylor; in which case, a few scars on Priscian's head are pardoned to old fellows who have quite as many on their own, and a constituency of thirty empires is not at all particular, provided they do not swear in their Presidential Messages. However, it is not for me to talk.
It was a consolation to him, while his adversaries were breaking Priscian's head as fast as the Duke, their master, was breaking his oaths, that his own syntax was as clear as his conscience. The feeblest commissioner was James-a-Croft, who had already exhibited himself with very anile characteristics, and whose subsequent manifestations were to seem like dotage.
The letter is further remarkable as combining intense admiration for the old masterpieces with a quite "modern" insistence on "begetting" rather than "reviving" on "giving the literature of the age a spirit of its own," etc. "Breaking Priscian's head" is familiar enough for "using bad grammar," which the book-keeper very likely did; but the explanation may be more remote.
But they are bound to speak decent English, unless, indeed, they are rough old campaigners, like General Jackson or General Taylor; in which case, a few scars on Priscian's head are pardoned to old fellows that have quite as many on their own, and a constituency of thirty empires is not at all particular, provided they do not swear in their Presidential Messages.
If any minister came to examine us, I was brought forth against him, nor would I argue with him unless in the Latin tongue, which I found few of them could well speak without breaking Priscian's head; which, if once they did, I would complain to my master, Non bene intelligit linguam Latinam, nec prorsus loquitur.
The historic existence of both the English universities dawns in the reign of the scholar king, and the restorer of order and prosperity after the ravages of the conquest and the tyranny of Rufus Henry I. In that reign the Abbot of Croyland, to gain money for the rebuilding of his abbey, set up a school where, we are told, Priscian's grammar, Aristotle's logic with the commentaries of Porphyry and Averroes, Cicero and Quintilian as masters of rhetoric, were taught after the manner of the school of Orleans.
With such a book as one's only support it was clearly of the highest importance to be good at etymology; with ouis, for instance, not to be troubled by Priscian's fanciful derivation from the Greek, but to know that it came from offero, and was therefore to be found under fero; or again to look for hirundo under aer.
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