student at Cambridge, Edward Elton, then pastor of St. Mary Magdalen's at Barmondsey.

The First Part of the True Watch, we learn, was a book "wherein he hath set out to the view of all, the holinesse and integritie of that way of life, which we all jointly professe (according to God's sacred word, and the good Lawes of our Christian Commonweale) to the justifying of our Church against the Separatists, to be the true Church of Jesus Christ, and that whosoever so walketh shall undoubtedly finde eternall life, and in the meane while all heavenly boldnesse, peace and joy. And not only against them, but also against the superstitious and clamorous Papists, who herein slander our Religion, affirming it to be a religion of carnall libertie, theirs of perfect unity thereby to draw our people to a dislike of the eternall truth of our blessed God, and to a liking of that popish way, which is nothing but meere superstition in outward shews of devotion, according to men's inventions, and such as God never commanded, or required; nay such as God hath most expressly forbidden, as tending to utter perdition, both of soules and bodies." This, his first religious publication, was published, we learn from Brinsley's address to the reader of The Third Part, at the time of the Powdertreason (1605). By the time Mr. Elton wrote the commendatory preface for the Third Part (1622), it was in its ninth edition.2

The Rule of Praier was the alternative title of the Second Part of the True Watch, concerning which Elton notes, "whosoever striveth so to watch & pray, shall undoubtedly be amongst them that are as the chariots and horsemen of Israel, and helpe to save the Iland."

The Third Part is a warning based upon Ezekiel's vision of the destruction of Jerusalem. This exhortation, at times powerful in its expression, is drawn out to the length of 568 pages, not counting "a holy and fervent Prayer, according to the Contents of the booke," Iwith which the volume closes.

The absence of school dramas from Brinsley's curriculum for the grammar school was probably due to his decided Puritan leanings. In any case he looked upon the stage as offering a clear proof of the demoralization that had overtaken England. "What defence

The citations are from the 1622 edition of The Third Part, in the Boston Public Library.

'The British Museum contains an eighth edition (1619).

can we make," he asks, "for that concourse that is ordinarily to those wanton places, in such places, even upon that day? In which are the continuall sowing of all Atheisme; and throwing the firebrands of all filthy and noysome lusts into the hearts of poore simple soules; the stirring up and blowing the coals of concupiscence, to kindle and increase the fire thereof, to breake out into an hideous flame, untill it burne downe to hell-How can you take those firebrands of hell into your bosomes and not be burnt? Is not every filthy speech, each whorish gesture, such a firebrand cast by Sathan into the heart of every wanton beholder, as a brand cast into a bundle of toe, or into a barrell of gunpowder, to set all on fire of a sudden?"

1

Still another part of The True Watch appeared in 1624, the last publication of Brinsley's which we can date with certainty. This was particularly addressed "to the plain-hearted seduced by popery."

But one other of his books remains to be noticed, an edition of Stanbridge's Vocabulary, which was an exceedingly popular book in its day.

Mr. Foster Watson thus described this edition printed "under undoubtedly careful and enthusiastic editing of John Brinsley." "He has placed figures above each of the Latin nouns in the Vocabulary to show the Declension, and a letter to show the gender. Adjectives of three terminations have bo placed above them to show that they are declined like bonus. 'If of three articles' fel shows them to be declined like felix, tr like tristis. Where pl is added, it is to show that the word has only or usually the plural number. Verbs have the conjugation marked by a figure before the letter C standing for conjugation. Brinsley hopes, therefore, the dictionarius may be also a help to the grammar."

Although the three editions in the British Museum are dated 1630, 1645, and 1647, there is no reason to suppose that it was not published earlier. It was unquestionably a book that was in demand and his was a most useful edition, judged by the standards of editorship prevailing at that time. It seems likely, then, that Brins'The Third Part, p. 343.

'Stanbrigie Embrion Relimatum, seu Vocabularium metricum olim a J. Stanbrigio digestum, nunc vero locupletatus. . . opera.

3

Watson, English Grammar Schools, p. 386.

ley's educational writings were: first, the general treatise on problems and methods of grammar-school instruction, then the grammatical translations and the word-list above-mentioned, followed by the abbreviated Ludus with an exhortation for the "consolation of our grammar schooles," and, toward the end of his life, religious writings almost exclusively. As with Milton, the rise of Puritanism and the consequent necessity of warring strenuously against its opponents seem gradually to have led him to cast aside everything else that he might work more zealously for what was plainly the thing of greatest significance to him, the religious welfare of mankind and of England.

In all his work Brinsley is primarily the educator. A teacher whose aim was high, he is not a destructive critic. When he diagnoses an ailment it is only that he may generously and confidently offer a remedy. Constructively he offers his definition of a "true nursery" (or an ideal school) as one "wherein learned Maisters and Vshers, being incouraged with meete maintenance and due rewards, do follow the best and most approved courses, labouring constantly to put the same in vse."

Method was to this headmaster at Ashby an all important thing. If only the right one were used, the school might be "the same as the goodly gardens, & as among the little singing birds, in the flourishing Spring." He likens "the shortest and fairest way of teaching" to the "shortest and safest cut in navigation" that brings in double gain. The scholars will profit, learning as much in seven years as they would otherwise have acquired in ten; the masters will be free from vexation; learning will come into greater esteem; the number of benefactors will consequently increase.

Uniformity, thoroughness, concentration, training of the memory, all valuable for their usefulness in preparing for later learning and later life, were the main planks in his educational platform. He touches upon other principles in passing: the careful gradation in the form of questions, the value of imitation based upon the best models, double translation, the gain in having the children mark in their book words that are difficult for them or which may be of future use. In all this there is nothing new for us, illuminating as it was for Spoudeus, the disheartened visitor.

But one cannot fail to respond to the zeal of John Brinsley as he writes of the responsibility and importance of the teacher, who must not discourage or dishearten, must reward all deserving effort, and must teach the boys to love learning, always mindful that he must "do all to the end to make them men."

I'

BALLAD NOTES TAKEN IN BUCKS COUNTY,

PENNSYLVANIA

JOHN C. MENDENHALL

Assistant Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania

N the autumn of 1908, I wrote down from recitation at Rich

boro, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the fragments of traditional ballads that follow, but I refrained for a time from publishing them because there seemed to be a possibility of further discoveries. These were not made, however, and, without being entirely forgotten, the matter rested, until recently an article was solicited for the present volume. Again I sought to add to the fragments, but none of my informants is now living, and their friends and children remember only vaguely that there were such things. Often not even the name or general outline of any ballad could be recalled. So I conclude that the ballad tradition in this part of the country, moribund in 1908, is practically extinct in 1923, and that inasmuch as the fragments that I have present some few points of interest in themselves and in relation to the history of American balladry, it is best to publish them without further delay.

That the tradition existed at all in southern Bucks County is a little surprising. This part of the state, adjacent to Philadelphia County, was settled almost exclusively by English Friends, and they remained dominant well into the nineteenth century; in fact, they are still strong in the very district of the latter county, Byberry, where the Lord Bateman fragment was learned from her grandmother by the mother of my principal informant. The latter told me that her mother, Mrs. John Randall, would not infrequently break off when she found herself singing these old songs, which people even in her youth had begun to call silly as well as to stigmatize as worldly, and taking down a volume of Elias Hicks read long in it, as a kind of penance or atonement. Mrs. Randall's grandmother, by whom she was brought up, lived during the Revolution, and some of her