xplanation may
perhaps be found by supposing that his time in the choir at Utrecht
was an interlude in the Deventer period; but in any case the school in
his time was still 'barbarous', to use his own word, that is, it was
still modelled on the requirements of the scholastic courses, the
_literae inamoenae_, which from his earliest years he abhorred.
Zinthius (or Synthius), who was one of the Brethren, and Hegius
'brought a breath of something better', he tells us: but both of them
taught only in the higher forms, and Hegius he only heard during his
last year, on the festivals when the head master lectured to the whole
school together.

A few years later the school numbered 2200 boys. It is difficult to us
to imagine such a throng gathered round one man. There were only eight
forms, which must therefore have had on an average 275 in each; and
even if subdivided into parallel classes, they must still have been
uncomfortably large to our modern ideas. On the title-pages of early
school-books are sometimes found woodcuts which represent the children
sitting, like the Indian schoolboy to-day, in crowds about their
master, taking only the barest amount of space, and content with the
steps of his desk or even the floor. Some idea of the character of the
teaching may be derived from the experiences of Thomas Platter
(1499-1582) at Breslau about thirty years later. 'In the school at St.
Elizabeth', he says, 'nine B.A.'s read lectures at the same hour and
in the same room. Greek had not yet penetrated into that part of the
world. No one had any printed books except the praeceptor, who had a
Terence.[8] What was read had first to be dictated, then pointed, then
construed, and at last explained.'[9] It was a wearisome business for
all concerned. The reading of a few lines of text, the punctuation,
the elaborate glosses full of wellnigh incomprehensible
abbreviations; all dictated slowly enough for a class of a hundred or
more to take down every word. Lessons in those days were indeed
readings. For a clever boy who was capable of going forward quickly,
they must have been great waste of time.

[8] It is worth remarking that in the fifteenth century Terence
was regarded as a prose author, no attempt having been made
to determine his metres. As late as 1516 an edition was
printed in Paris in prose.
[9] Here, and later on, I follow Mrs. Finn's translation, 1839.

At Deventer Erasmus began with