Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 edition. Excerpt: ... INTRODUCTION. THE present volume is offered as an introduction to the study of the education of the first period of Renaissance, the century which followed the death of Petrarch. The work falls into three divisions. The first treats of the career of the characteristic Humanist School-master, Vittorino da Feltre. The second consists of four noteworthy treatises on education produced during this period, not now readily accessible to students. These are here presented in English versions. In the third section I have aimed at setting forth a general review of education as conceived by humanist scholars. The subject is of interest in more than one direction. It bears immediately upon the broader conceptions which we form of the civilisation and ideals of the Renaissance in its earlier and less self-conscious stage; inasmuch as the edu-"l cational aim of any age, if scientifically thought out, must express, with some precision, the moral and intellectual temper of thfe time. In the next place, though less directly, light is thrown by such enquiry as the present upon the development of classical scholarship. Its relation to the history of educational ideals and methods needs no insistence. In limiting the present Study to the period of the early Renaisnce I have not been guided by considerations of space alone. Recent critics of Humanism, both in England and Germany, appear to me to have overlooked the distinctive character of this period of 'Origins.' Whether as regards i spirit or practice, the Mantuan school of Vittorino can by no possibility be classed under one head with the school of Sturm at Strassburg. In this difference is implied a constant process in which the ideal of the greater Humanists was slowly narrowed and hardened till it...