Logonomia Anglica

Introduction

Michela Compagnoni

Alexander Gil[1] (1565-1635), ninth High Master of St Paul’s School in London from 1608 to 1635, was born in Lincolnshire on 27 February 1565 and died in his house in St Paul’s Church Yard on 17 November 1635. He went to Oxford to attend university in 1581 and on 21 September 1583 he was admitted scholar of Corpus Christi College. Gil graduated BA on 9 November 1586 and was licensed for MA on 5 December 1589. According to his earliest biographer, Anthony à Wood, he was then schoolmaster at Norwich, where he was living in 1597. On 10 March 1608 he was appointed High Master of St Paul’s School in London, after Richard Mulcaster retired.

Gil served as High Master of St Paul for twenty-seven years, longer than any of his predecessors. As reported by Wood, “he was esteemed by most persons to be a learned man, a noted Latinist, critic, and divine, and also to have such an excellent way of training up youth, that none in his time went beyond him. Whence ’twas that many noted persons in church and state did esteem it the greatest of their happiness, that they had been educated under him”. Gil had been recommended for this position by many distinguished religious figures and scholars, including Thomas Ravis, Bishop of London from 1607 to 1609, and one of the known translators of the Authorised Version, who said that Gil was “a man of very extraordinary worth”; Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University and Dean of Christchurch, Dr John King; the President of Corpus Christi College, Dr John Spenser, and the Dean of St Paul’s, Dr John Overall, two other known translators of the Authorised Version. Fellows of Corpus Christi College also testified to his learning and ability, saying that after Gil had earned his MA “he was called out to do service to the commonwealth being excellently fitted and furnished thereunto”. Among a number of other writers of testimonials on his behalf were physicians Francis Anthony and Peter Turner; Roger Marbeck, physician to Queen Elizabeth; the Welsh poet Robert Holland; the musical composer Thomas Ravenscroft; Anthony Wotton, First Professor of Divinity at Gresham College; Sir Edward Dyer, poet, courtier, and diplomat; and three Members of Parliament (Admiral Sir Robert Mansell, Sir Thomas Middleton of the East India Company, and Sir William Hericke, diplomat and principal jeweller to James I). Gil was succeeded as High Master by his son, poet Alexander Gil Jr (1596/7–1642?), who had been appointed Under Usher in 1621. In September 1628, he was reported to William Laud, then bishop of London, for drinking the health of John Felton, who had assassinated the duke of Buckingham a week earlier, in a tavern in Oxford with friends. He was also reported for imprudently disparaging King Charles and his late father two days later while drinking in the cellar of Trinity College, Oxford. The younger Gil was then arrested at St Paul’s School on Laud’s orders and imprisoned in the Gatehouse at Westminster. On 6 November the court of Star Chamber sentenced him to be degraded from the ministry, dismissed from his ushership at St Paul’s, deprived of his university degrees, fined £2000, to lose one ear in the pillory at Westminster and the other in Oxford, and to be imprisoned in the Fleet prison at the king’s pleasure. The elder Gil, who was deeply distressed by his son’s escapade and was on friendly terms with Laud, successfully petitioned for a mitigation of the fine and a remission of the corporal punishment. Although Alexander Gil Jr was given notice of a royal pardon on 18 October 1630, he nevertheless lost his official teaching post at St Paul’s.

Information regarding Gil’s family is scarce. We know that he and his wife, Elizabeth, had three sons, who were all admitted to Trinity College, Oxford, between 1612 and 1623, and then graduated BA and MA. However, on 20 April 1613, Alexander migrated to Wadham, where he was admitted as Bible clerk; he graduated BA from Wadham on 26 February 1616 and proceeded MA from Trinity on 9 November 1619. Gil also had two daughters, Anna Banister – who was still alive as a widow in 1673 – and Elizabeth, born around 1612 and married to a pewterer, Gabriel Bouchier.

A Special Pupil

No records of St Paul’s School appear to have survived the Great Fire of 1666, which destroyed the building. However, researches into the lists of Pauline exhibitioners and into the admission registers of Caius College, Cambridge, have brought to light the names of some eighty students of St Paul’s School educated under Alexander Gil[2]. Among those students was John Milton (1608-1674), in addition to other distinguished people such as Sir Charles Scarborough (1615-1694) and Charles Diodati (1609/1610-1638), the beloved friend in memory of whom Milton wrote the pastoral elegy Epitaphium Damonis (1639).

As a schoolboy at St Paul’s in London, Milton was peculiarly lucky in being associated from his tenth to his sixteenth year with such intellectually alert and scholarly men as his schoolmasters as both Alexander Gil the Elder and the Younger. Both Gils were expert Latinists, competent Greek scholars and sufficiently good Hebraists to introduce the boys in the eight form to the language of the Psalms. Moreover, although Milton never directly mentions the Gils in his works, he must have been influenced by Gil Sr’s enthusiasm for the English language and his practice of illustrating figures of speech and metrical patterns with full examples from contemporary English poets, especially Spenser. Gil started his monument of rational Anglican theology, The Sacred Philosophie of the Holy Scripture (1635), only in 1625, the year Milton left St Paul’s School for Cambridge, but as a result of many years of reading, meditating, and note taking. We can only make speculations on this, but that Gil should talk to his students from time to time of what so occupied his thoughts seems quite likely. Thus, Milton from childhood would have been exposed to rationalist philosophy in matters human and divine, something which clearly emerges from his mature writings.

Alexander Gil: Religious Writer and Spelling Reformer

Gil was not only a schoolmaster but also the author of theological treatises and a grammarian. In 1601 he wrote A Treatise Concerning the Trinitie of Persons in Unitie of the Deiti, which was reprinted in one volume in 1635 with The Sacred Philosophie of the Holy Scripture, Or a Commentary on the Creed (followed by a second edition in 1651). The Sacred Philosophie is an extraordinary physical and mental effort displaying prodigious learning, akin to Thomas Aquinas’s Summa contra gentiles (written between 1258 and 1264, first published in 1854) in spirit and method; it is a reasoned defence of the truth of the apostles’ Creed against the rival creeds of Muslims, Jews, atheists, and heretics. Gil also wrote a dedicatory poem for John Speed’s Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (1611) and a preface in Latin to Francis Anthony’s Apologia Veritatis illucescentis, pro auro potabile (1616), in which he thanked Anthony for curing his infant daughter and one of his sons by administering potable gold.

Gil’s most important work was Logonomia Anglica, published in two editions in 1619 and 1621.  As scholars have often pointed out, it testifies to Gil’s prominent role within the heated debate on early modern spelling and grammar-writing, which arose as a consequence of the development of national vernacular languages as a step towards the fading away of the previous hegemony of Latin. Faced with a cultural climate in which the emerging ruling middle class made a practical, superficial use of scholarly learning, and in which the prospects of a grammatical study of English language in most leading schools and universities was rather pessimistic, English Renaissance grammarians adopted one of two positions: either to complain about the state of abandonment and poverty of their native language or to make bold attempts to enrich it.

In his lengthy treatment of pronunciation and his proposal for a spelling reform, Alexander Gil had notable forerunners. In Logonomia’s “Preface to the Reader”, he decries the bad spelling of English and suggests that such corruption came into common usage because of the German early printers of English books, who had to use the types available and who assigned the task of proofreading not to educated men but to some employees who understood both German and English. Before discussing his own theories, Gil mentions the vain efforts of four spelling reformers who had tried to remedy such linguistic evil before him: Thomas Smith (1513-1577), Richard Mulcaster (1531/2-1611), John Hart (c.1501-1574), and William Bullokar (1531-1609). Thomas Smith’s new alphabet, described in De recta & emendata Linguae anglicae scriptione, dialogus (published in Paris in 1568), comprises nineteen Roman and six English letters, new characters that – according to Gil – “are not pleasing in appearance or easy to write”. Writing in opposition to Smith is Mulcaster who, as remarked by Gil, “brought out a very large book [and] after the great ruin of time and of good writing decided that everything should be surrendered to custom as if to a tyrant”. What animates Mulcaster’s principles of orthography is strict adherence to custom and to the customary characters, a system which is neither logical nor consistent – as observed by Gil – and which is set forth in the dedication of his Elementarie (1582). Mulcaster sets out to achieve his end with twenty-four capital letters and twenty-seven small letters (the latter increase being due to three forms of s and two of u), limiting the rules for the sounds of individual letters by the influence of proportion, composition, derivation, distinction, enfranchisement, and prerogative. The third spelling reformer in Gil’s list is John Hart, Chester Herald, the author of three treatises on orthography who provides us with the first truly scientific discussion of English spelling. Hart’s chief work, An Orthographie, was published in 1569, the year after the publication of Smith’s Dialogus. Here, Hart maintains that no more than two thirds or three quarters at most of the letters in use in Renaissance English were necessary, so that at least one quarter of the paper, ink, and time formerly needed would be saved by dropping them. We should write as we speak, Hart clearly advocates, after presenting his new phonetic alphabet comprising twenty-six symbols. Since he never uses capital letters on the ground that they represent the same sound as small letters, his use of a slanting line before the word in place of capital letters makes him more consistently phonetic than some twentieth-century phoneticians[3]. The last on Gil’s list of predecessors in the study of English orthography is William Bullokar, who wrote Booke at Large, for the Amendment of Orthographie for English Speech (published in 1580), described in its title by Bullokar himself as being “for the easy, speedy, and perfect reading and writing of English, the speech not changed, as some untruly and maliciously, or at least ignorantly, blow abroad”. According to Gil, Bullokar “changed very little, but he faithfully corrected a very great deal” in his proposed forty-four-letter alphabet: though Bulllokar’s scheme attempts to solve many of the problems confronting would-be spelling reformers, his object was indeed to keep as closely as possible to the existing orthography, yet correcting what he could, and at the same time marking the pronunciation. This, however, led him into a very complicated orthographic system, which only its inventor could master with skill and ease[4].

Logonomia Anglica: Praising the English National Language

Logonomia Anglica has long been recognized for its relevance to the study of English pronunciation and was an important contribution to the nationalistic view of the English language promulgated by a series of writers from William Camden (1551-1623) and Richard Mulcaster onwards. Being the most complete treatment of its subject among all the early grammars, it can be regarded as a vade-mecum of the verbal arts dealing with grammar, rhetoric, and prosody.

Logonomia was entirely written in Latin and survives in two editions published in 1619 and 1621. The second edition, though less handsome than the first, has corrected many typographical errors and includes a page of Errata, in which Gil amends his own mistakes. As is often the case in printed books of this type, Logonomia is dedicated to a noble patron, no less a personage than King James himself, in an Epistola Dedicatoria that nonetheless praises the English language even more than England’s sovereign. Gil was a linguistic patriot and a fierce defender of his native language against the charge of crudity because it does not employ classical metres. Thus, he strongly opposes the theories of those who, recognising the euphony of Greek and Latin metres, advocated the propriety of imitating them. In his Preface, Gil shows himself to be an enthusiastic upholder of all things Anglo-Saxon. Indeed, his lively appreciation of the native elements in English led him to a strong prejudice against foreign elements in the English vocabulary (especially Latin and French), which carried him so far as to condemn Geoffrey Chaucer “of unlucky omen” for “using French and Latin words [that] rendered his poetry contemptible”. The noble origins and purity of English are praised alongside the claim that England’s national language is appropriate to communicate literature, intellectual ideas, and manners. Moreover, given that English bears a comparison with other languages, and since it has been borrowing freely from other languages through the centuries, Gil claims that it could be a good choice as a lingua franca. In his Preface, Gil mentions the belief that all human beings used to speak the same language, and accordingly argues that to achieve a universal vocabulary again would be desirable. The best candidate for that, of course, would be English. With the aim of finding the English essential features, Gil showed unusual concern with language comparison and went as far as comparing English not only with Latin but also with Greek, Hebrew, and other modern languages. In his view, the only weak point and cause of corruption of English is the chaotic spelling that emerged with the early printed books. For this reason, Logonomia is no mere grammar-book but devotes extensive space to a discussion for a reformed orthography as well as to a discussion of Gil’s own projected scheme, which sets the pattern for all subsequent English words in the book.

Generally speaking, Gil believes that there are four things which greatly aid orthography: derivation, difference, accepted custom, and dialect. Thus, derivatives follow the writing of the primitives as well as indicate the orthography of the primitives; difference of meaning is distinguished by orthography as far as the sound permits; as for the third aid, accepted custom, Gil grants that custom should everywhere be followed except where the true pronunciation clearly rejects it. It is an interesting concession, especially if one thinks of Gil’s condemnation of Mulcaster for surrendering to custom as if to a tyrant. Finally, just as proper nouns also are to retain their accustomed rule of writing, so dialect is to retain the irregularities which the exigencies of the matter demand.

Gil’s orthographic system is based on the principle that each letter or symbol should have only one sound. His alphabet consists of twenty-four letters: a, b, ch, d, e, f, g, j, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, w, x, y, z. Considering the properties of the letters, however, he extends the list to forty by adding several varieties of single characters; he envisages no double consonants and no silent vowels, compound characters (such as ch, ng, sh, th, and wh) are to represent simple sounds. According to Gil’s rule for the representation of vowels, the shortness or length of each vowel should be sought in itself, not by other means such as the addition of a silent e or the doubling of a consonant. Therefore, he establishes the following general principles for writing vowels: short vowels are written in the customary form; long vowels have two dots above.

Logonomia Anglica is divided into four parts: Grammar, Etymology, Syntax, and Prosody. Such structure testifies to Gil’s very definition of logonomia as “the understanding of the rules by which an unknown language can be more easily learned”. Thus, as previously recalled, Gil’s Logonomia is a combination of grammar and rhetoric for English. The first section, Grammatica sive Literatoria, is what other grammarians such as Lily usually call Orthography and includes seven chapters: 1. (untitled chapter); 2. On the Composition of Letters; 3. Orthography; 4. Consonants; 5. Proper Diphthongs; 6. Dialects, and also Concerning Improper Diphthongs; 7. Syllables. Like most teachers of phonetic languages like Latin and Greek, Gil is distressed by English not being spelled as it is pronounced. He knows it would be much easier to teach it to foreigners if it too were phonetic. Hence, in the seven chapters of this section he endeavours to teach a phonetic system for writing English, and in the rest of the book he gives examples from English writers as well as illustrations in his own phonetic spelling of English.

The second section, Etimologia, is devoted to Etymology or Accidence. It presents the parts of speech with tables of declensions and conjugations and includes chapters from 8 to 13: 8. Primitives and Derivatives; 9. Composition, Comparison, Diminution; 10. Classification of Words; 11. Personal Nouns; 12. Verbs; 13. Consignificants. In the third section on Syntax, Gil suggests that there are two types of syntax: simple and schematised. Simple syntax is that used ordinarily in speaking and writing, whereas schematised (or figured) syntax is the one used by necessity or for ornament, as in oratorical prose. In chapters 14 to 17 Gil treats English syntax much as Lily’s Grammar treats Latin syntax. Then, in chapter 18, he moves to the tropes and figures of speech which were usually dealt with in the school rhetoric of his time and, because his own pupils remember definitions better if they are in verse, he uses Latin verse definitions of the figures – some drawn from Mancinelli, Despauterius, and Farnaby, and some of his own composition. Finally, Gil’s last section on Prosody mostly deals with accent, both grammatical and rhetorical, as well as with the use of classical metres in English. He approves of writing English accentual verse after the pattern of Greek and Latin poetry, but he does not approve of the efforts to write quantitative English poetry.

In his treatment of rhetorical figures and prosody, Gil makes ample use of illustrations from English poets, which is a unique aspect of Logonomia and probably one of the most appealing for modern readers. In doing so, Gil proves to be an innovator, since his predecessors and contemporaries mostly employed examples drawn from the classics. His favourite poet is “our Homer”, Edmund Spenser, who “is more exact in the refinements of language, and, as he is more fluent, so is he more eminent”. Gil’s main source of illustrations is The Faerie Queene, but he also quotes from Spenser’s the Shepheardes Calendar (1579) and Ruins of Time (1591). Gil grants to Philip Sidney, “our Anacreon”, the same general excellence in poetic qualities as to Spenser, and he also quotes from other English poets, namely George Withers, “our Juvenal”; Samuel Daniel, “our Lucan”; John Harington, “our Martial”, John Davies, Ben Jonson, and Edward Dyer, as well as from Stanyhurst’s translation of the Aeneid (1558) and Arthur Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1567).

References

Algeo, John. 2009. The Origins and Development of the English Language (6th edition). ‎ Boston: Wadsworth Publishing.

Barber, Charles, Joan C. Beal, and Philip A. Shaw, eds. 2009. The English Language: A Historical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Barker, Arthur. 1937. “Milton’s Schoolmasters”. The Modern Language Review 32 (4): 517–36.

Campbell, Gordon. 2004. “Gil [Gill], Alexander, the elder”. In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, published online https://doi-org.nls.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/10729.

Campbell, Gordon. 2004. “Gil, Alexander, the younger”. In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, published online https://doi-org.nls.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/10730.

Clark, Donald Lemen. 1946. “Milton’s Schoolmasters: Alexander Gil and his Son Alexander”. Huntington Library Quarterly 9 (2): 121–47.

Danielsson, Bror and Arvid Gabrielson, eds. 1972. Alexander Gill’s Logonomia Anglica (1619). Part I: Facsimiles of Gill’s presentation copy in the Bodleian Library. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell.

Danielsson, Bror and Arvid Gabrielson, eds. 1972. Alexander Gill’s Logonomia Anglica (1619). Part II: Biographical and Bibliographical Introductions. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell.

Dixon, Dorothy. 1951. Alexander Gil’s Logonomia Anglica, edition of 1621, translated with an introduction and critical and explanatory notes, PhD diss. University of Southern California.

Dobson, E. J. 1957. English Pronunciation 1500 to 1700 (2 voll.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ellis, Alexander J. 1869. On Early English Pronunciation. London and Berlin: Asher & Co.

Espinasse, Margaret. 1975. “Reviewed Work(s): Alexander Gill’s Logonomia Anglica (1619) by B. Danielsson, A. Gabrielson, Robin C. Alston and Alexander Gill”. The Review of English Studies 26 (101): 111.

Gill, Alexander. 1903. Alexander Gill’s Logonomia Anglica. Edited by Otto Jiriczek, Strassburg: Karl J. Trübner.

López Folgado, Vicente. 2001. “Alexander Gill’s Logonomia Anglica”. Alfinge 13: 63-82.

McDonnell, Michael F. J. 1909. A History of St. Paul’s School. London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd.

Michael, Ian. 1970. English Grammatical Categories and the Tradition to 1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nevalainen, Terttu. 2006. An Introduction to Early Modern English. Edinburg: Edinburg University Press.

Poole, William. 2018. “The Literary Remains of Alexander Gil the Elder (1565–1635) and Younger (1596/7–1642?)”. Milton Quarterly 51 (3): 163–90.

Poole, William. 2019. “More Light on the Literary Remains of Alexander Gil the Younger (1596/7-1644)”. Milton Quarterly 53 (4): 215-21.

Wood, Anthony à. 1691. Athenae Oxonienses: An Exact History of All the Writers and Bishops who Have Had Their Education in the University of Oxford (4 voll.). London: Thomas Bennet.

[1] Although Gil’s name has often been spelled with a double l at the end, in this digital edition of the text I chose to stick to the spelling of Gil with one l because it is the one both Gil and his son consistently employed in their works, as well as the one we find on the titlepage of both editions of Logonomia Anglica.

[2] Data provided by McDonnell 1909.

[3] For more details, see my own introduction to Hart’s grammar contained in the EMEGA archive.

[4] For more details, see the introduction to Bullokar’s grammar by Marco Bagli contained in the EMEGA archive.

This edition of Alexander Gil’s Logonomia Anglica is based on the 1621 copy preserved at the Royal Society of London (40907) and available in a digitized copy on Archive.org (https://archive.org/details/LogonomiaAnglica1621/mode/2up). Gil’s grammar was never reissued for nearly three centuries, and one good reason was the difficulty in reproducing his new alphabet. In his first version (1619), a number of the symbols had to be completed by hand; in the revised version (1621) they were replaced by symbols which could be printed, but like all non-standard alphabets were troublesome. Two critical editions of Logonomia Anglica were published in the twentieth century: Otto L. Jiriczek edited in 1903 a valuable diplomatic edition (with introduction and critical apparatus in German), which collates the edition of 1621 with the authoritative copy of the 1619 edition, corrected and carefully annotated by Gil himself and given to the Bodleian Library ex dono authoris. In 1972, Bror Danielsson and Arvid Gabrielson edited the first edition of Logonomia in two volumes with the facsimile of the 1619 copy preserved at the Bodleian Library and a long bio-bibliographical introduction.