Exercises of Syntax

From Wythepedia: The George Wythe Encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Exercises of Syntax
Title not held by The Wolf Law Library
at the College of William & Mary.
  
Author
Editor
Translator
Published :
Date
Edition Precise work and edition unknown.
Language
Volumes volume set
Pages
Desc. 12mo

Possible Titles

While there is no work titled "Exercises of Syntax," there are several titles Thomas Jefferson could have been referring to when he listed it in his inventory. The following works are each a possibility: An Abridgement of Pomey's Pantheon (John Stirling), A Short View of English Grammar (John Stirling), A collection of English exercises, (William Ellis), or Exercises to the accidence (William Turner).

John Stirling

John Stirling (also spelled Sterling) was an English clergyman and teacher who wrote a number of books designed to teach Latin and English.[1] Details of his life are sparse, but he was likely born around 1700 and lived in the household of the Earl of Strathmore as a companion to James Lyon.[2] He received his M.A. from the University of Glasgow in 1721 [3], and served as chaplain to the Duke of Gordon in 1738.[4] Stirling also held the title of Doctor of Divinity (D.D.).[5] He served as vicar of St. John the Baptist Church in Great Gaddedsen until his death in 1777.[6] He published at least twenty-four works, largely pedagogical materials on grammar and rhetoric.[7] Stirling works often contained simplified Latin, referred to as the “ordo,” short for “ordo verborum” (order of words),[8] and scansion tables[9] Furthermore, Stirling’s “paraphrase” technique, which augments and rewrites the Latin text to be more accessible to a student, is still used by the Latinum Institute in their Latin lessons today.[10] However, most copies of Stirling’s work are extremely rare or lost altogether.[11]

Abridgment of Pomey's Pantheon, by way of Latin Exercises

François Antoine Pomey (1618-73) was a French Jesuit who served as prefect of the Collège de la Trinité in Lyon.[12] He published his Pantheum mythicum (Pantheon of mythology) in 1659, which described the principal gods and figures within ancient Greek and Roman mythology.[13] John Stirling later adapted the Pantheon into an educational text, publishing his Abridgement of Pomey’s Pantheon in 1740.[14] Stirling’s abridgement was printed in English and Latin, with double columns displaying the English text to the left and the Latin one to the right.[15]

A Short View of English Grammar

A Short View of English Grammar was published in 1735 and contains three parts: etymology, syntax, and prosody.[16] The “method entirely new” mentioned in the title likely refers to a format commonly used by Stirling, where there was “verse on the top half of the page and the same words in ‘grammatical construction’ at the bottom.”[17] This format would become the model for other works such as James Buchanan’s The First Six Books of Milton’s Paradise Lost.[18] A Short View of English Grammar went on to be published in numerous editions.[19]

William Ellis and William Turner

There is scant information on both these authors and their works. William Ellis was identified as master of a grammar school in Alford, Lincolnshire.[20] His work, A Collection of English exercises, was a translation of Cicero's work for the use of school-boys learning Latin.[21] William Turner was identified as the late master of the free-school in Colchester.[22] His work, Exercises to the accidence, consisted of works by Roman authors translated into English, with the intent that they be rendered back into Latin by the students.[23]

Evidence for Inclusion in Wythe's Library

Listed in the Jefferson Inventory of Wythe's Library as "Exercises of syntax. 12mo." and given by Thomas Jefferson to his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph. No exact title matches Jefferson's description. The Brown Bibliography[24] suggests two plausible titles based on copies owned by Thomas Jefferson, John Stirling's Abridgment of Pomey's Pantheon, by way of Latin Exercises (London, 1740) and the same author's A Short View of English Grammar, 2nd edition (London: 1740). [25] George Wythe's Library[26] on LibraryThing states "Precise work unknown. Possibly William Ellis, A collection of English exercises (1782) or William Turner, Exercises to the accidence (several editions)." As yet, the Wolf Law Library determined which title to purchase for this entry.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Michael G. Moran, “John Stirling and the Classical Approach to Style in 18th Century England,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Phoenix, AZ, March 12-15, 1997), 6.[1]
  2. ↑ Barnaby Ralph, “The Uses of Fable: Three Eighteenth-Century Versions of the Phædri Fabulæ,” Bulletin of the Faculty of Humanities Seikei University No. 58, 6 (2023).[2]
  3. ↑ Ralph, "The Uses of Fable," 6.
  4. ↑ Moran, "John Stirling," 3.
  5. ↑ Ralph, "The Uses of Fable," 6.
  6. ↑ Ralph, "The Uses of Fable," 6.
  7. ↑ Ralph, "The Uses of Fable," 6.
  8. ↑ Ralph, "The Uses of Fable," 6.
  9. ↑ Mark Morford, “Early American School Editions of Ovid,” The Classical Journal 78, no. 2 (1982), 150–51n5.
  10. ↑ “Stirling Collection,” Latinum Institute, accessed February 17th, 2026, https://www.latinum.org.uk/intermediate/stirling-collection.
  11. ↑ Ralph, "The Uses of Fable," 7.
  12. ↑ Manfred Kraus, “François Pomey’s Candidatus rhetoricae and Its Revisions as Documents of the History of Jesuit Rhetorical Education,” in Engaging Sources: The Tradition and Future of Collecting History in the Society of Jesus (Proceedings of the Symposium held at Boston, June 11–13, 2019), ed. Cristiano Casalini, Emanuele Colombo, and Seth Meehan, special issue, International Symposia on Jesuit Studies 1, no. 1 (2021): 8.
  13. ↑ "An Abridgement of Pomey's Pantheon," AbeBooks, accessed February 17th, 2026.[3]
  14. ↑ John Stirling, An abridgment of Pomey's Pantheon: by way of Latin exercise ... By ... John Stirling, (Thomas Astley, 1740), Google Books.[4]
  15. ↑ "An Abridgement of Pomey's Pantheon," AbeBooks.
  16. ↑ Moran, "John Stirling," 10.
  17. ↑ Aaron Shapiro, “‘Levelling the Sublime’: Translating Paradise Lost into English in the Eighteenth Century,” in Milton in Translation (2017), 64.
  18. ↑ Shapiro, "'Leveling the Sublime,'" 64.
  19. ↑ Morford, "Early American School Editions of Ovid," 150-51n5.
  20. ↑ William Ellis, A collection of English exercises; Translated from the writings of Cicero only, for school-boys to re-translate into Latin; and adapted to the principal rules int he compendium of erasmus's syntax. The third edition, corrected, and greatly englarged by the author: to which are added, some rules for adapting the English idiom to the Latin. By William Ellis, A.M. and master of the Grammar School at Alford, in Lincolnshire. Printed for G. Robinson, and R. Baldwin, Pater-Noster-Row, MDCCXCVII. [1797].
  21. ↑ Ellis, A Collection of English exercises.
  22. ↑ Turner, William. Exercises to the accidence; or, an exemplification of the several moods and tenses, and of the principal rules of construction; consisting chiefly of moral sentences, collected out of the best Roman authors, and translated into English, to be render'd back into Latin, the Latin words being set in the opposite Column. With references to the Latin syntax; and notes. Printed by J.H. for Sam. Crouch against the Royal Exchange in Cornhill; and J. Sprint at the Bell in Little-Britain, 1707. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, accessed 23 Feb. 2026.
  23. ↑ Turner, Exercises to the Accidence,
  24. ↑ Bennie Brown, "The Library of George Wythe of Williamsburg and Richmond," (unpublished manuscript, 2009, rev. 2023) Microsoft Word document, on file at the Wolf Law Library.
  25. ↑ Brown, The Library of George Wythe. Brown suggests the first title based on E. Millicent Sowerby's Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson (Washington, D.C.: The Library of Congress, 1952-1959), 5:90 no.4801. Jefferson sold a title he listed as "# 20. Stirling's Exercises, 12mo" to the Library of Congress in 1815. Sowerby joins that reference to her entry based on the 1839 catalog of books in the Library of Congress, proposing the two are the same. The second title Brown offers, Stirling's English Grammar, is based on an entry in "Jefferson's manuscript catalog of 1770-1812, where he lists it as: Stirling's exercises 8vo. 6d."
  26. ↑ LibraryThing, s.v. "Member: George Wythe," accessed on July 10, 2025.
Retrieved from "http://wythepedia.wm.edu/index.php?title=Exercises_of_Syntax&oldid=78218"