Editing William Lily (grammarian)

{{Short description|15th/16th-century English classical grammarian and scholar}}
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[[File:Memorial to the graves lost in the Great Fire of London, St Paul's Cathedral.JPG|thumb|upright=1.3|Lilly's name listed on the Memorial to the graves lost in the Great Fire of London, St Paul's Cathedral]]
'''William Lily''' (or '''William Lilly''' or '''Lilye'''; c. 1468{{snd}}25 February 1522) was an English classical [[Philologist|grammarian]] and scholar.  He was an author of the most widely used [[Latin grammar]] textbook in England and was the first [[High Master (academic)|high master]] of [[St Paul's School (London)|St Paul's School]], London.

==Life==
Lily was born c. 1468 at [[Odiham]], Hampshire, and he entered the [[University of Oxford]] in 1486.  After graduating in arts he went on a pilgrimage to [[Jerusalem]].  On his return journey he put in at [[Rhodes]], which was still occupied by the [[knights of St John]], under whose protection many Greeks had taken refuge after the capture of [[Constantinople]] by the [[Ottoman Empire|Turks]]. He then went on to Italy, where he attended the lectures of [[Angelo Sabino|Angelus Sabinus]],<ref>M. Audin, translated by Edward G. Kirwan Browne, ''The Life of Henry the Eighth and History of the Schism of England'' (London, 1852), p. 422 [https://books.google.com/books?id=XXlnAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22Angiolo+Sabino%22&pg=PA422 online.]</ref> [[Sulpitius Verulanus]] and [[Pomponius Laetus]] at Rome, and of [[Egnazio|Egnatius]] at [[Venice]].{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

After his return he settled in London—where he became friends with [[Thomas More]]—as a private teacher of [[grammar]], and is believed to have been the first who taught Greek in that city. In 1510 [[John Colet]], dean of [[St Paul's Cathedral|St Paul's]], who was then founding the school which afterwards became famous, appointed Lily the first high master in 1512.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}} Colet's correspondence with [[Erasmus]] shows he first offered the position to the Dutchman, who refused it, before considering Lily.  Ward and Waller ranked Lily "with [[William Grocyn|Grocyn]] and [[Thomas Linacre|Linacre]] as one of the most erudite students of Greek that England possessed". Lily's pupils included [[William Paget, 1st Baron Paget|William Paget]], [[John Leland (antiquary)|John Leland]], [[Antony Denny]], [[Thomas Wriothesley]] and [[Edward North, 1st Baron North]].<ref name=ODNB>Carley, "Leland, John (''c''.1503–1552)"</ref> The school became a paragon of classical scholarship.

He died of the plague in London on 25 February 1522 and was buried in the north churchyard of [[Old St Paul's Cathedral]]. His grave and monument were destroyed in the [[Great Fire of London]] in 1666. A modern monument in the crypt lists his as one of the important graves lost.

==Works==
Lily is famous not only as one of the pioneers of Greek learning, but as one of the joint-authors of a book, familiar to many generations of students up to the 19th century, the old Eton Latin grammar or ''Accidence''.  This ''Brevissima Institutio'', a sketch by Colet, corrected by [[Erasmus]] and worked upon by Lily, contains two portions the author of which is indisputably Lily.  These are the lines on the genders of nouns, beginning ''Propria quae maribus'', and those on the conjugation of verbs beginning ''As in praesenti''.  The ''Carmen de Moribus'' bears Lily's name in the early editions; but [[Thomas Hearne (antiquarian)|Thomas Hearne]] asserts that it was written by Leland, who was one of his scholars, and that Lily only adapted it.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}} However Erasmus himself stated:

<blockquote>At Colet's command, this book was written by William Lily, a man of no ordinary skill, a wonderful craftsman in the instruction of boys. When he had completed his work, it was handed over to, nay rather thrust upon, me for emendation. easier for me to do). So that Lily (endowed as he is with too much modesty) did not permit the book to appear with his name, and I (with my sense of candour) did not feel justified that the book should bear my name when it was the work of another. Since both of us refused our names it was published anonymously, Colet merely commending it in a preface.<ref>George A. Plimpton, ''The Education of Shakespeare: Illustrated from the Schoolbooks in Use in His Time'', Oxford University Press, London, 1933, p. 85.</ref></blockquote>

An edition published in 1534 was entitled ''Rudimenta Grammatices''. Various other parts were added and a stable form finally appeared in 1540. In 1542 [[Henry VIII of England|Henry VIII]] authorised it as the sole Latin grammar textbook to be used in education and schools; it has been suggested that Henry commissioned the book but the interval between initial publication and authorisation argue against this. With corrections and revisions,<ref>Wm. Lilly (1513) [https://books.google.com/books?id=tdoFAAAAQAAJ A Shorte Introduction of Grammar], Oxford by the Theater, link from [[Google Books]]</ref> it was used for more than three hundred years. It was so widely used by Elizabethan scholars that [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]] was able to refer to it in the second scene of Act IV of ''[[Titus Andronicus]]'', quote from it in the first scene of Act II of ''[[Henry IV, Part 1]]'' ("''Homo'' is a common name to all men") and allude to it in the first scene of Act IV of ''[[The Merry Wives of Windsor]]'' and scene 1 of Act IV of [[Much Ado about Nothing]].

Part of the grammar is a poem, "Carmen de Moribus", which lists school regulations in a series of pithy sentences, using a broad vocabulary, and examples of most of the rules of Latin grammar that were part of an English [[grammar school]] curriculum.  (See [[Latin mnemonics]].) The poem is an early reinforcement of part of the reading list in Erasmus' ''De Ratione Studii'' of the Classical authors who should be included in the curriculum of a Latin grammar school.  Specifically, the authors derived from Erasmus are [[Cicero]], [[Terence]], and [[Virgil]].

When [[John Milton]] wrote his Latin grammar ''Accedence Commenc't Grammar'' (1669), over 60 percent of his 530 illustrative quotations were taken from Lily's grammar.

Besides the ''Brevissima Institutio'', Lily wrote a variety of Latin pieces and translations from Greek, both in prose and verse.  Some of the latter are printed along with the Latin verses of Sir Thomas More in ''Progymnasmata Thomae Mori et Gulielmi Lylii Sodalium'' (1518). Another volume of Latin verse (''Antibossicon ad Gulielmum Hormannum'', 1521) is directed against a rival schoolmaster and grammarian, [[Robert Whittington]], who had "under the feigned name of Bossus, much provoked Lily with scoffs and biting verses."{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

A sketch of Lily's life by his son [[George Lily]] was written for [[Paulus Jovius]], who was collecting for his history the lives of the learned men of Great Britain.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

==Notes==
{{Reflist}}

==Sources==
* Anders, Henry R. D., ''Shakespeare's books: A dissertation on Shakespeare's reading and the immediate sources of his works'' (New York: AMS, 1965)
* {{Cite web |first=James P. |last=Carley |title=Leland, John (''c''.1503–1552) |work=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |publisher=Oxford University Press |orig-year=2004 |edition=online |year= 2006 |url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16416  |access-date=13 May 2010 }}
* {{EB1911|wstitle=Lilye, William|volume=16|page=688}}
* Hedwig Gwosdek [Ed.]: ''Lily's grammar of Latin in English : an introduction of the eyght partes of speche, and the construction of the same'', Oxford : Oxford Univ. Press, 2013, {{ISBN|978-0-19-966811-3}}
* [[Joseph Hirst Lupton]], formerly sur-master of St Paul's School, in the ''[[Dictionary of National Biography]]''.
* Ward, A. W. and Waller, A. R. (eds.) ''The Cambridge History of English and American Literature''. Volume III: ''Renascence and Reformation'' (Cambridge: University Press, 1908)

==External links==
* Archival Material at {{wikidata|qualifier|property|P485|Q24568958|P856|format=\[%q %p\]}} 
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lily, William}}
[[Category:1460s births]]
[[Category:1522 deaths]]
[[Category:16th-century writers in Latin]]
[[Category:16th-century deaths from plague (disease)]]
[[Category:16th-century English educators]]
[[Category:High Masters of St Paul's School]]
[[Category:Infectious disease deaths in England]]
[[Category:People from Odiham]]
[[Category:Grammarians of Latin]]
[[Category:Schoolteachers from Hampshire]]