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The Donatus, or Boy's Latin Grammar.
A Very Old Book … A Favorite with the Early Xylographers … Frequently Printed … Scarcity of Fragments … Printed by Typographic Process … Printed before and after Invention of Typography … Testimony of the Cologne Chronicle … Of Accursius … Of Scaliger … Of Sweinheim and Pannartz … Fac-simile of a German Donatus … Of a Dutch Donatus … The Arrangement of Words in the Donatus … Obscurity of the Letters … Fac-simile of a Dutch Horarium … Xylographic Editions are Imitations of Typographic Editions ... Irregularities of Engraved Letters … The Donatus a Relic of the Past … Shows the Retrogressive Tendencies of the Teachers of the Period … The Pettiness of all Block-Books … An Evidence of the Limitations of Xylography.
The only block-book without pictures of which we have any knowledge is the Donatus,[1] or Boy's Latin Grammar. It received its name from its author, Ælius Donatus, a Roman grammarian of the fourth century, and one of the instructors of St. Jerome. The block-book is but an abridgment of the old grammar: as it was usually printed in the form of a thin quarto, it could, with propriety, be classified among primers rather than with books. When printed in the largest letters, it occupied but thirty-four pages; when letters of small size were used, it was compressed within nine pages. As the most popular of small works, and one constantly needed in every
- ↑ The full title of the book is Donatus de octibus partibus orationis, or Donatus on the Eight Parts of Speech. It is sometimes designated as Donatus pro puerilis, or the Donatus for Little Boys.
