It is necessary to bear in mind this conception of the academy in reading the school dialogues, for we have in them little children learning their alphabet[13] and the elements of reading[14] and writing,[15] and we have also the youths (at our undergraduate stage) going on their academic journey on horseback from Paris to Boulogne. This reminds us of Milton’s sallying forth of students “at the vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, and it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to go out and see her riches and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.”
And we have the student of mature age, in his dressing-gown, at midnight, pursuing his classical meditations. Thus infancy, youth, manhood, all stages, come into the conception of education. Education is a continuous process lasting throughout life, and for Vives the educational institution of “schools” should embody and make facilities for the achievement of that idea. In passing, it should be remarked that John Milton, in his _Tractate of Education_ (1644), and John Dury (1650), in his _Reformed School_, advocate what we may call the Vives-Academy view of school![16] It must occur to every reader of Vives’ _De Tradendis Disciplinis_ as highly probable that Milton’s hurriedly dashed-off and eloquent tractate was written after a fairly recent perusal of Vives’ book.
The treatises on education in Tudor times have scarcely been surpassed by any later works in their treatment of physical education and advocacy of games. Particularly is this so in England, for in that period were published Sir Thomas Elyot’s _Gouvernour_ (1531), Roger Ascham’s _Toxophilus_ (1545), and Richard Mulcaster’s _Positions_ (1581). But outstanding in their importance as these works were, Vives in his _School Dialogues_ makes an interesting supplementary contribution.
Vives shows the value of “play” as an underlying spirit of school work, for the school is a form of “ludus” or play.[17] The little child, Corneliola, learns the alphabet “playing,” as indeed children had done at any rate from the days of Quintilian. Indeed, one of the most charming pictures of children provided by Vives is in Dialogue VI., which describes the mother, the boys Tulliolus, Lentulus, Scipio, and the little girl Corneliola, on the return from school of the boys, as they engage in children’s play and discussion of it. The games named in that dialogue are the games of “nuts,” “odd and even,” dice-play, draughts, and playing cards. Vives passes over the question of the moral obliquity of dice-playing and card-playing, though much was said in the Tudor period with regard to them.[18]