Joseph Webbe (

fl. ''Floruit'' ( ; usually abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for 'flourished') denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indic ...

1610 – 1630) was an English grammarian, physician, and astrologer. He is now remembered for his views on language teaching, which were based on minimal instruction in grammar, against the contemporary fashion.

Life

A Catholic, he graduated M.D. and Ph.D., perhaps at Padua. Before 1622 he returned to England, and in 1623 was residing in the

Old Bailey The Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, commonly referred to as the Old Bailey after the street on which it stands, is a criminal court building in central London, one of several that house the Crown Court of England and Wales. The s ...

;

John Gee John Laurence Gee (born 1964) is an American Latter-day Saint scholar, apologist and an Egyptologist. He currently teaches at Brigham Young University (BYU) and serves in the Department of Near Eastern Languages. He is known for his writings in ...

, in his ''Foot out of the Snare'', describes him as there and taking pupils. Through

Samuel Hartlib Samuel Hartlib or Hartlieb (c. 1600 – 10 March 1662)
M. Greengrass, "Hartlib, Samuel (c. 1600–1662)", ''Oxford D ...

Webbe corresponded in 1629 with another innovator, William Brookes.

Works

In 1612 he published at Rome an astrological work entitled ''Minae Coalestes Affectus segrotantibus denunciantes, hoc anno 1612''. He strongly advocated a colloquial method of teaching languages, proposing to extend it even to the classical tongues, and to substitute it for the manner of grammatical study in general use. He was influenced in this by

Georgius Haloinus Georgius is a masculine given name, the Latin form of the Greek name Γεώργιος ''Georgios''; its English equivalent is ''George''. Notable people with the name include: * Georgius Choeroboscus (7th century), Greek educator * Georgius Tzul (1 ...

and Wolfgang Ratke. In 1622 he published, in support of his views, ''An Appeale to Truth, in the Controuersie betweene Art and Vse'' (London), which he supplemented in 1623 by ''A Petition to the High Court of Parliament, in the behalf of auncient and authentique Authors'' (London), in which he says that his system has received encouragement from James I, and that he wishes to receive a monopoly of the right to teach by his method. The ''Pueriles confabulatiunculae, or children talke, claused and drawne into lessons'' appeared in 1627. A work dedicated to Charles I from 1626, entitled ''Vsus et Authoritas'' (London), was a treatise on

hexameter Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek as well as in Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of s ...

s and

pentameter Pentameter (, 'measuring five ( feet)') is a term describing the meter of a poem. A poem is said to be written in a particular pentameter when the lines of the poem have the length of five metrical feet. A metrical foot is, in classical poetry, ...

s. Webbe was also the author of translations, including one of ''The Familiar Epistles of Cicero'' (London), undated, but probably published about 1620. In 1629 bilingual versions of ''Andria'' and ''Eunuchus'', the plays of

Terence Publius Terentius Afer (; – ), better known in English as Terence (), was a playwright during the Roman Republic. He was the author of six Roman comedy, comedies based on Greek comedy, Greek originals by Menander or Apollodorus of Carystus. A ...

, were set out in columns by phrase.Olive Classe, ''Encyclopedia of Literary Translation into English'' (2000), p. 1385.

Life

Works

Notes

References

Further reading