Charles Hoole

Charles Hoole (1610–1667) was an English cleric and educational writer. He produced a visually-improved English translation of the Orbis Pictus of Comenius, a year after its original publication in 1658.

Life The son of Charles Hoole of Wakefield in Yorkshire, he was born there. He was educated at Wakefield free school, and at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he proceeded B.A. on 12 June 1634 and M.A. on 7 July 1636. Robert Sanderson, a relative, helped him get a place at Oxford, and continued through life to support him.

Hoole took holy orders around 1632, and through the influence of Sanderson was appointed master of Rotherham free school. He became rector of Great Ponton, Lincolnshire in 1642, at the outbreak of the First English Civil War but was sequestrated from the living by Parliament. L. Culmann's Sentences for Children … translated into English, 1658. From the Sententiæ pueriles of Leonhard Culmann. J. A. Commenii, Orbis Sensualium pictus … translated as "The Visible World", 1659. Pueriles Confabulatiunculæ. Children's Talk. English and Latin, 1659. Catonis disticha de Moribus, with Dicta septem sapientum Græciæ, 1659. From the Distichs of Cato.

Centuria Epistolarum. Anglo-Latinarum, ex Tritissimis Classicis Authoribus … A Century of Epistles, 1660. Based on Cicero, it covers letter composition in both Latin and English. New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching School, 1660. Examinatio Grammaticæ Latinæ in usum Scholarum adornatæ, 1660. An edition of the New Testament in Greek, 1664. P. Terentii Comœdiæ Sex Anglo-Latinæ, 1676. The Common Accidence Examined and Explained by Short Questions and Answers, 1679. Æsop's Fables. English and Latin, 1700.

Views on pedagogy For the upper school forms Hoole recommended a rhetoric text, derived from the Rhetorica of Audomarus Talaeus in the edition by Charles Butler. It was the Rhetorices Elementa (1648) of William Dugard. He advocated the traditional approach of having pupils converse in Latin, but it was dying out by the end of his career. Alongside Latin poetry, he introduced pupils to contemporary poetry in English: George Herbert, Francis Quarles, and Ovid in the translation of George Sandys.