CHAPTER V.

HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1520 TO 1550.

_Classical Taste of the Italians--Ciceronians--Erasmus attacks them--Writings on Roman Antiquity--Learning in France--Commentaries of Budæus--Progress of Learning in Spain, Germany, England--State of Cambridge and Oxford--Advance of Learning still slow--Encyclopædic Works._

|Superiority of Italy in taste.|

1. Italy, the genial soil where the literature of antiquity had been first cultivated, still retained her superiority in the fine perception of its beauties, and in the power of retracing them by spirited imitation. It was the land of taste and sensibility; never surely more so than in the age of Raffaelle as well as Ariosto. Far from the clownish ignorance so long predominant in the transalpine aristocracy, the nobles of Italy, accustomed to a city life, and to social festivity, more than to war or the chase, were always conspicuous for their patronage, and, what is more important than mere patronage, their critical skill in matters of art and elegant learning. Among the ecclesiastical order this was naturally still more frequent. If the successors of Leo X. did not attain so splendid a name, they were perhaps, after the short reign of Adrian VI., which, if we may believe the Italian writers, seemed to threaten an absolute return of barbarism,[627] not less munificent or sedulous in encouraging polite and useful letters. The first part indeed of this period of thirty years was very adverse to the progress of learning; especially in that disastrous hour when the lawless mercenaries of Bourbon’s army were led on to the sack of Rome. In this, and in other calamities of the same kind, it happened that universities and literary academies were broken up, that libraries were destroyed or dispersed. That of Sadolet, having been with difficulty saved in the pillage of Rome, was dispersed, in consequence of shipwreck during its transport to France.[628] A better æra commenced with the pacification of Italy in 1531. The subsequent wars were either transient, or partial in their effects. The very extinction of all hope for civil freedom, which characterised the new period, turned the intellectual energies of an acute and ardent people towards those tranquil pursuits, which their rulers would both permit and encourage.

[627] Valerianus, in his treatise De Infelicitate Litteratorum, a melancholy series of unfortunate authors, in the manner, though not quite with the spirit and interest, of M. D’Israeli, speaks of Adrian VI. as of another Paul II. in hatred of literature. Ecce adest musarum et eloquentiæ, totiusque nitoris hostis acerrimus, qui literatis omnibus inimicitias minitatur, quoniam, ut ipse dictitabat, Terentiani essent, quos cum odisse atque etiam persequi cœpisset, voluntarium alii exilium, alias atque alias alii latebras quærentes, tamdiu latuere, quoad Dei beneficio, altero imperii anno decessit, qui si aliquanto diutius vixissit, Gotica illa tempora adversus bonas literas videbatur suscitaturus. Lib. ii. p. 34. It is but fair to add, that Erasmus ascribes to Adrian the protection of letters in the Low Countries. Vix nostra phalanx sustinuisset hostium conjurationem, ni Adrianus tum Cardinalis, postea Romanus pontifex, hoc edidisset oraculum: Bonus literas non damno, hæreses et schismata damno. Epist. Mclxxvi. There is not indeed much in this; but the Biographie Universelle (Suppl. art. Busleiden) informs us that this pope was compelled to interfere in order to remove the impediments to the foundation of Busleiden’s Collegium Trilingue at Louvain. It is well known that Adrian VI. was inclined to reform some abuses in the church; enough to set the Italians against him. See his life, in Bayle, Note D.

[628] Cum enim direptis rebus cæteris, libri soli superstites ab hostium injuria intacti, in navim conjecti, ad Galliæ littus jam pervecti essent, incidit in vectores, et in ipsos familiares meos pestilentia. Quo metu ii permoti, quorum ad littora navis appulsa fuerat, onera in terram exponi non permisere. Ita asportati sunt in alienas et ignotas terras; exceptisque voluminibus paucis, quæ deportavi mecum huc proficiscens, mei reliqui illi tot labores quos impenderamus, Græcis præsertim codicibus conquirendis undique et colligendis, mei tanti sumptus meæ curæ, omnes iterum jam ad nihilum reciderunt. Sadolet. Epist. lib. i. p. 23. (Colon. 1554.)

|Admiration of Antiquity.|

2. The real excellence of the ancients in literature as well as art gave rise to an enthusiastic and exclusive admiration of antiquity, not unusual indeed in other parts of Europe, but in Italy a sort of national pride which all partook. They went back to the memory of past ages for consolation in their declining fortunes, and conquered their barbarian masters of the north in imagination with Cæsar and Marius. Everything that reminded them of the slow decay of Rome, sometimes even their religion itself, sounded ill in their fastidious ears. Nothing was so much at heart with the Italian scholars, as to write a Latin style, not only free from barbarism, but conformable to the standard of what is sometimes called the Augustan age, that is of the period from Cicero to Augustus. Several of them affected to be exclusively Ciceronian.

|Sadolet.|

|Bembo.|

3. Sadolet, one of the apostolic secretaries under Leo X. and Clement VII., and raised afterwards to the purple by Paul III., stood in as high a rank as any for purity of language without affectation, though he seems to have been reckoned of the Ciceronian school. Except his epistles, however, none of Sadolet’s works are now read, or even appear to have been very conspicuous in his own age; though Corniani has given an analysis of a treatise on education.[629] A greater name, in point of general literary reputation, was Peter Bembo, a noble Venetian, secretary with Sadolet to Leo, and raised, like him, to the dignity of a cardinal by Paul III. Bembo was known in Latin and in Italian literature; and in each language both as a prose writer and a poet. We shall thus have to regard four claims he prefers to a niche in the temple of fame, and we shall find none of them ungrounded. In pure Latin style he was not perhaps superior to Sadolet, but would not have yielded to any competitor in Europe. It has been told, in proof of Bembo’s scrupulous care to give his compositions the utmost finish, that he kept forty portfolios, into which every sheet entered successively, and was only taken out to undergo his corrections, before it entered into the next limbo of this purgatory. Though this may not be quite true, it is but an exaggeration of the laborious diligence by which he must often have reduced his sense to feebleness and vacuity. He was one of those exclusive Ciceronians who, keenly feeling the beauties of their master’s eloquence, and aware of the corruption which after the age of Augustus came rapidly over the purity of style, rejected with scrupulous care not only every word or phrase which could not be justified by the practice of what was called the golden age, but even insisted on that of Cicero himself, as the only model they thought absolutely perfect. Paulus Manutius, one of the most rigorous, though of the most eminent among these, would not employ the words of Cicero’s correspondents, though as highly accomplished and polite as himself. This fastidiousness was of course highly inconvenient in a language constantly applicable to the daily occurrences of life in epistles or in narration, and it has driven Bembo, according to one of his severest critics, into strange affectation and circuity in his Venetian history. It produced also, what was very offensive to the more serious reader, and is otherwise frigid and tasteless, an adaptation of heathen phrases to the usages and even the characters of Christianity.[630] It has been remarked also, that in his great solicitude about the choice of words, he was indifferent enough to the value of his meaning; a very common failing of elegant scholars, when they write in a foreign language. But if some praise is due, as surely it is, to the art of reviving that consummate grace and richness which enchants every successive generation in the periods of Cicero, we must place Bembo, had we nothing more than this to say of him, among the ornaments of literature in the sixteenth century.

[629] Niceron says of Sadolet’s Epistles, which form a very thick volume: Il y a plusieurs choses dignes d’être remarquées dans les lettres de Sadolet; mais elles sont quelquefois trop diffuses, et par conséquent ennuyeuses à lire. I concur in this: yet it may be added, that the epistles of Cicero would sometimes be tedious, if we took as little interest in their subjects as we commonly do in those of Sadolet. His style is uniformly pure and good; but he is less fastidious than Bembo, and does not use circuity to avoid a theological expression. They are much more interesting, at least, than the ordinary Latin letters of his contemporaries, such as those of Paulus Manutius. A uniform goodness of heart, and love of right, prevail in the epistles of Sadolet. His desire of ecclesiastical reformation in respect of morals has caused him to be suspected of a bias towards protestantism, and a letter he wrote to Melanchthon, which that learned man did not answer, has been brought in corroboration of this; but the general tenor of his letters refutes this surmise. His theology, which was wholly semi-pelagian, must have led him to look with disgust on the Lutheran school (Epist. l. iii. p. 121, and l. ix. p. 410); and after Paul III. bestowed on him the purple, he became a staunch friend of the court of Rome, though never losing his wish to see a reform of its abuses. This will be admitted by every one who takes the trouble to run over Sadolet’s epistles.

[630] This affectation had begun in the preceding century, and was carried by Campano in his Life of Braccio di Montone to as great an extreme as by Bembo, or any Ciceronian of his age. Bayle (Bembus, Note B.) gives some odd instances of it in the latter. Notwithstanding his laborious scrupulosity as to language, Bembo is reproached by Lipsius, and others of a more advanced stage of critical knowledge, with many faults of Latin, especially in his letters. Ibid. Sturm says of the letters of Bembo: Ejus epistolæ scriptæ mihi magis quam missæ esse videntur. Indicia sunt hominis otiosi et imitatoris speciem magis rerum quam res ipsas consectantis. Ascham, Epist. cccxci.

|Ciceronianus of Erasmus.|

4. The tone which Bembo and others of that school were studiously giving to ancient literature, provoked one of the most celebrated works of Erasmus, the dialogues entitled Ciceronianus. The primary aim of these was to ridicule the fastidious purity of that sort of writers, who would not use a case or tense for which they could not find authority in the works of Cicero. A whole winter’s night, they thought, was well spent in composing a single sentence; but even then it was to be revised over and over again. Hence they wrote little except elaborated epistles. One of their rules, he tells us, was never to speak Latin, if they could help it, which must have seemed extraordinary in an age when it was the common language of scholars from different countries. It is certain, indeed, that the practice cannot be favourable to very pure Latinity.

5. Few books of that age give us more insight into its literary history and the public taste than the Ciceronianus. In a short retrospect Erasmus characterises all the considerable writers in Latin since the revival of letters, and endeavours to show how far they wanted this Ciceronian elegance for which some were contending. He distinguishes in a spirit of sound taste between a just imitation which leaves free scope for genius, and a servile following of a single writer. “Let your first and chief care,” he says, “be to understand thoroughly what you undertake to write about. That will give you copiousness of words, and supply you with true and natural sentiments. Then will it be found how your language lives and breathes, how it excites and hurries away the reader, and how it is a just image of your own mind. Nor will that be less genuine which you add to your own by imitation.”

6. The Ciceronianus, however, goes in some passages beyond the limited subject of Latin style. The controversy had some reference to the division between the men of learning and the men of taste, between the lovers of the solid and of the brilliant, in some measure also, to that between Christianity and Paganism, a garb which the incredulity of the Italians affected to put on. All the Ciceronian party, except Longolius, were on the other side of the Alps.[631] The object of the Italian scholars was to write pure Latin, to gleam little morsels of Roman literature, to talk a heathenish philosophy in private, and leave the world to its own abuses. That of Erasmus was to make men wiser and better by wit, sense, and learning.

[631] Though this is generally said, on the authority of Erasmus himself, Peter Bunel is asserted by some French scholars of great name, and particularly by Henry Stephens, to have equalled in Ciceronian purity the best of the Italians; and Paulus Manutius owns him as his master, in one of his epistles: Ego ab illo maximum habebam beneficium, quod me cum Politianis et Erasmis nescio quibus miserè errantem, in hanc rectè scribendi viam primus induxerat. In a later edition, for Politianis et Erasmis, it was thought more decent to introduce Philelphis et Campanis. Bayle, art. Bunel, Note A. The letters of Bunel, written with great purity, were published in 1551. It is to be observed, that he had lived much in Italy. Erasmus does not mention him in the Ciceronianus.

|Scaliger’s invective against it.|

7. Julius Cæsar Scaliger wrote against the Ciceronianus with all that unmannerly invective, which is the disgrace of many scholars, and very much his own. His vanity blinded him to what was then obvious to Europe, that with considerable learning, and still better parts, he was totally unworthy of being named with the first man in the literary republic. Nor in fact had he much right to take up the cause of the Ciceronian purists, with whom he had no pretension to be reckoned, though his reply to Erasmus is not ill written. It consists chiefly in a vindication of Cicero’s life and writings against some passages in the Ciceronianus which seem to affect them, scarcely touching the question of Latin style. Erasmus made no answer, and thus escaped the danger of retaliating on Scaliger in his own phrases.

|Editions of Cicero.|

8. The devotedness of the Italians to Cicero was displayed in a more useful manner than by this close imitation. Pietro Vettori (better known as Victorius), professor of Greek and Roman literature at Florence, published an entire edition of the great orator’s writings in 1534. But this was soon surpassed by a still more illustrious scholar, Paulus Manutius, son of Aldus, and his successor in the printing-house at Venice. His edition of Cicero appeared in 1540. It is by far the most important edition of any ancient author that had hitherto been published. In fact, the notes of Manutius, which were very much augmented in later editions,[632] form at this day in great measure the basis of interpretation and illustration of Cicero, as what are called the Variorum editions will show. A further accession to Ciceronian literature was made by Nizolius in his Observationes in M. Tullium Ciceronem, 1535. This hardly indicates that it is a dictionary of Ciceronian words, with examples of their proper senses. The later and improved editions bear the title of Thesaurus Ciceronianus. I find no critical work in this period of greater extent and labour than that of Scaliger de Causis Latinæ Linguæ; by “causis” meaning its principles. It relates much to the foundations of the language, or the rules by which its various peculiarities have been formed. He corrects many alleged errors of earlier writers, and sometimes of Valla himself; enumerating, rather invidiously, 634 of such errors in an index. In this book he shows much acuteness and judgment.

[632] Renouard, Imprimerie des Aldes.

|Alexander ab Alexandro.|

9. The Geniales Dies of Alexander ab Alexandro, a Neapolitan lawyer, published in 1522, are on the model of Aulus Gellius, a repertory of miscellaneous learning, thrown together without arrangement, on every subject of Roman philology and antiquities. The author had lived with the scholars of the fifteenth century, and even remembered Philelphus; but his own reputation seems not to have been extensive, at least through Europe. “He knows every one,” says Erasmus in a letter; “no one knows who he is.”[633] The Geniales Dies has had better success in later ages than most early works of criticism, a good edition having appeared, with Variorum notes, in 1673. It gives, like the Lectiones Antiquæ of Cælius Rhodiginus, an idea of the vast extent to which the investigation of Latin antiquity had been already carried; though so much was left for the _coryphæi_ of these researches, whom the ensuing age was to produce.

[633] Demiror quis sit ille Alexander ab Alexandro. Novit omnes celebres Italiæ viros, Philelphum, Pomponium Lætum, Hermolaum, et quos non? Omnibus usus est familiariter; tamen nemo novit illum. Append. ad Erasm. Epist. ccclxxiii. (1533). Bayle also remarks, that Alexander is hardly mentioned by his contemporaries. Tiraqueau, a French lawyer of considerable learning, undertook the task of writing critical notes on the Geniales Dies about the middle of the century, correcting many of the errors which they contained.

|Works on Roman antiquities.|

10. A very few books of the same class belong to this period; and may deserve mention, although long since superseded by the works of those to whom we have just alluded, and who filled up and corrected their outline. Marlianus on the Topography of Rome, 1534, is admitted, though with some hesitation, by Grævius into his Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanarum, while he absolutely sets aside the preceding labours of Blondus Flavius and Pomponius Lætus. The Fasti Consulares were first published by Marlianus in 1549; and a work on the same subject in 1550 was the earliest production of the great Sigonius. Before these the memorable events of Roman history had not been critically reduced to a chronological series. A treatise by Raphael of Volterra de Magistratibus et Sacerdotibus Romanorum is very inaccurate and superficial.[634] Mazochius, a Roman bookseller, was the first who, in 1521, published a collection of inscriptions. This was very imperfect, and full of false monuments. A better appeared in Germany by the care of Apianus, professor of mathematics at Ingoldstadt, in 1534.[635]

[634] It is published in Sallengre, Novus Thesaurus Antiquit. vol. iii.

[635] Burmann, præfat. in Gruter, Corpus Inscriptionum.

|Greek less studied in Italy.|

11. It could not be expected, that the elder and more copious fountain of ancient lore, the Greek language, would slake the thirst of Italian scholars as readily as the Latin. No local association, no patriotic sentiment, could attach them to that study. Greece itself no longer sent out a Lascaris or a Musurus; subdued, degraded, barbarous in language and learning, alien, above all, by insuperable enmity, from the church, she had ceased to be a living guide to her own treasures. Hence we may observe even already, not a diminution, but a less accelerated increase of Greek erudition in Italy. Two however among the most considerable editions of Greek authors, in point of labour, that the century produced, are the Galen by Andrew of Asola in 1525, and the Eustathius from the press of Bladus at Rome in 1542.[636] We may add, as first editions of Greek authors, Epictetus, at Venice, in 1528, and Arrian in 1535; Ælian, at Rome, in 1545. The Etymologicum Magnum of Phavorinus, whose real name was Guarino, published at Rome in 1523, was of some importance, while no lexicon but the very defective one of Craston had been printed. The Etymologicum of Phavorinus, however, is merely “a compilation from Hesychius, Suidas, Phrynichus, Harpocration, Eustathius, the Etymologica, the lexicon of Philemon, some treatises of Trypho, Apollonius, and other grammarians and various scholiasts. It is valuable as furnishing several important corrections of the authors from whom it was collected, and not a few extracts from unpublished grammarians.”[637]

[636] Greswell’s Early Parisian Greek Press, p. 14.

[637] Quarterly Review, vol. xxii. Roscoe’s Leo, ch. xi. Stephens is said to have inserted many parts of this lexicon of Guarino in his Thesaurus. Niceron, xxii. 141.

|Schools of classical learning.|

12. Of the Italian scholars, Vettori, already mentioned, seems to have earned the highest reputation for his skill in Greek. But there was no considerable town in Italy, besides the regular universities, where public instruction in the Greek as well as Latin tongue was not furnished, and in many cases by professors of fine taste and recondite learning, whose names were then eminent; such as Bonamico, Nizzoli, Parrhasio, Corrado, and Maffei, commonly called Raphael of Volterra. Yet, according to Tiraboschi, something was still wanting to secure these schools from the too frequent changes of teachers, which the hope of better salaries produced, and to give the students a more vigorous emulation, and a more uniform scheme of discipline.[638] This was to be supplied by the followers of Ignatius Loyola. But their interference with education in Italy did not begin in quite so early a period as the present.

[638] Vol. viii. 114, x. 319. Ginguéné, vii. 232, has copied Tiraboschi’s account of these accomplished teachers with little addition, and probably with no knowledge of the original sources of information.

|Budæus; his commentaries on Greek.|

13. If we cross the Alps, and look at the condition of learning in countries which we left in 1520 rapidly advancing on the footsteps of Italy, we shall find that, except in purity of Latin style, both France and Germany were now capable of entering the lists of fair competition. France possessed, by general confession, the most profound Greek scholar in Europe, Budæus. If this could before have been in doubt, he raised himself to a pinnacle of philological glory by his Commentarii Linguæ Græcæ, Paris, 1529. The publications of the chief Greek authors by Aldus, which we have already specified, had given a compass of reading to the scholars of this period, which those of the fifteenth century could not have possessed. But, with the exception of the Etymologicum of Phavorinus, just mentioned, no attempt had been made by a native of western Europe to interpret the proper meaning of Greek words; even he had confined himself to compiling from the grammarians. In this large and celebrated treatise, Budæus has established the interpretation of a great part of the language. All later critics write in his praise. There will never be another Budæus in France, says Joseph Scaliger, the most envious and detracting, though the most learned, of the tribe.[639] But, referring to what Baillet and Blount have collected from older writers,[640] we will here insert the character of these Commentaries which an eminent living scholar has given.

[639] Scaligerana, i. 33.

[640] Baillet, Jugemens des Savans, ii. 328. (Amst. 1725) Blount, in Budæo.

|Its character.|

14. “This great work of Budæus has been the text-book and common storehouse of succeeding lexicographers. But a great objection to its general use was its want of arrangement. His observations on the Greek language are thrown together in the manner of a commonplace book, an inconvenience which is imperfectly remedied by an alphabetical index at the end. His authorities and illustrations are chiefly drawn from the prose writers of Greece, the historians, orators, and fathers. With the poets he seems to have had a less intimate acquaintance. His interpretations are mostly correct, and always elegantly expressed; displaying an union of Greek and Latin literature which renders his Commentaries equally useful to the students of both languages. The peculiar value of this work consists in the full and exact account which it gives of the Greek legal and forensic terms, both by literal interpretation, and by a comparison with the corresponding terms in Roman jurisprudence. So copious and exact is this department of the work, that no student can read the Greek orators to the best advantage unless he consults the Commentaries of Budæus. It appears from the Greek epistle subjoined to the work that the illustration of the forensic language of Athens and Rome was originally all that his plan embraced; and that when circumstances tempted him to extend the limits of his work, this still continued to be his chief object.”[641]

[641] Quarterly Review, vol. xxii., an article ascribed to the Bishop of London. The commentaries of Budæus are written in a very rambling and desultory manner, passing from one subject to another as a casual word may suggest the transition. Sic enim, he says, hos commentarios scribere instituimus, ut quicquid in ordinem seriemque scribendi incurreret, vel ex diverticulo quasi obviam se offerret, ad id digredi. A large portion of what is valuable in this work has been transferred by Stephens to his Thesaurus. The Latin criticisms of Budæus have also doubtless been borrowed.

Budæus and Erasmus are fond of writing Greek in their correspondence. Others had the same fancy; and it is curious, that they ventured upon what was wholly gone out of use since the language has been so well understood. But probably this is the reason that later scholars have avoided it. Neither of these great men shine much in elegance or purity. One of Budæus, 15 Aug. 1519, (in Erasm. Epist. cccclv.) seems often incorrect, and in the mere style of a schoolboy.

|Greek grammars and lexicons.|

15. These Commentaries of Budæus stand not only far above any thing else in Greek literature before the middle of the sixteenth century, but are alone in their class. What comes next, but at a vast interval, is the Greek grammar of Clenardus, printed at Louvain in 1530. It was, however, much beyond Budæus in extent of circulation, and probably, for this reason, in general utility. This grammar was continually reprinted with successive improvements, and, defective as, especially in its original state, it must have been, was far more perspicuous than that of Gaza, though not perhaps more judicious in principle. It was for a long time commonly used in France; and is in fact the basis of those lately or still in use among us; such as the Eton Greek grammar. The proof of this is, that they follow Clenardus in most of his rules, erroneous or not, and, nine times or more out of ten, in the choice of instances.[642] The account of syntax in this grammar, as well as that of Gaza, is wretchedly defective. A better treatise, in this respect, is by Varenius of Malines, Syntaxis Linguæ Græcæ, printed at Louvain about 1532. Another Greek grammar by Vergara, a native of Spain, has been extolled by some of the older critics, and depreciated by others.[643] The Greek lexicon, of which the first edition was printed at Basle in 1537, is said to abound in faults and inaccuracies of every description. The character given of it by Henry Stephens, even when it had been enlarged, if not improved, does not speak much for the means that the scholars of this age had possessed in labouring for the attainment of Greek learning.[644]

[642] Clenardus seems first to have separated simple from contracted nouns, thus making ten declensions. Wherever he differs from Gaza, our popular grammars seem to have followed him. He tells us, that he had drawn up this for the use of his private pupils. Baillet observes, that the grammar of Clenardus, notwithstanding the mediocrity of his learning, has had more success than any other; those who have followed having mostly confined themselves to correcting and enlarging it. Jugemens des Savans, ii. 164. This is certainly true, as far as England is concerned; though the Eton grammar, bad as, in the present times, it appears, is in some degree an improvement on Clenardus.

[643] Vergara, De omnibus Græcæ Linguæ Grammaticæ Partibus, 1573; rather 1537, for “deinde Parisiis,” 1550, follows in Antonio, Bibl. Nova.

[644] H. Stephanus, De Typographiæ suæ Statu. Gesner himself says of this lexicon, which sometimes bore his name: Circa annum 1537 lexicon Græco-Latinum, quod jam ante a diversis et innominatis nescio quibus miserè satis consarcinatum erat, ex Phavorini Camertis Lexico Græco ita auxi, ut nihil in eo extaret, quod non ut singulari fide, ita labore maximo adjicerem; sed typographus me inscio, et præter omnem expectationem meam, exiguam duntaxat accessionis meæ partem adjecit, reservans sibi forte auctarium ad sequentes etiam editiones. He proceeds to say, that he enlarged several other editions down to 1556, when the last that had been enriched by his additions appeared at Basle. Cæterum hoc anno, quo hæc scribo, 1562, Genevæ prodiisse audio longe copiosissimum emendatissimumque Græcæ linguæ thesaurum a Rob. Constantino incomparabilis doctrinæ viro, ex Joannis Crispini officinâ. Vide Gesneri Biblioth. Universalis, art. Conrad Gesner: this is part of a long account given here by Gesner of his own works.

|Editions of Greek authors.|

|Latin Thesaurus of R. Stephens.|

16. The most remarkable editions of Greek authors from the Parisian press were those of Aristophanes in 1528, and of Sophocles in 1529; the former printed by Gourmont, the latter by Colinæus; the earliest edition of an entire Diodorus in 1539, of Dionysius Halicarnassensis in 1546, and of Dio Cassius in 1548; the two latter by Robert Stephens. The first Greek edition of the elements of Euclid appeared at Basle in 1533, of Diogenes Laertius the same year, of five books of Diodorus in 1539, of Josephus in 1544; the first of Polybius in 1530, at Haguenaw. Besides these editions of classical authors, Basil, and other of the Greek fathers, occupied the press of Frobenius, under the superintendence of Erasmus. The publications of Latin authors by Badius Ascensius continued till his death in 1535. Colinæus began to print his small editions of the same class at Paris about 1521. They are in that cursive character, which Aldus had first employed.[645] The number of such editions, both in France and Germany, became far more considerable than in the preceding age. They are not, however, in general, much valued for correctness of text; nor had many considerable critics even in Latin philology yet appeared on this side of the Alps. Robert Stephens stands almost alone, who, by the publication of his Thesaurus in 1535, augmented in a subsequent edition of 1543, may be said to have made an epoch in this department of literature. The preceding dictionaries of Calepio and other compilers had been limited to an interpretation of single words, sometimes with reference to passages in the authors who had employed them. This produced, on the one hand, perpetual barbarisms and deviations from purity of idiom, while it gave rise in some to a fastidious hypercriticism, of which Valla had given an example.[646] Stephens first endeavoured to exhibit their proper use, not only in all the anomalies of idiom, but in every delicate variation of sense to which the pure taste and subtle discernment of the best writers had adapted them. Such an analysis is perhaps only possible with respect to a language wherein the extant writers, and especially those who have acquired authority, are very limited in number; and even in Latin, the most extensive dictionary, such as has grown up long since the days of Robert Stephens, under the hands of Gesner, Forcellini, and Facciolati, or such as might still improve upon their labour, could only approach an unattainable perfection. What Stephens himself achieved would now be deemed far too defective for general use; yet it afforded the means of more purity in style than any could in that age have reached without unwearied exertion. Accordingly, it is to be understood, that while a very few scholars, chiefly in Italy, had acquired a facility and exactness of language, which has seldom been surpassed, the general style retained a great deal of barbarism, and neither in single words, nor always in mere grammar, can bear a critical eye. Erasmus is often incorrect, especially in his epistles, and says modestly of himself in the Ciceronianus, that he is hardly to be named among writers at all, unless blotting a great deal of paper with ink is enough to make one. He is, however, among the best of his contemporaries, if a vast command of Latin phrase, and a spirited employment of it, may compensate for some want of accuracy. Budæus, as has been already said, is hard and unpolished. Vives assumes that he has written his famous and excellent work on the corruption of the sciences with some elegance; but this he says in language which hardly warrants the boast.[647] In fact, he is by no means a good writer. But Melancthon excelled Erasmus by far in purity of diction, and correctness of classical taste. With him we may place Calvin in his Institutes, and our countryman Sir John Cheke, as distinguished from most other cisalpine writers of this period by the merit of what is properly called style. Bunel of Toulouse is reckoned the best model of language in this period. The praise, however, of writing pure Latin, or the pleasure of reading it, is dearly bought when accompanied by such vacuity of sense as we experience in the elaborate epistles of Paulus Manutius and the Ciceronian school in Italy.

[645] Greswell’s History of the early Parisian Greek Press.

[646] Vives de causis corrupt. art. (Opera Lud. Vives, edit. Basle, 1555, i. 358.) He observes, in another work, that there was no full and complete dictionary of Latin. Id. p. 475.

[647] Nitorem præterea sermonis addidi aliquem, et quod non expediret res pulcherrimas sordidè ac spuriè vestiri, et ut studiosi elegantiarum [orum?] literarum non perpetuo in vocum et sermonis cognitione adhærescerent; quod hactenus fere accidit, tædio nimirum infrugiferæ ac horridæ molestiæ, quæ in percipiendis artibus diutissimè erat devorata, i. 324.

|Progress of learning in France.|

17. Francis I. has obtained a glorious title, the Father of French literature. The national propensity (or what once was such) to extol kings may have had something to do with this; for we never say the same of Henry VIII. In the early part of his reign he manifested a design to countenance ancient literature by public endowments. War, and unsuccessful war, sufficiently diverted his mind from this scheme. But in 1531, a season of peace, he established the royal college of three languages in the university of Paris, which did not quite deserve its name till the foundation of a Latin professorship in 1534. Vatable was the first professor of Hebrew, and Danés of Greek. In 1545 it appears that there were three professors of Hebrew in the royal college, three of Greek, one of Latin, two of mathematics, one of medicine, and one of philosophy. But this college had to encounter the jealousy of the university, tenacious of its ancient privileges, which it fancied to be trampled upon, and stimulated by the hatred of the pretended philosophers, the scholastic dialecticians, against philological literature. They tried to get the parliament on their side; but that body, however averse to innovation, of which it gave in this age, and long afterwards, many egregious proofs, was probably restrained by the king’s known favour to learning from obstructing the new college as much as the university desired.[648] Danés had a colleague and successor as Greek professor in a favourite pupil of Budæus, and a good scholar, Toussain, who handed down the lamp in 1547 to one far more eminent, Turnebus. Under such a succession of instructors, it may be naturally presumed that the knowledge of Greek would make some progress in France. And no doubt the great scholars of the next generation were chiefly trained under these men. But the opposition of many, and the coldness almost of all, in the ecclesiastical order, among whom that study ought principally to have flourished, impeded in the sixteenth century, as it has perhaps ever since, the diffusion of Grecian literature in all countries of the Romish communion. We do not find much evidence of classical, at least of Greek, learning in any university of France, except that of Paris, to which students repaired from every quarter of the kingdom.[649] But a few once distinguished names of the age of Francis I. deserve to be mentioned. William Cop, physician to the king, and John Ruel, one of the earliest promoters of botanical science, the one translator of Galen, the other of Dioscorides; Lazarus Baif, a poet of some eminence in that age, who rendered two Greek tragedies into French verse; with a few rather more obscure, such as Petit, Pin, Deloin, De Chatel, who are cursorily mentioned in literary history, or to whom Erasmus sometimes alludes. Let us not forget John Grollier, a gentleman who, having filled with honour some public employments, became the first perhaps on this side of the Alps who formed a very extensive library and collection of medals. He was the friend and patron of the learned during a long life; a character little affected in that age by private persons of wealth on the less sunny side of the Alps. Grollier’s library was not wholly sold till the latter part of the seventeenth century.[650]

[648] The faculty of theology in 1530 condemned these propositions: 1. Scripture cannot be well understood without Greek and Hebrew; 2. A preacher cannot explain the epistle and gospel without these languages. In the same year they summoned Danés and Vatable with two more to appear in Parliament, that they might be forbidden to explain scripture by the Greek and Hebrew, without permission of the university; or to say, the Hebrew, or the Greek, is so and so; lest they should injure the credit of the Vulgate. They admitted, however, that the study of Hebrew and Greek was praiseworthy in skilful and orthodox theologians, disposed to maintain the inviolable authority of the Vulgate. Contin. de Fleury, Hist. Ecclesiast., xxvii. 233. See also Gaillard, Hist. de François I., vi. 289.

[649] We find, however, that a Greek and Latin school was set up in the diocese of Sadolet (Carpentras), about 1533; he endeavoured to procure a master from Italy, and seems, by a letter of the year 1540, to have succeeded. Sadol. Epist., lib. ix. and xvi.

[650] Biog. Univ., Grollier.

|Learning in Spain.|

18. In Spain, the same dislike of innovation stood in the way. Greek professorships existed, however, in the universities; and Nunnes, usually called Pincianus (from the Latin name for the city of Valladolid), a disciple of Lebrixa, whom he surpassed, taught the language at Alcala, and afterwards at Salamanca. He was the most learned man Spain had possessed; and his edition of Seneca, in 1536, has obtained the praise of Lipsius.[651] Resende, the pupil of Arias Barbosa and Lebrixa in Greek, has been termed the restorer of letters in Portugal. None of the writings of Resende, except a Latin Grammar, published in 1540, fall within the present period; but he established, about 1531, a school at Lisbon, and one afterwards at Evora, where Estaco, a man rather better known, was educated.[652] School divinity and canon law over-rode all liberal studies throughout the Peninsula; of which the catalogue of books at the end of Antonio’s Bibliotheca Nova is a sufficient witness.

[651] Antonio, Bibl. Nova. Biogr. Univ.

[652] Biogr. Univ.

|Effects of Reformation on learning.|

19. The first effects of the great religious schism in Germany were not favourable to classical literature.[653] An all-absorbing subject left neither relish nor leisure for human studies. Those who had made the greatest advances in learning were themselves generally involved in theological controversy; and, in some countries, had to encounter either personal suffering on account of their opinions, or, at least, the jealousy of a church that hated the advance of knowledge. The knowledge of Greek and Hebrew was always liable to the suspicion of heterodoxy. In Italy, where classical antiquity was the chief object, this dread of learning could not subsist. But few learned much of Greek in these parts of Europe without some reference to theology,[654] especially to the grammatical interpretation of the Scriptures. In those parts which embraced the Reformation a still more threatening danger arose from the distempered fanaticism of its adherents. Men who interpreted the Scripture by the Spirit could not think human learning of much value in religion; and they were as little likely to perceive any other advantage it could possess. There seemed, indeed, a considerable peril, that, through the authority of Carlostadt, or even of Luther, the lessons of Crocus and Mosellanus would be totally forgotten.[655] And this would very probably have been the case, if one man, Melanchthon, had not perceived the necessity of preserving human learning as a bulwark to theology itself, against the wild waves of enthusiasm. It was owing to him that both the study of the Greek and Latin languages, and that of the Aristotelian philosophy, were maintained in Germany. Nor did his activity content itself with animating the universities. The schools of preparatory instruction, which had hitherto furnished merely the elements of grammar, throwing the whole burthen of philological learning on the universities, began before the middle of the century to be improved by Melanchthon, with the assistance of a friend, even superior to him, probably, in that walk of literature, Joachim Camerarius. “Both these great men,” says Eichhorn, “laboured upon one plan, upon the same principle, and with equal zeal; they were, in the strictest sense, the fathers of that pure taste and solid learning by which the next generation was distinguished.” Under the names of Lycæum or Gymnasium, these German schools gave a more complete knowledge of the two languages, and sometimes the elements of philosophy.[656]

[653] Erasm. Epist. passim.

[654] Erasm. Adag. chil. iv. c. v. § 1. Vives, apud Meiners, Vergl. der sitten, ii. 737.

[655] Seckendorf, p. 198.

[656] Eichhorn, iii. 254, et post.

|Sturm’s account of German schools.|

20. We derive some acquaintance with the state of education in this age from the writings of John Sturm, than whom scarce any one more contributed to the cause of letters in Germany. He became in 1538, and continued for above forty years, rector of a celebrated school at Strasburg. Several treatises on education, especially one, De Literarum Ludis rectè instituendis, bear witness to his assiduity. If the scheme of classical instruction which he has here laid down may be considered as one actually in use, there was a solid structure of learning erected in the early years of life, which none of our modern academies would pretend to emulate. Those who feel any curiosity about the details of this course of education, which seems almost too rigorous for practice, will find the whole in Morhof’s Polyhistor.[657] It is sufficient to say, that it occupies the period of life between the ages of six and fifteen, when the pupil is presumed to have acquired a very extensive knowledge of the two languages. Trifling as it may appear to take notice of this subject, it serves at least as a test of the literary pre-eminence of Germany. For we could, as I conceive, trace no such education in France, and certainly not in England.

[657] Lib. ii. c. 10.

|Learning in Germany.|

21. The years of the life of Camerarius correspond to those of the century. His most remarkable works fall partly into the succeeding period; but many of the editions and translations of Greek authors, which occupied his laborious hours, were published before 1550. He was one of the first who knew enough of both languages, and of the subjects treated, to escape the reproach which has fallen on the translators of the fifteenth century. His Thucydides, printed in 1540, was superior to any preceding edition. The universities of Tubingen and Leipsic owed much of their prosperity to his superintending care. Next to Camerarius among the German scholars we may place Simon Grynæus, professor of Greek at Heidelberg in 1523, and translator of Plutarch’s Lives. Micyllus, his successor in this office, and author of a treatise De Re Metrica, of which Melanchthon speaks in high terms of praise, was more celebrated than most of his countymen for Latin poetry. Yet in this art he fell below Eobanus Hessus, whose merit is attested by the friendship of Erasmus, Melanchthon, and Camerarius, as well as by the best verses that Germany had to boast. It would be very easy to increase the list of scholars in that empire; but we should find it more difficult to exhaust the enumeration. Germany was not only far elevated in literary progress above France, but on a level, as we may fairly say, with Italy herself. The university of Marburg was founded in 1526, that of Copenhagen in 1539, of Königsberg in 1544, of Jena in 1548.

|In England. Linacre.|

22. We come now to investigate the gradual movement of learning in England, the state of which about 1520 we have already seen. In 1521, the first Greek characters appear in a book printed at Cambridge, Linacre’s Latin translation of Galen de Temperamentis, and in the title-page, but there only, of a treatise περι Διψαδων [peri Dipsadôn], by Bullock. They are employed several times for quotations in Linacre de Emendata Structura Orationis, 1524.[658] This treatise is chiefly a series of grammatical remarks, relating to distinctions in the Latin language now generally known. It must have been highly valuable, and produced a considerable effect in England, where nothing of that superior criticism had been attempted. In order to judge of its proper merit, it should be compared with the antecedent works of Valla and Perotti. Every rule is supported by authorities; and Linacre, I observe, is far more cautious than Valla in asserting what is not good Latin, contenting himself, for the most part, with showing what is. It has been remarked that, though Linacre formed his own style on the model of Quintilian, he took most of his authorities from Cicero. This treatise, the first fruits of English erudition, was well received, and frequently printed on the Continent. Melanchthon recommended its use in the schools of Germany. Linacre’s translation of Galen has been praised by Sir John Cheke, who in some respects bears rather hardly on his learned precursor.[659]

[658] The author begins by bespeaking the reader’s indulgence for the Greek printing. Pro tuo candore, optime lector, æquo animo feras, si quæ literæ in exemplis Hellenismi vel tonis, vel spiritibus, vel affectionibus careant. Iis enim non satis erat instructus typographus, videlicet recens ab eo fusis characteribus Græcis, nec parata ea copia quæ ad hoc agendum opus est.

[659] Johnson’s Life of Linacre.

|Lectures in the universities.|

23. Croke, who become tutor to the Duke of Richmond, son of Henry VIII., did not remain at Cambridge long after the commencement of this period. But in 1524, Robert Wakefield, a scholar of some reputation, who had been professor in a German university, opened a public lecture there in Greek, endowed with a salary by the king. We know little individually of his hearers; but notwithstanding the confident assertions of Antony Wood, there can be no doubt that Cambridge was, during the whole of this reign, at least on a level with the sister university, and indeed, to speak plainly, above it. Wood enumerates several persons educated at Oxford about this time, sufficiently skilled in Greek to write in that language, or to translate from it, or to comment upon Greek authors. The list might be enlarged by the help of Pits; but he is less of a scholar than Wood. This much, after all, is certain, that the only editions of classical authors published in England before 1540, except those already mentioned, are five of Virgil’s Bucolics, two of a small treatise of Seneca, with one of Publius Syrus; all evidently for the mere use of schoolboys. Lectures in Greek and Latin were, however, established in a few Colleges at Oxford.

|Greek perhaps taught to boys.|

24. If Erasmus, writing in 1528, is to be believed, the English boys were wont to disport in Greek epigrams.[660] But this must be understood as only applicable to a very few, upon whom some extraordinary pains had been bestowed. Thus Sir Thomas Elyot, in his Governor, first published in 1531, points out a scheme of instruction which comprehends the elements of the Greek language. There is no improbability in the supposition, and some evidence to support it, that the masters of our great schools, a Lily, a Cox, an Udal, a Nowell, did not leave boys of quick parts wholly unacquainted with the rudiments of a language they so much valued.[661] It tends to confirm this supposition, that in the statutes of the new cathedrals established by Henry in 1541, it is provided, that there shall be a grammar-school for each, with a head master, “learned in Latin and Greek.” Such statutes, however, are not conclusive evidences that they were put in force.[662] In the statutes of Wolsey’s intended foundation at Ipswich, some years earlier, though the course of instruction is amply detailed, we do not find it extend to the merest elements of Greek.[663] It is curious to compare this with the course prescribed by Sturm for the German schools.

[660] An tu credidisses unquam fore, ut apud Britannos aut Batavos pueri Græcè garrirent, Græcis epigrammatiis non infeliciter luderent? Dial. de Pronuntiatione, p. 48, edit. 1528.

[661] Churton, in his Life of Nowell, says that he taught the Greek testament to the boys at Westminster school, referring for authority to a passage in Strype, which I have not been able to find. There is nothing at all improbable in the fact. These inquiries will be deemed too minute by some in this age. But they are not unimportant in their bearing on the history of literature; and an exaggerated estimate of English learning in the age of the Reformation generally prevails. Sir Thomas Pope, founder of Trinity college, Oxford, observes in a letter to Cardinal Pole in 1556, that when he was “a young scholar at Eton, the Greek tongue was growing apace; the study of which is now alate much decayed.” Warton, iii. 279. I do not think this implies more than a reference to the time, which was about 1520.

[662] Warton, iii. 265.

[663] Strype’s Ecclesiast. Memorials. Appendix, No. 35.

|Teaching of Smith at Cambridge.|

25. But English learning was chiefly indebted for its more rapid advance to two distinguished members of the university of Cambridge, Smith, afterwards secretary of state to Elizabeth, and Cheke. The former began to read the Greek lecture in 1533. And both of them, soon afterwards, combined to bring in the true pronunciation of Greek, upon which Erasmus had already written. The early students of that language, receiving their instructions from natives, had acquired the vicious uniformity of sounds belonging to the corrupted dialect. Reuchlin’s school, of which Melanchthon was one, adhered to this, and were called Itacists, from the continual recurrence of the sound of Iota in modern Greek, being thus distinguished from the Etists of Erasmus’s party.[664] Smith and Cheke proved by testimonies of antiquity, that the latter were right; and “by this revived pronunciation,” says Strype, “was displayed the flower and plentifulness of that language, the variety of vowels, the grandeur of diphthongs, the majesty of long letters, and the grace of distinct speech.”[665] Certain it is, that about this time some Englishmen began to affect a knowledge of Greek. Sir Ralph Saddler, in his embassy to the king of Scotland, in 1540, had two or three Greek words embroidered on the sleeves of his followers, which led to a ludicrous mistake on the part of the Scotch bishops. Scotland, however, herself was now beginning to receive light; the Greek language was first taught in 1534 at Montrose, which continued for many years to be what some call a flourishing school.[666] But the whole number of books printed in Scotland before the middle of the century was only seven. No classical author, or even a grammar, is among these.[667]

[664] Eichhorn, iii. 217. Melanchthon, in his Greek grammar, follows Reuchlin; Luscinius is on the side of Erasmus. Ibid. In very recent publications, I observe that attempts have been made to set up again the “lugubres sonos, et illud flebile iota” of the modern Greeks. To adopt their pronunciation, even if right, would be buying truth very dear.

[665] Strype’s Life of Smith, p. 17. “The strain I heard was of a higher mood.” I wonder what author honest John Strype has copied or translated in this sentence; for he never leaves the ground so far in his own style.

[666] M’Crie’s Life of Knox, i. 6, and note C. p. 342.

[667] The list in Herbert’s History of Printing, iii. 468, begins with the Breviary of the Church of Aberdeen; the first part printed at Edinburgh in 1509, the second in 1510. A poem without date, addressed to James V., De Suscepto Regni Regimine, which seems to be in Latin, and must have been written about 1528, comes the nearest to a learned work. Two editions of Lindsay’s Poems, two of a translation of Hector Boece’s Chronicles, two of a temporary pamphlet called Scotland’s Complaint, with one of the statutes of the kingdom, printed in pursuance of an act of parliament passed in 1540, and a religious tract by one Balnaves, compose the rest.

|Succeeded by Cheke.|

26. Cheke, successor of Smith as lecturer in Greek at Cambridge, was appointed the first royal professor of that language in 1540, with a respectable salary. He carried on Smith’s scheme, if indeed it were not his own, for restoring the true pronunciation, in spite of the strenuous opposition of bishop Gardiner, chancellor of the university. This prelate, besides a literary controversy in letters between himself and Cheke, published at Basle in 1555, interfered, in a more orthodox way, by prohibiting the new style of speech in a decree which, for its solemnity, might relate to the highest articles of faith. Cheke however in this, as in greater matters, was on the winning side; and the corrupt pronunciation was soon wholly forgotten.

|Ascham’s character of Cambridge.|

27. Among the learned men who surrounded Cheke at Cambridge, none was more deserving than Ascham; whose knowledge of ancient languages was not shown in profuse quotation, or enveloped in Latin phrase, but served to enrich his mind with valuable sense, and taught him to transfer the firmness and precision of ancient writers to our own English, in which he is nearly the first that deserves to be named, or that is now read. He speaks in strong terms of his university. “At Cambridge also, in St. John’s college, in my time, I do know that not so much the good statutes as two gentlemen of worthy memory, Sir John Cheke and Dr. Redman, by their only example of excellency in learning, of godliness in living, of diligence in studying, of counsel in exhorting, by good order in all things, did breed up so many learned men in that one college of St. John’s at one time as I believe the whole university of Louvain in many years was never able to afford.”[668] Lectures in humanity, that is, in classical literature, were, in 1535, established by the king’s authority in all colleges of the university of Oxford where they did not already exist; and in the royal injunctions at the same time for the reformation of academical studies a regard to philological learning is enforced.[669]

[668] Ascham’s Schoolmaster. In the Life of Ascham by Grant, prefixed to the former’s Epistles, he enumerates the learned of Cambridge about 1530. Ascham was himself under Pember, homini Græcæ linguæ admirabili facilitate excultissimo. The others named are Day, Redman, Smith, Cheke, Ridley, Grindal (not the archbishop), Watson, Haddon, Pilkington, Horn, Christopherson, Wilson, Seton, et infiniti alii, excellenti doctrinâ præditi. Most of these are men afterwards distinguished in the church on one side or the other. This is a sufficient refutation of Wood’s idle assertion of the superiority of Oxford; the fact seems to have been wholly otherwise. Ascham himself, in a letter without date, but evidently written about the time that the controversy of Cheke and Gardiner began, praises thus the learning of Cambridge. Aristoteles nunc et Plato, quod factum est etiam apud nos hic quinquennium, in sua lingua a pueris leguntur. Sophocles et Euripides sunt hic familiariores, quam olim Plautus fuerat, cum tu hic eras. Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, magis in ore et manibus omnium tenuntur, quam tum Titus Livius, etc. Ibid. p. 74. What then can be thought of Antony Wood when he says, “Cambridge was in the said king’s reign overspread with barbarism and ignorance, as ’tis often mentioned by several authors?” Hist. and Antiq. of Oxford, A.D. 1545.

[669] Warton, iii. 272.

|Wood’s account of Oxford.|

28. Antony Wood, though he is by no means always consistent, gives rather a favourable account of the state of philological learning at Oxford in the last years of Henry VIII. There can, indeed, be no doubt that it had been surprisingly increasing in all England through his reign. More grammar schools, it is said by Knight, were founded in thirty years before the Reformation, meaning, I presume, the age of Henry, than in three hundred years preceding. But the suddenness with which the religious establishment was changed on the accession of Edward, and still more the rapacity of the young king’s council, who alienated or withheld the revenues designed for the support of learning, began to cloud the prospect before the year 1550.[670] Wood, in reading whom allowance is to be made for a strong, though not quite avowed bias towards the old system of ecclesiastical and academical government, inveighs against the visitors of the university appointed by the crown in 1548, for burning and destroying valuable books. And this seems to be confirmed by other evidence. It is true that these books, though it was a vile act to destroy them, would have been more useful to the English antiquary than to the classical student. Ascham, a contemporary protestant, denies that the university of Cambridge declined at all before the accession of Mary in 1553.

[670] Strype, ii. 258. Todd’s Cranmer, ii. 33.

|Education of Edward and his sisters.|

29. Edward himself received a learned education, and, according to Ascham, read the ethics of Aristotle in Greek. Of the princess Elizabeth, his favourite pupil, we have a similar testimony.[671] Mary was not by any means illiterate. It is hardly necessary to mention Jane Grey and the wife of Cecil. Their proficiency was such as to excite the admiration of every one, and is no measure of the age in which they lived. And their names carry us on a little beyond 1550, though Ascham’s visit to the former was in that year.

[671] Of the king he says: Dialecticam didicit, et nunc Græcè discit Aristotelis Ethica. Eo progressus est in Græca lingua, ut in philosophia Ciceronis ex Latinis Græca facillime faciat, Dec. 1550. Ascham, Epist. iv. Elizabeth spoke French and Italian as well as English; Latin fluently and correctly; Greek tolerably. She began every day by reading the Greek Testament, and afterwards the orations of Isocrates, and tragedies of Sophocles. Some years afterwards, in 1555, he writes of her to Sturm: Domina Elizabeth et ego una legimus Græcè orationes Æschinis et Demosthenis περι στεφανου [peri stephanou]. Illa prælegit mihi et primo aspectu tam scienter intelligit non solum proprietatem linguæ et oratoris sensum, sed totam causæ contentionem, populi scita, consuetudinem et mores illius urbis, ut summopere admireris, p. 53. In 1560 he asserts that there are not four persons, in court or college (in aula, in academia), who know Greek better than the queen.

Habemus Angliæ reginam, says Erasmus long before of Catherine, feminan egregiè doctam, cujus filia Maria scribit bene Latinas epistolas. Thomæ Mori domus nihil aliud quam musarum est domicilium. Epist. Mxxxiv.

|The progress of learning is still slow.|

30. The reader must be surprised to find that, notwithstanding these high and just commendations of our scholars, no Greek grammars or lexicons were yet printed in England, and scarcely any works in that or the Latin languages. In fact, there was no regular press in either university at this time, though a very few books had been printed in each about 1520; nor had they one till near the end of Elizabeth’s reign. Reginald Wolfe, a German printer, obtained a patent, dated April 19th, 1541, giving him the exclusive right to print in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and also Greek and Latin grammars, though mixed with English, and charts and maps. But the only productions of his press before the middle of the century, are two homilies of Chrysostom, edited by Cheke in 1543. Elyot’s Latin and English Dictionary, 1538, was the first, I believe, beyond the mere vocabularies of schoolboys; and it is itself but a meagre performance.[672] Latin grammars were of course so frequently published, that it has not been worth while to take notice of them. But the Greek and Latin lexicon of Hadrian Junius, though dedicated to Edward VI., and said to have been compiled in England, (I know not how this could be the case), being the work of a foreigner, and printed at Basle in 1548, cannot be reckoned as part of our stock.[673]

[672] Elyot boasts that this “contains a thousand more Latin words than were together in any one dictionary published in this realm at the time when I first began to write this commentary.” Though far from being a good, or even, according to modern notions, a tolerable dictionary, it must have been of some value at the time. It was afterwards much augmented by Cooper.

[673] Wood ascribes to one Tolley or Tolleius a sort of Greek grammar, Progymnasmata Linguæ Græcæ, dedicated to Edward VI. And Pits, in noticing also other works of the same kind, says of this: Habentur Monachii in Bavaria in bibliotheca ducali. As no mention is made of such a work by Herbert or Dibdin, I had been inclined to think its existence apocryphal. It is certainly foreign.

|Want of books and public libraries.|

31. It must appear on the whole, that under Edward VI. there was as yet rather a commendable desire of learning, and a few vigorous minds at work for their own literary improvement, than any such diffusion of knowledge as can entitle us to claim for that age an equality with the chief continental nations. The means of acquiring true learning were not at hand. Few books, as we have seen, useful to the scholar, had been published in England; those imported were of course expensive. No public libraries of any magnitude had yet been formed in either of the universities; those of private men were exceedingly few. The king had a library, of which honourable mention is made; and Cranmer possessed a good collection of books at Lambeth; but I do not recollect any other person of whom this is recorded.

|Destruction of monasteries no injury to learning.|

32. The progress of philological literature in England was connected with that of the Reformation. The learned of the earlier generation were not all protestants, but their disciples were zealously such. They taunted the adherents of the old religion with ignorance; and though by that might be meant ignorance of the Scriptures, it was by their own acquaintance with languages that they obtained their superiority in this respect. And here I may take notice, that we should be greatly deceived by acquiescing in the strange position of Warton, that the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536 and the next two years gave a great temporary check to the general state of letters in England.[674] This writer, however, is inconsistent with himself; for no one had a greater contempt for the monastic studies, dialectics and theology. But, as a desire to aggravate, in every possible respect, the supposed mischiefs of the dissolution of monasteries, is abundantly manifest in many writers later than Warton, I shall briefly observe, that men are deceived, or deceive others, by the equivocal use of the word learning. If good learning, _bonæ literæ_, which for our present purpose means a sound knowledge of Greek and Latin, was to be promoted, there was no more necessary step in doing so, than to put down bad learning, which is worse than ignorance, and which was the learning of the monks, so far as they had any at all. What would Erasmus have thought of one who should in his days have gravely intimated, that the abolition of monastic foundations would retard the progress of literature? In what protestant country was it accompanied with such a consequence, and from whom, among the complaints sometimes made, do we hear this cause assigned? I am ready to admit, that in the violent courses pursued by Henry VIII. many schools attached to monasteries were broken up, and I do not think it impossible that the same occurred in other parts of Europe. It is also to be fully stated and kept in mind, that by the Reformation the number of ecclesiastics, and consequently of those requiring what was deemed a literate education, was greatly reduced. The English universities, as we are well aware, do not contain by any means the number of students that frequented them in the thirteenth century. But are we therefore a less learned nation than our fathers of the thirteenth century? Warton seems to lament, that “most of the youth of the kingdom betook themselves to mechanical or other illiberal employments, the profession of letters being now supposed to be without support or reward.” Doubtless many who would have learned the Latin accidence, and repeated the breviary, became useful mechanics. But is this to be called, not rewarding the profession of letters? and are the deadliest foes of the Greek and Roman muses to be thus confounded with their worshippers? The loss of a few schools in the monasteries was well compensated by the foundation of others on a more enlightened plan and with much better instructors, and after the lapse of some years, the communication of substantial learning came in the place of that tincture of Latin which the religious orders had supplied. Warton, it should be remarked, has been able to collect the names of not more than four or five abbots and other regulars, in the time of Henry VIII., who either possessed some learning themselves, or encouraged it in others.

[674] Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iii. 268.

|Ravisius Textor.|

33. We may assist our conception of the general state of learning in Europe, by looking at some of the books which were then deemed most usefully subsidiary to its acquisition. Besides the lexicons and grammatical treatises that have been mentioned, we have a work first published about 1522, but frequently reprinted, and in much esteem, the Officina of Ravisius Textor. Of this book Peter Danés, a man highly celebrated in his day for erudition, speaks as if it were an abundant storehouse of knowledge, admirable for the manner of its execution, and comparable to any work of antiquity. In spite of this praise, it is no more than a commonplace book from Latin authors, and from translations of the Greek, and could deserve no regard except in a half-informed generation.

|Conrad Gesner.|

34. A far better evidence of learning was given by Conrad Gesner, a man of prodigious erudition, in a continuation of his Bibliotheca Universalis (the earliest general catalogue of books with an estimate of their merits), to which he gave the rather ambitious title of Pandectæ Universales, as if it were to hold the same place in general science that the Digest of Justinian does in civil law. It is a sort of index to all literature, containing references only, and therefore less generally useful, though far more learned and copious in instances, than the Officina of Ravisius. It comprehends, besides all ancient authors, the schoolmen and other writers of the middle ages. The references are sometimes very short, and more like hints to one possessed of a large library, than guides to the general student. In connection with the Bibliotheca Universalis, it forms a literary history or encyclopædia, of some value to those who are curious to ascertain the limits of knowledge in the middle of the sixteenth century.