Page:Collected Works of Dugald Stewart Volume 1.djvu/45

 everywhere turned the spirit of philosophical inquiry from frivolous or abstruse speculations, to the business and affairs of men."

The revival of letters may be considered as coeval with the fall of the Eastern empire, towards the close of the fifteenth century. In consequence of this event, a number of learned Greeks took refuge in Italy, where the taste for literature already introduced by Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, together with the liberal patronage of the illustrious House of Medicis, secured them a welcome reception. A knowledge of the Greek tongue soon became fashionable; and the learned, encouraged by the rapid diffusion which the art of printing now gave to their labours, vied with each other in rendering the Greek authors accessible, by means of Latin translations, to a still wider circle of readers. For a long time, indeed, after the era just mentioned, the progress of useful knowledge was extremely slow. The passion for logical disputation was succeeded by an unbounded admiration for the wisdom of antiquity; and in proportion as the pedantry of the schools disappeared in the universities, that of erudition and philology occupied its place. Meanwhile an important advantage was gained in the immense stock of materials which the ancient authors supplied to the reflections of speculative men; and which, although frequently accumulated with little discrimination or profit, were much more favourable to the development of taste and of genius than the unsubstantial subtleties of ontology or of dialectics. By such studies were formed Erasmus, Ludovicus