Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/185

Rh The standard of English education was low, even in the universities. An eminent Italian man of letters, in England in 1420, complains of the scarcity of good books, and is not at all respectful to English scholars. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge had been established rather more than three hundred years, but they taught bad Latin. There were few books of merit in the English language: Wickliffe's translation of the Bible, and the poems of Chaucer, Lydgate and Gower, are all that deserve any notice. There was, as yet, no universally spoken English language: French was the language of the English nobility and of English courts and books of law, as late as the year 1362 merchants and mercantile companies kept their books in French; boys at school were required to translate