Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/434

Rh 414 ENGLISH LITERATI! It E [RENAISSANCE. country of Europe, was noticed in the last section. A new interest seized upon all the more lively intelligences, that of recovering what, having passed into oblivion, mi^ht still be recoverable of the works of the ancients, as well as of appropriating thoroughly what was already known. In Latin literature the chief works had long been known ; Virgil, Ovid, and even many of the works of Cicero, had for ages been the delight of scholars and the food of. poets. But even in respect of these, the greater publicity which the multiplication of copies by the printing- press gave to them led to innumerable questions being stirred, which till then had lain comparatively dormant. The problems of textual, philological, and literary criticism, which the careful study of an author suggested to an acute mind, were taken up with eagerness by a large and ever-increasing circle of students. But it was Greek learn ing, because of the comparative newness of the field, and the inconceivable value of the treasures which it hid, that awakened the most intense and passionate interest. The Hevival story of the revival of Greek studies in Italy, towards the of Greek eil d O f the 14th century, is as exciting to a sensitive intellect study, as any romance. Gradually the contagion of the learned frenzy which created a hundred academies and literary societies in the Italian cities spread itself across the Alps. England was but a very little, if at all, behind France. The steps by which a change of so much importance to literature was effected seem to be worth tracing with some minute ness. Without lingering over the names of Gray, Phrea, and Vitelli, by each of whom something was done towards promoting Greek study at Oxford, we will begin with Linacre s master, William Selling. An Oxonian, and a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, Selling conceived a fervent desire to partake of the intellectual banquet pro vided in the schools of Florence, where the great Lorenzo was then ruling the republic ; and about the year in which Sir Thomas More was born (1480) he travelled into Italy, and attended for some time the lectures of that prodigy of learning and talent, Angelo Folitiano. While in Italy he learnt to read and speak Greek, and collected a number of Greek MSS. ; but unluckily, soon after his return with these to England, they were destroyed by an accidental fire. Thomas Linacre, a Derbyshire boy, had Selling for his master at the Canterbury school ; his capacity and zeal for study were great, and when Selling was sent on a mission into Italy by Henry VII. in 1486 or 1487, he took Linacre with him, and left him studying Greek under Folitiano at Bologna. In these studies William Grocyn, an older man than Linacre, is mentioned by contem poraries as his &quot;sodalis.&quot; Having been for many years a fellow of New College, he visited Italy between 1480 and 1490, and studied chiefly at Florence, under Demetrius Chalcoudyles and Folitiano. &quot; Grocyn,&quot; says George Lilye, &quot; was the first who publicly lectured on Greek literature at the university of Oxford, to crowded audiences of young men.&quot; Grocyn was a somewhat hard, dry man; an Aristo telian, not a Platonist. Plato he regarded as a man who multiplied words, but in Aristotle he saw the founder of real science. His lectures seem to have been delivered between 1491 and 1500. Grocyn left no works behind him ; but Linacre, who probably began to lecture in Greek when Grocyn ceased to do so, was a voluminous author and editor. To him we owe editions of the principal works of some of the Greek medical writers, and a Latin grammar, which was superseded in a few years by the more symmetrical Breviarium of William Lilye, commonly called Lilly s Grammar. An anecdote related of Linacre illustrates the enthusiasm for letters, mingled with a dash of pedantic absurdity, which characterized the age. When about to leave Italy and return to his native country, he erected at Padua an altar, which he dedicated to the genius of Italy ; he crowned it with flowers, and burned incense upon it. More, born in 1480, learnt Greek under Linacre More at Oxford, in about the years 1496 and 1497. His Pro- gymuasmata and Epigrams (the latter written conjointly with William Lilye) are the work of a man deeply imbued and inflamed with the classical spirit. The celebrated Dean Colet, whose eminent services to literature and Colot education have been of late years examined and recorded by Seebohm, Lupton, and others, studied Greek in Italy a few years later than Grocyn and Linacre. He lectured at Oxford after 1497 on the epistles of St Paul (in Greek), and at St Paul s, London, of which he was dean, on the Hierarchies of Dionysius. The letters of Erasmus present in the clearest light the &quot; perfervidum ingenium &quot; of this remarkable man, who, as the founder of St Paul s school, may be said still to live and work among us. This school he opened in 1510, appointing William Lilye its first head master, Lilye himself was no common man. In youth he had travelled to the Holy Land, and on his return took up his abode at llhodes, and made himself master of the Greek language. Polydore Vergil even says that Lilye was the first Englishman who ever taught publicly &quot; per- fectas literas,&quot; by which he appears to mean the Greek authors, but this is certainly a mistake. For the scholars of St Paul s school, Richard Pace, another Oxford man, wrote, at Colet s request, a pleasant discursive treatise called De Fructa qui ex Doctrina percipitur (1518), in which are introduced some interesting details respecting the learned men of that day. William Latimer, a priest and an Oxford man, is continually mentioned in the letters of Erasmus and his contemporaries as a scholar of vast erudition and especially conversant with Greek. But he was diffident, and perhaps indolent, and declined the task of teaching Fisher Greek, which Erasmus urged him to undertake. It is a lamentable fact that after this brilliant opening of the study of the humanities at Oxford, the dawn was overcast, and a dismal reaction set in. Erasmus tells us that, about 1518, a body of brutal obscurantists a] &amp;gt;peared in the university, who, calling themselves Trojans, attempted by ridicule and petty persecution to discourage the study of Greek. It was on this occasion that More wrote his Epistle to the University (1519), complaining that the party of the barbarians was not put down. The king was induced to interfere, and the nuisance was after a while suppressed. At Cambridge, though the study of Greek appears to have been introduced later than at Oxford, it was carried on without check or discouragement, and was supported by endowments at an earlier period than at the sister univer sity. The excellent Fisher, bishop of Rochester, who was chancellor of the university of Cambridge from 1501 to 1517, and in that time founded, or helped to found, the colleges of Christ s and St John s, promoted Greek learning with all his energy. He invited Erasmus down to Cambridge in 1511, and procured for him, first, the Lady Margaret professorship of divinity, and afterwards the chair of Greek. He was succeeded by a scholar of some celebrity, Richard Croke, who, after being educated for twelve years at foreign universities, at the expense of Archbishop Warhain, returned a most accomplished Grecian, and settled at Cambridge. The archbishop just named, the last before the change of religion, was a prelate of great enlightenment and unfailing generosity. Erasmus, who received from him an annual pension and frequent gifts, is never weary of extolling to his correspondents the &quot;sanctissimi mores,&quot; the love of letters, integrity, and piety of the English primate. Towards the middle of the century Sir John Cheke, as Milton says, &quot;taught Cam bridge and -King Edward Greek ; &quot; his friend Sir Thomas Smith was also a great promoter of learning. From the suppression of the monasteries in 1536 to