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 between the conditions under which this movement reached us, and those which had surrounded the advent of its great predecessor, the scholastic philosophy, in the twelfth century. That philosophy had hardly begun its course when, owing to the intervention of the Dominicans and Franciscans, it was enabled to advance under the banners of the Church. No equivalent patronage protected or encouraged the first endeavours of our English humanists. It was not until the middle of Henry VIII.'s reign that the humanities began to enjoy the doubtful advantage of official favour; and then the classical muse might already have responded—if only she had dared—in the tone of Dr Johnson's reply to the tardy civilities of Lord Chesterfield. The restored classical learning was planted in England by the enterprise and zeal of a few individuals, such as that series of Hellenists whom Oxford can show at the close of the fifteenth century,—Selling, Lilly, Grocyn, Latimer, Linacre; such as Cambridge, again, produced in the immediately subsequent period,—Richard Croke, Thomas Smith, and that able scholar, whom Ascham and Milton commemorate, Sir John Cheke. The Colleges sheltered most of those who brought the new learning into England. These foundations afforded opportunities for private study,—and it must be recollected that the new learning, Greek especially, carried the suspicion of heresy;—they also facilitated foreign travel, which was then almost indispensable for the purpose. But the classics,