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 fifteenth century rigorously demanded, and finally was made Dean of Wells. There he built the deanery house, much of which still remains, bearing clear traces of the influence exercised by Italian architecture on the new houses which were beginning to replace the castle. Gunthorp has some interest for us, for he was for a time Warden of King's Hall (which was absorbed into Trinity College), and bequeathed some of his MSS. to Jesus College, which was founded a year before his death. He obviously had greater hopes of Cambridge than had his friend Grey.

There is yet another who belonged to this curious band, Robert Fleming, who stayed at home till he was appointed Dean of Lincoln, and then joined his friends at Ferrara. Thence he went to Rome, and was in time appointed English representative at the papal Court. He had a country house at Tivoli, where he composed a long Latin poem in honour of Pope Sixtus IV., to which he gave the title Lucubrationes Tiburtinæ to mark, I suppose, that it was the work of a busy man in villeggiatura.

I have wearied you with these details. But they were necessary to prove my conclusion. There was no real interest in scholarship in England. Patronage could not create it, nor could foreign example plant it and make it grow. The only result of the attempt was to kindle interest in a chosen few, who went to Italy in search of a career, and when they returned to occupy eminent posts at home felt that they had left their literary life behind them. All that they could do was to provide books and leave them where others in happier times might read them.