Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/223

199 CLASSICAL LEARNING. — SCIENCE. 199 made this literary pilgrimage to Italy, was Antonio chapter de Lebrija, or Nebrissensis, as he is more frequently '. — called from his Latin name.^^ After ten years passed at Bologna and other seminaries of repute, with particular attention to their interior discipline, he returned, in 1473, to his native land, richly laden with the stores of various erudition. He was invited to fill the Latin chair at Seville, whence he was successively transferred to Salamanca and Alcala, both of which places he long continued to enlighten by his oral instruction and publications. The earliest of these was his Introducciones Lati- nas, the third edition of which was printed in 1485, being four years only from the date of the first ; a remarkable evidence of the growing taste for clas- sical learning. A translation in the vernacular accompanied the last edition, arranged, at the queen's suggestion, in columns parallel with those of the original text ; a form which, since become common, was then a novelty. ^^ The publication of his Castilian grammar, " Grammatica Castilla- na^'' followed in 1492 ; a treatise designed particu- larly for the instruction of the ladies of the court. The other productions of this indefatigable scholar, embrace a large circle of topics, independently of his various treatises on philology and criticism. Some were translated into French and Italian, and their republication has been continued to the last 23 For a notice of this scholar, see 1482, the author states, that no the postscript to Part I. Chap. 11, work of the time had a greater of this History. circulation, more than a thousand 24 Mendez, Typographia Espa- copies of it, at a high price, having nola, pp. 271, 272. been disposed of in the preceding In the second edition, published year. Ibid., p. 237.