Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/27

 years ago, to the earlier reformation period in England, to the lords and bishops and abbots, to the men of action and the men of study, and, above all, to the zealous leader of the first assault on Rome.

Between John Wyclif and John Knox there is a curious and striking resemblance, in more points than one such a resemblance as occurs not infrequently between two historical characters who from similar beginnings have pursued a somewhat similar course in life. No one who has made himself familiar with the various portraits and engravings which preserve for us at any rate the traditional features of Wyclif can fail to be arrested when he sees the face of Knox, as Wilkie has reproduced it from earlier pictures. It is not so much that the exact lineaments correspond in such a way as to catch the attention of a casual observer, though even in this sense the parallel is sufficiently remarkable. The type and character of the two heads are the same; you cannot look at one without thinking of the other. The keen intelligent eyes, the drawn features with their ascetic cast, the resolute lips which bespeak an absolutely fearless heart, are present in all the pictures; and a grizzled patriarchal beard serves to deepen the similarity.

But if the physical resemblance between Wyclif and Knox is noteworthy, still more so is the parallel presented by the leading events of their lives. Both were born and bred in the Latin rite, and became conspicuous as secular priests of the Roman Church. Knox, at St. Andrew's, and Wyclif, at Oxford, clung to the courts of their beloved universities, and there,