PART II. CHAP. V. eminent scholar he gained a knowledge of Greek, while his leisure was devoted, like that of William Gray, to the collection of numerous manuscripts. On his return to England, Selling bequeathed these treasures to his own convent, and his acquirements in Greek and genuine admiration. for the Greek literature became the germ of the study in England. His attainments as a scholar now led to his appointment as master of the conventual school, and among his pupils was Thomas Linacre. From Selling, Linacre received his first instruction in Greek, and when, at the Selling at age of twenty, he in turn went up to All Souls, Oxford, Christchurch, it was probably with a stock of learning that, both as Thomas Linacre. b. 1460. d. 1524. The pupil of at Oxford. regards quality and quantity, differed considerably from the ordinary acquirements of an Oxford freshman in those days. In the year 1484 he was, like Selling (to whom he was probably related), elected to a fellowship at All Souls, and became distinguished for his studious habits. Like Caius Auberinus at Cambridge, there was at this time, and of Vitelli at Oxford, a learned Italian of the name of Cornelius Vitelli ; but while Auberinus taught only Latin, Vitelli could teach Greek. Linacre became his pupil, and his intercourse with the noble exile soon excited in his breast a longing to follow in the steps of his old preceptor. It so happened that Selling's acquirements as a scholar had marked him out for a diplomatic mission to the papal court, and he now gained He accompa- permission for Linacre to accompany him on his journey. Italy, about On his arrival in Italy, he obtained for his former pupil an introduction to Politian, who, removed to Florence, was there, as narrated in the former part of this chapter, dividing the academic honours with Chalcondyles. After studying for some time at Florence, where he was honoured by being Becomes a admitted to share Politian's instruction along with the young Medicean princes,-Linacre proceeded to Rome. In the splendid libraries of that capital he found grateful employment in the collation of different texts of classical authors,— many of them far superior in accuracy and authority to any nies Selling to 1485.. pupil of Politian. residence at Bologna. PART II. quaintance of results of quent inter that it had previously been his fortune to find. One day CHAP. V. while thus engaged over the Phado of Plato, he was accosted by a stranger; their conversation turned upon the manuscript with which he was occupied; and from this casual interview sprang up a cordial and lasting friendship between the Makes the acyoung English scholar and the noblest Italian scholar of the Hermolaus Barbarus at period,-Hermolaus Barbarus. It became Linacre's privilege Rome. to form one of that favored circle in whose company the illustrious Venetian would forget, for a while, the sorrows of exile and proscription; he was a guest at those simple but delightful banquets where they discussed, now the expedition of the Argonauts, now the canons for the interpretation of Aristotle; he joined in the pleasant lounge round the extensive gardens in the cool of the evening, and listened to discussions on the dicta of Dioscorides respecting the virtues and medicinal uses of the plants that grew around. It seems Important in every way probable that, from this intercourse, Linacre their subsederived both that predilection for the scientific writings of course. Aristotle for which he was afterwards so distinguished, and that devotion to the study of medicine which afterwards found expression in the foundation of the College of Physicians, and of the Linacre lectureships at Merton College, Oxford, and at St. John's College, Cambridge. From Rome Linacre proceeded to Padua, whence, after studying medicine for some months and receiving the doctorial degree, he returned to England. His example, and the interest excited Influence of by his accounts at Oxford, proved more potent than the ex- at Oxford on ample of Selling. Within a few years three other Oxonians, and Latimer. William Grocyn, William Lily, and William Latimer,—also set out for Italy, and, after there acquiring a more or less competent acquaintance with Greek, returned to their university to inspire among their fellow-academicians an interest in Greek literature. To the united efforts of these illustrious Different canOxonians, the revival of Greek learning in England is the title of undoubtedly to be attributed; but the individual claims of Greek learnany one of the four to this special honour are not so easily to be determined. That Grocyn was the father of the new study, is in Stapleton's opinion incontestable, inasmuch as his example Grocyn, Lily, didates for restorer of ing in Eng land. PART II. CHAP. V. he was the first who publicly lectured at Oxford on the subject'; 'if he who first publishes to the world the fruits of his studies,' says Johnson, 'merits the title of a restorer of letters above others, the award to Linacre will not be questioned';' while Polydore Virgil considers that Lily, from his industry as a teacher, ought to be regarded as the true founder of a real knowledge of the language. Erasmus to his Oxford Testimony of Such were the men from all of whom Erasmus, when the merits of he came to Oxford in 1498, received that guidance and friends. assistance in his studies which he had so vainly sought at Paris, and of whom, in his letter to Robert Fisher, he speaks in oft-quoted terms of enthusiastic admiration. But to Linacre his obligations were probably the greatest, and in that eminent scholar Cambridge may gratefully recognise an important link in the chain that connects her Greek learning with the scholarship of Italy. Oxford indeed has never Debt of Cam- ceased to pride herself on the obligation under which the Oxford. sister university has thus been laid; and there are few of Gibbon's sayings more frequently quoted than that wherein he has described Erasmus as there acquiring the Greek which he afterwards taught at Cambridge. The statement however, like many of the epigrammatic sentences in which the great historian has epitomised his judicial awards, is not to be accepted without considerable qualification. It is certain, on the one hand, that Erasmus knew something of bridge to Gibbon's dictum. ciplinarum orbem non miretur? Linacri judicio quid acutius, quid altius, quid emunctius? Thomæ Mori ingenio quid unquam finxit natura vel mollius, vel dulcius, vel felicius? ' Opera, II 13. 5 Hallam goes to the opposite extreme in describing the statement as 'resting on no evidence' (Lit. of Europe, 16 237): the following passage in a letter from Erasmus to Latimer in 1518, can hardly be otherwise understood than as implying that he had formerly benefited by his correspondent's instructions as well as those of Linacre:-'sed ut ingenue dicam quod sentio, si mihi contingat Linacrus aut Tonstallus præceptor, nam de te nihil dicam, non desiderarim Italiam.' Opera, 111 379. PART II. where Erasmus acquired ledge of Greek when he went to Oxford; it is equally certain on CHAP. V. the other hand, that when he left he did not know much; considerably less, that is to say, than he knew when he When and entered upon the duties of instructor in Greek to our own his knowuniversity. In the year in which he left Oxford, we find Greek. him speaking of an acquirement of the language as still the object he had most at heart, and of himself as yet unpossessed of the necessary authors for his purpose'. Nearly twelve years elapsed from that time before he gathered round him a Greek class at Cambridge, and it was undoubtedly during this period of his life that his chief acquirements in the language were made. Writing to Colet in 1504, he describes himself as having been for the last three years intent on the study, as he found he could do nothing without it. The year 1507 he spent in Italy,-at Florence, Padua, Rome, and Venice, where his acquirements could scarcely fail to be augmented by his intercourse with scholars like Marcus Musurus and Scipio Carteromachus. But his own inde- Chiefly infatigable industry, it is evident, accomplished the main part own efforts. of the work; and his expression in relation to the subject, as being himself autodidakтos, clearly shews, as Müller observes, that he was his own chief instructor. debted to his Greek studies During the time that Erasmus was resident at Oxford, Progress of the study of Greek appears to have gone on among the few at Oxford. earnest students by whom it was pursued, quietly enough. There was as yet nothing, in the application they seemed disposed to make of their acquirements, that afforded any pretext for interference on the part of those who hated the new study simply because it was an innovation. Linacre, who was Linacre's Aristotelian to the backbone, and heartily despised the Platonists, was occupied in translating Galen; while, in conjunc translations. PART II. theologicum. CHAP. V. tion with Grocyn and Latimer, he had conceived the vast design of giving to the world a new Latin version of the whole of Aristotle's writings'. Neither Grocyn' nor Latimer gave, by their pens, the slightest clue to their sentiments with respect to those questions out of which a controversy was likely to arise; and it was probably not before some years of the sixteenth century had elapsed, that the growing jealousy of the continental theologians began to find expression among theologians The odium in England. In the first part of the present chapter it has already been pointed out, how materially the schism between the eastern and western Churches had impeded the progress of Greek learning, by the belief which was concurrently diffused that Greek could not fail to be heretical; and it is easy to understand that such a conviction must have operated with no little potency in universities like Paris, Oxford, Maintz and Louvain, whose reputation, as yet, was almost entirely derived from their theological activity. Up to the fifteenth century however we hear but little of this distrust; and during the pontificate of Clement v, in the The study of year 1311, Greek had been expressly sanctioned as an orthotioned in the dox study, by a decree for the foundation of two professorcentree ships of the language, at the universities of Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca. At the same time a like provision was made for instruction in Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldee. Neither Grosseteste and the continental translators of Aristotle in his day, nor Richard of Bury and Nicholas Oresme, at a later period, though imputations of heresy were sufficiently rife in their time,-betray any consciousness of any such stigma attaching to the study of Greek. The earliest indication of the Church's mistrust is perhaps the fact that, somewhere in the fifteenth century, it was discovered that, in the papal decree above referred to, the provision for the Greek in the study of Greek had been silently withdrawn, while that for Clementines. the three other languages was retained. The subsequent Greek sanc fourteenth papal Subsequent omission of text of the 1 Life, by Johnson, p. 204. cyn's friendship. See his Letter to a monk, Jortin, 11 673. 3 Thurot, De l'Organisation de l'Enseignement, etc., p. 85. Vives, De Causis, IV 141. |