tury, and who died in 1490, was a lover and a guardian of literature *. He purchased innumerable volumes of Greek and Hebrew writers at Constantinople and other Grecian cities, when they were sacked by the Turks: and, as the operations of typography were now but imperfect, employed at Florence many learned librarians to multiply copies of classics, both Greek and Latin, which he could not procure in Greece'. These, to the number of fifty thousand, he placed in a tower, which he had erected in the metropolis of BudaTM: and in this library he established thirty amanuenses, skilled in painting, illuminating, and writing: who, under the conduct of Felix Ragusinus, a Dalmatian, consummately learned in the Greek, Chaldaic, and Arabic languages, and an elegant designer and painter of ornaments on vellum, attended incessantly to the business of transcription and decoration". The librarian was Bartholomew Fontius, a learned Florentine, the writer of many philological works, and a professor of Greek and oratory at Florence. When Buda was taken by the Turks in the year 1526, cardinal Bozmanni offered for the redemption of this inestimable collection, two hundred thousand pieces of the Imperial money yet without effect; for the barbarous besiegers defaced or destroyed most of the books, in the violence of seizing the splendid covers and the silver bosses and clasps with which they were enriched. The learned Obsopaeus relates, See Petr. Jaenichii NoTIT. BIBLIOTH. THORUNIENSIS, p. 32. Who has written a DISSERTATION De meritis Matthice Corvini in rem literariam. See Joh. Alex. Brassicani PREFAT. AD SALVIANUM, Basil. 1530. fol. And MADERUS DE BIBLIOTHECIS. p. 145. 149. m Anton. Bonfini RER. HUNGAR. Decad. iv. lib. 7. p. 460. edit. 1690. Belius, APPARAT. AD HISTOR. HUNGAR. Dec. i. cap. 5. Among other things, he wrote Commentaries on Persius, Juvenal, Livy, and Aristotle's POETICS. He translated Phalaris's Epistles into the Tuscan language, published at Florence 1491. Crescimbeni has placed him among the Ita lian poets. Lambeccius says, that in P COLLECTIO Madero-Schmidiana, Ac- that a book was brought him by an Hungarian soldier, which he had picked up, with many others, in the pillage of king Corvino's library, and had preserved as a prize, merely because the covering retained some marks of gold and rich workmanship. This proved to be a manuscript of the ETHIOPICS of Heliodorus; from which, in the year 1534, Obsopaeus printed at Basil the first edition of that elegant Greek ro mance". But as this incidental sketch of the history of the revival of modern learning is intended to be applied to the general subject of my work, I hasten to give a detail of the rise and progress of these improvements in England: nor shall I scruple, for the sake of producing a full and uniform view, to extend the enquiry to a distant period. Efforts were made in our English universities for the revival of critical studies, much sooner than is commonly imagined. So early as the year 1439, William Byngham, rector of Saint John Zachary in London, petitioned king Henry the Sixth, in favour of his grammar scholars, for whom he had erected a commodious mansion at Cambridge, called God's HOUSE, and which he had given to the college of Clare-hall: to the end, that twenty-four youths, under the direction and government of a learned priest, might be there perpetually educated, and be from thence transmitted, in a constant succession, into different parts of England, to those places where grammar schools had fallen into a state of desolation'. In the year 1498, Alcock bishop of Ely founded Jesus College in Cambridge, partly for a certain number of scholars to be educated in grammar3. In the PREFACE. See Neandri PRÆFAT. AD GNOMOLOG. Stobæi, p. 27. "Ubi scholæ grammaticales existunt desolatæ." Pat. Hen. VI. ann. reg. xvii. p. 2. memb. 16. Rymer, Foeder. xii. 653. We find early establishments of this sort in the colleges of Paris. In the year 1304, queen Jane founded the college of Navarre, at Paris, for thirty theologists, thirty artists, and twenty GRAMMARIANS, who are also called Enfans escholiers en grammaire. They are ordered to hear lectiones, [lessons] materias, et versus, prou! in scholis grammaticalibus consuevit. Boul. HIST. ACAD. PARIS. vol. iv. p. 74. But the college of AVE MARIA, at Paris, founded in 1839, is for a Master and six boys only, from nine to sixteen years. Boul. ibid. p. 261. The society of Merton college, in Oxford, founded in 1272, originally maintained in the university Yet there is reason to apprehend, that these academical pupils in grammar, with which the art of rhetoric was commonly joined, instead of studying the real models of style, were chiefly trained in systematic manuals of these sciences, filled with unprofitable definitions and unnecessary distinctions: and that in learning the arts of elegance, they acquired the barbarous improprieties of diction which those arts were intended to remove and reform. That the foundations I have mentioned did not produce any lasting beneficial effects, and that the technical phraseology of metaphysics and casuistry still continued to prevail at Cambridge, appears from the following anecdote. In the reign of Henry the Seventh, that university was so destitute of skill in latinity, that it was obliged to hire an Italian, one Caius Auberinus, for composing the public orations and epistles, whose fee was at the rate of twenty-pence for an epistle'. The same person was employed to explain Terence in the public schools". Undoubtedly the same attention to a futile philosophy, to unintelligible elucidations of Scotus and Aquinas, notwithstanding the accessions accruing to science from the establishment of the Humfredian library, had given the same tincture to the ordinary course of studies at Oxford. such boys as claimed kindred to the founder, bishop Walter de Merton, in grammar learning, and all necessaries, sometimes till they were capable of taking a degree. They were placed in Nunhall, adjoining to the college on the east. Expens. factæ per Thomam de Herlyngton, pro pueris de genere fundatoris a fest. Epiph. usque ad fest. S. Petri ad vincula, 21 Edw. III. A.D. 1347.”— Item, in filo albo et viridi, et ceteris pertinenciis, ad reparationem vestium tam artistarum quam GRAMMATICORUM, vid. Item, Mag. Joh. Cornubiensi pro salario SCHOLE, in tertio quadragesimali. x d. Et hostiario [usher] suo, iid. ob. Item, Mag. Joh. Cornubiensi pro tertio estivali, x d. Et hostiario suo, iid. ob." A. Wood, MS. Coll. Merton COLLECTAN. [Cod. MSS Baliard. Bibl. Bodl. 46.] MSS. Bibl. C. C. C. Camb. MISCELL. P. p. 191. Officium magistri Glomeriæ. I observe here, that Giles du Vadis, or Ægidius Dewes, successively royal librarian at Westminster, to Henry the Seventh and Eighth, was a Frenchman. The last king granted him a salary for that office, of ten pounds, in the year 1522. Priv. Sig. 13 Henr. VIII. Offic. Pell. He was preceptor in French to Henry Eighth, prince Arthur, princess Mary, the kings of France and Scotland,' and the marquis of Exeter. Stowe, LONDON, p. 230. Among other things of the sort, he wrote at the command of Henry, An Introductorie for to lerne to rede, to pronounce, and to speak French truely compyled for the princess Mary. Lond. p. Waley, 4to. [See Pref. Palsgrave's LESCLAIRCISSMENT.] He died in 1535. For, aoout the year 1468, the university of Oxford complimented Chadworth bishop of Lincoln, for his care and endeavours in restoring grammatical literature, which, as they represent, had long decayed and been forgotten in that seminary". But although these gleams of science long struggled with the scholastic cloud which inveloped our universities, we find the culture of the classics embraced in England much sooner than is supposed. Before the year 1490, many of our countrymen appear to have turned their thoughts to the revival of the study of classics: yet, chiefly in consequence of their communications with Italy, and, as most of them were clergymen, of the encouragements they received from the liberality of the Roman pontiffs. Millyng, abbot of Westminster, about the year 1480, understood the Greek language: which yet is mentioned as a singular accomplishment, in one, although a prelate, of the monastic profession'. Robert Flemmyng studied the Greek Registr. Univ. Oxon. FF. [EPISTOL. ACAD.] fol. 254. The Epistles in this Register, contain many local anecdotes of the restoration of learning at Oxford. * Such of our countrymen as wrote in Latin at this period, and were entirely educated at home without any connec tions with Italy, wrote a style not more classical than that of the monkish Latin annalists who flourished two or three centuries before. I will instance only in Ross of Warwick, author of the HISTORIA REGUM ANGLIE, educated at Oxford, an ecclesiastic, and esteemed an eminent scholar. Nor is the plan of Ross's History, which was finished so late as the year 1483, less barbarous than his latinity; for in writing a chronicle of the kings of England, he begins, according to the constant practice of the monks, with the creation and the first ages of the world, and adopts all their legends and fables. His motives for undertaking this work are exceedingly curious. He is speaking of the method of perpetuating the memories of famous men by statues: "Also in our churches, tabernacles in stone-work, or niches, are wrought for containing images of this kind. For instance, in the new work of the college of Windsor, [i. e. saint George's chapel,] such tabernacles abound, both within and without the building. Wherefore, being requested, about the latter end of the reign of king Edward the Fourth, by the venerable master Edward Seyinor, Master of the Works there, and at the desire of the said king, to compile a history of those kings and princes who have founded churches and cities, that the images placed in those niches might appear to greater advantage, and more effectually preserve the names of the persons represented; at the instance of this my brother-student at Oxford, and especially at the desire of the said most noble monarch, as also to exhilarate the minds of his royal successours, I have undertaken his work," &c. Edit. Hearne, Oxon. 1745. p. 120. 8vo. y Leland, in V. One Adam Eston, educated at Oxford, a Benedictine monk of Norwich, and who lived at Rome the greatest part of his life, is said to have written many pieces in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. He died at Rome, in the year 1397. Tanner, p. 266. Leland and Latin languages under Baptista Guarini at Ferrara; and at his return into England, was preferred to the deanery of Lincoln about the year 14502. During the reign of Edward the Fourth, he was at Rome; where he wrote an elegant Latin poem in heroic verse, entitled LUCUBRATIONES TIBURTINE, which he inscribed to pope Sixtus his singular patron. It has these three chaste and strong hexameters, in which he describes the person of that illustrious pontiff. Sane, quisquis in hunc oculos converterit acreis, In facie vultuque viri sublime videbit Elucere aliquid, majestatemque verendam. Leland assures us, that he saw in the libraries of Oxford a Greco-Latin lexicon, compiled by Flemmyng, which has escaped my searches. He left many volumes beautifully written and richly illuminated, to Lincoln college in Oxford, where he had received his academical education. About the same period, John Gunthorpe, afterwards, among other numerous and eminent promotions, dean of Wells, keeper of the privy seal, and master of King's hall in Cambridge, attended also the philological lectures of Guarini: and for the polished latinity with which he wrote EPISTLES and ORATIONS, compositions at that time much in use and request, was appointed by king Edward the Fourth Latin secretary to queen Anne, in the year 1487. |