plans of a most extraordinary nature in Spain; and placed the literature of his country, which, from the phlegmatic temper of the inhabitants was tenacious of antient forms, on a much wider bafis than before. To thefe he added a manual of rhetoric, compiled from Ariftotle, Tully, and Quintilian: together with commentaries on Terence, Virgil, Juvenal, Perfius, and other claffics. He was deputed by Ximenes, with other, learned linguifts, to fuperintend the grand Complutenfian edition of the bible: and in the conduct of that laborious work, he did not escape the cenfure of heretical impiety for exercifing his critical skill on the facred text, according to the ideas of the holy inquifition, with too great a degree of precision and accuracy 1.

Even Hungary, a country by no means uniformly advanced with other parts of Europe in the common arts of civilisation, was illuminated with the distant dawning of science. Mattheo Corvini, king of Hungary and Bohemia, in the fifteenth century, and who died in 1490, was a lover and a guardian of literature. He purchased innumerable volumes of Greek and Hebrew writers at Conftantinople and other Grecian cities, when they were facked by the Turks: and, as the operations of typography were now but imperfect, employed at Florence many learned librarians to multiply copies of claffics, 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 Buda": and in this library he established thirty amanuenfes, fkilled in painting, illuminating, and writing: who, under the conduct of Felix Ragufinus, a

i See Alvarus Gomefius de VITA XIMENIS, lib. ii. pag. 43. Nic. Anton. ut fupr. p. 109. Imbonatus, BIBL. LATINOHEBR. p. 315.

* See Petr. Jaenichii NOTIT. BIBLIOTH. THORUNIENSIS, p. 32. Who has written a. DISSERTATION De meritis Matthiæ VOL. II.

Corvini in rem literariam.

See Joh. Alex. Brafficani PRÆFAT. AD SALVIANUM, Bafil. 1530. fol. And MADERUS DE BIBLIOTHECIS. p. 145. 149. Anton. Bonfinii RER. HUNGAR. Decad. iv. lib. 7. p. 460. edit. 1690. Dalmatian,

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Dalmatian, confummately learned in the Greek, Chaldaic, and Arabic languages, and an elegant defigner and painter of ornaments on vellum, attended inceffantly to the business of transcription and decoration". The librarian was Bartholomew Fontius, a learned Florentine, the writer of many philological works, and a profeffor 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 befiegers defaced or destroyed most of the books, in the violence of feizing the fplendid covers and the filver bosses and clasps with which they were enriched'. The learned Obfopaeus relates, that a book was brought him by an Hungarian foldier, which he had picked up, with many others, in the pillage of king Corvino's library, and had preferved as a prize, merely because the covering retained fome marks of gold and rich workmanship. This proved to be a manufcript of the ETHIOPICS Of Heliodorus; from which, in the year 1534, Obfopaeus printed at Bafil the first edition of that elegant Greek romance".

But as this incidental sketch of the history of the revival of modern learning, is intended to be applied to the general fubject of my work, I haften to give a detail of the rife and

" Belius, APPARAT. AD HISTOR. HUNGAR. Dec. i. cap. 5.

Among other things, he wrote Commentaries on Perfius, Juvenal, Livy, and Ariftotle's POETICS. He tranflated Phalaris's Epiftles into the Tufcan language, published at Florence 1491. Crefcimbeni has placed him among the the Italian poets. Lambeccius fays, that in the year 1665, he was fent to Buda by the emperor Leopold, to examine what remained in this library: After repeated delays and difficulties, he was at length permitted by the

Turks to enter the room: where he faw about four hundred books, printed, and of no value, difperfed on the floor, and covered with duft and filth. Lambeccius fuppofes, that the Turks, knowing the condition of the books, were afhamed to give him admittance. COMMENT. DE BIBL. VINDOBON. lib. ii. c. ix. p. 993.

P COLLECTIO Madero-Schmidiana, AcCESS. i. p. 310. feq. Belius, ut fupr. tom. iii. p. 225.

9 In the PREFACE. See Neandri PRÆFAT. AD GNOMOLOG. Stobæi, p. 27.

progress

progress of these improvements in England: nor shall I fcruple, for the fake 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 ftudies, much fooner than is commonly imagined. So early as the year 1439, William Byngham, rector of Saint John Zachary in London, petitioned king Henry the fixth, in favour of his grammar scholars, for whom he had erected a commodious manfion 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 conftant fucceffion, into different parts of England, to thofe places where grammar fchools had fallen into a state of defolation". In the year 1498, Alcock bishop of Ely founded Jefus College in Cambridge, partly for a certain number of scholars to be educated in grammar. Yet there is reafon to apprehend, that these academical pupils in grammar, with which the art of rhetoric was commonly

Ubi fcholæ grammaticales exiftunt defolatæ." Pat. Hen. vi. ann. reg. xvii. p. 2. membr. 16.

Rymer, Foder xii. 653. We find early eftablishments of this fort in the colleges of Paris. In the year 1304, queen Jane founded the college of Navarre, at Paris, for thirty theologifts, thirty artists, and twenty GRAMMARIANS, who are also called Enfans efcholiers en grammaire. They are ordered to hear lectiones, [leffons] materias, et verfus, prout in fcholis grammati calibus confuevit. Boul. HIST. ACAD. PARIS. vol. iv. p. 74. But the college of AVE MARIA, at Paris, founded in 1339, is for a Master and fix boys only, from nine to fixteen years. Boul. ibid. P. 261. The fociety of Metton college, in Oxford, founded in 1272, originally maintained in the univerfity fuch boys as claimed kindred

joined, instead of ftudying the real models of style, were chiefly trained in. fyftematic manuals of these sciences, filled with unprofitable definitions and unneceffary distinctions: and that in learning the arts of elegance, they acquired the barbarous improprieties of diction which thofe arts were intended to remove and reform. That the foundations I have mentioned did not produce any lafting beneficial effects, and that the technical phrafeology of metaphyfics and cafuiftry still continued to prevail at Cambridge, appears from the following anecdote. In the reign of Henry the seventh, that univerfity was fo deftitute of skill in latinity, that it was obliged to hire an Italian, one Caius Auberinus, for compofing the public orations and epiftles, whofe fee was at the rate of twenty-pence for an epiftle'. The fame perfon was employed to explain Terence in the public schools". Undoubtedly the fame attention to a futile philosophy, to unintelligible elucidations of Scotus and Aquinas, notwithstanding the acceffions accruing to fcience from the establishment of the Humfredian library, had given the fame tincture to the ordinary course of studies at Oxford. For, about 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 feminary ".

MSS. Bibl. C. C. C. Camb. MISCELL P. p. 194. Officium magiftri Glomeria. I obferve here, that Giles du Vadis, or Ægidius Dewes, fucceffively royal librarian at Westminster, to Henry the feventh and eighth, was a Frenchman. The last king granted him a falary 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, princefs Mary, the kings of France and Scotland, and the marquis of Exeter. Stowe, LONDON, p. 230. Among other things of the fort, he wrote at the com

A

But although these gleams of science long ftruggled with the fcholaftic cloud which inveloped our univerfities, we find the culture of the claffics embraced in England much fooner than is fuppofed. Before the year 1490, many of our countrymen appear to have turned their thoughts to the revival of the study of claffics: yet, chiefly in consequence of their communications with Italy, and, as moft 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 fingular accomplishment, in one, although a prelate, of the monaftic profession'. Robert Flemmyng ftudied the Greek and Latin languages under Baptifta Guarini at Ferrara; and at his return into England, was preferred to the deanery of Lincoln about the

* Such of our countrymen as wrote in Latin at this period, and were entirely educated at home without any connections with Italy, wrote a ftyle not more claffical than that of the monkish latin annalists who flourished two or three centuries before. I will inftance only in Rofs of Warwick, author of the HISTORIA REGUM ANGLIÆ, educated at Oxford, an ecclefiaftic, and esteemed an eminent fcholar, Nor is the plan of Rofs's Hiftory, which was finished fo late as the year 1483, lefs barbarous than his latinity; for in writing a chronicle of the kings of England, he begins, according to the conftant 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 fpeaking of the method of perpetuating the memories of famous men by ftatues: "Al"fo in our churches, tabernacles in stone"work, or niches, are wrought for con"taining images of this kind. For in"ftance, in the new work of the college "of Windfor, [i. e. faint George's chapel,] “fuch tabernacles abound, both within "and without the building. Wherefore,

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"being requested, about the latter end of "the reign of king Edward the fourth, by "the venerable mafter Edward Seymor, "Master of the Works there, and at the "defire of the faid king, to compile a hiftory of those kings and princes who have "founded churches and cities, that the images placed in thofe niches might appear to greater advantage, and more effectually preferve the names of the per"fons reprefented; at the inftance of this my brother-ftudent at Oxford, and efpe"cially at the defire of the faid most noble "monarch, as alfo to exhilarate the minds "of his royal fucceffours, I have under"taken his work, &c." Edit. Hearne, Oxon. 1745. P. 120. 8vo.

y Leland, in V. One Adam Efton, edu cated at Oxford, a Benedictine monk of Norwich, and who lived at Rome the greatest part of his life, is faid to have written many pieces in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. He died at Rome, in the year 1397. Tanner, p. 266. Leland mentions John Bate, a Carmelite, of York, about the year 1429, as a Greek scholar. Scriptor. BATUS.

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