published a new Latin tranflation of ECCLESIASTES, with critical annotations on the Hebrew text, printed at Antwerp in 1523" This, in an elegant Latin epiftle, he dedicates to John Webbe, prior of the Benedictine cathedral convent at Coventry; whom he styles, for his fingular learning, and attention to the general cause of letters, MONACHORUM DECUS. John Batmanfon, prior of the Carthufians in London, controverted Erasmus's commentary on the new Testament with a degee of spirit and erudition, which was unhappily misapplied, and would have done honour to the cause of his antagonist". He wrote many other pieces; and was patronised by Lee, a learned archbishop of York, who opposed Erasmus, but allowed Ascham a pension*. Kederminster, abbot of Winchcombe in Gloucestershire, a traveller to Rome, and a celebrated preacher before king Henry the eighth, established regular lectures in his monastery, for explaining both scriptures in their original languages; which were fo generally frequented, that his little cloister acquired the name and reputation of a new univerfity'. He was master of a terfe and perfpicuous Latin style, as appears from a fragment of the HISTORY OF WYNCHCOMB ABBEY, written by himself, His erudition is attested in an epistle from the university to king Henry the eighth. Longland, bishop of Lincoln, the most eloquent preacher of his time,

μ Quarto.

w Theodor. Petreus, BIBL. CARTHUS. edit. Col. 1609. p. 157.

* Afcham, EPISTOL. lib. ii. p. 77. a. edit. 1581. [See alfo iii. p. 86. a. On the death of the archbishop, in 1544 Afcham defires, that a part of his penfion then due might be paid out of fome of the archbifhop's greek books: one of thefe he wishes. may be Aldus's DECEM RHETORES GRÆCI, a book which he could not purchase or procure at Cambridge.

"Non aliter quam fi fuiffet altera No"VA UNIVERSITAS, tametfi exigua, clauf"trum Wynchelcombenfe tunc temporis fe

haberet." From his own HISTORIA, 28 below, Wood, HIST. Univ. Oxon. i. p. 248. There is an Epiftle from Colet, the learned dean of St. Paul's, to this ab bot, concerning a paffage in faint Paul's EPISTLES, first printed by Knight, from the original manuscript at Cambridge. Knight's LIFE, p. 311.

2 Printed by Dugdale, before the whole of the original was destroyed in the fire of London. MONAST. i. 188. But a tranfcript of a part remains in Dodfworth, MSS. Bibl. Bodl. lxv. 1. Compare A. Wood, ut fupr. and ATHEN. OXON. i. 28.

Regiftr. Univ. Oxon. FF. fol. 46.

in

in the dedication to Kederminster, of five quadragefimal fermons, delivered at court, and printed by Pinson in the year 1517, infifts largely on his SINGULARIS ERUDITIO, and other fhining qualifications.

Before we quit the reign of Henry the eighth, in this review of the rife of modern letters, let us turn our eyes once more on the universities; which yet do not always give the tone to the learning of a nation. In the year 1531, the learned Simon Grynaeus vifited Oxford. By the intereft of Clay

mund, president of Corpus Chrifti college, an admirable scholar, a critical writer, and the general friend and correspondent of the literary reformers, he was admitted to all the libraries of the univerfity; which, he fays, were about twenty in number, and amply furnished with the books of antiquity. Among these he found numerous manuscripts of Proclus on Plato, many of which he was easily permitted to carry abroad by the governors of the colleges, who did not know the value of these treasures. In the year 1535, the king ordered lectures in humanity, inftitutions which have their use for a time, and while the novelty lafts, to be founded in those colleges of the university, where they were yet wanting and these injunctions were fo warmly approved by the scholars in the largest focieties, that they seized on the venerable volumes of Duns Scotus and other irrefragable logicians, in which they had fo long toiled without the attainment of knowledge, and tearing them in pieces, difperfed them in great triumph about their quadrangles, or gave them away as ufelefs lumber. The king himself alfo established some public lectures with large endowments. Notwithstanding, the number of students at Oxford daily decreased: infomuch, that in 1546, not because a general cultivation of the new fpecies of literature was increased, there were only ten inceptors in arts, and three in theology and jurifprudence'.

:

As all novelties are purfued to excefs, and the most beneficial improvements often introduce new inconveniencies, so this univerfal attention to polite literature destroyed philo

Tophy. The old philofophy was abolished, but a new one was not adopted in its ftead. At Cambridge we now however find the antient fcientific learning in fome degree reformed, by the admiffion of better systems.

In the injunctions given by Henry to that university in the year 1535, for the reformation of study, the dialectics of Rodolphus Agricola, the great favorite of Erafmus, and the genuine logic of Ariftotle, are prefcribed to be taught, instead of the barren problems of Scotus and Burlaeus'. By the fame edict, theology and caufuiftry were freed from many of their old incumbrances and perplexities: degrees in the canon law were forbidden; and heavy penalties were imposed on thofe academics, who relinquished the facred text, to explain the tedious and unedifying commentaries on Peter Lombard's fcholaftic cyclopede of divinity, called the SENTENCES, which alone were fufficient to constitute a moderate library. Claffical lectures were alfo directed, the study of words was enforced, and the books of Melancthon, and other folid and elegant writers of the reformed party, recommended. The politer ftudies, foon afterwards, feem to have rifen into a flourishing state at Cambridge. Bishop Latimer complains, that there were now but few who studied divinity in that univerfity. But this is no proof of a decline of learning in that feminary. Other pursuits were now gaining ground there; and fuch as in fact were fubfervient to theological truth, and to the propagation of the reformed religion. Latimer himself, whose discourses from the royal pulpit appear to be barbarous beyond their age, in style, manner, and argument, is an example of the neceffity of the ornamental ftudies to a writer in divinity. The

Greek language was now making confiderable advances at Cambridge, under the inftruction of Cheke and Smith; notwithstanding the interruptions and oppofition of bishop Gardiner, the chancellor of the univerfity, who loved learning but hated novelties, about the proprieties of pronunciation. But the controverfy which was agitated on both sides with much erudition, and produced letters between Cheke and Gardiner equal to large treatifes, had the good effect of more fully illustrating the point in debate, and of drawing the general attention to the subject of the Greek literature'. Perhaps bishop Gardiner's intolerance in this respect was like his perfecuting spirit in religion, which only made more heretics. Afcham obferves, with no fmall degree of triumph, that instead of Plautus, Cicero, Terence, and Livy, almoft the only claffics hitherto known at Cambridge, a more extenfive field was opened; and that Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, Demofthenes, Xenophon, an Ifocrates, were univerfally and critically studied *. But Cheke being foon called away to the court, his auditors relapfed into differtations on the doctrines of original fin and predeftination; and it was debated with great obftinacy and acrimony, whether thofe topics had been moft fuccefsfully handled by fome modern German divines or faint Austin'. Afcham obferves, that at Oxford, a decline of tafte in both languages was indicated, by a preference of Lucian, Plutarch, and Herodian, in Greek, and of Seneca, Gellius, and Apuleius, in Latin, to the more pure, antient, and original writers, of Greece and Rome". At length,

i Afcham. EPISTOL. ut modo infr. p..65. a. Afcham calls Gardiner, “omnibus lite"rarum, prudentiæ, confilii, authoritatis,

præfidiis ornatiffimus, abfque hac una re "effet, literarum et academiæ noftræ pa"tronus ampliffimus." But he fays, that Gardiner took this meafure, "quorundam

"invidorum hominum precibus victus." ibid. p. 64. b.

* Strype's CRANMER, p. 170. Afcham, EPISTOL. L. ii. p. 64. b. 1581.

Afcham. EPIST. lib. ii.

m EPISTOL. lib. i..p. 18. b. Dat. 1559. edit. 1581.