Part 14 (1/2)

As late as 1726, Jenkin Thomas Phillipps reprinted shi+rley's Grae of this edition it is said to be ”for the use of Prince William”

In 1640 Thomas Hayne published his _Grammatices Latinae Compendium_ A copy before me was presented by the author to Charles II when a boy, and has an autograph inscription on the blank page before the title to the young Prince It also passed through the hands of his brother, James Duke of York, who has written _Ja the troubles it seeht at Oxford on the 4th October 1647 by a later owner, who records the fact at the top of another page It was subsequently at Stowe, and the fine old blue n of a schoolboy's thu survey of the progress and develop in former days, and some of the later attempts made with a view to improve the lish and Latin in parallel columns, and systematises and tabulates the cases and declensions in a more lucid manner than the prior experiments If we set it side by side with Whittinton's eleven divisions, we see that it is a great advance

Fro volume of literature calculated to assist the diffusion of useful and ined for schools These publications, belonging to nearly every department of science and inquiry, were often reproduced with the saularity as the educational works the ress of discovery and reform than the fact that the standard manuals of one century become the waste paper of the next

As one arrests a stray copy of Heylin's _Cosraphy_, Godwin's _Rodon School, Provost Rous's _Attic Archaeology_, Prideaux's _Introduction to the Reading of Histories_, or any other book of the sae from an old collection to thetheir straitened opportunities and the force of clerical influence, the culture and light of our ancestors were in fair relative proportion to our own

The literary thought and bias of the age were naturally affected by these shallow and re repertories of information, which were as far removed in scholarshi+p from the _Roman Antiquities_ of Adams and the _Dictionary_ of Lempriere as Adams and Lempriere are removed from Dr Smith's series

XVII

Liland--Erase--Notices of a few Philhellenists--Study of the language at Rhodes by Lily--Languid interest in it ae as to the pronunciation--Remarks on this subject--The tract by John Kay--Few books in the Greek character printed in England

I The few scattered notices, which offer thelishmen of very reue, tend ly and ie was cultivated down to the age of Elizabeth; and of course this circulect of it in our universities and academies Warton himself cites a case in which a scholar travelled from Malmesbury to Canterbury in order to iained through a local ely and sensibly to render Greek a part of the educational systerammarian, who spent some years of his life at Rhodes, and introduced a study of the language into the routine of St Paul's, whence it found its way by degrees to the other great foundations in London and in the provinces

The biographer of Colet has so to say on this subject:--

”Such was the infelicity of those tirareat need of it in the two Universities by the generality of scholars It is worth notice that [John] Standish, as a bitter eneainst hi time after the phrase for an heretic”

”But,” he adds, ”Dr John Fisherwas of another mind, and very sensible of this imperfection, whichyears”

The Bishop, however, who through Erasmus was recommended to William Latymer, one of the foremost Philhellenists of the day, could not persuade that scholar to enter on the task, as he considered the prelate too old to acquire the language; and Knight tells us that, in order to escape from the application, he advised Fisher to send for a professor out of Italy

Englishmen, even at a later period than this, occasionally went to Florence or elsewhere to learn Greek; but Erasmus made himself, with the assistance of Linacre, tolerably proficient in it, on the contrary, during his first visit to England in the time of Henry the Seventh (1497-8), and was sufficiently versed, at all events in the rudie Doubtless he did so in aid of his expenses

”In Caht the Greek gra in that University, that (as he tells a friend) about the year 1485, the beginning of Henry the Seventh's reign, there was nothing taught in that public seicalia_ (as they called them), the old axioms of Aristotle, and the questions of John Scotus”

Erase, and was contee, who did valuable service in pro at that University, and published several tracts relating to the Greek literature and tongue, including _Introductiones ad Linguam Graecam_ and _Elementa Grammaticae Graecae_--the earliest attempts to place before students in a handy form the alphabet of the subject

At Oxford it was an Italian, Cornelius Vitellius, who became the first Greek professor, and William Grocyne, ith Latyland, was a his pupils

It is to be suspected that, while a enius like Eras of whatever he seriously undertook, his conversance with Greek was always comparatively superficial, and it is e was cultivated at Cae at that epoch, that he was enabled to earn money as a teacher of it

It was not apparently till 1524 that Greek type was introduced into our printing-offices Linacre's book _De Emendata Structura Latini Serenerally received as containing the first specilish press The Greek alphabet occurs in the Primer of 1548

II Florence, Roners were then accustomed to resort for the study and mastery of Greek In the _Life of Dean Colet_ it is sho he travelled in Italy, and met with two of his countrymen at Florence, Grocyn and Linacre, and with a third at Rora Greek at Rhodes, had proceeded to Rome to render himself equally adept in Latin, so that, when he finally settled in London, he had served a laborious apprenticeshi+p and taken unusual pains to become an instructor of others

Colet himself, it is to be noted, displayed in earlier life a bent towards theology and the Fathers, though he had scanty sympathy with the survivals whom he found around him, both at home and abroad, of the monastic schoolmen and expounders of the old divinity

”He had observed these schoolrapher indeed, ”to be a heavy set of for rather than to wit and sense, for to argue so elaborately about the opinions and the very words of other uish and divide into a thousand niceties: this was rather the work of a poor and barren invention than anything else”