religion. He came back to Oxford utterly untouched by the Platonic mysticism or the semi-serious infidelity which characterized the group of scholars round Lorenzo the Magnificent. He was hardly more influenced by their literary enthusiasm. The knowledge of Greek seems to have had one almost exclusive end for him, and this was a religious end. Greek was the key by which he could unlock the Gospels and the New Testament, and in these he thought he could find a new religious standing-ground. It was this resolve of Colet to fling aside the traditional dogmas of his day and to discover a rational and practical religion in the Gospels themselves, which gave its peculiar stamp to the theology of the Renascence. His faith stood simply on a vivid realization of the person of Christ. In the prominence which such a view gave to the moral life, in his free criticism of the earlier Scriptures, in his tendency to simple forms of doctrine and confessions of faith, Colet struck the key-note of a mode of religious thought as strongly in contrast with that of the later Reformation as with that of Catholicism itself. The allegorical and mystical theology on which the Middle Ages had spent their intellectual vigour to such little purpose fell at one blow before his rejection of all but the historical and grammatical sense of the Biblical text. The great fabric of belief built up by the mediæval doctors seemed to him simply "the corruptions of the Schoolmen." In the life and sayings of its Founder he found a simple and rational Christianity, whose fittest expression was the Apostle's creed. "About the rest," he said with characteristic impatience, "let divines dispute as they will." Of his attitude toward the coarser aspects of the current religion his behaviour at a later time before the famous shrine of Saint Thomas at Canterbury gives us a rough indication. As the blaze of its jewels, its costly sculptures, its elaborate metal-work burst on Colet's view, he suggested with bitter irony that a saint so lavish to the poor in his lifetime would certainly prefer that they should possess the wealth heaped round him since his death. With petulant disgust he rejected the rags of the martyr which were offered for his adoration, and the shoe which was offered for his kiss. The earnestness, the religious zeal, the very impatience and want of sympathy with the past which we see in every word and act of the man, burst out in the lectures on Saint Paul's Epistles which he delivered at Oxford. Even to the most critical among his hearers he seemed "like one inspired, raised in voice, eye, his whole countenance and mien, out of himself." Severe as was the outer life of the new teacher, a severity marked by his plain black robe and the frugal table which he preserved amidst his later dignities, his lively conversation, his frank simplicity, the purity and nobleness of his life, even the keen outbursts of his troublesome temper, endeared him to a group of scholars among whom Erasmus and Thomas More stood in the foremost rank.

134. The New Taste for Books

(Green, J. R., Short History of the English People, pp. 294-95. London, 1888) The following interesting selection pictures the decay of the mediæval learning, the rising curiosity for secular knowledge, the increased use of books, and finally the invention of the great art of printing.

...

The literature of the Middle Ages was dying out with the Middle Ages themselves; in letters as in life their thirst for knowledge had spent itself in the barren mazes of the scholastic philosophy, their ideal of warlike nobleness faded away before the gaudy travestie of a spurious chivalry, and the mystic enthusiasm of their devotion shrank at the touch of persecution into a narrow orthodoxy and a flat morality. The clergy, who had concentrated in themselves the intellectual effort of the older time, were ceasing to be an intellectual class at all. The monasteries were no longer seats of learning. "I found in them," said Poggio, an Italian traveller twenty years after Chaucer's death, "men given up to sensuality in abundance, but very few lovers of learning, and those of a barbarous sort, skilled more in quibbles and sophisms. than in literature." The erection of colleges, which was beginning, failed to arrest the quick decline of the universities both in the numbers and learning of their students. Those at Oxford amounted to only a fifth of the scholars who had attended its lectures a century before, and "Oxford Latin" became proverbial for a jargon in which the very tradition of grammar had been lost. All literary production was nearly at an end. Historical composition lingered on indeed in compilations of extracts from past writers, such as make up the so-called works of Walsingham, in jejune monastic annals, or worthless popular compendiums. But the only trace of mental activity is to be found in the numerous treatises on alchemy and magic, on the elixir of life or the philosopher's stone, a fungous growth which most unequivocally witnesses to the progress of intellectual decay. On the other hand, while the older literary class was dying out, a glance beneath the surface shows us the stir of a new interest in knowledge among the masses of the people itself. The correspondence of the Paston family, which has been happily preserved, not only displays a fluency and vivacity as well as a grammatical correctness which would have been impossible in familiar letters a few years before, but shews country squires discussing about books and gathering libraries. The very character of the authorship of the time, its love of compendiums and abridgements of the scientific and historical knowledge of its day, its dramatic performances or mysteries, the commonplace morality of its poets, the popularity of its rimed chronicles, are additional proofs that literature was ceasing to be the possession of a purely intellectual class and was

beginning to appeal to the people at large. The increased use of linen paper in place of the costlier parchment helped in the popularization of letters. In no former age had finer copies of books been produced; in none had so many been transcribed. This increased demand for their production caused the processes of copying and illuminating manuscripts to be transferred from the scriptoria of the religious houses into the hands of trade-guilds, like the Guild of Saint John at Bruges, or the Brothers of the Pen at Brussels. It was, in fact, this increase of demand for books, pamphlets, or fly-sheets, especially of a grammatical or religious character, in the middle of the fifteenth century that brought about the introduction of printing. We meet with it first in rude sheets simply struck off from wooden blocks, "blockbooks" as they are now called, and later on in works printed from separate and moveable types. Originating at Maintz with the three famous printers, Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer, the new process travelled southward to Strasburg, crossed the Alps to Venice, where it lent itself through the Aldi to the spread of Greek literature in Europe, and then floated down the Rhine to the towns of Flanders. It was probably at the press of Colard Mansion, in a little room over the porch of Saint Donat's at Bruges, that Caxton learnt the art which he was the first to introduce into England.

CHAPTER XI

EDUCATIONAL RESULTS OF THE REVIVAL

OF LEARNING

THE Readings contained in this chapter illustrate the educational results of the Italian Revival of Learning, as shown in the changes in the schools in Italy, France, Germany, and England. Beginning with the court schools of Italy, the resulting reform of education gradually extended to northern lands. The largest amount of space is given to the results in England and to the work and character of the English grammar school, because we in America drew our early educational ideas and practices direct from England. The Boston Latin School, founded in 1635, was a direct descendant of the English grammar schools and English educational traditions.

The first selection (135) is from the tractate by Guarino da Verona on the teaching of the new literatures, and in this he describes the method employed so successfully by his father in his Italian court school. He also lays down his new dictum as to the fundamental importance of a knowledge of Greek and Latin for the educated man. The second selection (136) describes the course of study at the French college of Guyenne, at Bordeaux, one of the leading exponents of the new humanism in France. The third selection (137) outlines the course of instruction which Sturm, employing the new humanism, finally evolved for his famous classical gymnasium at Strassburg. These two furnish an interesting comparison.

The introduction of humanistic studies into the English secondary schools was largely due to Colet, through the re-founding of Saint Paul's School in London, in 1510. This school, though at first bitterly opposed, soon established the type for nearly all the English grammar schools founded or reorganized thereafter. The extracts from Colet's Statutes for the school (138 a-c) are given to show the character of the provisions he made for the new school. The introduction of the new learning into England was also greatly aided by the English court, and the selection from Ascham (139) is given to show Queen Elizabeth's deep in

terest in the new studies. For Colet's school Lily wrote a new type of Latin Grammar. This became a famous textbook and continued in use for centuries, and the Introduction contributed thereto by Colet is reproduced (140) to show his kindly interest in good learning.

Even before the new humanistic type of school had been introduced into England some efforts at securing schools directed by university-trained teachers, instead of clerics, had been made, of which the school established by William Sevenoaks is a good example. His will is reproduced (141) to show the type of school he wanted to establish. The chantry grammar school founded by John Percival (142), and the efforts of the city authorities of Sandwich to provide a grammar school (143), both illustrate the interest such new-type schools had awakened in England.

The course of study for Eton College, one of the largest and best-endowed of the English grammar schools, as reproduced (144), shows how thoroughly the new humanistic studies had made a home for themselves in the larger grammar schools within half a century after Colet's re-foundation of Saint Paul's; while the description by Adam Martindale (145) of the instruction he received in a small country grammar school, about 1635, is interesting as showing how thoroughly the new learning had by that time penetrated to even the small and remote grammar schools of England. It was in 1635 that the Boston Latin School, the first Latin grammar school in America, was founded by English settlers, most of whom had been educated in these English grammar schools. Our educational traditions for secondary education thus go back, through the English-type Latin grammar school, directly to the Italian Renaissance.

After a time the new humanistic studies began to lose their earlier importance as cultural studies, due in part to a change in teaching methods. The emphasis now came to be placed upon drill and intellectual discipline instead of the humanistic spirit, and in consequence the schools in time became formal and lifeless. This came to be particularly true of such instruction in the hands of the Jesuits, though it extended to secondary education in all lands and among all creeds. The description of such formal instruction by the Jesuit Campion (146) illustrates well how formal drill and minute analysis of the old authors had replaced the earlier humanistic culture.