HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY FROM THE TWELFTH TO THE CLOSE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. BY THOMAS WARTON, B. D. FELLOW OF TRIN. COLL., OXFORD; F.S.A.; PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. WITH A PREFACE BY RICHARD PRICE, AND NOTES VARIORUM. EDITED BY W. CAREW HAZLITT. WITH NEW NOTES AND Other additIONS BY SIR FREDERIC MADDEN, K.H., F.R.S.; WALTER W. SKEAT, M.A.; RICHARD MORRIS, LL.D.; BODLEIAL P LIBRARY CHISWICK PRESS :-PRINTED BY WHITTINGHAM AND WILKINS, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE. OON after the year 1500, Lilly, the famous grammarian, who had learned Greek at Rhodes, and had afterwards acquired a polifhed Latinity at Rome under Johannes Sulpicius and Pomponius Sabinus, became the firft teacher of Greek at any public school in England. This was at Saint Paul's school in London, then newly established by Dean Colet, and celebrated by Erafmus; and of which Lilly, as one of the moft exact and accomplished scholars of his age, was appointed the first mafter. And that ancient prejudices were now gradually wearing off, and a national tafte for critical ftudies and the graces of compofition began to be diffufed, appears from this circumftance alone: that from the year 1503 to the Reformation, there were more grammar schools, most of which at prefent are perhaps of little ufe and importance, founded and endowed in England, than had been for three hundred years before. The practice of educating our youth in the monafteries growing into difufe, near twenty new grammar fchools were established within this period: and among thefe, Wolfey's fchool at Ipswich, which foon fell a facrifice to the refentment or the avarice of Henry the Eighth, deferves particular notice, as it rivalled those of Winchester and Eton. To give splendour to the inftitution, befide the scholars, it confifted of a dean, twelve canons, and a numerous Knight, Life of Colet, p. 19. Pace, above mentioned, in the Epiftle Dedicatory to Colet, before his Treatife De fructu qui ex Doctrina percipitur, thus compliments Lilly, edit. Bafil. ut fupr. 1517, p. 13. "Ut politiorem Latinitatem, et ipfam Romanam linguam, in Britanniam noftram introduxiffe videatur.-Tanta [ei] eruditio, ut extrufa barbarie, in qua noftri adolefcentes folebant fere ætatem confumere," &c. Erafmus fays, in 1514, that he had taught a youth, in three years, more Latin than he could have acquired in any school in England, ne Liliana quidem excepta, not even Lilly's excepted. Epiftol. 165, p. 140, tom. iii. |