CHAPTER XVIII

ENGLISH EDUCATION IN LETTERS

THE English were the progeny of Britons, Saxons, Danes, and Gallicised Normans. After the Conquest, newcomers from the Continent constantly freshened this racial mixture, uniting with those who by a few, or many, generations had preceded them. Social fashions and enlightenment from abroad also affected these islanders, and such elements of Latin education as the more favored ones received.

An English speech developed, as well as political institutions and a common law; also an insular point of view, an English patriotism, and in fine an English genius which should set its stamp upon the achievements of an English race and find expression in its intellectual creations. Yet the language betrayed its heterogeneous constituents, and foreign currents were to remain evident in English thought and literature. Continental conditions and intrigues constantly affected the English political situation; and foreign elements will be seen to enter, and sometimes neutralize each other, in the insular religious revolution of the sixteenth century.

Of all centuries the sixteenth most strikingly exhibits the plastic power of the English genius, which was then masterfully appropriating the foreign matter and compelling it to contribute to the expression of the mental and emotional experiences of the race. The products or expressions of this English genius will be seen in English legislation, in English conduct, in fortified modes of English thinking, in Anglican forms of Christianity, and most gloriously in English songs and dramas.

With different emphasis or elusiveness these phenomena testify to the continuity of the English past and present, and evince the medial qualities of a people whose racehood

3

was composite, and whose language was not wholly Teutonic or Romance either in its genius or vocabulary. One will constantly encounter the effect of recent foreign fashions, or foreign thought, foreign learning, including the invigorated humanism which entered from abroad and which Englishmen went abroad to seek; or, again, all foreign elements are sunk in the creative power, and lost in the magnificence, of the English imagination.

To trace the evolution of English political institutions out of an insular experience, instructed by foreign suggestions or impelled by external exigencies; to follow English education; note the use of antique or foreign material in secular English thinking or philosophy; observe the construction of an Anglican Christianity from the edicts of a King chiming with popular approvals, which were affected by the ideas of Luther, Zwingli, or Calvin; and witness the English literary genius leaping forth from conventions and conceits, insular or continental, and even from Latin and Greek translations - all this were to attempt the intellectual history of England. A few of the illustrative features of these vast assimilative and creative processes may be noted in this and the following chapters.

During no mediaeval century did the influence of the antique civilization fail to act upon England; nor did English students whether at home in Oxford or Cambridge, or at Paris, Chartres or Orleans, fail to prosecute some form of classical or antique study, impelled by love of letters or philosophy, or by a more conventionally pious motive. The English were not leaders here; yet John of Salisbury who passed much of his life in France, and died. as bishop of Chartres in the year 1180, was one of the best scholars and most genial teachers of his time. Robert Grosseteste, an emphatic English personality, carried learning from Paris to Oxford, and there did much to foster a closer knowledge of the tongues; a work which his great pupil Roger Bacon strove vigorously to further.i

In the early fourteenth century, England sent forth 1 Cf. The Mediaeval Mind, Vol. II, p 146 sqq.

revolutionary scholastics, like Duns Scotus and Occam; but she was scarcely conscious of the renewal of classic studies issuing from the personalities and writings of Petrarch and Boccaccio. Intellectually as well as geographically, England was one stage further than France from the rising Italian ardor for a classical humanism. The times were violent, and were to prove disastrous for her as well as for her chief continental neighbor, involved with her in an interminable war, which for France turned the first coming of letters from Italy into a false dawn, and for England issued finally in defeat upon the Continent and in dynastic war at home. Not even then were letters altogether quenched in Englishmen. Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, (b. 1391 d. 1447) brother of Henry V., tempered a rather malign career by an interest in books. He was a reader of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio as well as of the Latin classics. He collected books, which he gave or left to Oxford; he patronized Italian humanists, and, among his own countrymen, the poet Lydgate and the rather too clairvoyant ecclesiastic Pecock.2 Lydgate knew no Greek, and his favorite ancient author was Seneca. He was still more occupied with Boccaccio and mediaeval Latin writers, from whom, rather than from the classic sources, he drew his knowledge of antiquity.

Some Englishmen of Duke Humphrey's generation, or close to it, were drawn to Italy. There was the highborn and scholarly William Grey, who died as bishop of Ely, leaving to Balliol College his manuscripts of the writings of Poggio, Guarino and other Italians. His protégé was John Free (d. 1465) or Phreas, who lived in Italy, and translated a Greek work of Synesius. At the same time John Tiptoff, earl of Worcester, travelled there, lived with humanists and bought their manuscripts. The shrewd reign of Henry VII (1485-1509) established commercial relations with Italian cities and drew Italian craftsmen, artists, and even diplomats to the service of a King who knew their worth. Intellectually Italian influence counts from the latter part of his reign; Dante and Petrarch became great names, while Boccaccio was trans2 Cf. post, p. 40, sqq.

lated and read and imitated: other Italian poets and humanists also in their turn.3

Henry VIII was a highly educated youth, whose succession to the throne was hailed by Erasmus as ushering in a millennium of letters for England. In fact, it followed closely upon the coming of a better scholarship to Oxford. An early leader was Grocyn, apparently the first Englishman since Roger Bacon to teach Greek. Born about 1444, he taught Greek at Oxford before 1488, when he went to Italy, where he learned more Greek, to teach on his return. He was the eldest of the band of Scholars Linacre, Colet, More - whom Erasmus met upon his first visit to England in 1499. Grocyn left an influence and a library, but apparently no writings of his own, when he died in 1519.

Thomas Linacre, a somewhat younger man of ampler genius, handed on the torch of classic study and of medicine. Elected fellow of All Souls in 1484, he spent the following years in Italy, where fortune proved kind. Lorenzo dei Medici permitted him to attend the lessons which Politian was giving Lorenzo's sons; he stayed in Rome and Venice under favorable auspices, and at Padua was made Doctor of Medicine. He became a good Latinist and Grecian, and was devoted to such medical study as the times afforded. Returning to England, he incidentally taught Greek to Thomas More, and was tutor to Prince Arthur, Henry VII's eldest son. Afterwards he became physician to Henry VIII, and had Wolsey and other great ones for patients. Receiving, according to the custom, a number of ecclesiastical preferments, he devoted his income and his energies to founding the College of Physicians. This medical humanist translated works of Galen into Latin, and, dying in 1524, left his considerable property to support the College of Physicians and provide for medical studies in Oxford.

The coming of Erasmus to England in 1499, and his subsequent return and lengthy sojourns at London, Oxford and Cambridge were an inspiration and a financial

See generally the valuable study of Mary A. Scott. Elizabethan Translations from the Italian, (1916).

burden to these English humanists, like More and Colet, whose friendship for this rising star of humanists lasted till death. Erasmus had scarcely entered on his career of Latin authorship when he first arrived, nor did he know much Greek. In fact he left England to study Greek in Paris. Some years later he lectured for a while at Cambridge. In England, as elsewhere, his works won vogue and influence, and were a power making for humane and religious enlightenment,- an enlightenment from a foreign source, which might be dimmed crossing the Channel.

No man in England worked more earnestly to spread learning and piety than John Colet, who was of the same age as Erasmus. Born in affluence, he was educated at Oxford, and then travelled and studied in France and Italy. Whether or not he ever listened to Ficino and Pico della Mirandula, he was influenced by their writings, and by the Hierarchies of pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. He was a man of humane piety; and was strongly drawn to the Epistles of St. Paul, which he studied only in the Vulgate. Returning to his native land, he lectured at Oxford during portions of the years from 1497 to 1499, chiefly upon Romans and Corinthians; and presented in these lectures a sound appreciation of the actual circumstances under which Paul wrote. He made an understanding of the historical situation a basis of his pious exposition of the text. This was indeed to introduce the new learning in biblical studies to his hearers.

In 1504 Henry VII made Colet Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral. He had always spoken out about church abuses, and as Dean found much that needed change. He began to preach in the Cathedral on Sundays and other festivals, in itself an innovation which was no more agreeable to his Chapter than his insistence upon temperance in food and drink. In fact, he did and said much to draw the dislike of his clerical brethren. His most memorable sermon was preached before a Convocation of the church called in 1511 to consider heresies and other matters. Colet showed them another kind of heresy, very unpleasant to their ears, the heresy of their own evil lives. His sermon, animated with instincts reappearing