The English were equally late in adopting the new German art of printing. When Caxton introduced it, it had almost reached its perfection abroad. Block books—books printed wholly from carved blocks of wood—had come in and gone out. Arising out of them, the idea of movable types had long been invented and developed on the Continent.
The Bamberg and Mazarin Bibles, the first two books to be printed from movable type, had been produced by Gutenberg, Fust and Schöffer as early as 1453. But it was not till 1477 that Caxton set up his press at Westminster. A year later the first book was issued from an Oxford press. This was the famous small quarto of forty-two leaves, “Exposicio sancti Jeronimi in simbolum apostolorum,” written by Tyrannius Rufinus of Aquileia. The colophon of this book, however, distinctly states that it was printed in 1468: “Impressa Oxonie et ibi finita anno domini M.CCCC.LXVIIJ, XVIJ die decembris.” But there is every reason to suppose that an X has been omitted from this date and that the true year was 1478. Such a misprint is not uncommon. Exactly the same error occurs in books published at Venice, at Barcelona and at Augsburg. The workmanship is very much the same as, but slightly inferior to, that of the next two books which came from the Oxford Press in 1479. And in the library of All Souls’ there is a copy of each of these, which were originally bound up together. A break of eleven years between the production of the first and subsequent books is both inconceivable and inexplicable.
The press from which these books and twelve others were issued at Oxford during the eight years, 1478-1486, was apparently set up by one Theodore Rood of Cologne. The first three books, however, namely the “Exposicio” mentioned, the “Ægidius de originali peccato,” and “Textus Ethicorum Aristotelis per Leonardum Aretinum translatus,” bear no printer’s name, but the type was either brought from Cologne or directly copied from Cologne examples. It strongly resembles that used by Gerard ten Raem de Berka or Guldenschaff. Still, it cannot be proved that Rood printed these first three books, or that he ever used the type in which they alone are printed. The colophon of the fourth book, a Latin commentary on the “De Anima” of Aristotle by Alexander de Hales, a folio printed from new type, gives the name of the printer, Theodore Rood, and bears the date 1481. A copy of it was bought in the year of publication for the library of Magdalen, where it still remains. The price paid was thirty-three shillings and fourpence. A very beautiful copy of the next book, “Commentary on the Lamentation of Jeremiah,” by John Lattebury, 1482, is in the library of All Souls’. Four leaves survive in the Bodleian and four in the Merton Library, of the “Cicero pro Milone,” the first edition of a classic printed in England. Two leaves of a Latin grammar are to be found in the British Museum.
Rood went into partnership with an Oxford stationer named Thomas Hunt, and together they produced eight other books with a type more English in character than the preceding ones. One of these books, “Phalaris,” 1485 (Wadham and Corpus Libraries), has a curious colophon in verse, which describes the printers and their ambition to surpass the Venetians in their work. The partners ceased to produce books after 1486. Rood probably returned to Cologne, and the German art found no exponents in Oxford for the remainder of the century. Subsequently we find Leicester advancing money to set up Joseph Barnes with a new press. Laud and Fell were other great patrons of the University Press.
Meantime the return of the Pope to Rome had attracted many foreign travellers and students to Italy, who could not fail to be impressed by the new birth of art and intellectual life that was taking place in that country.
Among the pupils of Guarino of Verona at Ferrara the names of at least five students from Oxford occur. Of these, Robert Fleming, a relative of the founder of Lincoln College, was an author of some distinction, and he compiled a Græco-Latin dictionary at a time when Greek was almost unknown in England. He brought back from his travels in Italy many precious books, which he gave to the library of Lincoln College. William Grey, another of Guarino’s pupils, enriched the library of Balliol with many fine manuscripts redolent of the New Learning. John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, was another scholar who, before paying for his share in politics with his head, presented to the University the valuable collection of manuscripts, which he had made in the course of his travels.
William Selling, a member of the recent foundation of All Souls’, was perhaps the earliest Englishman of influence to catch from Italy the inspiration of the Greek muse. On his return from that country, he was appointed to the conventual school at Canterbury. His knowledge of Greek, and his enthusiasm for Greek literature, became the germ of the study in England. Thomas Linacre was one of his pupils, who, after studying at Oxford under Vitelli, journeyed to Italy with Selling. He was introduced to Politian at Florence. Thence he proceeded to Rome, and there perhaps formed his taste for the scientific writings of Aristotle and his devotion to the study of medicine, which afterwards found expression in the foundation of the College of Physicians and of the two lectureships at Merton, now merged into the chair which bears his name. Linacre returned to Oxford and lectured there awhile before being appointed Physician to Henry VIII. His translation of five medical treatises of Galen was, Erasmus declared, more valuable than the original Greek.
We have said that he studied under Vitelli. It was Cornelio Vitelli who, some time before 1475, first “introduced polite literature to the schools of Oxford,” by a lecture as prelector of New College, upon which the warden, Thomas Chandler, complimented him in a set Latin speech. This was probably that Cornelius who, in company with two other Italians, Cyprian and Nicholas by name, dined with the President of Magdalen on Christmas Day, 1488. And from the lips of this pioneer William Grocyn himself learned Greek. Grocyn was a fellow of New College (1467-1481), but he afterwards removed to Magdalen as Reader in Theology. He completed his study of Greek and Latin by a sojourn of two years (1488) at Florence, under Demetrius Chalcondylas and Politian. On his return to Oxford he took rooms in Exeter College (1491), and gave a course of lectures on Greek.
A few years later (1496-7) the first step in the revolution against the system under which the study of the Bible had been ousted by the study of the Sentences was taken. A course of lectures by John Colet on the Epistles of S. Paul was the first overt act in a movement towards practical Christian reform.
It was from Grocyn and Linacre that Thomas More and Erasmus learnt Greek. For Gibbon’s epigram that Erasmus learned Greek at Oxford and taught it at Cambridge is true, if we qualify it by the reminder that he knew a little before he came to England and learned more in the years which intervened between the time when, much to the chagrin of Colet, he left Oxford and went to Cambridge as an instructor in that language.