If we could depend on the accuracy of all this, we must suppose that Greek was taught at Eton so early, that one who acquired the rudiments of it in that school might die at an advanced age in 1535. But this is not to be received on Pits’s authority. And I find, in Harwood’s Alumni Etonenses, that Horman became head master as early as 1485: no one will readily believe, that he could have learned Greek while at school: and the fact is, that he was not educated at Eton, but at Winchester.
The Latin grammar which bears the name of Lilly was compiled partly by Colet, partly by Erasmus.
Few classical works printed here. 32. It is to be observed, that we rather extol a small number of men who have struggled against difficulties, than put in a claim for any diffusion of literature in England, which would be very far from the truth. No classical works were printed except four editions of Virgil’s Bucolics, a small treatise of Seneca, the first book of Cicero’s Epistles (the latter at Oxford in 1519), all merely of course for learners. We do not reckon Latin grammars. And as yet no Greek types had been employed. In the spirit of truth, we cannot quite take to ourselves the compliment of Erasmus; there must evidently have been a far greater diffusion of sound learning in Germany; where professors of Greek had for some time been established in all the universities, and where a long list of men ardent in the cultivation of letters could be adduced.[572] Erasmus had a panegyrical humour towards his friends, of whom there were many in England.
[572] Such a list is given by Meiners, i. 154, of the supporters of Reuchlin; who comprised all the real scholars of Germany: he enumerates sixty-seven, which might doubtless be enlarged.
State of learning in Scotland. 33. Scotland had, as might naturally be expected, partaken still less of Italian light than the south of Britain. But the reigning king, contemporary with Henry VII., gave proofs of greater good-will towards letters. A statute of James IV., in 1496, enacts that gentlemen’s sons should be sent to school in order to learn Latin. Such provisions were too indefinite for execution, even if the royal authority had been greater than it was; but it serves to display the temper of the sovereign. His natural son, Alexander, on whom, at a very early age, he conferred the archbishopric of St. Andrews, was the pupil of Erasmus in the Greek language. The latter speaks very highly of this promising scion of the house of Stuart in one of his adages.[573] But, at the age of twenty, he perished with his royal father on the disastrous day of Flodden Field. Learning had made no sensible progress in Scotland; and the untoward circumstances of the next twenty years were far from giving it encouragement. The translation of the Æneid by Gawin Douglas, bishop of Dunkeld, though we are not at present on the subject of poetry, may be here mentioned in connection with Scottish literature. It was completed about 1513, though the earliest edition is not till 1553. “This translation,” says Warton, “is executed with equal spirit and fidelity; and is a proof that the Lowland Scotch and English languages were now nearly the same. I mean the style of composition, more especially in the glaring affectation of anglicising Latin words. The several books are introduced with metrical prologues, which are often highly poetical, and show that Douglas’s proper walk was original poetry.” Warton did well to explain his rather startling expression, that the Lowland Scotch and English languages were then nearly the same: for I will venture to say, that no Englishman, without guessing at every other word, could understand the long passage he proceeds to quote from Gawin Douglas. It is true that the differences consisted mainly in pronunciation, and consequently in orthography; but this is the great cause of diversity in dialect. The character of Douglas’s original poetry seems to be that of the middle ages in general,—prolix, though sometimes animated, description of sensible objects.[574]
[573] Chil. ii. cent. v. 1.
[574] Warton, iii 111.
Utopia of More. 34. We must not leave England without mention of the only work of genius that she can boast in this age; the Utopia[575] of Sir Thomas More. Perhaps we scarcely appreciate highly enough the spirit and originality of this fiction, which ought to be considered with regard to the barbarism of the times, and the meagreness of preceding inventions. The Republic of Plato no doubt furnished More with the germ of his perfect society; but it would be unreasonable to deny him the merit of having struck out the fiction of its real existence from his own fertile imagination; and it is manifest, that some of his most distinguished successors in the same walk of romance, especially Swift, were largely indebted to his reasoning, as well as inventive talents. Those who read the Utopia in Burnet’s translation, may believe that they are in Brobdignag; so similar is the vein of satirical humour and easy language. If false and impracticable theories are found in the Utopia (and perhaps he knew them to be such), this is in a much greater degree true of the Platonic Republic; and they are more than compensated by the sense of justice and humanity that pervades it, and his bold censures on the vices of power. These are remarkable in a courtier of Henry VIII.; but, in the first year of Nero, the voice of Seneca was heard without resentment. Nor had Henry much to take to himself in the reprehension of parsimonious accumulation of wealth, which was meant for his father’s course of government.
[575] Utopia is named from a King Utopus. I mention this, because some have shown their learning by changing the word to Eutopia.
His inconsistency with his opinions. 35. It is possible that some passages in the Utopia, which are neither philosophical nor reconcilable with just principles of morals, were thrown out as mere paradoxes of a playful mind; nor is it easy to reconcile his language as to the free toleration of religious worship with those acts of persecution which have raised the only dark cloud on the memory of this great man. He positively indeed declares for punishing those who insult the religion of others, which might be an excuse for his severity towards the early reformers. But his latitude as to the acceptability of all religions with God, as to their identity in essential principles, and as to the union of all sects in a common worship, could no more be made compatible with his later writings or conduct, than his sharp satire against the court of Rome for breach of faith, or against the monks and friars for laziness and beggary. Such changes, however, are very common, as we may have abundantly observed, in all seasons of revolutionary commotions. Men provoke these, sometimes in the gaiety of their hearts with little design, sometimes with more deliberate intention, but without calculation of the entire consequences, or of their own courage to encounter them. And when such men, like More, are of very quick parts, and, what is the usual attendant of quick parts, not very retentive of their opinions, they have little difficulty in abandoning any speculative notion, especially when, like those in the Utopia, it can never have had the least influence upon their behaviour. We may acknowledge, after all, that the Utopia gives us the impression of its having proceeded rather from a very ingenious than a profound mind; and this apparently, is what we ought to think of Sir Thomas More. The Utopia is said to have been first printed at Louvain in 1516;[576] it certainly appeared at the close of the preceding year; but the edition of Basle in 1518, under the care of Erasmus, is the earliest that bears a date. It was greatly admired on the Continent; indeed there had been little or nothing of equal spirit and originality in Latin since the revival of letters.