[588] Eichhorn, iii. 273, gives a curious list of names of these early grammars: they were driven out of the schools about this time. Mammotrectus, after all, is a learned word: it means, μαμμοθρεπτος, that is, a boy taught by his grandmother; and a boy taught by his grandmother means one taught gently.
Erasmus gives a lamentable account of the state of education when he was a boy, and probably later: Deum immortalem! quale sæculum erat hoc, cum magno apparatu disticha Joannis Garlandini adolescentibus operosis et prolixis commentariis enarrabantur! cum ineptis versiculis dictandis, repetendis et exigendis magna pars temporis absumeretur; cum disceretur; Floresta et Floretus; nam Alexandrum iter tolerabiles numerandum arbitror.
I will take this opportunity of mentioning, that Erasmus was certainly born in 1465, not in 1467, as Bayle asserts, whom Le Clerc and Jortin have followed. Burigni perceived this; and it may be proved by many passages in the Epistles of Erasmus. Bayle quotes a letter of Feb. 1516, wherein Erasmus says, as he transcribes it: Ago annum undequinquagesimum. But in the Leyden edition, which is the best, I find, Ego jam annum ago primum et quinquagesimum. Epist. cc. Thus he says also, 15th March, 1528: Arbitror me nunc ætatem agere, in quo M. Tullius decessit. Some other places I have not taken down. His epitaph at Basle calls him, jam septuagenarius, and he died in 1536. Bayle’s proofs of the birth of Erasmus in 1467 are so unsatisfactory, that I wonder how Le Clerc should have so easily acquiesced in them. The Biographie Universelle sets down 1467 without remark.
[589] When the first lectures in Greek were given at Oxford about 1519, a party of students arrayed themselves, by the name of Trojans, to withstand the innovators by dint of clamour and violence, till the king interfered to support the learned side. See a letter of More giving an account of this in Jortin’s Appendix, p. 662. Cambridge, it is to be observed, was very peaceable at this time, and suffered those who liked it to learn something worth knowing. The whole is so shortly expressed by Erasmus that his words may be quoted. Anglia duas habet Academias.... In utraque traduntur Græcæ litteræ, sed Cantabrigiæ tranquillè, quod ejus scholæ princeps sit Johannes Fischerus, episcopus Roffensis, non eruditione tantum sed et vitâ theologicâ. Verum Oxoniæ cum juvenis quidam non vulgariter doctus satis feliciter Græcè profiteretur, barbarus quispiam in populari concione magnis et atrocibus convitiis debacchari cœpit in Græcas literas. At Rex, ut non indoctus ipse, ita bonis literis favens, qui tum forte in propinquo erat, re per Morum et Pacœum cognitâ, denunciavit ut volentes ac lubentes Græcanicam literaturam amplecterentur. Ita rabulis impositum est silentium. Id. p. 667. See also Erasm. Epist. ccclxxx.
Antony Wood, with rather an excess of academical prejudice, insinuates that the Trojans, who waged war against Oxonian Greek, were “Cambridge men, as it is reported.” He endeavours to exaggerate the deficiencies of Cambridge in literature at this time, as if “all things were full of rudeness and barbarousness;” which the above letters of More and Erasmus show not to have been altogether the case. On the contrary, More says that even those who did not learn Greek contributed to pay the lecturer.
It may be worth while to lay before the reader part of two orations by Richard Croke, who had been sent down to Cambridge by Bishop Fisher, chancellor of the university. As Croke seems to have left Leipsic in 1518, they may be referred to that, or perhaps more probably the following year. It is evident that Greek was now just incipient at Cambridge.
Maittaire says of these two orations of Richard Croke: Editio rarissima, cujusque unum duntaxat exemplar inspexisse mihi contigit. The British Museum has a copy, which belonged to Dr. Farmer; but he must have seen another copy, for the last page of this being imperfect, he has filled it up with his own hand. The book is printed at Paris by Colinæus in 1520.
The subject of Croke’s orations, which seem not very correctly printed, is the praise of Greece and of Greek literature, addressed to those who already knew and valued that of Rome, which he shows to be derived from the other. Quin ipsæ quoque voculationes Romanæ Græcis longe in suaviores, minusque concitatæ sunt, cum ultima semper syllaba rigeat in gravem, contraque apud Græcos et inflectatur nonnunquam et acuatur. Croke of course spoke Greek accentually. Greek words, in bad types, frequently occur through this oration.
Croke dwells on the barbarous state of the sciences, in consequence of the ignorance of Greek. Euclid’s definition of a line was so ill translated, that it puzzled all the geometers till the Greek was consulted. Medicine was in an equally bad condition; had it not been for the labours of learned men, Linacre, Cop, Ruel, quorum opera felicissime loquantur Latinè Hippocrates, Galenus et Dioscorides, cum summa ipsorum invidia, qui, quod canis in præsepi, nec Græcam linguam discere ipsi voluerunt, nec aliis ut discerent permiserunt. He then urges the necessity of Greek studies for the theologian, and seems to have no respect for the Vulgate above the original.
Turpe sanè erit, cum mercator sermonem Gallicum, Illyricum, Hispanicum, Germanicum, vel solius lucri causa avide ediscat, vos studiosos Græcum in manus vobis traditum rejicere, quo et divitiæ et eloquentia et sapientia comparari possunt. Imo perpendite rogo viri Cantabrigienses, quo nunc in loco vestræ res sita sunt. Oxonienses quos ante hæc in omni scientiarum genere vicistis, ad literas Græcas pertugere, vigilant, jejunant, sudant et algent; nihil non faciunt ut eas occupent. Quod si contingat, actum est de fama vestra. Erigent enim de vobis tropæum nunquam succumbuturi. Habent duces præter cardinalem Cantuariensem, Wintoniensem, cæteros omnes Angliæ episcopos, excepto uno Roffensir summo semper fautore vestro, et Eliensi, &c.