Shakespeare), Bacon, Milton, Dryden.[389] The first history of English literature also comes from the hand of a Cantabrigian, John Bale. There are two other classes of English literature to which reference must be made. The novelists as we have already seen have not been alumni of our universities, partly because this is a field in which women have attained the highest rank, partly because there seems to be that something more of the artistic afflatus in the novelist’s craft and that something less of the academic, as compared with the other forms of literature, which we should à priori have certainly predicated of poetry also. A list of the novelists, from Mrs. Afra Behn to George Meredith would however show how different is the case of the novelists to that of the poets.
The last branch of literature, the importance of which is much greater than its literary merit, is journalism. Here, too, Cambridge led the way, though here, as elsewhere, it has not maintained its position. It was Roger Le Strange who as sole licenser and authorised printer and publisher of news, printed the first number of the “London Gazette”;[390] and Andrew
A.D. 1658-78.
Marvell’s newsletters to his constituents at Hull were among the earliest attempts at parliamentary reporting.
The learned professions.
When we turn to philosophy, we find that Cambridge has been singularly poor in metaphysicians, logicians, and political philosophers. Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Oxford all precede her. Among eminent representatives of the learned faculties Cambridge had, with the exception of Segrave, Bateman, and Beaufort, no great churchmen in the xiv century. In the xvth it can boast that it nurtured Thomas Langton,* Fox,* Rotherham,* Alcock,* Tunstall, and Fisher.* In the next century Cambridge has it all its own way, the succession of primates is hers, and nearly every one of the prelates who took the leading parts in that busy century were Cambridge alumni: Fox,* Gardiner,* Latimer,* Ridley,* Cranmer,* Parker,* Grindal,* Whitgift,* Bancroft.[391] In the xvii century Andrewes,* Cosin,* Williams* the opponent of Laud, Taylor, Stillingfleet, and the primates Bancroft, Sancroft, Tillotson, Tenison, represented the university.
Cambridge has also contributed her large share of the lawyers, lords chancellors and chief justices of England, from Thorpe, Cavendish and Beaufort in the reigns of Edward III. and his successors to Booth, Rotherham, Alcock, Fox, Ruthall, Goodrich, Wriothesley, Gardiner, Heath, Coke, the two Bacons, Williams, Guilford and Lyndhurst in later times. The great physicians, Caius, “Butler of Cambridge,” Gilbert, Harvey, Wharton, Sydenham,[392] Paris, Grew, Sir William Browne and Sir Samuel Garth, were all Cambridge men, and illustrate the early history of medicine from the xvi century to the xixth.
Statesmen and diplomatists.
The roll of Cambridge statesmen is not less distinguished: the two Cecils, Walsingham, Boyle ‘the great earl’ of Cork, of whom Cromwell said that had there been one like him in every province it would have been impossible for the Irish to raise a rebellion; Cromwell himself, Sir W. Temple, Halifax, Walpole, Chesterfield, Pitt, Castlereagh, Wilberforce, Stratford de Redcliffe, Palmerston.
National movements.