Latin was learned with an accuracy and purity never before attained.

The language and literature of Greece had been introduced before the beginning of the century, by William Grocyn, justly called the patriarch of English learning, who had studied in Italy under the fugitive scholars from Constantinople. The appearance of this new branch of erudition excited at first an alarm, which divided Oxford into two factions, the Greeks and the Trojans. But enlightenment speedily forced its way. Thomas Linacre, the first physician of the day, translated Galen and other authors into Latin, and wrote original treatises in the same tongue; and William Lilly, the author, in part, of the Old Latin Grammar, which bears his name, learned Greek at Rhodes, and, on the foundation of Saint Paul's school, was the first who publicly taught the language in England. Cambridge next became the focus of Hellenic learning, through the teaching of two very able men, both of whom were soon withdrawn from the academic cloisters to the arena of public business: Sir Thomas Smith, who became one of the most eminent statesmen of his time; and Sir John Cheke, whose name will be remembered by most of us as introduced in a sonnet of Milton.

Latin scholarship flourished not less, in the hands of these and other zealous promoters. Among those who became most distinguished in this department, were several who likewise attained to eminence elsewhere. Such was Cardinal Pole, Cranmer's successor in the see of Canterbury, and one of the most accomplished of those ecclesiastics who adhered to the old faith. Of the Reformers, though several were creditable scholars, none seem to have been very highly celebrated except the martyr Ridley. Of other Latinists it is enough to name Leland, best known in modern times for his researches into English antiquities; Roger Ascham, the tutor of Queen Elizabeth; and the celebrated and unfortunate Sir Thomas More.

The Latin writings of Ascham are miscellaneous, and. not very important. The principal work which More composed in that language, was the "Utopia," in which he described an imaginary commonwealth, placed on an imaginary island from which the book takes its name, and having a polity whose main feature is a thorough community of property. The epithet " Utopian" is still familiar to us, as descriptive of chimerical and fantastic schemes; and notwithstanding the good Latinity of More's treatise, and the similarity of its design to that of Plato's Republic, the leading idea really looks so like a grave jest, and such jesting was so much in accordance with the character of the man,

that we are reminded by it of those half-serious apologues which we found to be prevalent in the monasteries of the middle ages. The work, in truth, is a romance, although clothed in a scholastic garb; and it abounds with touches of humour and strokes of homely illustration. Nor is it wanting in those lessons of wisdom, which its strong-minded writer loved so much to inculcate with his quiet smile. It is striking, perhaps humiliating to modern pride of enlightenment, to hear the chancellor of Henry the Eighth urging the education of the people, asserting solemnly that it is better to prevent crime than to punish it, and denouncing the severities of the penal code as discreditable to England.

Among the other scholars of the time, may be named John Bale, who, in the reign of Edward the Sixth, was made bishop of Ossory. Although he was a voluminous writer of English theological tracts, chiefly controversial, his memory is now preserved only by certain lighter effusions, to be named soon, and by his series of Latin Lives of old British Writers, which is still an authoritative book of reference.

The stock of ancient learning was thus very large. But it was accumulated in the hands of a few capitalists. The communication of it, however, to a wider circle, was anxiously aimed at, by the foundation of schools and colleges, of which a larger number was established in the hundred years which end with the accession of Elizabeth, than in any equal period throughout the course of our history. The most celebrated benefactors were Dean Colet, the founder of Saint Paul's School, and himself one of the most skilful Latinists of his time; and Cardinal Wolsey, who was a man of learning as well as of political ability.

THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE IN ENGLISH.

4. Among the works couched in the living tongue, the most important, by very far, were those which were devoted to Theology.

Foremost among such efforts, and claiming from us reverent and thankful attention, were the Translations of the Scriptures into English, none of which had been publicly attempted since that of Wycliffe. The history of these is very interesting; not only for its own sake, but also because, as we shall speedily learn, our received version of the Bible owes largely to them.

b. ab. 1485. William Tyndale, a native of Gloucestershire, a d. 1536. man of studious and ascetic habits, imbibed, in the early part of Henry's reign, many of the opinions of the continental reformers; and he expressed these so openly, in private intercourse and occasional preaching in the country, that his

stay at home was no longer safe. He sought refuge in Hamburg and elsewhere, and, in two or three years he completed a translation of the New Testament. It was printed under his own care, at Antwerp, in 1526; but it has lately been shown that two surreptitious editions had appeared the year before. In these and other impressions, it was immediately introduced by stealth into England; Tyndale being employed, meanwhile, on the Old Testament. His version of the Five Books of Moses, really printed successively in different foreign towns, was next collected into one volume, which, the statement of the real places being dangerous, was described as printed "at Marlborough, in the land of Hesse." Its date is January 1530, which, the old style being then in use, corresponds with the beginning of our year 1531. His next publication was a revisal of his New Testament, which appeared at Antwerp in 1534; and with it his labours were nearly at a close. Imprisoned at Antwerp for heresy, he was there, after a long imprisonment, strangled and burnt, in October 1536. In that very year his New Testament was reprinted in England; this being the first translation that issued from an English press.

The scene was now changed. Henry the Eighth had come to an irretrievable breach with the See of Rome; and the opening of the Bible to the unlearned was no longer to be held a crime, or practised secretly in the fear of punishment. In 1537 there was published, with a dedication to the King and Queen, the first complete Translation of the Bible. The translator was a clergyman, Miles Coverdale, who afterwards was made bishop of Exeter. From this version are taken the Psalms still used in the Book of Common Prayer. In the same year there appeared, on the continent, a complete translation, which, veiled under a fictitious name, was called "Matthew's Bible." It was edited by John Rogers, who, some years later, was the first Protestant burned by Queen Mary. About a third of it is attributed to the editor himself, perhaps with consultation of Coverdale's version: two-thirds, embracing the whole of the New Testament, and the Old as far as the end of the Second Book of Chronicles, were, we are told, taken verbatim from Tyndale.

Besides Tyndale's own editions of his New Testament, as many as twenty others had been printed on the continent, and circulated widely through England, before his death. English reprints now became common; and among them were two or three of Coverdale's whole translation.

The reign of Henry gives us, in the last place, the Translation commonly called Cranmer's, from its chief promoter, but known

also as the Great Bible, from the size in which its earliest impres sions were printed. It is usually said to differ very slightly from Coverdale's, and to have been prepared chiefly by him. But the most recent writer of the history of the English Bible seems to consider this as a mistake, founded on the appearance of other editions about the same time under the patronage of Cranmer; and, according to this authority, Cranmer's Bible is really a revision of Tyndale's. Its date, also, commonly set down as 1539, appears to be 1540.

The short reign of Edward the Sixth, the Josiah of England, (as he has aptly been called,) produced the new translation; but it was fertile, to a marvel, in reprints of those already made, Tyndale's being seemingly the most popular. In the six years and a half during which this young king filled the throne, the English Bible, which he had caused to be carried before him at his coronation, was printed entire in fourteen editions at least; and the editions of the New Testament by itself amounted nearly to thirty.

The accession of Queen Mary stopped, of course, the printing of the Scriptures in England, and made the circulation of the translations, fortunately for the last time, a thing to be attempted only in secrecy and with fear. Yet even this perilous time introduced one new translation from abroad; namely, the "Geneva" New Testament. It was a revision of Tyndale's, performed by William Whittingham, a refugee fellow of Oxford. We shall encounter him again in the same walk: and then also will appear the received version of the Bible.

In the meantime, the student of literature may be invited to observe, how the history of this, the record of the Divine Will, and the history of human and uninspired productions, dovetail into each other, and reflect mutual light. Some of the most valuable contributions ever made to our knowledge of the progress of intellectual culture in Scotland, were incorporated, not very long ago, in a summary of the history of Bible-printing in the country. Here, again, in noting the diffusion of the Scriptures in England, we encounter some particulars, showing how far the benefits of the press were allowed to be reaped under the arbitrary and capricious sway of Henry, and how rapidly those benefits extended themselves when free communication of all kinds of knowledge was permitted by his excellent son.

At the accession of Henry the Eighth, there appear to have been no more than four printers in England. Before his death the number had risen to forty-five. Of these no fewer than thirty-three appeared in the last twenty years of his reign; that

is, during the time when he was gradually seceding from Rome, and had begun to relax, in his vacillating and arbitrary way, the restrictions by which literary communication was fettered. Still more remarkable was that which followed. Fourteen of the

forty-five printers surviving when Edward the Sixth ascended the throne, his short rule of tolerance and enlightenment added fortythree to the list, raising the whole number to fifty-seven. Of these, likewise, thirty-one, or more than a half, took part in the printing or publication of the Scriptures.

5. Our attention cannot long be given to the Original Writings couched in the English tongue, and dealing with theological matters. Chiefly, of course, controversial, they discuss questions for which this is no fit place; and yet, without treating these, the merits of the works could not be fairly appreciated. But the truth is, that the treatises of the sort, which this stirring period has transmitted to us, are neither so numerous as we might have expected, nor marked by qualities which make them very important in the history of literature. Neither the learning nor the power of thinking possessed either by the Reformers or their opponents could be estimated rightly, unless full account were taken of the writings, on both sides, which appeared in the Latin tongue : and, though we were to judge with the aid of these materials, still the records of a struggle, so hampered by secular interferences and so inextricably mixed up with political considerations, would scarcely do justice either to the momentous character of the contest, or to the real ability and knowledge of those who maintained it.

It may be enough to name a very few of those who, dying for the faith which they taught, have a purer title to the reverence of posterity than any that could have been gained by the highest literary merit. Ridley, held to have been one of the most dexterous disputants of his time, and famous as a preacher, has already been noticed as the most learned of the Reformers. Cranmer was more remarkable for his patronage of theological learning, than for the merit possessed by any writings of his own? but his extant English compositions are numerous.

Two others of the martyrs, whose names seldom occur in any general history of literature, were men of much though dissimilar power; and these might be taken, more fitly than most others, as examples both of the turn of thinking which then prevailed, and of the state of progress of the English language.

tures.

The one was Tyndale, our honoured translator of the ScripHis English tracts, quite controversial in character, were likewise nothing more than interludes between his weightier la