a version of Valerius Flaccus. Golding's Ovid's Metamorphoses. His other works. Ascham's censure of rhyme. A translation of the Fasti revives and circulates the story of Lucrece. Euryalus and Lucretia. Detached fables of the Metamorphoses translated. Moralisations in fashion. Underdowne's Ovid's Ibis. Ovid's Elegies translated by Mar- lowe. Remedy of Love, by F. L. Epistles by Turberville. Lord Es- sex a translator of Ovid. His literary character. Churchyard's Ovid's Tristia. Other detached versions from Ovid. Ancient meaning and use of the word Ballad. Drant's Horace. Incidental criticism on Kendal's Martial. Marlowe's versions of Coluthus and Museus. Gene- ral character of his Tragedies. Testimonies of his cotemporaries. Spe- cimens and estimate of his poetry. His death. First Translation of the Iliad by Arthur Hall. Chapman's Homer. His other works. Ver- sion of Clitophon and Leucippe. Origin of the Greek erotic romance. Palingenius translated by Googe. Criticism on the original. Speci- men and merits of the translation. Googe's other works. Incidental Translation of Italian Novels. Of Boccace. Paynter's Palace of Plea- sure. Other versions of the same sort. Early metrical versions of Boc- cace's Theodore and Honoria, and Cymon and Iphigenia. Romeus and Juliet. Bandello translated. Romances from Bretagne. Plot of Shak- speare's Tempest. Miscellaneous Collections of translated novels before the year 1600. Pantheon. Novels arbitrarily licensed or suppressed. Truth by John Davies of Hereford. Chrestoloros by Thomas Bastard. Microcynicon by T. M. Gent. William Goddard's Mastiff Whelp. Pas- quill's Mad-Cap, Message, Foole-Cap. Various collections of Epigrams. Rowland's Letting of Humours blood in the head vaine. Lodge, Greene and Decker's Pamphlets. Catalogue of Epigrammatic Miscellanies. THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRY. SECTION XXXVI. View of the Revival of Learning in England, continued. Reformation of Religion. Its effects on Literature in England. Application of this digression to the main subject. SOON after the year 1500, Lillye, the famous grammarian, who had learned Greek at Rhodes, and had afterwards acquired a polished Latinity at Rome under Johannes Sulpicius and Pomponius Sabinus, became the first teacher of Greek at any public school in England. This was at saint Paul's school in London, then newly established by dean Colet, and celebrated by Erasmus; and of which Lillye, as one of the most exact and accomplished scholars of his age, was appointed the first mastera. And that antient prejudices were now gradually wearing off, and a national taste for critical studies and the graces of composition began to be diffused, appears from this circumstance alone: that from the year one thousand five hundred and three to the reformation, there were more grammar schools, most of which at present are perhaps of little use and importance, founded and endowed in England, than had been for three hundred years before. The practice of educating our youth in the monasteries growing into disuse, near twenty new grammar schools were established within this period: and among these, Wolsey's school at Ipswich, which soon fell a sacrifice to the resentment or the avarice of Henry the Eighth, deserves particular notice, as it rivalled those of Winchester and Eton. To give splendor to the institution, beside the Knight, Life of Colet, p. 19. Pace, above mentioned, in the Epistle dedicatory to Colet, before his Treatise De fructu qui ex Doctrina percipitur, thus compliments Lillye, edit. Basil. ut supr. 1517. p. 13. "Ut politiorem Latinitatem, et ipsam Romanam linguam, in Britanniam nostram introduxisse videatur.-Tanta[ei] VOL. III. B eruditio, ut extrusa barbarie, in qua nostri adolescentes solebant fere ætatem consumere," &c. Erasmus says, in 1514, that he had taught a youth, in three years, more Latin than he could have acquired in any school in England, ne Liliana quidem excepta, not even Lillye's excepted. Epistol. 165. p. 140. tom. iii. scholars, it consisted of a dean, twelve canons, and a numerous choiri. So attached was Wolsey to the new modes of instruction, that he did not think it inconsistent with his high office and rank, to publish a general address to the schoolmasters of England, in which he orders them to institute their youth in the most elegant literaturek. It is to be wished that all his edicts had been employed to so liberal and useful a purpose. There is an anecdote on record, which strongly marks Wolsey's character in this point of view. Notwithstanding his habits of pomp, he once condescended to be a spectator of a Latin tragedy of DIDO, from Virgil, acted by the scholars of saint Paul's school, and written by John Rightwise, the master, an eminent grammarian'. But Wolsey might have pleaded the authority of pope Leo the Tenth, who more than once had been present at one of these classical spectacles. It does not however appear, that the cardinal's liberal sentiments were in general adopted by his brother prelates. At the foundation of saint Paul's school above mentioned, one of the bishops, eminent for his wisdom and gravity, at a public assembly, severely censured Colet the founder for suffering the Latin poets to be taught in the new structure, which he therefore styled a house of pagan idolatry m. In the year 1517, Fox, bishop of Winchester, founded a college at Oxford, in which he constituted, with competent stipends, two professors for the Greek and Latin languages". Although some slight idea of a classical lecture had already appeared at Cambridge in the system of collegiate discipline, this philological establishment may justly be looked upon, as the first conspicuous instance of an attempt to depart from the narrow plan of education, which had hitherto been held sacred in the universities of England. The course of the Latin professor, who is expressly directed to extirpate BARBARISM from the new society P, is not confined to the private limits of the college, but open to the students of Oxford in general. The Greek lecturer is ordered to explain the best Greek classics; and the poets, historians, and orators, in that language, which the judicious founder, who seems to have consulted the most intelligent scholars of the times, recommends by name on this i Tanner, Notit. Mon. p. 520. k 66 Elegantissima literatura." Fiddes's Wolsey. Coll. p. 105. 1 Wood, Ath. Oxon. i. 15. See what is said of this practice, vol. ii. Sect. xxxiv. "Episcopum quendam, et eum qui habetur a SAPIENTIORIBUS, in magno hominum conventu, nostram scholam blasphemasse, dixisseque, me erexisse rem inutilem, imo malam, imo etiam, ut illius verbis utar, Domum Idololatriæ," &c. [Coletus Erasmo. Lond. 1517.] Knight's Life of Colet, p. 319. n Statut. C.C.C. Oxon. dat. Jun. 20. 1517. cap. xx. fol. 51. Bibl. Bodl. MSS. Laud. I. 56. At Christ's college in Cambridge, where, in the statutes given in 1506, a lecturer is established; who, together with logic and philosophy, is ordered to read, "vel ex poetarum, vel ex oratorum operibus." Cap. xxxvii. In the statutes of King's at Cambridge, and New college at Oxford, both much more antient, an instructor is appointed with the general name of INFORMATOR only, who taught all the learning then in vogue. Rotul. Comput. vet. Coll. Nov. Oxon. "Solut. Informatoribus sociorum et scolarium, iv l. xii s. ii d." "Lector seu professor artium humaniorum... BARBARIEM a nostro alveario extirpet." Statut. ut supr. |