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let the emperor not delay, but 'let that word of Curio to Caesar ring forth once more:

Dum trepidant nullo firmatae robore partes,
Tolle moras; semper nocuit differre paratis;
Par labor atque metus pretio maiore petuntur.

Let that voice of the chider ring forth from the clouds once more against Aeneas:

Si te nulla movet tantarum gloria rerum,
Ascanium surgentem et spes heredis Iuli
Respice;

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for John, thy royal first-born . . . is for us a second Ascanius who, following in the footprints of his great sire, shall rage like a lion all around against every Turnus, and shall be gentle as a lamb toward the Latins.' Dante then warns the emperor by the example of David, whom Samuel rebuked for sparing 'the sinners of Amalek.' He warns him by the example of Hercules, for there are many heads of the Italian hydra, and if Cremona is lopped off Brescia and Paria will remain. He must strike at the viper itself, even Florence, who is that 'foul and impious Myrrha that burns for the embraces of her father Cinyras,' 'that passionate Amata who rejected the wedlock decreed by fate,' thus resisting 'the ordinance of God' and worshiping 'the idol of her proper will.' So come, 'thou lofty scion of Jesse. Take to thee confidence from the eyes of the Lord God of Sabaoth . . . and lay this Golias low with the sling of thy wisdom and the stone of thy strength.'

Surely for this act of public service-the greatest, Dante doubtless thought, that he could render his country-the authority of Virgil and Lucan and Ovid seems well-nigh as efficient as that of Scripture itself. May we not say that for Dante, as truly as for any later humanist, the study of the ancients had an immediate bearing upon the problems of the day?

When Dante had finished his work it was time for a new epoch. Scholasticism had run its course. After so minute and comprehensive a vision of the kingdom of this world and the next as St. Thomas records, some sort of protest and readjustment is inevitable if the human sense of wonder is to persist; in a universe where nothing escapes the observer, the observer, as Lucretius knew, will find at last:

eadem sunt omnia semper.

So scholasticism declined and a new age came, in which education returned to the methods of antiquity. We need not pause to examine the causes of this event; but its most significant concomitant is the return of Greek literature to the Western World. There is a humorous aspect to the triumphs of the humanists, who 'discovered' Latin authors long treasured on monastic shelves. Quintilian, welcomed back with such a furor, had been the patron saint of the school of Chartres. The humanists could rediscover because in the thirteenth century the classical interests of the twelfth had yielded to philosophy, and in the fourteenth, monastic discipline and the monastic library had lapsed into decay. But I would not belittle the importance of what to the contemporaries of Poggio were certainly discoveries. For the thirst for discoveries led also to the more careful study of the authors existing. Petrarch initiated the movement; though curiously mediaeval in some respects, he deserves his title of the first modern man, and this because of his passion for antiquity. His great service is not so much the discovery of Cicero's letters as the exaltation of Ciceronian ideas, which were from that time on the guiding principle of humanistic education. Petrarch's craving for Homer, too, ill satisfied by the wretched translation which his teacher made, gave impetus to the general demand for the Greek authors. Work after work was won back; practically all the authors that we have to-day were recovered before the fall of Constantinople in 1453, which date surely does not mark the beginning of the Renaissance. What wonder if the age, intoxicated by the new draught, indulged itself in various excesses? What wonder, too, if at first the habits of centuries prevented men from rightly valuing their new treasures, so that throughout the Renaissance the doctrine prevailed that the greater literature was the Latin? The Greek authors had at any rate returned, and civilization could not remain as before.

For a glimpse into the new school of the humanists after Greek had its sure place there, we can do no better than open a little book by Battista Guarino, De Ordine Docendi et Studendi, published in 1459. Battista Guarino is less celebrated than his father, and distinctly less celebrated than Vittorino da Feltre, the greatest teacher of the Renaissance. The curriculum at this school is narrower than that of Vergerio or Aeneas Silvius; for this reason it is a safer guide to the average practice of the day. Guarino restricts the disciplines to ancient literature and history, Greek and Latin; logic and ethics, for instance, are introduced, not as independent studies, but because they are necessary for the explanation of

Cicero. The program sounds rather barren, but we must study it more deeply to see what it means. Literature involves grammar, of course, and prosody, and likewise composition in both prose and verse. The works of Virgil should be learned by heart, for 'in this way the flow of the hexameter, not less than the quantity of individual syllables, is impressed on the ear, and insensibly moulds the taste.' Nor should the contents of poetry be neglected. Its fictions have moral as well as artistic value. They exhibit the realities of our own life under the form of imaginary persons and situations; Cicero's authority is quoted for this sentiment, and St. Jerome is cited to good purpose. The lessons of history, too, are of great value. By it, Guarino states, the student will learn 'to understand the manners, laws, and institutions of different types of nations, and will examine the varying fortunes of individuals and states, the sources of their success and failure, their strength and their weakness. Not only is such knowledge of interest in daily intercourse, but it is of practical value in the ordering of affairs.' Now though logic and ethics may have been an aside, they involved the direct study of Aristotle and Plato. We find other asides, tooastronomy, and geography, and Roman Law, and the writers on those subjects. Moreover, independent reading is a vital part of the plan, and among authors suggested as appropriate for such reading are St. Augustine, Aulus Gellius, Macrobius, the elder Pliny, 'whose Natural History is indeed as wide as nature herself.' The pupil is bidden to practise his memory by going over at the end of each day what he has just learned; he is told to do much reading aloud, since this will give him the confidence which the public speaker needs. Throughout these instructions there is constant reference to the moral goal of education. 'In purity of grace and style,' Guarino affirms, 'in worthy deeds worthily presented, in noble thoughts nobly said, in all these, and not in one alone, the learner finds the nourishment of his mind and spirit.' But literature is not merely moral; it trains the dramatic imagination. 'In this way,' he continues, 'we are not disturbed by the impieties, cruelties, horrors, which we find there; we judge these things simply by their congruity to the characters and situations described. We criticize the artist, not the moralist.' The ultimate secret of this method is its foundation in personality, and humanity. 'Finally,' he declares, 'through books and books alone, will your converse be with the best and greatest, nay even with the mighty dead themselves. . To man only is given the desire to learn. Hence what

the Greeks called raideía we call studia humanitatis; for learning and virtue are peculiar to man; therefore our forefathers called them "humanitas," the pursuits, the activities, proper to mankind. And no branch of knowledge embraces so wide a range of subjects as that learning which I have now attempted to describe.'

Nothing but Greek and Latin. Under Guarino's cultivation, these ancient roots branch out as widely as the flower in the crannied wall. These studies of antiquity educate the whole manmoral, aesthetic, intellectual; they train him to independent thinking, for the authors are but the starting-point; they inculcate reverence for the past; they teach its application to the present. Now two historical facts are plain with reference to this program. First, it is simply the ancient method of Cicero and Quintilian all over again. Both authors are constantly cited for principles as well as facts; 'virtutis laus omnis in actione consistit,' said Cicero, and Vittorino echoes the words. Second, it is the basis of every truly humanistic program established from that day to this. Its principles appear in some dozen treatises of the day, and from Italy spread to the North. What I have quoted does not touch all the elements in humanistic education. Science and mathematics received more consideration than one might suppose. Religious training was not neglected, as it is with us; polite demeanor, dress, physical exercise, all were matters for attention. And let me emphasize again the point I would specially make: the twofold character of their education, its reverence for the past and its interest in the present, derives clearly from the ancient prototype.

It is not necessary to quote in extenso the leading humanists of the North for proof that the new educational ideals are eagerly appropriated and applied. Rudolphus Agricola in Germany, Vivès in Holland, but originally from Spain, Dorat and the learned Budé in France, diverge in no essential particular from Vittorino. Let Erasmus, the most cosmopolitan man of his day, speak for them all. "The first object of education,' he declares, 'is to teach the young mind to foster the seeds of piety, the next to love and learn the liberal arts, the third to prepare itself for the duties of life, the fourth, from its earliest years to cultivate civil manners.' Erasmus truly represents England, as well as his own land, but a native voice. was also heard from our mother-country at that time. I mean, not Roger Ascham, who comes later in the sixteenth century, and whose system is a bit ladylike in its painful propriety, but Thomas Elyot, who, in his Book of the Governour (1531), interpreted Erasmus and Budé to England. The idea that the study of the classics was

merely the study of two foreign and ancient tongues would find no favor with him. 'Only to possess language,' he declared, 'is to be a popinjay.' Homer holds for him far more than that. 'If by reading the sage counsel of Nestor, the subtle persuasions of Ulysses, the compendious gravity of Menelaus, the imperial majesty of Agamemnon, the prowess of Achilles, the valiant courage of Hector, we may apprehend anything whereby our wits may be amended and our personages more apt to serve our public weal and our prince, what forceth it us though Homer writes leasings?' As with Guarino, the poetic lie has its moral function. Elyot concludes: 'I think verily if children were brought up as I have written, and continually were retained in the right study of every philosophy until they passed the age of twenty-one years and then set to the laws of this realm. . . undoubtedly they should become men of so excellent wisdom that, throughout the world, men should be found in no commonweal more noble counselors.'

These words have the ring of a familiar passage in Bacon's Advancement of Learning, concerning the learned governor. 'Nay, let a man look into the government of the Bishops of Rome,' he remarks, 'as by name, into the government of Pius Quintus, and Sextus Quintus, in our times, who were both at their entrance esteemed but as pedantical friars, and he shall find that such Popes do greater things, and proceed upon truer principles of estate, than those which have ascended to the papacy from an education and breeding in affairs of estate and courts of princes.' Or, to translate this into modern terms, let future lawyers take Classics in college, and not confine themselves to Economics.

Need I say that all Bacon's thinking was seasoned through and through with the classics? He was no pedantic advocate, surely no advocate of the Ciceronianist, whom he berates as soundly as he does the scholastic. "Then did Car of Cambridge and Ascham, with their lectures and writings, almost deify Cicero and Demosthenes, and allure young men that were studious, into that delicate and polished kind of learning. Then did Erasmus take the occasion to make the scoffing echo: "Decem annos consumpsi in legendo Cicerone"; and the echo answered in Greek ""Ove," (= "Asine").'

Bacon brings us naturally to Milton, a Puritan and a rebel, who also, thanks to the ancients, could temper his virtue with Epicureanism, and show in his poetry that liturgic reverence for the past which is ingrained in classic literature. Milton writes a brief treatise Of Education to his friend Samuel Hartlib, and in it he says: 'I call, therefore, a complete and generous education, that which

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