and sixteenth
centuries were not governed by a system of education which would render
their students very eminent either as scholars or as gentlemen: and the
monasteries, which were used as seminaries, even until the reformation,
taught only the corrupt Latin used by the ecclesiastics. The time however
was approaching, when the united efforts of Stanbridge, Linacre, Sir John
Cheke, Dean Colet, Erasmus, William Lily, Roger Ascham, &c., were
successful in reviving the Latin tongue in all its purity; and even in
exciting a taste for Greek in a nation the clergy of which opposed its
introduction with the same vehemence which characterized their enmity to a
reformation in religion. The very learned Erasmus, the first who undertook
the teaching of the Greek language at Oxford, met with few friends to
support him; notwithstanding Oxford was the seat of nearly all the learning
in England."--_Constable's Miscellany_, Vol. xx, p. 146.

21. "The priests preached against it, as a very recent invention of the
arch-enemy; and confounding in their misguided zeal, the very foundation of
their faith, with the object of their resentment, they represented the New
Testament itself as 'an impious and dangerous book,' because it was written
in that heretical language. Even after the accession of Henry VIII, when
Erasmus, who had quitted Oxford in disgust, returned under his especial
patronage, with the support of several eminent scholars and powerful
persons, his progress was still impeded, and the language opposed. The
University was divided into parties, called Greeks and Trojans, the latter
being the strongest, from being favoured by the monks; and the Greeks were
driven from the streets, with hisses and other expressions of contempt. It
was not therefore until Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey gave it their
positive and powerful protection, that this persecuted language was allowed
to be quietly studied, even in the institutions dedicated to
learning."--_Ib._, p. 147.

22. These curious extracts are adduced to show the _spirit of the times_,
and the obstacles then to be surmounted in the cause of learning. This
popular opposition to Greek, did not spring from a patriotic design to
prefer and encourage English literature; for the improvement of this was
still later, and the great promoters of it were all of them classical
scholars. They wrote in English, not because they preferred it, but because
none but those who were bred in colleges, co