eal, had recommended in 1311 that lectures
in Greek--as in other languages of the heretical East--should be
established in the universities of Paris, Bologna, Oxford, and
Salamanca, the decree had not been carried out, and Greek was still
regarded with suspicion by the orthodox. Their opposition dies with
their lives, these guardians of the thing that is. Of the thing that
cometh they know, that 'if it be of God, they cannot overthrow it'.
The silent flooding in of the main is to them more to be desired than
the swift wave which in giving may destroy. Let us not think too
lightly of them because they feared shadows which the light of time
has dispelled. It needs no eyes to see where they were wrong: where
they were right--and they were right often enough--can only be seen by
taking trouble to inquire.

Of the condition of learning in England in the second half of the
fifteenth century we do not yet know all that we might. Manuscripts
that men bought or had written for them, books that they read,
catalogues of libraries now scattered can tell us much, even though
the owners are dead and speak not. Single facts, like cards for
cardhouses, will not stand alone. There is still much to be done.
Great libraries are only just beginning to gather up the manuscript
minutiae which their books contain; to identify handwritings; to
decipher monograms; to collect facts. But some day when the work has
been done, we may well hope to be able to put bone to bone and breathe
new life into them in a way which will make valuable contributions to
our knowledge.

There is sometimes an inclination now to underestimate the effect of
the Renaissance. The writers of that age were unsparingly contemptuous
of their predecessors, and their verdict was for long accepted almost
without question. The reaction against this has led to an undue
extolling of the Middle Ages. It is true enough that many of the
Schoolmen, though the humanists speak of them as hopelessly barbarous,
were capable of writing Latin which, if not strictly classical, had
yet an excellence of its own. But in view of the extracts given above
from Ebrardus and John Garland it can hardly be maintained that there
was much knowledge of Greek in Western Europe before the Renaissance.
England was not ahead of France and Germany in the fifteenth century;
and if Deventer school in 1475 was fed upon the monstrosities we have
seen, it is not likely that Winchester and Eton had any better fa