orators had enforced the importance of style. The Schoolmen swung the
pendulum back, letting sound and froth go and thinking only of their
subject-matter, despising the classics. In their turn they were
confronted by the humanists, who reasserted the claims of form.

There was sense in the humanist contention. It is very easy to say the
right thing in the wrong way; in other spheres than diplomacy the
choice of language is important. Words have a history of their own,
and often acquire associations independent of their meaning. Rhythm,
too, and clearness need attention. An unbalanced sentence goes
haltingly and jars; an ambiguous pronoun causes the reader to stumble.
An ill-written book, an ill-worded speech fail of their effects; it is
not merely by sympathy and character that men persuade. But of course
the humanists pushed the matter too far. Pendulums do not reach the
repose of the mean without many tos and fros. Elegance is good, but
the art of reasoning is not to be neglected. Of the length to which
they went Ascham's method of instruction in the _Scholemaster_ (1570)
is a good example. He wished his scholar to translate Cicero into
English, and then from the English to translate back into the actual
words of the Latin. The Ciceronians did not believe that the same
thing could be well said in many ways; rather there was one way which
transcended all others, and that Cicero had attained. Erasmus,
however, was no Ciceronian; and one of the reasons why he won such a
hold upon his own and subsequent generations was that, more than all
his contemporaries, he succeeded in establishing a reasonable accord
between the claims of form and matter in literature.

In their neglect of the classics the Schoolmen had a powerful ally.
For obvious reasons the early and the mediaeval Church felt that much
of classical literature was injurious to the minds of the young, and
in consequence discouraged the use of it in schools. The classics were
allowed to perish, and their place was taken by Christian poets such
as Prudentius or Juvencus, by moralizations of Aesop, patchwork
compositions known as 'centos' on Scriptural themes, and the like. The
scholars, therefore, who went to Italy and came home to the North
carrying the new enthusiasm, had strenuous opposition to encounter.
The Schoolmen considered them impertinent, the Church counted them
immoral. To us who know which way the conflict ended, the savage blows
delivered by the human