ssical
studies and by a renewed interest in Plato.

The classical learning of the middle ages was largely second-hand. It
was often derived from glossaries, from books of elegant extracts, or
from comprehensive encyclopaedias. Among the compilers of these last
were Isidore and Hrabanus, William of Conches and Honorius of Autun,
Bartholomaeus Anglicus (fl. 1250), Vincent of Beauvais (d. 1264), and,
lastly, Brunetto Latini (d. 1290), the earlier contemporary of Dante.
For Aristotle, as interpreted by Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas,
Dante has the highest regard. To the Latin translations of Aristotle
and to his interpreters he refers in more than three hundred passages,
while the number of his references to the Latin translation of the
_Timaeus_ of Plato is less than ten. His five great pagan poets are
Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Lucan; Statius he regards as a "Christian"
converted by Virgil's _Fourth Eclogue_. His standard authors in Latin
prose are Cicero, Livy, Pliny, Frontinus and Orosius. His knowledge of
Greek was practically nil. Latin was the language of his political
treatise, _De Monarchia_, and even that of his defence of the vulgar
tongue, _De Vulgari Eloquio_. He is, in a limited sense, a precursor of
the Renaissance, but he is far more truly to be regarded as the crowning
representative of the spirit of the middle ages.

Italy.

(iv.) _The Modern Age._--(a) Our fourth period is ushered in by the age
of the Revival of Learning in Italy (c. 1350-1527). Petrarch (1304-1374)
has been well described as "the first of modern men." In contrast with
the Schoolmen of the middle ages, he has no partiality for Aristotle. He
was interested in Greek, and, a full century before the fall of
Constantinople, he was in possession of MSS. of Homer and Plato, though
his knowledge of the language was limited to the barest rudiments. For
that knowledge, scanty as it was, he was indebted to Leontius Pilatus,
with whose aid Boccaccio (1313-1375) became "the first of modern men" to
study Greek to some purpose during the three years that Leontius spent
as his guest in Florence (1360-1363). It was also at Florence that Greek
was taught in the next generation by Chrysoloras (in 1396-1400). Another
generation passed, and the scholars of the East and West met at the
council of Florence (1439). One of the envoys of the Greeks, Gemistus
Pletho, then inspired Cosimo dei Medici with the thought of founding an
academy for the study