irretrievable. Great
havoc, however, was made in the libraries of Constantinople at its
capture by the Latins--an epoch from which a rapid decline is to be
traced in the literature of the eastern empire. Solecisms and barbarous
terms, which sometimes occur in the old Byzantine writers, are said to
deform the style of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.[923] The
Turkish ravages and destruction of monasteries ensued; and in the
cheerless intervals of immediate terror there was no longer any
encouragement to preserve the monuments of an expiring language, and of
a name that was to lose its place among nations.[924]

[Sidenote: Literature not much improved beyond Italy.]

That ardour for the restoration of classical literature which animated
Italy in the first part of the fifteenth century, was by no means common
to the rest of Europe. Neither England, nor France, nor Germany, seemed
aware of the approaching change. We are told that learning, by which I
believe is only meant the scholastic ontology, had begun to decline at
Oxford from the time of Edward III.[925] And the fifteenth century, from
whatever cause, is particularly barren of writers in the Latin language.
The study of Greek was only introduced by Grocyn and Linacer under
Henry VII., and met with violent opposition in the university of Oxford,
where the unlearned party styled themselves Trojans, as a pretext for
abusing and insulting the scholars.[926] Nor did any classical work
proceed from the respectable press of Caxton. France, at the beginning
of the fifteenth age, had several eminent theologians; but the reigns of
Charles VII. and Louis XI. contributed far more to her political than
her literary renown. A Greek professor was first appointed at Paris in
1458, before which time the language had not been publicly taught, and
was little understood.[927] Much less had Germany thrown off her ancient
rudeness. AEneas Sylvius, indeed, a deliberate flatterer, extols every
circumstance in the social state of that country; but Campano, the papal
legate at Ratisbon in 1471, exclaims against the barbarism of a nation,
where very few possessed any learning, none any elegance.[928] Yet the
progress of intellectual cultivation, at least in the two former
countries, was uniform, though silent; libraries became more numerous,
and books, after the happy invention of paper, though still very scarce,
might be copied at less expense. Many colleges were founded in the
English