The book which the dying Petrarch held wistfully in his
hands, revering its very material shape, though he could not spell
its contents, was the Iliad of Homer. The book which the young
Renaissance held in its hands in England, with reverence and
eagerness as strong and tender, contained the Epistles of St. Paul.
It was on the Epistles that Colet lectured in 1496-97, when doctors
and abbots flocked to hear him, with their note-books in their hands.
Thus Oxford differed from Florence, England from Italy: the former
all intent on what it believed to be the very Truth, the latter all
absorbed on what it knew to be no other than Beauty herself.
We cannot afford to regret the choice that England and Oxford made.
The search for Truth was as certain to bring "not peace but a sword"
as the search for Beauty was to bring the decadence of Italy, the
corruption of manners, the slavery of two hundred years. Still, our
practical earnestness did rob Oxford of the better side of the
Renaissance. It is not possible here to tell the story of religious
and social changes, which followed so hard upon each other, in the
reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth. A few
moments in these stormy years are still memorable for some terrible
or ludicrous event.
That Oxford was rather "Trojan" than "Greek," that men were more
concerned about their dinners and their souls than their prosody and
philosophy, in 1531, is proved by the success of Grynaeus.
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