He
visited the University and carried off quantities of MSS., chiefly
Neoplatonic, on which no man set any value. Yet, in 1535, Layton, a
Commissioner, wrote to Cromwell that he and his companions had
established the New Learning in the University. A Lecture in Greek
was founded in Magdalen, two chairs of Greek and Latin in New, two in
All Souls, and two already existed, as we have seen, in C. C. C.
This Layton is he that took a Rabelaisian and unquotable revenge on
that old tyrant of the Schools, Duns Scotus. "We have set Dunce in
Bocardo, and utterly banished him from Oxford for ever, with all his
blind glosses . . . And the second time we came to New College we
found all the great quadrant full of the leaves of Dunce, the wind
blowing them into every corner. And there we found a certain Mr.
Greenfield, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire, gathering up part of the
same books' leaves, as he said, therewith to make him sewers or
blanshers, to keep the deer within his wood, thereby to have the
better cry with his hounds." Ah! if the University Commissioners
would only set Aristotle, and Messrs. Ritter and Preller, "in
Bocardo," many a young gentleman out of Buckinghamshire and other
counties would joyously help in the good work, and use the pages, if
not for blanshers, for other sportive purposes!
"Habent sua fata libelli," as Terentianus Maurus says, in a
frequently quoted verse. If Cromwell's Commissioners were hard on
Duns, the Visitors of Edward VI.
Pages:
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59