ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 55 



the humanities, that had long slept in libraries, began to 

 be generally read. This brought on a necessity of greater 

 application to the original languages wherein those authors 

 wrote, for the better understanding and application of their 

 works. Hence also proceeded a delight in their manner of 

 style and phrase, and an admiration of this kind of writing, 

 which was much increased by the enmity now grown up 

 against the schoolmen, who were generally of the contrary 

 party, and whose writings were in a very different style and 

 form, as taking the liberty to coin new and strange words, 

 to avoid circumlocution and express their sentiments 

 acutely, without regard to purity of diction and justness 

 of phrase. And again, because the great labor then was 

 to win and persuade the people, eloquence and variety of 

 discourse grew into request as most suitable for the pulpit, 

 and best adapted to the capacity of the vulgar; so that 

 these four causes concurring, viz., 1, admiration of the 

 ancients; 2, enmity to the schoolmen; 3, an exact study 

 of languages; and 4, a desire of powerful preaching 

 introduced an affected study of eloquence and copiousness 

 of speech, which then began to flourish. This soon grew to 

 excess, insomuch that men studied more after words than 

 matter, more after the choiceness of phrase, and the round 

 and neat composition, sweet cadence of periods, the use 

 of tropes and figures, than after weight of matter, dignity 

 of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or 

 depth of judgment. Then grew into esteem the flowing 

 and watery vein of Orosius, 51 the Portugal bishop; then 

 did Sturmius bestow such infinite pains upon Cicero and 

 Hermogenes; then did Car and Ascham, in their lectures 

 and writings, almost deify Cicero and Demosthenes; then 

 grew the learning of the schoolmen to be utterly despised 

 as barbarous; and the whole bent of those times was rather 

 upon fulness than weight. 



51 Neither a Portuguese nor a bishop, but a Spanish monk, born at Tarragona, 

 and sent by St. Augustine on a mission to Jerusalem in the commencement of 

 the fifth century. 



