334 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



less quibbling over names and words. The learning of 

 the realm, as Bacon said, was but "an infinite chaos of 

 shadows and moths wherewith our books and minds are 

 pestered." 



The mob detested foreigners and all their ways. The 

 aristocracy aped the Italians under what Ascham called 

 the "enchantment of Circe brought out of Italy to mar 

 men's manners in England," in everything except educa- 

 tion. In 1605, Nicholas Peiresc, a Frenchman of great 

 learning, visiting England, finds nothing more worthy of 

 record than a discussion with Camden as to the meaning of 

 the names of French towns, and a summons from the King 

 to relate the story of a drinking match. 1 In 1615 Scioppius 

 denied that James could collect twenty learned men in all 

 the realm. Brilliant rhetoric, casting the glamour of ro- 

 mance and poetry about the Elizabethan Age, may obscure 

 the fact that the existing state of learning was one of degra- 

 dation; but it cannot destroy the truth of it. Neither can a 

 recital of the varied attainments of the Queen, and notices 

 of the erection of new grammar schools and of increased 

 interest in the ancient classics among the word-spinners, 

 serve to make that which was in the mire appear to have 

 been in the clouds. 



"The reign of Queen Elizabeth," says the ingenuous 

 Thomas Sprat in 1667, summing up the true condition of 

 learning in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, "was long, 

 triumphant, peaceable at home and glorious abroad . . . 

 but though knowledge began abundantly to spring forth, 

 yet it was not then seasonable for experiments to receive 

 the public encouragement, while the writings of antiquity 

 and the controversies between us and the Church of Rome 

 were not fully studied and despatched. The reign of King 

 James was happy in all the benefits of peace, and plenti- 

 fully furnished with men of profound learning, but, in 

 imitation of the king, they chiefly regarded the matters of 

 religion and disputation, so that even my Lord Bacon, with 



1 Gassendus : The Mirrour of True Nobility and Gentry. London, 1657. 



