BOOK I.] STYLE CONSIDERED MORE THAN MATTER. 43 



prevailed about the time of Luther, who, finding how great 

 ft task he had undertaken against the degenerate traditions 

 of the Church, and being unassisted by the opinions of his 

 o^^^l age, was forced to awake antiquity to make a party fot 

 him ; whence the ancient authors both in divinity and the 

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

 generally read. This brought on a necessity of greater ap- 

 l)lication to the original languages wherein those authoi^ 

 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 v/as much increased by the enmity now grown up 

 against the schoolmen, who were generally of the contrary 

 party, and whose ^vritings 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 labour 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 con- 

 cuning, \dz., 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 choice- 

 ness 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,^ 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 de- 

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

 rather upon fulness than weight. 



e Neither a Portuguese or a bishop, but a Spanish monk bom at 

 Tarragona, and sent by St. Augustine on a mission to Jerusalem in tb« 

 commencement of the fifth century. 



