We learn also by the Venetian Archives that
throughout the fifteenth century books were being imported into England
by the galleys that brought the produce of the East to our merchants in
London and Southampton. There were as yet but slight signs of literary
activity; but it has been well said that 'the seed was germinating in the
ground'; and many foreign works were brought home from time to time by
those who had studied or travelled in Italy. It was the fashion of the
day to learn under Guarini at Ferrara; the list of his scholars includes
the names of Robert Fleming, and Bishop William Gray, and the book-loving
John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, whose virtue and learning became the
object of William Caxton's celebrated eulogy. We may commemorate here the
earlier labours of Lord Cobham, who caused Wicliffe's works to be copied
at a great expense and to be conveyed for safety to Bohemia, and of Sir
Walter Sherington, who early in the same century built a library at
Glastonbury, and furnished it with 'fair books upon vellum.' Towards the
end of the century learning began to flourish under the patronage of Lord
Saye, and the accomplished Anthony Lord Rivers: and its future in this
country was secure, when the English scholars began to flock towards
Florence to hear the lectures of Chalcondylas and his successor Politian.
Grocyn, our first Greek Professor, had drawn his learning from that
source, and Linacre had sat there in a class with the children of Lorenzo
de' Medici.
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