Statues were dug up and placed in museums, and men became acquainted
with a civilization far more mature than that of the Middle Age, and
with models of perfect workmanship in letters and the fine arts.
In the latter years of the 15th century a number of Englishmen learned
Greek in Italy and brought it back with them to England. William Grocyn
and Thomas Linacre, who had studied at Florence under the refugee,
Demetrius Chalcondylas, began teaching Greek at Oxford, the former as
early as 1491. A little later John Colet, Dean of St. Paul's and the
founder of St. Paul's School, and his friend, William Lily, the
grammarian, and first master of St. Paul's (1500), also studied Greek
abroad; Colet in Italy, and Lily at Rhodes and in the city of Rome.
Thomas More, afterward the famous chancellor of Henry VIII., was among
the pupils of Grocyn and Linacre at Oxford. Thither also, in 1497, came,
in search of the new knowledge, the Dutchman, Erasmus, who became the
foremost scholar of his time. From Oxford the study spread to the sister
university, where the first English Grecian of his day, Sir John Cheke,
who "taught Cambridge and King Edward Greek," became the incumbent of
the new professorship founded about 1540. Among his pupils was Roger
Ascham, already mentioned, in whose time St.
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