personal efforts of individuals. Be this as it may, the fame of Colet, Grocyn and Linacre, to whom was added an attractive youth, Thomas More, made Oxford renowned, and drew thither the eager scholar, Erasmus of Rotterdam, who gives a charming picture of the delights of academical society. "When I listen to my friend Colet," he wrote, "I seem to be listening to Plato himself. Who does not admire in Grocyn the perfection of training? What can be more acute, more profound, or more refined than the judgment of Linacre? What has nature ever fashioned gentler, sweeter or pleasanter than the disposition of Thomas More?" Such a body of scholars, living and working together, sufficed to establish the reputation of Oxford, especially when such a man as Erasmus sang their praises to the learned world.
Fisher steadily kept before his eyes a like possibility for Cambridge, and in 1511 summoned Erasmus to teach Greek and lecture on the foundation of the Lady Margaret. I need not speak of this interesting episode in our history, as it is not long since Professor Jebb brought before you its picturesque significance. Erasmus tells how within the space of thirty years the studies of the University had progressed from the old grammar, logic and scholastic questions to some knowledge of polite letters, mathematics, the renewed study of Aristotle and the study of Greek. Cambridge has so flourished, he adds, that it can vie with the chief schools of the age.
In fact, if the revival in Cambridge was slower and less brilliant than at Oxford, it was more secure, for it rested on the cautious and careful supervision of
