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At the age of seventeen, More was sent by his patron to Oxford, where he studied Greek, which was then publicly taught in the University, though not without opposition. While at Oxford, More composed the greater number of his English poems, which Ben Jonson speaks of as some of the best in the English language. More retained his love of learning throughout life; and when he had risen to the highest offices, he frequently complained to his friend Erasmus, of being obliged to leave his friends and his books to discharge what were to him disagreeable commissions.

The plan of Education which More adopted in his own family, and his enlightened views on the Education of all Classes, have been already sketched at pp. 62-63 of the present volume.

THE POETS WYATT AND SURREY.

Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet, was born at Allington Castle, near Maidstone, in 1503. All that is known of his youth is, that at 12 years old he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, and that he took out his degrees of Bachelor and Master in 1518 and 1520. About 1524, Wyatt was introduced at court, where he was received into the King's household; in 1533, he officiated as ewerer for his father at the coronation of Anne Boleyn, upon which occasion his friend Surrey, then about 16 years of age, carried the fourth sword with the scabbard before the King. Wyatt traveled much on the continent; he possessed great conversational powers, and is said to have combined the wit of Sir Thomas More with the wisdom of Sir Thomas Cromwell.* His political knowledge and sound judgment acquired for him a high reputation as a statesman and diplomatist; and his scholarship was in advance of most men of his time. Camden bears testimony to the extent and accuracy of his classical attainments: he spoke French, Italian, and Spanish fluently; excelled in music; and was pre-eminent for skill and dexterity in arms. Surrey has left a portrait of Wyatt, and rarely have so many noble qualities been connected into a single character virtue, wisdom, beauty, strength, and courage. His letters to his son, written from Spain, exhibit close observation of life; and contain a whole code of maxims for the government of conduct, based on sound religious principles. He co-operated with Surrey in "correcting the ruggedness" of English poetry: it is said that they were devoted friends, and Surrey's lines on the death of Wyatt seem to indicate a close and intimate intercourse.

* One of Wyatt's common sayings was, that there were three things which should always be strictly observed: "Never to play with any man's unhappiness or deformity, for that is inhuman; nor on superiors, for that is saucy and undutiful; nor on holy matters, for that is irreligious."

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, exercised great influence on our poetry. "He founded," says Mr. Bell, "a new era in our versification, purified and strengthened our poetical diction, and carefully shunning the vices of his predecessors, set the example of a style in which, for the first time, verbal pedantry and fantastical devices were wholly ignored. He was also the first writer of English blank verse, and the sonnet, and the first poet who understood and exemplified the art of translation." The poet became Earl of Surrey on the accession of his father to the Dukedom of Norfolk in 1524; he is thought to have been born about 1517. He was placed at court, about the person of Henry VIII., at the early age of 15, but it is uncertain whether he studied at college. His boyhood was passed in the society of such men as Lord Berners, the translator of Froissart; Vere, Earl of Oxford; Lord Stafford, Lord Morley, and others equally distinguished by their literary attainments. Surrey, in his childhood, was always sent during the winter months to Hunsdon, one of the estates of his grandfather, the Duke of Norfolk, in Hertfordshire. This seat, about 1536, became the residence of Princess Mary; with her was living the fair Geraldine, with whom Surrey fell in love, and her name is indissolubly united with his in many a legend in prose and verse, wherein he showed "the noblest qualities of chivalry blended with the graces of learning and a cultivated taste." Having traveled into Italy, he became a devoted student of the poets of that country Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Ariosto—and formed his own poetical style on theirs.

Surrey, among his general accomplishments, appears to have cultivated the study of heraldry, which helped to bring him to the block; for the chief charge against him by his enemies was his having illegally quartered on his escutcheon the arms of Edward the Confessor, which, however, he was entitled to do. He was beheaded on Tower-hill, January 21, 1547.

LORD BURLEIGH AT CAMBRIDGE.

That truly great statesman, William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, descended from an ancient and respectable family, was born at Bourne, in Lincolnshire, in the year 1520. Both his father and grandfather held honorable appointments under Henry VIII. During his early education, his progress either exhibited nothing remarkable, or has been overlooked by his biographers, amidst the splendor of his succeeding transactions; for we are merely informed that he received the first rudiments of learning at the grammar-school of Grantham and Stamford. But at St. John's College, Cambridge, to which he was removed in the

fifteenth year of his age, he gave strong indications of the qualities calculated to raise him to future eminence. Here he was distinguished by the regularity of his conduct, and the intensity of his application. That he might daily devote several hours to study without any hazard of interruption, he made an agreement with the bell-ringer to be called up every morning at four o'clock. Through this extreme application, without proper intervals of exercise, he, however, contracted a painful distemper, which led to his being afflicted with gout in the latter part of his life.

His indefatigable industry at college, and his consequent proficiency, was marked by occasional presents from the Master. He began, at sixteen, to put in practice the method, then usual, of acquiring literary celebrity, by delivering a public lecture. His first topic was the logic of the schools; and three years afterward he ventured to comment on the Greek language. He was subsequently ambitious of excelling as a general scholar; and successively directed his industry to the various branches of literature then cultivated at the university.

At twenty-one he entered Gray's Inn, where he applied himself to the study of the law with the same method and industry as he had observed at Cambridge. He found leisure also for several collateral pursuits: the antiquities of the kingdom, and more especially the pedigrees and fortunes of the most distinguished families, occupied much of his attention; and such was his progress in these pursuits, that no man of his time was accounted a more complete adept in heraldry. This species of information, had he adhered to his destination for the bar, might have been of little utility; but in his career of a statesman, it often proved of essential advantage.

His practice was to record with his pen everything worthy of notice which occurred to him either in reading or observation, arranging this observation in the most methodical manner, a singular example of diligence, which is authenticated to posterity by collections of his manuscripts, still preserved in many public and private libraries. While from this practice he derived, besides other advantages, an uncommon facility in committing his thoughts to writing, he neglected not to cultivate an accomplishment still more essential to his intended profession—a ready and graceful enunciation. By frequenting various companies, and entering into free discussion, he learned to express himself with ease and confidence; while the extent of his information, and the soundness of his judgment, prevented his fluency from degenerating into declamation.-Macdiarmid's British Statesmen.

Such was the educational basis upon which Cecil laid the foundation of his brilliant but sound reputation; and by which means, conjoined with the strong natural gift of sagacity, and a mind tinctured with piety, he acquired the esteem and confidence successively of three sovereigns, and held the situation of prime minister of England for upward of half a century. His sole literary production was a volume of Precepts or Directions for

the Well-Ordering and Carriage of a Man's Life, addressed to his son.

CAMDEN'S SCHOOLS.

Camden, one of the most illustrious of learned Englishmen, was born May 22, 1551, in the Old Bailey, where his father was a painter-stainer. He died when his son was but a child, and left little provision for him. Dr. Smith, in his Life of Camden, mentions his early admission into Christ's Hospital as a fact not well authenticated, but very generally believed; and the imperfect state of the records does not admit of its verification. At all events, an attack of the plague caused his removal in 1563; and after his recovery, he was sent to St. Paul's School, and thence to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1566.-Trollope's History of Christ's Hospital.

Wood, in his Athena Oxonienses, states positively that "when this most eminent person was a child, he received the first knowledge of letters in Christchurch Hospital in London, then newly founded for blue-coated children, where, being fitted for grammar-learning, he was sent to the free school, founded by Dr. Colet, near to St. Paul's Cathedral." Thence he removed to Oxford, where he studied in more than one college. He left the university in 1571, and became an under-master of Westminster School, the duties of which he discharged at the time when he composed the works which have made his name so eminent. The most celebrated of these are his Britannia, a survey of the British Isles; and his Annals of the reign of Elizabeth; both written in pure and elegant Latin. Camden was now looked upon as one of the most distinguished scholars of his age: he is termed “the Pausanias of England." He was made head-master of Westminster School in 1592: he had among his scholars, Ben Jonson; he wrote a small Greek Grammar for the use of the school; and shortly before his death, he founded an historical lecture in the University of Oxford. He died in 1623, and was interred in Westminster Abbey, a great assemblage of the learned and illustrious doing him honor at his funeral.

To Camden, Ben Jonson dedicated his first play, Every Man in his Humor; hoping, to use his own words in addressing his Master, that the confession of my studies might not repent you to have been my instructor; for the profession of my thankfulness, I am sure it will, with good men, find either praise or excuse. Your true lover, Ben Jonson."

The career of Camden strikingly illustrates the benefits of English school foundations. Left a poor orphan, he was one of the first boys admitted into Christ's Hospital, where he sowed

the seed of that learning which was matured in the University of Oxford, and employed for the advantage of the next generation in his mastership at Westminster. He left to the Painter-Stainers' Company, of which his father was a member, a silver loving-cup, which is produced on every St. Luke's Day feast.

SIR EDWARD COKE'S LEGAL STUDIES.

This celebrated lord-chief-justice was born in 1551-2, at Mileham, Norfolk, in which county the Cokes had been settled for many generations. His father, who was a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, sent him to the Free Grammar-school at Norwich, whence, in 1567, he removed to Trinity College, Cambridge. After having spent three years at the University, he went to London, to commence his legal education: he became a member of Clifford's Inn, and in 1572 was admitted into the Inner Temple; here he entered into a laborious course of study, which Lord Campbell thus vividly describes:

Every morning at three, in the winter season lighting his own fire, he read Bracton, Littleton, the Year Books, and the folio Abridgments of the Law, till the Courts met at eight. He then went by water to Westminster, and heard cases argued till twelve, when pleas ceased for dinner. After a short repast in the Inner Temple Hall, he attended readings" or lectures in the afternoon, and then resumed his private studies till five, or supper-time. This meal being ended, the moots took place, when difficult questions of law were proposed and discussed,-if the weather was fine, in the garden by the river side; if it rained, in the covered walks near the Temple Church. Finally, he shut himself up in his chamber, and worked at his common-place book, in which he inserted, under the proper heads, all the legal information he had collected during the day. When nine o'clock struck, he retired to bed, that he might have an equal portion of sleep before and after midnight. The Globe and other theatres were rising into repute, but he would never appear at any of them; nor would he indulge in such unprofitable reading as the poems of Lord Surrey or Spenser. When Shakspeare and Ben Jonson came into such fashion that even "sad apprentices of the law" occasionally assisted in masques and wrote prologues, he most steadily eschewed all such amusements; and it is supposed that in the whole course of his life he never saw a play acted, or read a play, or was in company with a player!

To Coke's merits there cannot be a more direct testimony than that of his great rival, Sir Francis Bacon, who speaks of his great industry and learning in terms of high and deserved commendation; and justly ascribes to him the praise of having preserved the vessel of the common law in a steady and consistent course.

We gather what the fare of the Universities was about this period, from the following description of Cambridge, given at St. Paul's Cross, in the year 1550, by Thomas Lever, soon after made Master of St. John's College:

"There be divers there at Cambridge which rise daily betwixt four and five of the elock in the morning, and from five until six of the clock use common prayer, with an exhortation of God's word in a common chapel; and from six until ten of the clock use either private study or common lectures. At ten of the clock, they go to dinner; whereas they be content with a penny piece of beef amongst four, having a few pottage made of the broth of the same beef, with salt and oatmeal, and nothing else.

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