From the commencement of the seventeenth century an increasing volume of literature calculated to assist the diffusion of useful and improving knowledge supplemented the books expressly designed for schools. These publications, belonging to nearly every department of science and inquiry, were often reproduced with the same steady regularity as the educational works themselves; and nothing more triumphantly establishes the unceasing progress of discovery and reform than the fact that the standard manuals of one century become the waste paper of the next. As one arrests a stray copy of Heylin's _Cosmography_, Godwin's _Roman Antiquities_, edited for the use of Abingdon School, Provost Rous's _Attic Archæology_, Prideaux's _Introduction to the Reading of Histories_, or any other book of the same stamp, on its passage from an old collection to the mill, a not unlikely reflection to arise is that, considering their straitened opportunities and the force of clerical influence, the culture and light of our ancestors were in fair relative proportion to our own. The literary thought and bias of the age were naturally affected by these shallow and meagre repertories of information, which were as far removed in scholarship from the _Roman Antiquities_ of Adams and the _Dictionary_ of Lemprière as Adams and Lemprière are removed from Dr. Smith's series. XVII. Limited acquaintance with the Greek language in England--Erasmus first learns, and then teaches, Greek at Cambridge--Notices of a few Philhellenists--Study of the language at Rhodes by Lily--Languid interest in it among us--Disputes at Cambridge as to the pronunciation--Remarks on this subject--The tract by John Kay--Few books in the Greek character printed in England. I. The few scattered notices, which offer themselves in Warton and other authorities, of Englishmen of very remote days who entered on the study of the Greek tongue, tend mainly to illustrate the fact, how sparingly and imperfectly that noble and precious language was cultivated down to the age of Elizabeth; and of course this circumstance involves the almost complete neglect of it in our universities and academies. Warton himself cites a case in which a scholar travelled from Malmesbury to Canterbury in order to improve a rudimentary acquaintance with Greek which he had gained through a local monastic seminary. The first man who helped at all largely and sensibly to render Greek a part of the educational system was Lily the grammarian, who spent some years of his life at Rhodes, and introduced a study of the language into the routine of St. Paul's, whence it found its way by degrees to the other great foundations in London and in the provinces. The biographer of Colet has something to say on this subject:--