Nothing but some suddenly conceived dissatisfaction with his actual situation, or the prospect of considerable emolument, could have induced Poggio to fix his residence in Britain, a country regarded by the Italians as the remotest corner of the globe, and as the abode of ignorance and barbarity. He was in fact led to entertain great expectations by the magnificent promises of the bishop of Winchester. But when he arrived in London, he found himself doomed to the common lot of those who depend upon the patronage of the great. Beaufort wanted either leisure or inclination to minister to the wants and wishes of his guest; and Poggio began to feel all the inconveniences of straightened circumstances, aggravated by the reflection that he was situated at so serious a distance from his native land. His communication with his early friends, and the companions of his youthful years, was interrupted. He experienced the embarrassments necessarily incident to those who are thrown into a new circle of society, to the habits of which they are entirely unaccustomed; and his mind became the prey of discontent and anxiety. He was also much chagrined on observing the uncultivated state of the public mind in Britain, when compared with the enthusiastic love of elegant literature which polished and adorned his native country.[111] The period of his arrival in England has been justly pronounced by one of our most accurate historians, to be in a literary point of view one of the darkest which occur in the whole series of British annals.[112] Leland indeed and other writers enumerate long lists of scholars, whom they indiscriminately grace with the title of most learned. These champions of literature were however nothing more than monks and astrologers, who were regarded with superstitious admiration by an ignorant age, but whose works are now deservedly buried in oblivion. The occult sciences, scholastic philosophy, and the mysteries of theology, absorbed the attention of the contemptible few who advanced any pretensions to the cultivation of learning. Of the principles of composition and the graces of style they were totally ignorant—nay so imperfect was their knowledge of the Latin tongue, that almost every sentence of their writings is deformed by the barbarous introduction of English words, miserably metamorphosed by a Latin termination.[113] The respectable author, whose opinion of the state of British literature in the fifteenth century has been quoted above, ascribes the neglect of learning which disgraces this portion of our history to the following causes.—The wars in which the English had been so long engaged against France—The schism of the west—The little encouragement afforded to learned men—and the scarcity of books.