We now come to a very important event--the resuscitation of the study of Greek in Italy. In 1423, Giovanni Aurispa, of Sicily, brought over two hundred manuscripts from Greece, including Plato, Plotinus, Diodorus, Pindar, and many other classics. Manuel Chrysoloras, teacher of Greek in Florence, had trained a school of Hellenists; and copyists, translators, and commentators set to work upon the masterpieces of the ancient world. We have good reason to doubt whether, without the Italians of those times, the revival of classical learning would ever have occurred. The movement was powerfully aided by Nicolas V., pope in 1447, who founded the Vatican library, supported scholars, and encouraged authors. Soon after 1450, the art of printing began to be applied to the purposes of useful learning, and Bibles, classical texts, collections of fables; and other works were rapidly given to the world. The accession to power of Lorenzo de Medici in 1464 marks the revival of native Italian genius in poetry, and under his influence the Platonic academy, founded by his grandfather Cosmo, promoted a variety of studies. But we still look in vain to England for either learning or native genius. The reign of Edward IV. is one of the lowest points in our literary annals. In France, the "Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles," 1486, and the poems of Villon, 1489, show a marked advance in style. Many French "mysteries," or religious dramas, belong to this period, and this early form of the dramatic art had also much popularity in Germany and in Italy. Literary activity, in France and in Germany, had become regularly progressive by the end of the century. Two men, Erasmus and Budæus, were now devoting incessant labour, in Paris, to the study of Greek; and a gleam of light broke out even in England, where William Grocyn began, in 1491, to teach that language in Oxford. On his visit to England, in 1497, Erasmus was delighted with everything he found, and gave unbounded praise to the scholarship of Grocyn, Colet, Linacre, and the young Thomas More. The fifteenth century was a period of awakening and of strenuous effort. But if we ask what monuments of its genius and erudition still receive homage, we can give no very triumphant answer. Of the books then written, how few are read now! _III.--The Sixteenth Century (1500-1550)_ In the early years of this century the press of Aldus Manutius, who had settled in Venice in 1489, was publishing many texts of the classics, Greek as well as Latin.