they also studied Priscian, Donatus, Boethius, Euclid, and
Ptolemy. In 1431 the _Nova Rhetorica_ of Cicero, the _Metamorphoses_
of Ovid, and the works of Virgil were prescribed at Oxford as
alternatives to the fourth book of the _Topica_ of Boethius. By the
end of the century Humanism had found a place in the universities, (p. 140)
and sixteenth-century colleges at Oxford and Cambridge provided for
the study of the literatures of Greece and Rome. In Scotland the
medieval teaching of Aristotle reigned supreme in all its three
universities until the appointment of Andrew Melville as Principal at
Glasgow in 1574, and in 1580 he had some difficulty in persuading the
masters at St Andrews to "peruse Aristotle in his ain language."

Lectures were either "ordinary" or "cursory," a distinction which, as
Dr Rashdall has shown, corresponded to the "ordinary" and
"extra-ordinary" lectures at Bologna. The ordinary lectures were the
statutable exercises appointed by the Faculty, and delivered by its
properly accredited teachers in the hours of the morning, which were
sacred to the prelections of the masters. Cursory lectures were
delivered in the afternoon, frequently by bachelors; but as College
teaching became more important than the lectures given in the Schools,
the distinction gradually disappeared. Ordinary lectures were
delivered "solemniter" and involved a slow and methodical analysis of
the book. The statutes of Vienna prescribe that no master shall read
more than one chapter of the text "ante quaestionem vel etiam
quaestione expedita." Various references in College and University
statutes show that the cursory lecture was not regarded as the (p. 141)
full equivalent of an ordinary lecture. At Oxford, attendance on a
lecture on the books or any book of the Metaphysics, or on the
Physics, or the Ethics, was not to count for a degree, except in the
case of a book largely dealing with the opinions of the ancients. The
third and fourth books of the Metaphysics were excepted from the rule,
"they being usually read cursorily, that the ordinary reading of the
other books might proceed more rapidly." The cursory lecture was
clearly beloved of the pupil, for Oxford grammar masters are reproved
for lecturing "cursorie" instead of "ordinarie" for the sake of gain;
and at Vienna, the tariff for cursory lectures is double that for
ordinary lectures. At Paris the books of Aristotle de Dialectica were
to be read "ordinarie et non ad