successor Politian.
Grocyn, our first Greek Professor, had drawn his learning from that
source, and Linacre had sat there in a class with the children of Lorenzo
de' Medici. Cardinal Pole and the Ciceronian De Longueil shared as
students in those tasks and sports at Padua which were so vividly
described by the English churchman in his record of their life-long
friendship. Thomas Lilly, the master at St. Paul's, not only worked at
Florence but went to perfect his Greek in the Isle of Rhodes. Sir Thomas
More was the pupil of Grocyn, whom he seems to have excelled in
scholarship. His affection for books is known by his son-in-law's careful
biography. An anecdote cited by Dibdin preserves a record of the fate of
his library. When the Chancellor was arrested, the officers were expected
to listen to his talk with certain spies, on the chance that the prisoner
might be led into a treasonable conversation; but, as Mr. Palmer said in
his deposition, 'he was so busy trussing up Sir Thomas More's books in a
sack that he took no heed to their talk'; and Sir Richard Southwell on
the same occasion deposed, that 'being appointed only to look to the
conveyance of the books, he gave no ear unto them.' Erasmus praised More
as 'the most gentle soul ever framed by Nature.' He was astonished at his
learning, and indeed at the high standard that had already been attained
in England. 'It is incredible,' he said, 'what a thick crop of old books
spreads out on every side: there is so much erudition, not of any
ordinary kind, but recondite and accurate and antique, both in Greek and
Latin, that you need not go to Italy except for the pleasure of
travelling.' Hallam remarked that Erasmus was always ready with a
compliment; but he admitted that before the year 1520 there were probably
more scholars in England than in France, 'though all together they might
not weigh as heavy as Budaeus.'

CHAPTER IX.

FRANCE: EARLY BOOKMEN--ROYAL COLLECTORS.

We shall take Budaeus as our first example of the French bookmen in the
period that followed the invention of printing. Of Guillaume Bude, to
give him his original name, it was said that he knew Greek as minutely as
the orators of the age of Demosthenes. If there was any real foundation
for the compliment it must have consisted in the fact that the Frenchman
had more acquaintance with the language than his instructor George of
Sparta. Budaeus is said to have paid a very large sum for a course of
l