winds blew, or, at the best, making the most of oppor« tunities, he set himself to the task without which, he felt sure, reform M'ould be impossible, which, once ac- complished, would render it inevitable. " Ere man}' years," he said, at the age of thirty-six (A.D. 1520), he would cause " a boy that driveth the plough" to know more of Scripture than the great body of the clerg}' then knew (Foxe, in Anderson's Annals of Eng- lish Bible, i, oG). We are able to form a fairh' accu- rate estimate of his fitness for the work to which he thus gave himself. The change wliich had come over the universities of Continental Europe since the time of Wycliffe had affected those of England. Greek had been taught in Paris in 1458. The first Greek Gram- mar, that of Constantine Lascaris, had been printed in 147G. It was followed in 1480 by Craston's Lexicon. The more enterprising scholars of Oxford visited for- eign universities for the sake of the new learning. Grocyn (d. 1519), Linacre (d. 1524), Colot (d. 1519), had, in this way, from the Greeks whom the fall of Constantinople had scattered over Europe, or from their Italian pupils, learned enough to enter, in tlieir turn, upon the work of teaching. When Erasmus visited Oxford in 1497, he found in these masters a scholar- ship which even he could admire. Tyndale, who went to Oxford cir. 1500, must have been witliin the range of their teaching. His two great opponents, Sir Thom- as More and bishop Tonstal, are known to have been among their pupils. It is significant enough that, af- ter some years of studj', Tyndale left Oxford and went to Cambridge. Such changes were, it is true, com- mon enough. The fame of anj' great teacher would draw around him men from other universities, from many lands. In this instance, the reason of Tyndale's choice is probably not far to seek (^^'alter, Biog. Notice to Tyndale's Doctriiud Treiitises). Erasmus was in Cambridge from 1509 to 1514. All that we know of' Tyndale's character and life, the fact especially that he had made translations of portions of the N. T. as early as 1502 (Offor, Life if Tyndale, p. 9), leads to the conclusion that he resolved to make tlie most of the presence of one who was emphatically the scholar and philologist of Europe. It must be rcmeml)ered, too, that the great scheme of cardinal Ximenos was just then beginning to interest the minds of all scholars. The publication of the Complutensian Biiile, it is true, did not take place till 1520; but the collection of MSS. and other preparations for it began as early as 1504. In the mean time Erasmus himself, in 151 G, brought out the first published edition of the Greek Testament, and it was thus made accessible to all scholars. Of the use made by Tyndale of these opportunities we have evidence in his coming up to London (1522), in the vain hope of persuading Tonstal (known as a Greek scholar, an enlightened Humanist) to sanction his scheme of rendering the N. T. into Englisli, and bringing a translation of one of the orations of Isocra- tes as a proof of his capacity for the work. The at- tempt was not successful. "At the last I understood not onlv that there was no room in my lord of Lon- don's palace to translate the N. T., but also that there was no place to do it in all England" {Pref. to Five Books of Moses').
It is not so easj' to say how far at this time any knowledge of Hebrew was attainable at the English universities, or how far Tyndale had used any means of access that were open to him. It is proliable that it may have been known, in some measure, to a few l)older than their fellows, at a time far earlier tlian the introduction of Greek. The large body of Jews set- tled in the cities of England must have possessed a knowledge, more or less extensive, of their Hebrew books. On their banishment, to the numlier of ]G,000, by Edward I, these books fell into the liands of the monks, superstitiously reverenced or feared by most, yet drawing some to examination, and then to study. Grostute, it is said, knew Hebrew as well as Greek.
ENGLISH VERSIONS
211
ENGLISH VERSIONS
Kogor Bacon knew enough to pass judgment on the Vulgate as incorrect and misleading. Then, however, cams a period in which linguistic studies were thrown into the background, and Hebrew became an unknown speech even to the best-read scholars. The first signs of a revival meet us towards the close of the 15th cen- tury. The remarkable fact that a Hebrew Psalter was printed at Soncino in 1477 (forty years before Erasmus's Greek Testament), the Pentateuch in 1482, the Prophets in 1486, the whole of the O. T. in 1488, that b}' 1496 four editions had been published, and hy 1596 not fewer than eleven (Whitaker, Hist, and Crit. Inquiry., p. 22), indicates a demand on the part of the Christian students of Europe, not less than on that of the more learned .Jews. Here also the progress of the Comjjlutensian Bible would have attracted the notice of scholars. The crj' raised bj^ the "Trojans" of Ox- ford in 1519 (chiefly consisting of the friars, who from the time of AV'vcliffe had all but swamped the educa- tion of the place) a-cainst the first Greek lectures — that to study that language would make men pagans, that to study Hebrew would make them Jews — shows that the latter study as well as the former was the object of their dislike and fear (Anderson, i, 24 ; Hallam, Lit. of Eur. i, 403).