We shall understand this better if we remember that in the Middle Ages man’s whole world consisted of the narrow Mediterranean and the nations that clustered about it; and that this little world seemed bounded by impassable barriers, as if God had said to their sailors, “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther.”  Man’s mind also was bounded by the same narrow lines.  His culture as measured by the great deductive system of Scholasticism consisted not in discovery, but rather in accepting certain principles and traditions established by divine and ecclesiastical authority as the basis of all truth.  These were his Pillars of Hercules, his mental and spiritual bounds that he must not pass, and within these, like a child playing with lettered blocks, he proceeded to build his intellectual system.  Only as we remember their limitations can we appreciate the heroism of these toilers of the Middle Ages, giants in intellect, yet playing with children’s toys; ignorant of the laws and forces of the universe, while debating the essence and locomotion of angels; eager to learn, yet forbidden to enter fresh fields in the right of free exploration and the joy of individual discovery.

The Revival stirred these men as the voyages of Da Gama and Columbus stirred the mariners of the Mediterranean.  First came the sciences and inventions of the Arabs, making their way slowly against the prejudice of the authorities, and opening men’s eyes to the unexplored realms of nature.  Then came the flood of Greek literature which the new art of printing carried swiftly to every school in Europe, revealing a new world of poetry and philosophy.  Scholars flocked to the universities, as adventurers to the new world of America, and there the old authority received a deathblow.  Truth only was authority; to search for truth everywhere, as men sought for new lands and gold and the fountain of youth,—­that was the new spirit which awoke in Europe with the Revival of Learning.

II.  LITERATURE OF THE REVIVAL

The hundred and fifty years of the Revival period are singularly destitute of good literature.  Men’s minds were too much occupied with religious and political changes and with the rapid enlargement of the mental horizon to find time for that peace and leisure which are essential for literary results.  Perhaps, also, the floods of newly discovered classics, which occupied scholars and the new printing presses alike, were by their very power and abundance a discouragement of native talent.  Roger Ascham (1515-1568), a famous classical scholar, who published a book called Toxophilus (School of Shooting) in 1545, expresses in his preface, or “apology,” a very widespread dissatisfaction over the neglect of native literature when he says, “And as for ye Latin or greke tongue, every thing is so excellently done in them, that none can do better:  In the Englysh tonge contrary, every thinge in a maner so meanly, both for the matter and handelynge, that no man can do worse.”