The name is absent

Middle Ages and Renaissance 243
origin—Logic and the Three Philosophies (Metaphysics,
Ethics, and Natural Science), afternoons on humane letters :
Rhetoric, conceived in the Renaissance spirit; History, Po-
etry, and the Classics. For instance, the freshman spent his
afternoons on Roman history, Cicero, Erasmus’ Colloquies,
Terence, the Greek Testament, and the poetry of Theognis
of Megara. The sophomore read Cicero, Florus, Sallust,
Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Martial, Hesiod, and Theocritus. The
junior sophister read orations of Quintillian and Demos-
thenes, Juvenal and Persius, and Cluver’s Ancient History;
the senior sophister, although much occupied with disputa-
tions, was supposed to work through Cicero’s De Officiis, the
Iliad and Odyssey, and spend a fortnight each on Statius,
Seneca, and Lucian. For young gentlemen who do not care
to take a degree, Holdsworth maps out a much easier course
of reading, much of it in English ; but nowhere is there any
place for Mathematics, or for any Science but that of Aris-
totle. The mathematical glories of Cambridge date only
from the era of Sir Isaac Newton.

In consequence of these reforms, the English universities
became, in the second half of the sixteenth century, the fa-
vored place of education for the sons of gentlemen, or would-
be gentlemen. As early as 1549 Latimer complained, “There
be none now but great men’s sons in Colleges, and their fath-
ers look not to have them preachers.” He, and other writers
of the day, regarded the influx of wealthy young men as
something unnatural, unexpected, and undesirable. But the
colleges had “asked for it,” as we say; and the new privileged
class, enriched by the woolens trade or overseas commerce,
glutted by spoils of the monasteries, wanted it. Not that
the education of more seriously minded young men, and
those destined for the ministry, came to an end ; institutions
founded near the end of the sixteenth century, like Emman-

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