Page:Historical Lectures and Addresses.djvu/223

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Fisher, who had the influence of the Lady Margaret's new colleges at his back. In Oxford the departure of Linacre, Grocyn and Colet removed the spell of dominant personalities, which strangely enough has at many times lent a picturesque interest to Oxford which Cambridge can rarely claim. With their departure the glory of the New Learning departed also, as they left no equally distinguished successors. It was clear that, if Oxford had given the stimulus to new studies, Cambridge was more skilful in providing for them a permanent home. If progress was to be made, Oxford must copy the methods of Cambridge. The man who grasped this fact, and taught it to Wolsey, Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, had special means of knowing it, as he had been Chancellor of Cambridge and Master of Pembroke. In 1516 Fox founded Corpus Christi College at Oxford, avowedly in the interests of the New Learning. But here again we may notice a characteristic difference between the two Universities. Fisher had gone his way quietly, without laying down new principles in such a shape as to awaken antagonism, content with slowly breaking down barriers and finding room for the new studies by the side of the old. Fox, on the other hand, blew the trumpet of revolt, and his statutes breathe notes of defiance. His college is to be a beehive; its lecturers are gardeners who are to provide wholesome plants on which the bees may browse. They are "to root out barbarism from the garden and cast it forth, should it at any time germinate therein". When metaphors are dropped, provision is made for lecturers who are to teach Greek and Latin classical