almost all the knowledge which at that time existed in the world.
After this came the great revival of learning, at the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries. At that period, the historian Robertson observes, “all the modern languages were in a state extremely barbarous, devoid of elegance, of vigour, and even of perspicuity. No author thought of writing in language so ill adapted to express and embellish his sentiments, or of erecting a work for immortality with such rude and perishable materials. As the spirit which prevailed at that time did not owe its rise to any original effort of the human mind, but was excited chiefly by admiration of the ancients, which began then to be studied with attention in every part of Europe, their compositions were deemed not only the standards of taste and of sentiment, but of style; and even the languages in which they wrote were thought to be peculiar, and almost consecrated to learning and the muses. Not only the manner of the ancients was imitated, but their language was adopted; and, extravagant as the attempt may appear, to write in a dead tongue, in which men were not accustomed to think, and which they could not speak, or even pronounce, the success
