Note 561 — Chapter IV

Crocus regnat in Academia Lipsiensi, publicitus Græcas docens litteras. Erasm. Epist. clvii. 5th June 1514. Eichhorn says, that Conrad Celtes and others had taught Latin only, iii. 272. Camerarius, who studied for three years under Croke, gives him a very high character; qui primus putabatur ita docuisse Græcam linguam in Germania, ut plane perdisci illam posse, et quid momenti ad omnem doctrinæ eruditionem atque cultum hujus cognitio allatura esse videretur, nostri homines sese intelligere arbitrarentur. Vita Melanchthonis, p. 27; and Vita Eobani Hessi, p. 4. He was received at Leipsic like a heavenly messenger: every one was proud of knowing him, of paying whatever he demanded, of attending him at any hour of the day or night. Melanchthon apud Meiners, i. 165. A pretty good life of Croke is in Chalmers’s Biographical Dictionary. Bayle does not mention him. Croke was educated at King’s College, Cambridge, to which he went from Eton in 1506 and is said to have learned Greek at Oxford from Grocyn, while still a scholar of King’s.