Note 661 — Chapter V
Reading edition
Churton, in his Life of Nowell, says that he taught the Greek testament to the boys at Westminster school, referring for authority to a passage in Strype, which I have not been able to find. There is nothing at all improbable in the fact. These inquiries will be deemed too minute by some in this age. But they are not unimportant in their bearing on the history of literature; and an exaggerated estimate of English learning in the age of the Reformation generally prevails. Sir Thomas Pope, founder of Trinity college, Oxford, observes in a letter to Cardinal Pole in 1556, that when he was a young scholar at Eton, the Greek tongue was growing apace; the study of which is now alate much decayed. Warton, iii. 279. I do not think this implies more than a reference to the time, which was about 1520.