IV. INFIDELITY II. ROMAN RENAISSANCE 127

gained little by having discovered their guides to be blind; and the simplicity of the faith, ill understood and contumaciously alleged, became an excuse for the rejection of the highest arts and most tried wisdom of mankind: while the learned infidel, standing aloof, drew his own conclusions, both from the rancour of the antagonists, and from their errors; believed each in all that he alleged against the other; and smiled with superior humanity, as he watched the winds of the Alps drift the ashes of Jerome,¹ and the dust of England drink the blood of King Charles.*

§ 99. Now all this evil was, of course, entirely independent of the renewal found the faith of Christendom already weakened and divided; and therefore it was itself productive of an effect tenfold greater than could have been apprehended from it at another time. It acted first, as before noticed, in leading the attention of all men to words instead of things; for it was discovered that the language of the Middle Ages had been corrupt, and the primal object of every scholar became now to purify his style. To this study of words, that of forms being added, both as of matters of the first importance, half the intellect of the age was at once absorbed in the base sciences of grammar, logic, and rhetoric; studies utterly unworthy of the serious labour of men, † and necessarily rendering

* A good concentrated paragraph, but full of literary coxcombry. I was very proud of it when I had got it finished, and am now only woful over the waste of time. There is no use whatever in this history of blunders. We have little time enough, in human life, to watch men who are doing right, and to help them. [1881.]

† The reader had, perhaps, better take breath. But it’s all right, or nearly so, with a little expansion. Logic and rhetoric are indeed studies only for fools and hypocrites; all strong heads reason as easily as they walk, and all strong lips speak for truth’s sake, and not emotion’s. But grammar at a certain time of life is decidedly an expedient study,-and at any time of life an amusing one, if people have a turn for it. It should never be much more than play. Whether we say “two and two makes four,” or “two and

¹ [Jerome of Prague (c. 1365-1416), the friend and disciple of John Huss, and a pioneer of the Reformation, who was burnt at the stake in Constance, his ashes being gathered and thrown into the Rhine or to the winds.]

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