English Classical Scholarship

An authoritative study of the development of English classical scholarship from the 16th century to the 20th, concentrating on the three giants in the field: Richard Bentley, Richard Porson, and A.E. Housman.

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Professor C.O. Brink's English Classical Scholarship is the first sustained treatment since the early years of this century of the historical development of English classical scholarship. Brink shows the effect of the Italian Renaissance on nascent English scholarship and examines the contribution made by 17th century scholars such as Bishop Pearson and Thomas Gataker. He deals at length with the life of Richard Bentley, his troubled careers master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and above all the immense advances he made in classical studies, which were in turn developed by Richard Porson. He also shows how, paradoxically, in the Victorian era, while a classical education was seen as the key to advancement, classical scholarship almost wholly stagnated. Although the tradition of Bentley and Porson all but disappeared in England, it was nurtured by the great German scholars of the nineteenth century. It was only with the work of A. E. Housman that the tradition of the greatest classical scholars returned to its native land and Professor Brink shows how it began again to make a contribution to the 'European fund'.