Notes

By B. Montagu. Appendix, note 3, 1.

Baconiana, 201.

Bacon’s Apophthegms.

It is not surprising that ladies then received an education rare in our own times. It should be remembered that in the sixteenth century Latin was the language of courts and schools, of diplomacy, politics, and theology; it was the universal language, and there was then no literature in the modern tongues, except the Italian; indeed all knowledge, ancient and modern, was conveyed to the world in the language of the ancients. The great productions of Athens and Rome were the intellectual all of our ancestors down to the middle of the sixteenth century.

Prospetto delle Memorie aneddote dei Lincei da F. Cancellieri. Roma, 1823. This fact is quoted by Monsieur Cousin, in a note to his Fragments de Philosophie Cartésienne.

Sir Robert Cecil.