Lesse Greeke of 1944, including threenpages of untranslated Latin from thenhand of Edward VI. There are goodnpages on Valla and Erasmus. But muchnof the book is derivative and careless,nespecially parts that may reasonably benimputed to Jardine. Both scholars havendone better work apart.nThe Introduction announces, “It isnour contention that teachers and studentsnof the humanities today need to benfully aware … of the fact that the securitynof the humanities within institutionsnof higher education in particular rests onnthe continuing assumption that they arenintrinsically supportive of ‘civilisation’ —nthat is, of the Establishment.” (Thencritical reader will note the spelling ofn”civilization.” The ideological parts ofnthe book tend to have an English orientation.)nOnce we get into the text, wenmeet people like Lorenzo Valla, Erasmus,nand Peter Ramus, who were farnfrom being “supportive of the Establishment.”nWas it supportive of the Establishmentnfor Lorenzo Valla to publish anscholarly pamphlet that proved that thenDonation of Constantine, the legal basisnof papal rule in Italy, was a post-nConstantinian forgery? However, the authorsntell us that Valla produced a “set ofnhighly polemical scholarly works” tonprove that “teachers of grammar andnrhetoric deserved the sort of esteem andnsalaries” received by dialecticians andnphilosophers under Medieval education.nIn modern terms, he did it to get a raisenfrom the dean, but Valla as an Establishmentnlackey just will not wash.nChapter One, on the great Humanistneducator Guarino of Verona, reads like anparody of Grafton’s important book onnthe great classicist Joseph Scaliger, wherenhe showed Scaliger failing to live up tonhis own self-proclaimed standards. Guarinonpromised a rich and fulfilled life tonhis students, but they spent most of theirntime memorizing grammatical rules andnslowly trudging through a few basicnworks in Latin. No educator ever pretendednthat the process of learning tonread and write Latin was fun but that itnproduced a better person who had accessnto more interesting alternatives in life.nSitting around jabbering about death andnsex roles and the Establishment is morenfun, but the end result is mediocrity.nThe humanities are not especially securenin today’s universities, and the leastnsecure part is the teaching of literaturenand language. The intellectual trainingnneeded to master Greek and Latin andnthe resultant confrontation with greatnminds produce unpredictable results.nThere are plenty of lackeys, but there isnalso the occasional Valla or Erasmus.nThucydides confirmed Thomas Hobbesnin his monarchism, but Tacitus convincednrevolutionaries in the 17th andn18th centuries of the evils of Kingship.nOur authors are influenced by LauronMartinez’s famous formulation that Humanismnwas “a program for the rulingnclass.” It was many other things as well,nas the authors’ own examples show.nHumanist education needs a criticalnevaluation that goes beyond the Humanists’nown propaganda. Grafton and Jardinenignore the critique in the first chapternof C.S. Lewis’ OHEL (as he liked toncall his volume in the series “OxfordnHistory of English Literature”), whilenrepeating his observation that the Medievalneducation that the Humanists re­nnnplaced was a superb one. Humanism canntake some credit for Shakespeare andnRabelais, but the older education producednDante and St. Thomas.nMy contrasting examples bring up thenworst result of the Humanists’ success:nFor all their pseudo-Giceronian bombast,nthey succeeded in killing Latin as thenlanguage of culture and science. Nothing,nnot even the Reformation, did morento destroy the unity of European culturenthan that stupid act of vandalism. Hownmuch time does every scholar lose becausenimportant work has appeared in anlanguage he does not know or cannotnread with ease? How much internationalncooperation has been frustrated by nationalisticnlanguage barriers that did notnexist in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance?nErasmus, the most farsighted ofnthe Humanists, saw what they werendoing and wrote a devastating attack onnit in “The Ciceronian.” But not evennJANUARY 1988 / 33n