The first sustained treatment of the development of English classical scholarship, showing the effect of the Renaissance on nascent English scholarship and examining the contribution made by seventeenth-century scholars such as Bishop Pearson and Thomas Gataker.The book deals at length with the life of Richard Bentley, his troubled career as master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and above all the immense advances he made in classical studies. These advances were in turn developed by Richard Porson. Brink 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 began again to make a contribution to the 'European fund' of knowledge.C.O. Brink, F.B.A., was Kennedy Professor of Latin at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College. His magnum opus is a three-volume study, 'Horace on Poetry'.'A historical work of a very high level.' Times Literary Supplement'Brink's assessment of Housman's classical work and the analysis of his scholarship in relation to his views on poetry and literature provide the best combined study.' Times Higher Education Supplement'In the course of his lively and interesting narrative Brink brings to life a progression of major and minor scholars and illuminates many aspects of and episodes of the story of English scholarship.' JACT Review