Now it is, that the minds of men are qualified with all manner of
discipline, and the old sciences revived, which for many ages were
extinct. Now it is, that the learned languages are to their pristine
purity restored, viz. Greek, without which a man may be ashamed to
account himself a scholar, Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldean, and Latin. Printing
likewise is now in use, so elegant and so correct, that better cannot be
imagined, although it was found out but in my time by a divine
inspiration, as, by a diabolical suggestion on the other side, was the
invention of ordnance. All the world is full of knowing men, of most
learned schoolmasters, and vast libraries; and it appears to me as a
truth, that neither in Plato's time, nor Cicero's, nor Papinian's, there
was ever such conveniency for studying, as we see at this day there is.
Nor must any adventure henceforward to come in public, or present
himself in company, that hath not been pretty well polished in the shop
of Minerva. I see robbers, hangmen, freebooters, tapsters, ostlers, and
such like, of the very rubbish of the people, more learned now than the
doctors and preachers were in my time. What shall I say? The very women
and children have aspired to this praise and celestial manna of good
learning.--RABELAIS. _The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel._