ABSTRACT
Since the early 1950s, studies of humanism in England have in the main followed four different lines of enquiry. The bulk of the work has concerned itself with particular individuals' men of learning and men of affairs. Out of these investigations there came by stages the realization that among the foremost characteristics of English humanism was the ambition to apply the results of learning to the service of social amelioration. The discovery of post-Reformation humanism has, not surprisingly, been accompanied by growing doubts about their pre-Reformation predecessors. Erasmus several times acknowledged his debt to John Colet from whom he learned methods of enquiry and discourse, though the most recent review of that relationship demonstrates that any similarity of thought was confined to Erasmuss earliest writings. The humanists had won their sole victory when they conquered the territory specifically reserved to education, for even there it proved easier for Thomist Jesuits than for Calvinists to absorb new form of classical education.
