Chapter 9 CONCLUSION

General Survey-The Part played in the Revival by the Chief Cities-Preoccupation with Scholarship in spite of War and Conquest-Place of the Humanists in Society-Distributors of Praise and Blame-Flattery and Libels-Comparison with the Sophists-The Form preferred to the Matter of Literature-Ideal of Culture as an end in itself-Suspicion of Zealous Churchmen-Intrusion of Humanism into the Church-Irreligion of the Humanists-Gyraldi's 'Progymnasma'-Ariosto-Bohemian Life-Personal Immorality-Want of Fixed Principles-Professional Vanity-Literary Pride-Estimate of Humanistic Literature-Study of Style-In

fluence of Cicero-Valla's 'Eleganti?'-Stylistic Puerilities-Value attached to Rhetoric-'Oratore'-Moral Essays-Epistolography-Historics-Critical and Antiquarian Studies-Large Appreciation of Antiquity-Liberal Spirit-Poggio and Jerome of Prague-Humanistic Type of Education-Its Diffusion through Europe-Future Prospects-Decay of Learning in Italy.

In tracing the history of the Revival, we have seen how the impulse, first communicated by Petrarch, was continued by Boccaccio and his immediate successors. We have watched the enthusiasm for antiquity strike root in Florence, spread to Rome, and penetrate the Courts of Italy. One city after another receives the light and hands it on, until the whole cycle of study has been traversed and the vigour of the nation is exhausted. Florence discovers manuscripts, founds libraries, learns Greek, and leads the movement of the fifteenth century. Naples criticises; Rome translates; Mantua and Ferrara form a system of education; Venice commits the literature of the classics to the press. By the combined and successive activity of the chief Italian centres, not only is the culture of antiquity regained; it is also appropriated in all its various branches, discussed and illustrated, placed beyond the reach of accident, and delivered over in its integrity to Europe. The work thus performed by the Italians was begun in peace; but it had to be continued under the pressure of wars and national disasters unparalleled in the history of any other modern people. Not for a single moment did the students relax their energy. In the midst of foreign armies, deafened by the roar of cannon and the tumult of sacked towns, exiled from their homes, robbed of their books, deprived of their subsistence, they advanced to their end with the irresistible obstinacy of insects. The drums and tramplings of successive conquests and invasions by four warlike nations-Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, Swiss-could not disturb them. Drop by drop, Italy was being drained of blood; from the first the only question was which of her assailants should possess the beauty of her corpse. Yet the student, intent upon his manuscripts, paid but little heed. So non-existent was the sense of nationality in Italy that the Italians did not know they were being slowly murdered. When the agony was over, and the ruin was accomplished, they congratulated themselves on being still the depositaries of polite literature. Nations that are nations, seek to inspire fear, or at least respect. The Italians were contented with admiration, and looked confidently to the world for gratitude. The task of two toilsome, glorious centuries had been accomplished. The chasm between Rome and the Renaissance was bridged over, and a plain way was built for the progressive human spirit. Italy, downtrodden in the mire of blood and ruins, should still lead the van and teach the peoples. It was a sublime delusion, the last phase of an impulse so powerful in its origin that to prophesy an ending was impossible. Yet how delusive was the expectation is proved by the immediate history of Italy, enslaved and decadent, outstripped by the nations she had taught, and scorned by the world that owed her veneration.

The humanists, who were the organ of this intellectual movement, formed, as we have seen, a literary commonwealth, diffused through all the Courts and cities of Italy. As the secretaries of Popes and princes, as the chancellors of republics, as orators on all occasions of public and private ceremony, they occupied important posts of influence, and had the opportunity of leavening society with their opinions. Furthermore, we have learned to know them in their capacity of professors at the universities, of house-tutors in the service of noblemen, and of authors. Closely connected among themselves by their feuds no less than by their friendships, and working to one common end of scholarship, it was inevitable that these men, after the enthusiasm for antiquity had once become the fashion, should take the lead and mould the genius of the nation. Their epistles, invectives, treatises, and panegyrics, formed the study of an audience that embraced all cultivated minds in Italy. Thus the current literature of humanism played the same part in the fifteenth century as journalism in the nineteenth, and the humanists had the same kind of coherence in relation to the public as the quatrième état of modern times. The respect they inspired as the arbiters of praise and blame, was only equalled by their vast pretensions. Eugenius IV., living at the period of their highest influence, is reported to have said that they were as much to be feared for their malice as to be loved for their learning. While they claimed the power of conferring an immortality of honour or dishonour, no one dared to call their credit with posterity in question. Nothing seemed more dreadful than the fate reserved for Paul II. in the pages of Platina; and even so robust a ruler as Francesco Sforza sought to buy the praises of Filelfo. Flattery in all its branches, fulsome and delicate, wholesale and allusive, was developed by them as an art whereby to gain their living. The official history of this period is rendered almost worthless by its sustained note of panegyrical laudation. Our ears are deafened with the eulogies of petty patrons transformed into M?cenases, of carpet knights compared to Leonidas, of tyrants equalled with Augustus, and of generals who never looked on bloodshed tricked out as Hannibals or Scipios. As a pendant to panegyric, the art of abuse reached its climax in the invectives whereby the scholars sought to hand their comrades down to all time 'immortally immerded,' or to vilify the public enemies of their employers. As in the case of praise, so also in the case of blame, it is impossible to attach importance to the writings of the humanists. Their vaulting ambition to depreciate each other overleaped itself. All their literature of defamation serves now only to throw light on the general impurity of an age in which such monstrous charges carried weight. Unluckily, this double vice of humanism struck deep roots into Italian literature. Without the scholars of the fifteenth century, it is hardly possible that such a brigand as Pietro Aretino, who levied black mail from princes at the point of his venomous quill, or such an unprincipled biographer as Paolo Giovio, who boasted that he wrote with a golden or a silver pen, as pleased him best, could have existed. Bullying and fawning tainted the very source of history, and a false ideal of the writer's function was established by the practice of men like Poggio.

It is obvious and easy to compare the humanists of the Renaissance with the sophists of antiquity. Whether we think of the rivals of Socrates at Athens, or of the Greek rhetoricians of the Roman period,[508] the parallel is tolerably close. From certain points of view the Italian scholars remind us of the former class; from others, again, they recall the latter. The essence of sophism is the substitution of semblance for reality, indifference to truth provided a fair show be made, combined with verbal ingenuity and practice in the art of exposition. The sophist feels no need of forming opinions on a sound basis, or of adhering to principles. Regarding thought as the subject-matter of literary treatment, he is chiefly concerned with giving it a fair and plausible investiture in language. Instead of recognising that he must live up to the standard he professes, he takes delight in expressing with force the contrary of what he acts. The discord between his philosophy and his conduct awakes no shame in him, because it is the highest triumph of his art to persuade by eloquence and to dazzle by rhetoric. Phrases and sentences supply the place of feelings and convictions. Sonorous cadences and harmonies of language are always ready to conceal the want of substance in his matter or the flimsiness of his argument. At the same time the sophist's enthusiasm for a certain form of culture, and his belief in the sophistic method, may be genuine.

The literature of the Revival is full of such sophism. Men who lived loose lives, were never tired of repeating the commonplaces of the Ciceronian ethics, praising simplicity and self-control with the pen they used for reproducing the scandals of Martial, mingling impudent demands for money and flatteries of debauched despots with panegyrics of P?tus Thrasea and eulogies of Cincinnatus. Conversely, students of eminent sobriety, like Guarino da Verona, thought it no harm to welcome Beccadelli's 'Hermaphroditus' with admiration; while the excellent Nicholas V. spent nine days in perusing the filthy satires of Filelfo. It was enough that the form was elegant, according to their standards of taste, the Latinity copious and sound:-the subject-matter raised no scruples.

This vice of regarding only the exterior of literature produced a fatal weakness in the dissertations of the age. If a humanist wanted to moralise the mutability of fortune or the disadvantages of matrimony, he did not take the trouble to think, or the pains to borrow illustrations from his own experience. He strung together quotations and classical instances, expending his labour on the polish of the style, and fancying he had proved something by piquancy displayed in handling old material. When he undertook history, the same fault was apparent. Instead of seeking to set forth the real conditions of his native city, to describe its political vicissitudes and constitutional development, or to paint the characters of its great men, he prepared imaginary speeches and avoided topics incapable of expression in pure Latin. The result was that whole libraries of ethical disquisitions and historical treatises, bequeathed with proud confidence by their authors to the admiration of posterity, are now reposing in unhonoured dust, ransacked at rare intervals by weary students with restless fingers in search of such meagre scraps of information as even a humanist could not succeed in excluding.

The humanists resembled the sophists again in their profession to teach wisdom for pay. What philosophy was for the early Greeks, classic culture was for Italy in the Renaissance; and this the scholars sold. Antiquity lay before them like an open book. From their seat among the learned they doled out the new lore of life to eager pupils. And as the more sober-minded of the Athenians regarded the educational practice of the sophists with suspicion, so the humanists came to be dreaded as the corrupters of youth. The peculiar turn they gave to mental training, by diverting attention from patriotic duties to literary pleasures, by denationalising the interests of students, and by distracting serious thought from affairs of the present to interests of the past, tended to confirm the political debility of the Italians; nor can it be doubted that the substitution of Pagan for Christian ideals intensified the demoralisation of the age. Many arguments used by Aristophanes and Xenophon might be repeated against these sophists of the Renaissance.[509]

On this point it is worth observing that, though humanism took the Papal Court by storm and installed itself in pomp and pride within the Vatican, the lower clergy and the leaders of religious revivals, in no mere spirit of blind prejudice, but with solid force of argument, denounced it. S. Bernardino and Savonarola were only two among many who preached against the humanists from the pulpit. And yet, while we admit that the influences of the Revival injured morality, and gave a cosmopolitan direction to energies that ought to have been concentrated on the preservation of national existence, we are unable to join with these ecclesiastical antagonists in their crusade. Humanism was a necessary moment in the evolution of the modern world; and whatever were its errors, however weakening it may have been to Italy, this phase had to be passed through, this nation had to suffer for the general good.

The intrusion of the humanists into the Papal Curia was a victory of the purely secular spirit. It is remarkable how very few scholars took orders except with a view of holding minor benefices. They remained virtual laymen, drawing the emoluments of their cures at a distance. If Filelfo, after the death of his second wife, proposed to enter the Church, he did so because in his enormous vanity he hoped to gain the scarlet hat, and thought this worth the sacrifice of independence. The only great monastic litteratus was Ambrogio, General of the Camaldolese Order. Maffeo Vegio is the single instance I can remember of a poet-philologer who assumed the cowl. These statements, it will be understood, refer chiefly to the second or aggressive period of the Revival. Classic erudition was so common in the fourth that to be without a humanistic tincture was, even among churchmen, the exception rather than the rule. In the age of Leo, moreover, the humanists as a class had ceased to exist, merged in the general culture of the nation. Their successors were for the most part cardinals and bishops, elevated to high rank for literary merit. This change, however, really indicated the complete triumph of an ideal that for a moment had succeeded in paganising the Papacy, and substituting its own standard of excellence for ecclesiastical tradition.

This external separation between the humanists and the Church corresponded to their deep internal irreligiousness. If contemporary testimony be needed to support this assertion, I may quote freely from Lilius Gyraldus, Battista Mantovano, and Ariosto, not to mention the invectives that record so vast a mass of almost incredible licentiousness. A rhetorical treatise, addressed to Gian Francesco Pico by Lilius Gyraldus, himself an eminent professor at Ferrara, acquaints us with the opinion formed in Italy, after a century's experience, of the vices and discordant lives of scholars.[510] 'I call God and men to witness,' he writes, 'whether it be possible to find men more affected by immoderate disturbances of soul, by such emotions as the Greeks called π?θη, or by such desires as they named ?ρμα?, more easily influenced, driven about, and drawn in all directions. No class of human beings are more subject to anger, more puffed up with vanity, more arrogant, more insolent, more proud, conceited, idle-minded, inconsequent, opinionated, changeable, obstinate; some of them ready to believe the most incredible nonsense, others sceptical about notorious truths, some full of doubt and suspicion, others void of reasonable circumspection. None are of a less free spirit, and that for the very reason I have touched before, because they think themselves so far more powerful. They all of them, indeed, pretend to omniscience, fancy themselves superior to everything, and rate themselves as gods, while we unlearned little men are made of clay and mud, as they maintain.' Having for some space discoursed concerning their mad ways of life, Gyraldus proceeds to arraign the humanists in detail for vicious passions, want of economy, impiety, gluttony, intemperance, sloth, and incontinence.[511] This invective reads like a paradoxical thesis supported for the sake of novelty by a clever rhetorician; and, indeed, it might pass for such were it not for the confirmation it receives in Ariosto's seventh satire addressed to Pietro Bembo.[512] The poet, anxious to find a tutor for his son, dares not commit the young man to the care of a humanist. His picture of their personal immorality, impiety, pride, and gluttony acquires weight from the well-known tolerance of the satirist, and from his genial parsimony of expression. To cite further testimony from the personal confessions of Pacificus Maximus would hardly strengthen the argument, though students may be referred to his poems for details.[513]

The alternations of fortune to which the humanists were exposed-living at one time in the lap of luxury, caressed and petted; then cast forth to wander in almost total indigence, neglected and derided-encouraged a Bohemian recklessness injurious to good manners. Their frequent change of place told upon their character in the same way, by exposing them to fresh temptations and withdrawing them from censure. They had no country but the dreamland of antiquity, no laws beyond the law of taste and inclination. They acknowledged no authority superior to their own exalted judgment; they bowed to no tribunal but that of posterity and the past. Thus they lived within their own conceits, outside of custom and opinion; nor was the world, at any rate before the period of their downfall, scrupulous to count their errors or correct their vices.

Far more important, however, than these circumstances was their passion for a Pagan ideal. The study of the classics and the effort to assimilate the spirit of the ancients, undermined their Christianity without substituting the religion or the ethics of the old world. They ceased to fear God; but they did not acquire either the self-restraint of the Greek or the patriotic virtues of the Roman. Thus exposed without defence or safeguard, they adopted the perilous attitude of men whose regulative principle was literary taste, who had left the ground of faith and popular convention for the shoals and shallows of an irrecoverable past. On this sea they wandered, with no guidance but the promptings of undisciplined self. It is not, therefore, a marvel that, while professing Stoicism, they wallowed in sensuality, openly affected the worst habits of Pagan society, and devoted their ingenuity to the explanation of foulness that might have been passed by in silence. Licentiousness became a special branch of humanistic literature. Under the thin mask of humane refinement leered the untamed savage; and an age that boasted not unreasonably of its mental progress, was at the same time notorious for the vices that disgrace mankind. These disorders of the scholars, hidden for a time beneath a learned language, ended by contaminating the genius of the nation. The vernacular Capitoli of Florence say plainly what Beccadelli, Poggio, and Bembo piqued themselves on veiling.

Another notable defect of the humanists, equally inseparable from the position they assumed in Italy, was their personal and professional vanity. Battista Mantovano, writing on the calamities of the age in which he lived, reckons them among the most eminent examples of pride in his catalogue of the deadly sins. Regarding themselves as resuscitators of a glorious past and founders of a new civility, they were not satisfied with asserting their real merits in the sphere of scholarship. They went further, and claimed to rank as sages, political philosophers, writers of deathless histories, and singers of immortal verse. The most miserable poetasters got crowned with laurels. The most trivial thinkers passed verdict upon statecraft. Mistaking mere cultivation for genius, they believed that, because they had perused the authors of antiquity and could imitate Ovid at a respectful distance, their fame would endure for all ages. On the strength of this confidence they gave themselves inconceivable airs, looking down from the height of their attainment on the profane crowd. To understand that, after all, antiquity was a school wherein to train the modern intellect for genuine production, was not given to this epoch of discovery. Posterity has sadly belied their expectations. Of all their treatises and commentaries, poems and translations, how few are now remembered; how rarely are their names upon the lips of even professed students! The debt of gratitude we owe them is indeed great, and should be amply paid by our respectful memory of all they wrought for us with labour in the field of learning. Yet Filelfo would turn with passionate disappointment in his grave, if he could know that men of wider scope and sounder erudition appreciate his writings solely as shed leaves that fertilised the soil of literature.

Before turning, as is natural at this point, to form an estimate of the humanists in their capacity of authors, it will be right briefly to qualify the condemnation passed upon their characters. Taken as a class, they deserve the hardest words that have been said of them. Yet it must not be forgotten that they numbered in their ranks such men as Ambrogio Traversari, Tommaso da Sarzana, Guarino, Jacopo Antiquari, Vittorino da Feltre, Pomponius L?tus, Ficino, Pico, Fabio Calvi, and Aldus Manutius. The bare enumeration of these names will suffice for those who have read the preceding chapters. Piety, sobriety of morals, self-devotion to public interests, the purest literary enthusiasm, the most lofty aspirations, fairness of judgment, and generosity of feeling distinguish these men, and some others who might be mentioned, from the majority of their fellows. Nor, again, is it fair to charge the humanists alone with vices common to their age. The picture I ventured to draw of Papal and despotic manners in a previous volume, shows that a too strict standard cannot be applied to scholars, holding less responsible positions than their patrons, and professing a far looser code of conduct. Much, too, of their inordinate vanity may be ascribed to the infatuation of the people. Such scenes as the reception of the supposed author of 'Hermaphroditus' in Vicenza were enough to turn the heads of even stronger men.[514]

It is difficult to appraise humanistic literature at a just value, seeing that by far the larger mass of it, after serving a purpose of temporary utility, is now forgotten. Not itself, but its effect, is what we have to estimate; and the ultimate product of the whole movement was the creation of a new capacity for cultivation. To have restored to Europe the knowledge of the classics, and to have recovered the style of the ancients, so as to use Latin prose and verse with freedom at a time when Latin formed an universal medium of culture, is the first real merit of the humanists. Nothing can rob them of this glory; however much we may be forced to feel that their critical labours have been superseded, that their dissertations are dull, that their poems at the worst fall far below the level of an Oxford prize exercise, and at the best supply a decent appendix to the 'Corpus Poetarum.' Nor can we defraud them of the fame of having striven to realise Petrarch's ideal.[515] That ideal, only partially attained at any single point, developed in one direction by Milton, in another by Goethe, still guides, and will long guide, the efforts of the modern intellect.

The most salient characteristic of this literature was study of style. The beginners of the humanistic movement were conscious that what separated them more than anything else from their Roman ancestors, was want of elegance in diction. They used the same language; but they used it clumsily. They could think the same thoughts, but they had lost the art of expressing them with propriety. To restore style was therefore a prime object. Exaggerating its importance, they neglected the matter for the form, and ended by producing a literature of imitation. The ideal they proposed in composition included limpidity of language, simplicity in the structure of sentences however lengthy, choiceness of phrase, and a copious vocabulary. To be intelligible was the first requisite; to be attractive the second. Having mastered elementary difficulties, they proceeded to fix the rules for decorative writing. Cicero had said that nothing was so ugly or so common but that rhetoric could lend it charm. This unfortunate dictum, implying that style, as separate from matter, is valuable in and for itself, led the Italians astray. To form commonplace books of phrases culled from the 'Tusculans' and the 'Orations,' to choose some trivial theme for treatment, and to make it the occasion for verbal display, became their business. In the coteries of Rome and Florence scholars measured one another by their ingenuity-in other words, by their aptness for producing Ciceronian and Virgilian centos. Few indeed, like Pico, raised their voices against such trifling, or protested that what a man thought and felt was at least as important as his power of clothing it in rhetoric.

The appearance of Valla's 'Eleganti?' marked an epoch in the evolution of this stylistic art. It reached its climax in the work of Bembo. What the humanists intended, they achieved. Purity and perspicuity of language were made conditions of all literature that claimed attention; nor is it, perhaps, too much to say that Racine, Pascal, and Voltaire owe something of their magic to the training of these worn-out pedagogues. Yet the immediate effect in Italy, when Machiavelli's vigour had passed out of the nation, and the stylistic tradition survived, was deplorable. Nothing strikes a northern student of the post-Renaissance authors more than the empty smoothness of their writing, their faculty of saying nothing with a vast expenditure of phrase, their dread of homely details, and the triviality of the subjects they chose for illustration. When a man of wit like Annibale Caro could rise to praise the nose of the president before a learned academy in periods of this ineptitude-'Naso perfetto, naso principale, naso divino, naso che benedetto sia fra tutti i nasi; e benedetta sia quella mamma che vi fece così nasuto, e benedette tutte quelle cose che voi annusate!'[516]-we trace no more than a burlesque of humanistic seeking after style. It must, however, be admitted that it is not easy for a less artistic nation to do the Italians justice in this respect. They derived an ?sthetic pleasure from refinements of speech and subtle flavours of expression, while they remained no less conscious than we are that the workmanship surpassed the matter. The proper analogue to their rhetoric may be found in the exquisite but too unmeaning arabesques in marble and in wood, which belong to Cinque Cento architecture. Viewed as the playthings of skilled artists, these are not without their value; and we are apt, perhaps, unduly to depreciate them, because we lack the sense for their particular form of beauty.

If the most marked feature of humanistic literature was the creation of a Latin style, the supreme dictators were Cicero in prose and Virgil in verse. That Cicero should have fascinated the Italians in an age when art was dominant, when richness of decoration, rhetorical fluency, and pomp of phrase appealed to the liveliest instincts of a splendour-loving, sensitive, declamatory race, is natural. The Renaissance found exactly what it wanted in the manner of the most obviously eloquent of Latin authors, himself a rhetorician among philosophers, an orator among statesmen, the weakness of whose character was akin to that which lay at the root of fifteenth-century society. To be the 'apes of Cicero,' in all the branches of literature he had cultivated, was regarded by the humanists as a religious duty.[517] Though they had no place in the senate, the pulpit, or the law court, they were fain to imitate his oratory. Therefore public addresses to ambassadors, to magistrates on assuming office, and to Popes on their election; epithalamial and funeral discourses; panegyrics and congratulations-sounded far and wide through Italy. The fifteenth century was the golden age of speechification. A man was measured by the amount of fluent Latinity he could pour forth; copiousness of quotations secured applause; and readiness to answer on the spur of the moment in smooth Ciceronian phrases, was reckoned among the qualities that led to posts of trust in Church and State. On the other hand, a failure of words on any ceremonial occasion passed for one of the great calamities of life. The common name for an envoy, oratore, sufficiently indicates the public importance attached to rhetoric. It formed a necessary part of the parade which the Renaissance loved, and, more than that, a part of its diplomatic machinery. To compose orations that could never be recited was a fashionable exercise; and since the 'Verrines' and the 'Philippics' existed, no occasion was lost for reproducing something of their spirit in the invectives whereof so much has been already said. The emptiness of all this oratory, separated from the solid concerns of life, and void of actual value, tended to increase the sophistic character of literature. Eloquence, which ought to owe its force to passionate emotion or to gravity of meaning, degenerated into a mere play of words; and to such an extent was verbal cleverness over-estimated, that a scholar could ascribe the fame of Julius C?sar to his 'Commentaries' rather than his victories.[518] It does not seem to have occurred to him that Pompey would have been glad if C?sar had always wielded his pen, and that Brutus would hardly have stabbed a friendly man of letters. When we read a genuine humanistic speech, we find that it is principally composed of trite tales and citations. To play upon the texts of antiquity, as a pianist upon the keys of his instrument, was no small part of eloquence; and the music sounded pleasant in ears greedy of the very titles of old writings. Vespasiano mentions that Carlo Aretino owed his early fame at Florence to one lecture, introducing references to all the classic authors.

The style affected for moral dissertation was in like manner Ciceronian. The dialogue in particular became fashionable; and since it was dangerous to introduce matter unsuited to Tully's phrases, these disquisitions are usually devoid of local colouring and contemporary interest. Few have such value as attaches to the opening of Poggio's essay on Fortune, to Valeriano's treatise on the misfortunes of the learned, or to Gyraldi's attack upon the humanists.

Another important branch of literature, modelled upon Ciceronian masterpieces, was letter-writing. The epistolography of the humanists might form a separate branch of study, if we cared to trace its history through several stages, and to sift the stores at our disposal. Petrarch, after discovering the familiar letters of the Roman orator, first gave an impulse to this kind of composition. In his old age he tells how he was laughed at in his youth for assuming the Latin style of thou together with the Roman form of superscription.[519] I have already touched upon the currency it gained through the practice of Coluccio Salutato and the teaching of Gasparino da Barzizza.[520] In course of time books of formul? and polite letter-writers were compiled, enabling novices to adopt the Ciceronian mannerism with safety.[521] The Papal Curia sanctioned a set of precedents for the guidance of its secretaries, while the epistles of eminent chancellors served as models for the despatches of republican governments.

The private letters of scholars were useful in keeping up communication between the several centres of culture in Italy. From these sources too we now derive much interesting information respecting the social life of the humanists. They seem to have avoided political, theological, and practical topics, cultivating a style of urbane compliment, exchanging opinions about books, asking small favours, acknowledging obligations, recommending friends to favourable notice, occasionally describing their mode of life, discussing the qualities of their patrons with cautious reserve, but seeking above all things to display grace of diction and elegant humour rather than erudition. The fact that these Latin epistles were invariably intended for circulation and ultimate publication, renders it useless to seek for insight from them into strictly private matters.[522] For the historian the most valuable collections of Renaissance letters are composed in Italian, and are not usually the work of scholars, but of agents, spies, and envoys. Compared with the reports of the Venetian ambassadors, the correspondence of the humanists is unimportant. In addition to familiar letters, it not unfrequently happened, however, that epistles upon topics of public interest were indited by students. Intended by their diffusion to affect opinion, and addressed to influential friends or patrons, these compositions assumed the form of pamphlets. Of this kind were the letters on the Eastern question sent by Filelfo to Charles VII. of France, to the Emperor, to Matthias Corvinus, to the Dukes of Burgundy and Urbino, and to the Doge of Venice. The immortality expected by the humanists from their epistles, has hardly fallen to their lot; though much of Poliziano's, Pico's, Antiquari's, and Piccolomini's correspondence is still delightful and instructive reading. The masses extant in MS. exceed what has been printed; while the printed volumes, with some rare exceptions, among which may be mentioned Poliziano's letter to Antiquari on the death of Lorenzo, are only used by students.[523]

Since Cicero had left no specimen of history, the humanists were driven to follow other masters in this branch of literature. Livy was the author of their predilection. C?sar supplied them with a model for the composition of commentaries, and Sallust for concise monographs. Suetonius was followed in such minute studies of character as Decembrio's 'Life of Filippo Maria Visconti.' I do not find that Tacitus had any thoroughgoing imitators; the magniloquence of rhetoric, rather than the pungency of sarcasm, suited the taste of the age. The faults of the humanistic histories have been already pointed out.[524]

The services of the humanists, as commentators, translators, critics of texts, compilers of grammars and dictionaries of all kinds, collectors of miscellaneous information, and writers on antiquities, still remain to be remembered. Their industry in this field was quite different from the labour they devoted to the perfecting of style. Whatever we may think of them as men of letters, we are bound to give their erudition almost unqualified praise. Not, indeed, that their learning any more than their literature was final. It too has been superseded; but it formed the basis of a sounder method, and rendered the attainment of more certain knowledge possible. It is not too much to say that modern culture, so far as it is derived from antiquity, owes everything to the indefatigable energy of the humanists. Before the age of printing, scholars had to store their memories with encyclop?dic information, while the very want of a critical method, by preventing them from exactly discerning the good and the bad, enabled them to take a broader and more comprehensive view of classical literature than is now at any rate common. Antiquity as a whole-not the authors merely of the Attic age or the Augustan-claimed their admiration; and though they devoted special study to Cicero and Virgil for the purposes of style, they eagerly accepted every Greek or Latin composition from the earliest to the latest. To this omnivorous appetite of the elder scholars we are perhaps indebted for the preservation of many fragments which a more delicate taste would have rejected. Certainly we owe to them the conception of the classics in their totality, as forming the proper source of culture for the human race. The purism of Vida and Bembo, though it sprang from more refined perceptions, was in some respects a retrogression from the wide and liberal erudition of their predecessors. Discipleship under Virgil may make a versifier; but he who would fain comprehend the Latin genius must know the poets of Rome from Ennius to Claudian.

Finally we have to render the tribute due to the humanists for their diffusion of a liberal spirit. Sustained by the enthusiasm of antiquity, they first ventured to take a standpoint outside catholicity; and though they made but bad use of this spiritual freedom, inclining to levity and godlessness instead of fighting the battle of the reason, yet their large and human survey of the world was in itself invigorating. Poggio at the Council of Constance regarded Jerome of Prague not as a heretic, not as a fanatic, but as a Stoic. In other words, he was capable of divesting his mind of temporary associations and conventional prejudices, and of discerning the true character of the man who suffered heroically for his opinions. This instance illustrates the general tone and temper of the humanists. Their study of antiquity freed them from the scholastic pedantries of theologians, and from the professional conceits of jurists and physicians. There is nothing great and noble in human nature that might not, we fancy, have grown and thriven under their direction, if the circumstances of Italy had been more favourable to high aspirations. As it was, the light was early quenched and clouded by base vapours of a sensual, enslaved, and priest-corrupted society. The vital force of the Revival passed into the Reformation; the humanists, degraded and demoralised, were superseded. Still it was they who created the new atmosphere of culture, wherein whatever is luminous in art, literature, science, criticism, and religion has since flourished. Though we may perceive that they obeyed a false authority-that of the classics, and worshipped a false idol-style, yet modern liberty must render them the meed of thanks for this. When we consider that before the sixteenth century had closed, they had imbued the whole Italian nation with their views, forming a new literature, directing every kind of mental activity, and producing a new social tone, and furthermore that Italy in the sixteenth century impressed her spirit on the rest of Europe, we have a right to hail the humanists as the schoolmasters of modern civilisation.

As schoolmasters in a stricter sense of the term, it is not easy to exaggerate the influence exercised by Italian students. They first conceived and framed the education that has now prevailed through Europe for four centuries, moulding the youth of divers nations by one common discipline, and establishing an intellectual concord for all peoples. In spite of changes in government and creed, in spite of differences caused by race and language, we have maintained an uniformity of culture through the simultaneous prosecution of classic studies on the lines laid down for teachers by the scholars of the fifteenth century. The system of our universities and public schools is in truth no other than that devised by Vittorino and Guarino. Thus humanism in modern Europe has continued the work performed during the Middle Ages by the Church, uniting in one confederation of spiritual activity nations widely separated by all that tends to keep the human families apart.

Until quite recently in England, the litter? humaniores were accepted as the soundest training for careers in Church and State, for the learned professions, and for the private duties of gentlemen. If the old ideal is yielding at last to theories of a wider education based on science and on modern languages, that is due partly to the extension of useful knowledge, and partly to the absorption of classic literature into the modern consciousness. The sum of what a cultivated man should know, in order to maintain a place among the pioneers of progress, is so vast, that learners, distracted by a variety of subjects, resent the expenditure of precious time on Greek and Latin. Teachers, on the other hand, through long familiarity with humane studies, have fallen into the languor of routine. Besides, as knowledge in each new department increases, the necessity of specialising with a view to adopting a professional career, makes itself continually felt with greater urgency. It may therefore be plausibly argued that we have outgrown the conditions of humanism, and that a new stage in the history of education has been reached. Have not the ancients done as much for us as they can do? Are not our minds permeated with their thoughts? Do not the masterpieces of modern literature hold in solution the best that can be got from them for future uses?

These questions can perhaps be met by the counter-question whether the arts and letters of the Greeks and Romans will not always hold their own, not only in the formation of pure taste, but also in the discipline of character and the training of the intelligence. Just as well might we cease to study the sacred books of the Jews, because we have incorporated their ethics into our conscience, and possess their religion in our liturgy. No transmission of a spirit at second or third hand can be the same as its immediate contact; nor can we afford, however full our mental life may be, to lose the vivid sense of what men were and what they wrought in ages far removed from us, especially when those men were our superiors in certain spheres. Again, it may be doubted whether we should understand the masterpieces of modern literature, when we came to be separated from the sources of their inspiration. If Olympus connoted less than Asgard, or Hercules were no more familiar to our minds than Rustem, or the horses of the Sun stood at the same distance from us as the cows of Indra-if, in fact, we abandoned Greek as much as we have abandoned Scandinavian, Persian, and Sanskrit mythology, would not some of the most brilliant images of our own poets fade into leaden greyness, like clouds that have lost the flush of living light upon them?

It is therefore not improbable that for many years to come the higher culture of the race will still be grounded upon humanism: true though it be that the first enthusiasm for antiquity shall never be restored, nor the classics yield that vital nourishment they offered in the spring-time of the modern era. For average students, who have no special vocation for literature and no ?esthetic tastes, it may well happen that new methods of teaching the classics will have to be invented. Why should they not be read in English versions, and the time expended upon Greek and Latin grammar be thus saved? The practice of Greek and Latin versification has been virtually doomed already; nor is there any reason why Latin prose should form a necessary part of education in an age that has ceased to publish its thoughts in a now completely dead language. Our actual relation to the ancients, again, justifies some change. We know far more about them now than in the period of the Renaissance; but they are no longer all in all for civilised humanity, eager to reconstitute the realm of thought, and find its nobler self anew in the image of a glorious past, reconquered and inalienable. The very culture created by the study of antiquity through the last four centuries stands between them and our apprehension, so that they seem at the same moment more distinct from us and more a part of our familiar selves.

When we seek the causes which produced the decay of learning in Italy about the middle of the sixteenth century, we are first led to observe that the type of scholarship inaugurated by Petrarch had been fully developed. Nothing new remained to be worked out upon the lines laid down by him. Meanwhile the forces of the nation, both creative and receptive, were exhausted in the old fields of humanism. The reading public had been glutted with epistles, invectives, poems, orations, histories of antiquities, and disquisitions of all kinds. The matter of the ancient literatures had been absorbed, if superficially, at least entirely, and their forms had been reproduced with wearisome reiteration. The Paganism that had so long ruled as a fashion, was now passing out of vogue, because of its inadequacy to meet the deeper wants and satisfy the aspirations of the modern world. The humanists, moreover, as a class, had fallen into disrepute through faults and vices whereof enough has been already said. Nothing short of the new impulse which a new genius, equal at least in power to Petrarch, might have communicated, could have given a fresh direction to the declining enthusiasm for antiquity. But for this display of energy the Italians were not prepared. As in the ascent of some high peak, the traveller, after surmounting pine woods and Alpine pastures, comes upon bare grassy slopes that form an intermediate region between the basements of the mountain and the snowfields overhead, so the humanists had accomplished the first stage of learning. But it requires a fresh start and the employment of other faculties to scale the final heights; and for this the force was wanting. Erasmus, at the opening of the century, had, indeed, initiated a second age of scholarship. The more exact methods of criticism and comparison were already about to be instituted by the French, the Germans, and the Dutch. It was too much, however, to expect that the Italians, who had expended their vigour in recovering the classics and reviving a passion for knowledge, should compete upon the ground of modern erudition with these fresh and untried races.

What they might have done, if circumstances had been less unfavourable, and if the way of progress had been free before them, cannot be conjectured. As it was, all things contributed to the decline of intellectual energy in Italy. The distracting wars of half a century told more heavily upon the literati, who depended for their very existence upon the liberality of patrons, than on any other section of the people. What miseries they endured in Lombardy may be gathered from the prefaces and epistles of Aldus Manutius; while the blow inflicted on them by the sack of Rome is vividly described by Valeriano.[525] When comparative peace was restored, liberty had been extinguished. Florence, the stronghold of liberal learning, was enslaved. Scholarship no less than art suffered from the loss of political independence. Rome, terror-stricken by the Reformation, turned with rage against the very studies she had helped to stimulate. The engines of the Inquisition, wielded with all the mercilessness of panic by men who had the sombre cruelty of Spain to back them up, destroyed the germs of life in science and philosophy.

To some extent, again, the Italian scholars had prepared their own suicide by tending more and more to subtleties of taste and affectations of refinement. The purism of the sixteenth century was itself a sort of etiolation, and the puerilities of the academies distracted even able men from serious studies. It was one of the inevitable drawbacks of humanism that the new culture separated men of letters from the nation. Dante and the wool-carders of the fourteenth century understood each other; there was then no thick veil of erudition between the teacher and the taught. But neither Bembo nor Pomponazzi had anything to say that could be comprehended by the common folk. Therefore scholarship was left in mournful isolation; suspected, when it passed from trifles to grave speculations, by the Church; viewed with indifference by the people; unsustained by any sympathy, and, what was worse, without a programme or a watchword. The thinkers, whose biography belongs to the history of the Counter-Reformation in Italy, were all solitary men, voices crying in the wilderness with none to listen, bound together by no common bond, unnoticed by the nation, extinguished singly on the scaffold by an ever-watchful league of tyrants spiritual and political.

Before the end of the sixteenth century Greek had almost ceased to be studied in Italy. This was the sign of intellectual death. All that was virile in humanism fled beyond the Alps. This transference of intellectual supremacy from Italy to Germany was speedily accomplished. 'When I was a boy,' said Erasmus,[526] 'sound letters had begun to revive among the Italians; but by reason of the printer's art being as yet undiscovered or known to few, no books had reached us, and in the deep tranquillity of dulness there reigned a set of men who taught in all our towns the most illiterate learning. Rodolph Agricola was the first to bring to us from Italy some breath of a superior culture.' Again, he says of Italy, 'In that land, where even the very walls are both more learned and more eloquent than men with us; so that what here seems beautifully said, and elegant and full of charm, cannot be held for aught but clumsy, stupid, and uncultivated there.' Less than half a century after Erasmus had gained the right to hold the balance thus between the nations of the North and South-that is, in 1540 or thereabouts-Paolo Giovio, at the close of his 'Elogia Literaria,' while speaking of the Germans, felt obliged to confess that 'not only Latin letters, to our disgrace, but Greek and Hebrew also have passed into their territory by a fatal simultaneous migration.'

Thus Italy, after receiving the lamp of learning from the dying hands of Hellas, in the days of her own freedom, now, in the time of her adversity and ruin, gave it to the nations of the North. Her work was ended. Three centuries of increasing decrepitude, within our recent memory at length most happily surmounted, were before her. Can history, we wonder, furnish a spectacle more pathetic than that of the protagonist of spiritual liberty falling uneasily asleep beneath the footstool of the Spaniard and the churchman, while the races who had trampled her to death went on rejoicing in the light and culture she had won by centuries of toil? This is the tragic aspect of the subject which has occupied us through the present volume. At the conclusion of the whole matter it is, however, more profitable to remember, not the intellectual death of Italy, but what she wrought in that bright period of her vigour. She was the divinely appointed birthplace of the modern spirit, the workshop of knowledge for all Europe, our mistress in the arts and sciences, the Alma Mater of our student years, the well-spring of mental freedom and activity after ages of stagnation. If greater philosophers have since been produced by Germany and France and England, greater scholars, greater men of science, greater poets even, and greater pioneers of progress in the lands divined by Christopher Columbus beyond the seas-this must not blind us to the truth that at the very outset of the era in which we live and play our parts, Italy embraced all philosophy, all scholarship, all science, all art, all discovery, alone. Such is the Lampadephoria, or torch-race, of the nations. Greece stretches forth her hand to Italy; Italy consigns the sacred fire to Northern Europe; the people of the North pass on the flame to America, to India, and the Australasian isles.

* * *

FOOTNOTES

[1] To the original edition of this volume.

[2] The analogy of the individual might be quoted. We are aware within ourselves of times when thought is fertile and insight clear, times of conception and projection, followed by seasons of slow digestion, assimilation, and formation, when the creative faculty stagnates, and the whole force of the intellect is absorbed in mastering through years what it took minutes to divine.

[3] See Vol. I., Age of Despots, pp. 239, 350-356, 415-420, where I have endeavoured to treat these topics more at length.

[4] It would be easy to multiply these contrasts, comprising, for example, the Cardinals Inghirami and Bibbiena and the Leo of Raphael with the Farnesi portraits at Modena or the grave faces of Moroni's patrons at Bergamo.

[5] Portrait in the Uffizzi, ascribed to Giorgione, but more probably by some pupil of Mantegna.

[6] Paradiso, vi. 112.

[7] Notably Purg. xi. 100-117.

[8] A curious echo of this Italian conviction may be traced in Fletcher's Elder Brother.

[9] Vespasiano, Vita di Piero de' Pazzi. Compare the beautiful letter of ?neas Sylvius Piccolomini to his nephew (Ep. Lib. i. 4). He reminds the young man that fair as youth is, and delightful as are the pleasures of the May of life, learning is more fair and knowledge more delightful. 'Non enim Lucifer aut Hesperus tam pulcher est quam sapientia qu? studiis acquiritur litterarum.'

[10] It is enough to refer to Luther's Table Talk upon the state of Rome in Leo's reign.

[11] Poliziano, Pontano, Sannazzaro, and Bembo divided their powers between scholarship and poetry, to the injury of the latter.

[12] For the low state of criticism, even in a good age, see Aulus Gellius, lib. xiv. cap. vi. He describes the lecture of a rhetor, quispiam lingu? Latin? literator, on a passage in the seventh ?neid. The man's explanation of the word bidentes proves an almost more than medi?val puerility and ignorance.

[13] Most of the following quotations will be found in Comparetti, Virgilio nel Medio Evo, vol. i., a work of sound scholarship and refined taste upon the place of Virgil in the Middle Ages.

[14] Hoc est quod pueri tangar amore minus, for example, was altered into Hoc est quod pueri tangar amore nihil; for lusisset amores was substituted dampnasset amores, and so forth.

[15] The hymn quoted above in the text refers to a legend of S. Paul having visited the tomb of Virgil at Naples:-

'When to Maro's tomb they brought him

Tender grief and pity wrought him

To bedew the stone with tears;

What a saint I might have crowned thee,

Had I only living found thee,

Poet first and without peers!'

[16] The common use of the word grammarie for occult science in our ballads illustrates this phase of popular opinion. So does the legend of Friar Bacon. See Thoms, Early English Prose Romances.

[17] Didot, in his Life of Aldus, tries to make out that Greek learning survived in Ireland longer than elsewhere.

[18] The word Humanism has a German sound, and is in fact modern. Yet the generic phrase umanità for humanistic culture, and the name umanista for a professor of humane studies, are both pure Italian. Ariosto, in his seventh satire, line 25, writes-

'Senza quel vizio son pochi umanisti.'

[19] See the interesting letter to Luca di Penna, De Libris Ciceronis, p. 946, and compare De Ignorantia sui ipsius, &c. p. 1044. These references, as well as those which follow under the general sign Ibid., are made to the edition of Petrarch's collected works, Basle, 1581.

[20] Ibid. p. 948. Cf. the fine letter on the duty of collecting and preserving codices (Fam. Epist. lib. iii. 18, p. 619). 'Aurum, argentum, gemm?, purpurea vestis, marmorea domus, cultus ager, pict? tabul?, phaleratus sonipes, c?teraque id genus mutam habent et superficiariam voluptatem: libri medullitus delectant, colloquuntur, consulunt, et viva quadam nobis atque arguta familiaritate junguntur.'

[21] De Libris Ciceronis, p. 949. Cf. his Epistle to Varro for an account of a lost MS. of that author. Ibid. p. 708.

[22] Ibid. p. 948. Cf. De Ignorantia, pp. 1053, 1054. See, too, the letter to Nicolaus Syocerus of Constantinople, Epist. Var. xx. p. 998, thanking him for the Homer and the Plato, in which Petrarch gives an account of his slender Greek studies. 'Homerus tuus apud me mutus, immo vero ego apud illum surdus sum. Gaudeo tamen vel aspectu solo, et s?pe illum amplexus et suspirans dico.... Plato philosophorum princeps ... nunc tandem tuo munere Philosophorum principi Poetarum princeps asserit. Quis tantis non gaudeat et glorietur hospitibus?... Gr?cos spectare, et si nihil aliud, certe juvat.' The letter urging Boccaccio to translate Homer-'an tuo studio, mea impensa fieri possit, ut Homerus integer bibliothec? huic, ubi pridem Gr?cus habitat, tandem Latinus accedat'-will be found Ep. Rer. Sen. lib. iii. 5, p. 775. In another letter, Ep. Rer. Sen. lib. vi. 2, p. 807, he thanks Boccaccio for the Latin version.

[23] De Remediis utriusque Fortun?, p. 43. A plea for public as against private collections of useful books. 'Multos in vinculis tenes,' &c.

[24] See the four books of Invectives, Contra Medicum quendam, and the treatise De sui ipsius et aliorum Ignorantia. Page 1038 of the last dissertation contains a curious list of frivolous questions discussed by the Averrhoists. Cf. the letter on the decadence of true learning, Ep. Var. 31, p. 1020; the letter to a friend exhorting him to combat Averrhoism, Epist. sine titulo, 18, p. 731; two letters on physicians, Epist. Rerum Senilium, lib. xii. 1 and 2, pp. 897-914; a letter to Francesco Bruno on the lies of the astrologers, Epist. Rer. Sen. lib. i. 6, p. 747; a letter to Boccaccio on the same theme, Epist. Rer. Sen. lib. iii. 1, p. 765; another on physicians to Boccaccio, Epist. Rer. Sen. lib. v. 4, p. 796. Cf. the Critique of Alchemy, De Remediis utriusque Fortun?, p. 93.

[25] In comparing the orator and the poet, Petrarch gives the palm to the former. He thought the perfect rhetorician, capable of expressing sound philosophy with clearness, was rarer than the poet. See De Remediis utriusque Fortun?, lib. ii. dial. 102, p. 192.

[26] See, among other passages, Inv. contra Medicum, lib. i. p. 1092. 'Poet? studium est veritatem veram pulchris velaminibus adornare.' Cf. p. 905, the paragraph beginning 'Officium est ejus fingere,' &c.

[27] See the preface to the Epistol? Familiares, p. 570. 'Scribendi enim mihi vivendique unus (ut auguror) finis erit.'

[28] For his lofty conception of poetry see the two letters to Boccaccio and Benvenuto da Imola, pp. 740, 941. Epist. Rerum Senilium, lib. i. 4, lib. xiv. 11.

[29] The references to Augustine as a 'divine genius,' equal to Cicero in eloquence, superior to the classics in his knowledge of Christ, are too frequent for citation. See, however, Fam. Epist. lib. ii. 9, p. 601; the letter to Boccaccio, Variarum, 22, p. 1001; and Fam. Epist. lib. iv. 9, p. 635. The phrase describing the Confessions, quoted in my text, is from Petrarch's letter to his brother Gerard, Epist. Var. 27, p. 1012, 'Scatentes lachrymis Confessionum libros.'

[30] 'Sum sectarum negligens, veri appetens.' Epist. Rer. Sen. lib. i. 5, p. 745. 'Nam apud Horatium Flaccum, nullius jurare in verba magistri, puer valde didiceram.' Epist. Fam. lib. iv. 10, p. 637.

[31] See the letters addressed to Cicero and Seneca, pp. 705, 706.

[32] '?gritudo' is a phrase that constantly recurs in his epistles to indicate a restless, craving habit of the soul. See, too, the whole second book of the De Contemptu Mundi.

[33] See the treatise De Vita Solitaria, pp. 223-292, and the letters on 'Vaucluse,' pp. 691-697.

[34] See the discussion of this point in Baldelli's Vita del Boccaccio, pp. 130-135.

[35] Compare the chapter in the dissertation De Remediis on troublesome notoriety, p. 177, with the letter on his reception at Arezzo, p. 918, the letter to Nerius Morandus on the false news of his death, p. 776, and the letter to Boccaccio on his detractors, p. 749.

[36] See the Epistles to Rienzi, pp. 677, 535.

[37] Epistle to the Roman people, beginning 'Apud te invictissime domitorque terrarum popule meus,' p. 712.

[38] Epistle to Charles IV., De Pacificanda Italia, p. 531. This contradiction struck even his most ardent admirers with painful surprise. See Boccaccio quoted in Baldelli's Life, p. 115.

[39] Rerum memorandarum, lib. ii. p. 415.

[40] This is particularly noticeable in the miscellaneous collection of essays called De Remediis utriusque Fortun?, where opposite views on a wide variety of topics are expressed with great dexterity.

[41] See the last chapter of this volume.

[42] The lines from the Africa used as a motto for this volume are a prophecy of the Renaissance.

[43] It is very significant of Petrarch's influence that his contemporaries ranked him higher, even as a sonnet-writer, than Dante. See Coluccio de' Salutati's Letters, part ii. p. 57.

[44] Filippo Villani, Vite d'Uomini Illustri Fiorentini, Firenze, 1826, p. 9.

[45] With his own hand Boccaccio transcribed the Divine Comedy, and sent the MS. to Petrarch, who in his reply wrote thus:-'Inseris nominatim hanc hujus officii tui escusationem, quod tibi adolescentulo primus studiorum dux, prima fax fuerit.' Baldelli, p. 133. The enthusiasm of Boccaccio for Dante contrasts favourably with Petrarch's grudging egotism.

[46] Boccaccio was present at Naples when Petrarch disputed before King Robert for his title to the poet's crown (Gen. Deor. xiv. 22); but he first became intimate with him as a friend during Petrarch's visit to Florence in 1350.

[47] Salutato, writing to Francesco da Brossano, describes his conversations with Boccaccio thus:-'Nihil aliud quam de Francisco (i.e. Petrarcha) conferebamus. In cujus laudationem adeo libenter sermones usurpabat, ut nihil avidius nihilque copiosius enarraret. Et eo magis quia tali orationis generi me prospiciebat intentum. Sufficiebat enim nobis Petrarcha solus, et omni posteritati sufficiet in moralitate sermonis, in eloquenti? soliditate atque dulcedine, in lepore prosarum et in concinnitate metrorum.' Epist. Fam. p. 45.

[48] Epist. Rer. Sen., lib. xi. 9, p. 887; lib. vi. 1, p. 806; lib. v. 4, p. 801.

[49] Petrarch's letter to Ugone di San Severino, Epist. Rer. Sen. lib. xi. 9, p. 887, deserves to be read, since it proves that Italian scholars despaired at this time of gaining Greek learning from Constantinople. They were rather inclined to seek it in Calabria. 'Gr?ciam, ut olim ditissimam, sic nunc omnis longe inopem disciplin? ... quod desperat apud Gr?cos, non diffidit apud Calabros inveniri posse.'

[50] De Gen. Deor. xv. 6, 7.

[51] Comento sopra Dante, Opp. Volg. vol. x. p. 127. After allowing for the difficulty of writing Greek, pronounced by an Italian, in Italian letters, and also for the errors of the copyist and printer, it is clear that a Greek scholar who thought Melpomene was one 'who gives fixity to meditation,' Thalia one 'who plants the capacity of growth,' Polyhymnia she 'who strengthens and expands memory,' Erato 'the discoverer of similarity,' and Terpsichore 'delightful instruction,' was on a comically wrong track.

[52] See above, p. 53, note 4.

[53] Vita del Boccaccio, p. 264. The autograph was probably burned with other books of Boccaccio, and some of the unintelligible passages in the above quotation may be due to the ignorance of the copyist.

[54] De Genealogia Deorum; De Casibus Virorum ac Feminarum Illustrium; De Claris Muliebribus; De Montibus, Silvis, Fontibus, &c.

[55] 'La teologia e la poesia quasi una cosa si possono dire ... la teologia niuna altra cosa è che una poesia d'Iddio.' Vita di Dante, p. 59. Cf. Comento sopra Dante, loc. cit. p. 45. The explanation of the Muses referred to above is governed by the same determination to find philosophy in poetry.

[56] See Petrarch's letter 'De quibusdam fictionibus Virgilii.' Ep. Rer. Sen. lib. iv. 4, p. 785.

[57] See the privilege granted to Petrarch by the Roman senator in 1343, Petr. Opp. tom. iii. p. 6.

[58] De Sade, in his Memoirs of Petrarch, gives an interesting account of this romantic episode in his life. See too Petrarch, Epist. Rer. Sen. lib. v. 6 and 7, pp. 802-806.

[59] Epist. Rer. Sen. lib. xiv. 14, p. 942.

[60] Epist. sine titulo, xviii. p. 732.

[61] See the exhaustive work of Renan, Averroès et l'Averro?sme.

[62] See Manetti's Life, Mur. xx. col. 531. Other references will be found in Vespasiano's Lives. Boccaccio's library was preserved in this convent.

[63] Poggii Opera, p. 271.

[64] Salutato's familiar letters, Lini Coluci Pieri Salutati Epistolarum Pars Secunda, Florenti?, MDCCXXXXI., are a valuable source of information respecting scholarship at the close of the fourteenth century. See especially his letter to Benvenuto da Imola on the death of Petrarch (p. 32), his letter to the same about Petrarch's Africa (p. 41), another letter about the preservation of the Africa (p. 79), a letter to Petrarch's nephew Francesco da Brossano on the death of Boccaccio (p. 44), and a letter to a certain Comes Magnificus on the literary and philosophical genius of Petrarch (p. 49).

[65] 'Galeacius Mediolanensium Princeps crebro auditus est dicere non tam sibi mille Florentinorum equites quam Colucii scripta nocere.' Pii Secundi Europ? Commentarii, p. 454.

[66] 'Costui fu de' migliori dittatori di pistole al mondo, perocchè molti quando ne potevano avere, ne toglieano copie; si piaceano a tutti gl'intendenti: e nelle corte di Re e di signori del mondo, e anchora de' cherici era di lui in questa arte maggiore fama che di alcuno altro uomo.' From the Chronicle of Luca da Scarparia. These epistles were collected and printed by Josephus Rigaccius, Bibliopola Florentinus Celeberrimus, in 1741. Among the letters written for the Signory of Florence, that of congratulation to Gian Galeazzo Visconti on his murder of Bernabo (p. 16), that to the French Cardinals (p. 18), to Sir John Hawkwood, or Domino Joanni Aucud (p. 107), to the Marquis of Moravia (p. 110), and to the Romans (p. 141) deserve to be read.

[67] See the letter of Lionardo Bruni, quoted in Lini Coluci Pieri Salutati Epistol?, p. xv. Coluccio's own letter recommending Lionardo to Innocent VII., ib. p. 5, and his numerous familiar letters to Poggio, ib. pp. 13, 173, &c.

[68] 'Certe cogitabam revidere librum, et si quid, ut scribis, vel absonum, vel contra metrorum regulam intolerabile deprehendissem, curiosius elimare et sicut Naso finxit in ?neida, singulos libros paucis versiculis quasi in argumenti formam brevissime resumere, et exinde pluribus sumptis exemplis, et per me ipsum correctis et diligenter revisis, unum ad Bononiense gymnasium, unum Parisiis, unum in Angliam cum mea epistola de libri laudibus destinare, et unum in Florentia ponere in loco celebri,' &c. Epistol?, part ii. p. 80.

[69] Among the other laureati who filled the post of Florentine Chancellor may be mentioned Dante's tutor, Brunetto Latini, Lionardo Bruni, Carlo Marsuppini, Poggio Bracciolini, and Benedetto Accolti, of whom more hereafter.

[70] Vite d'Uomini Illustri, p. 271.

[71] Cf. the letter quoted by Voigt (p. 130) to Giacomo da Scarparia, which shows Coluccio's enthusiasm for Greek.

[72] Mur. xix. 920.

[73] Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, vol. iv. p. 42 et seq., vol. v. p. 60 et seq. Large quarto, Modena, 1787.

[74] See Muratori, vol. viii. 15, 75, 372. Matteo Villani, lib. i. cap. 8.

[75] 'Hoc anno translatum est Studium Scholarium de Bononia Paduam.' Mur. viii. 372.

[76] They were called 'Exemplatores.' See Tiraboschi, vol. iv. lib. i cap. 2.

[77] Muratori, vii. p. 997. Amari, Storia dei Mussulmani di Sicilia, vol. iii. p. 706.

[78] See Von Reumont, Lorenzo de' Medici, vol. i. p. 521.

[79] In 1320 there were at least 15,000 students in Bologna.

[80] See Sismondi, vol. iii. p. 349.

[81] Lib. i. cap. 8.

[82] 'Volendo attrarre gente alla nostra città, e dilatarla in onore, e dare materia a' suoi cittadini d'essere scienziati e virtudiosi.'

[83] Cf. Corio, p. 290. He gives the names of the professors who attended at the funeral of Gian Galeazzo Visconti.

[84] Mur. xxii. 990.

[85] See Voigt, p. 447.

[86] Many of the earliest printed editions of the Latin poets give an exact notion of what such lectures must have been. The text is embedded in an all-embracing commentary.

[87] Cf. Villani's Statistics of Florence, and Corio's of Milan.

[88] For humorous but vivid pictures of a professor's lecture-room, see the macaronic poems of Odassi and Fossa quoted by me in vol. v. of this work.

[89] See Cantù, Storia della Letteratura Italiana, p. 105, note.

[90] 'Hodie Scriptores non sunt Scriptores sed Pictores,' quoted by Tiraboschi, vol. iv. lib. i. cap. 4.

[91] See Cantù, loc. cit. p. 104.

[92] See Comparetti, vol. i. p. 114.

[93] In Milan, in the fourteenth century, when the population was estimated at about 200,000, the town could boast of only fifty copyists. Tirab. loc. cit. cap. 4.

[94] De Remediis utriusque Fortun?, lib. i. dial. 43, p. 42. The passage condensed above is so valuable for a right understanding of the humanistic feeling about manuscripts that I shall transcribe portions of the original:-'Libri innumerabiles sunt mihi. Et errores innumeri, quidam ab impiis, alii ab indoctis editi. Illi quidem religioni ac pietati et divinis literis, hi natur? ac justiti? moribusque et liberalibus disciplinis seu histori? rerumque gestarum fidei, omnes autem vero adversi; inque omnibus, et pr?sertim primis ubi majoribus agitur de rebus, et vera falsis immixta sunt, perdifficilis ac periculosa discretio est ... scriptorum insciti? inerti?que, corrumpenti omnia miscentique ... ignavissima ?tas h?c culin? solicita, literarum negligens, et coquos examinans non scriptores. Quisquis itaque pingere aliquid in membranis, manuque calamum versare didicerit, scriptor habebitur, doctrin? omnis ignarus, expers ingenii, artis egens ... nunc confusis exemplaribus et exemplis, unum scribere polliciti, sic aliud scribunt ut quod ipse dictaveris, non agnoscas ... accedunt et scriptores nulla frenati lege, nullo probati examine, nullo judicio electi; non fabris, non agricolis, non textoribus, non ulli fere artium tanta licentia est, cum sit in aliis leve periculum, in hac grave; sine delectu tamen scribendum ruunt omnes, et cuncta vastantibus certa sunt pretia.'

[95] 'Commentary on the Divine Comedy,' ap. Muratori, Antiq. Ital. vol. i. p. 1296.

[96] Mur. xx. 160.

[97] Petrarch in 1350 found a bad copy at Florence. Poggio describes it thus:-'Is vero apud nos antea, Italos dico, ita laceratus erat, ita circumcisus culpa, ut opinor, temporum, ut nulla forma, nullus habitus hominis in eo recognosceretur.'

[98] Mur. xx. 169. Cf. the Elegy of Landino quoted in the notes to Roscoe's Lorenzo, p. 388.

[99] Voigt, p. 138.

[100] See Voigt, p. 139, for this story.

[101] See the emphatic language about Palla degli Strozzi, Cosimo de' Medici, and Niccolo de' Niccoli, in Vespasiano's Lives. Islam, moreover, as is proved by Pletho's Life, was at that period more erudite than Hellas.

[102] I have touched upon this subject elsewhere. See Studies of Greek Poets, second series, pp. 304-307. In order to form a conception of the utter decline of Byzantine learning after Photius, it is needful to read the passages in Petrarch's letters, where even Calabria is compared favourably with Constantinople. In a state of ignorance so absolute as he describes, it is possible that treasures existed unknown to professed students, and therefore undiscovered by Filelfo and his fellow-workers. The testimony of Demetrius Chalcondylas, quoted by Didot, Alde Manuce, p. xiv., goes to show that the Greeks attributed their losses in large measure to the malice of the priests.

[103] The details of Virgil's romance occupy the first half of Comparetti's second volume on Virgil in the Middle Ages. For the English version of this legend see Thoms.

[104] See above, pp. 38-49.

[105] Gibbon, ch. lxxi.

[106] Vol. I., Age of the Despots, p. 200.

[107] Purg. xxxiii. 58.

[108] Stefano Porcari, for example. See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, pp. 296, 302.

[109] De Capessenda Libertate, Hortatoria, p. 535.

[110] See Petrarch's Epistle to the Roman People, p. 712.

[111] Epist. Fam. lib. ii. 14, p. 605; lib. vi. 2, p. 657.

[112] 'Qui enim hodie magis ignari rerum Romanarum sunt, quam Romani Cives? Invitus dico, nusquam minus Roma cognoscitur quam Rom?.' Epist. Fam. lib. ii. 14, p. 658.

[113] 'Quis enim dubitare potest, quin illico surrectura sit si c?perit se Roma cognoscere?' Ibid.

[114] 'Vi vel senio collapsa palatia, qu? quondam ingentes tenuere viri, diruptos arcus triumphales ... indignum de vestris marmoreis columnis, de liminibus templorum, ad qu? nuper ex toto orbe concursus devotissimus fiebat, de imaginibus sepulchrorum, sub quibus patrum vestrorum venerabilis cinis erat, ut reliquas sileam, desidiosa Neapolis adornatur.' Ibid. p. 536.

[115]

'Quanta quod integr? fuit olim gloria Rom?,

Reliqui? testantur adhuc, quas longior ?tas

Frangere non valuit, non vis, aut ira cruenti

Hostis, ab egregiis franguntur civibus heu, heu.'

Petr. Epist. Metr. lib. ii. p. 98.

[116] It delights me to contemplate thy ruins, Rome, the witness amid desolation to thy pristine grandeur. But thy people burn thy marbles for lime, and three centuries of this sacrilege will destroy all sign of thy nobleness.' Compare a letter from Alberto degli Alberti to Giovanni de' Medici, quoted by Fabroni, Cosmi Vita, Adnot. 86. The real pride of Rome was still her ruins. Nicolo and Ugo da Este journeyed in 1396 to Rome, 'per vedere quelle magnificenze antiche che al presente si possono vedere in Roma.' Murat. xxiv. 845.

[117] My references are made to the Paris edition of 1723. The first book is sometimes cited under the title of Urbis Rom? Descriptio.

[118] 'Juxta viam Appiam, ad secundum lapidem, integrum vidi sepulchrum L. C?cili? Metell?, opus egregium, et id ipsum tot s?culis intactum, ad calcem postea majori ex parte exterminatum' (p. 19). 'Capitolio contigua forum versus superest porticus ?dis Concordi?, quam, cum primum ad urbem accessi, vidi fere integram, opere marmoreo admodum specioso; Romani postmodum, ad calcem ?dem totam et portic?s partem, disjectis columnis, sunt demoliti.' Ibid.

[119] Pp. 8, 9.

[120] De Pacificanda Italia, Ad Carolum Quartum, p. 531.

[121] In the Dittamondo, about 1360.

[122] Such, for example, as Boccaccio's description of the ruins of Bai? in the Fiammetta, Sannazzaro's lines on the ruins of Cum?, ?neas Sylvius Piccolomini's notes on ancient sites in Italy.

[123] Filippo Maria Visconti is said to have denounced him as an impostor. Ambrogio Traversari mentions his coins and gems with mistrust. Poggio describes him as a conceited fellow with no claim to erudition. On the other hand, he gained the confidence of Eugenius IV., and received the panegyrics of Filelfo, Barbaro, Bruni, and others. See Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. i. cap. 5.

[124] In the place just cited. The temptation, at this epoch of discovery, when criticism was at a low ebb, and curiosity was frantic, to pass off forgeries upon the learned world must have been very great. The most curious example of this literary deception is afforded by Annius of Viterbo, who, in 1498, published seventeen books of spurious histories, pretending to be the lost works of Manetho, Berosus, Fabius Pictor, Archilochus, Cato, &c. Whether he was himself an impostor or a dupe is doubtful. A few of his contemporaries denounced the histories as patent fabrications. The majority accepted them as genuine. Their worthlessness has long been undisputed. See Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. iii. cap. 1.

[125] Vespasiano, p. 272.

[126] Vespasiano, p. 273.

[127] See Voigt, p. 202.

[128] Vespasiano, p. 275.

[129] Ibid. p. 276.

[130] See Von Reumont, vol. i. pp. 147-153, for the cruel treatment of the Albizzi and other leading citizens.

[131] See Vespasiano, pp. 283-287.

[132] Manetti's obligations to the commune were raised by arbitrary impositions to the enormous sum of 135,000 golden florins. He was broken in his trade and forced to live on charity in exile.

[133] See Von Reumont, vol. ii. p. 175.

[134] Vespasiano, p. 257.

[135] Vespasiano, p. 257.

[136] Ibid. p. 252. Cosimo ordered his clerks to honour all drafts presented with the signature of one of the chief brethren of the convent. 'Aveva ordinato al banco, che tutti i danari, che gli fussino tratti per polizza d'uno religioso de primi del convento, gli pagasse, e mettessegli a suo conto, e fussino che somma si volessino.'

[137] Vespasiano, pp. 264, 475.

[138] Vespasiano, pp. 29, 264.

[139] Ibid. pp. 34, 265.

[140] See Vespasiano's Life of Nicholas V. p. 26.

[141] Vita di Cosimo, p. 254.

[142] See Von Reumont, vol. i. p. 578.

[143] Vita di Cosimo, p. 266.

[144] Condensed from Vespasiano, p. 258.

[145] What follows I have based on Vespasiano's Life of Niccolo. Poggio's Funeral Oration, and his letter to Carlo Aretino on the death of his friend Niccolo, are to the same effect. Poggii Opera, pp. 270, 342.

[146] Vespasiano, p. 471. 'Le scriveva di sua mano o di lettera corsiva o formata, che dell'una lettera e dell'altra era bellissimo scrittore.'

[147] Ibid. p. 473.

[148] See a letter of Ambrogio Traversari, quoted by Voigt, p. 155.

[149] Vespasiano, p. 476. Poggio, p. 271.

[150] Vespasiano, pp. 473, 478.

[151] Ibid. p. 478. Poggio, p. 343.

[152] Vespasiano, p. 477.

[153] Ibid. p. 479.

[154] Ibid. p. 474.

[155] Muratori, xix. p. 917. 'Erat in ipso cubiculo picta Francisci Petrarch? imago, quam ego quotidie aspiciens, incredibili ardore studiorum ejus incendebar.'

[156] See above, pp. 77, 80.

[157] See Vespasiano, p. 436.

[158] See Vol. I., Age of Despots, pp. 216-218.

[159] These last were then thought genuine.

[160] Vespasiano, p. 436.

[161] Ibid. Vita di Manetti, p. 452. Manetti was himself a prior at this time.

[162] Vita di Carlo d'Arezzo, p. 440.

[163] See Tiraboschi, tom. vi. p. 1094.

[164] See Vespasiano, p. 500. Tiraboschi, vol. vi. p. 678. App. iii. to vol. v. of this work.

[165] The sources for Manetti's Life are Vespasiano and an anonymous Latin biography in Muratori. Besides the small Life of Vespasiano in his Vite d'Uomini Illustri, I have had recourse to his Comentario della Vita di Gianozo Manetti, Turin, 1862.

[166] 'Tenne in casa dua Greci et uno Ebreo che s'era fatto Cristiano, et non voleva che il Greco parlasse con lui se non in greco, et il simile il Ebreo in ebreo.'-Comentario, p. 11.

[167] 'Se ignuna cosa difficile o cura disperata, la davano a Messer Gianozo.'-Ibid. p. 22.

[168] Vita di Gianozo Manetti, p. 462. Compare Burckhardt, p. 182. There is another story, told in the Comentario, of Manetti's speaking before Alfonso at Naples. The King remained so quiet that he did not even brush the flies from his face. P. 30.

[169] Muratori, vol. xx.

[170] For Pius II.'s reputation see Burckhardt, p. 182.

[171] Vespasiano, p. 465. Muratori, xx. 600.

[172] Alfonso gave him a pension of 900 scudi. He wrote a history of his life and deeds.

[173] Niccolo de' Niccoli, it must be remembered, was not a Grecian. Ambrogio used to insert the Greek words into his transcripts of Latin codices.

[174] See the emphatic words of Poliziano, quoted by Voigt, p. 189, on the revival of extinct Hellenism by the Florentines, and on their fluent command of the Attic idiom.

[175] See the curious passage in the Vita di Eugenio IV., Papa, p. 14.

[176] I owe the greater part of the facts presented in this sketch of Gemistos to Fritz Schultze's Geschichte der Philosophie der Renaissance, vol. i.

[177] See Schultze, p. 53.

[178] See Schultze, p. 77, note.

[179] Ibid. p. 107.

[180] Γεμιστ?? and γεμ?ζω, Πλ?θων and πλ?θω. Both mean to be full. Plato, however, is said to have been called Πλ?των, because of his broad shoulders or his breadth of eloquence.

[181] See the translation of Plotinus by Ficino, quoted by Schultze, p. 76: 'Magnus Cosmus, Senat?s consulto patri? pater, quo tempore concilium inter Gr?cos atque Latinos sub Eugenio pontifice Florenti? tractabatur, philosophum Gr?cum nomine Gemistum, cognomine Plethonem quasi Platonem alterum, de mysteriis Platonicis disputantem frequenter audivit. E cujus ore ferventi sic afflatus est protinus, sic animatus, ut inde Academiam quandam alta mente conceperit, hanc opportuno primum tempore pariturus.'

[182] Schultze, p. 92. His secular name was Georgios Scholarios.

[183] See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, pp. 134, 135, and Sketches in Italy and Greece, article 'Rimini.'

[184] Vita di Palla di Noferi Strozzi, p. 284.

[185] See Vespasiano, p. 486.

[186] See long lists in Tiraboschi, vol. vi. pp. 812, 822-837, of foreign and Italian Grecians.

[187] See Facius, De Viris Illustribus, p. 3, quoted by Voigt, p. 278.

[188] See Vespasiano, p. 6.

[189] He was born at Forli in 1388, and died in 1463, the father of five sons.

[190] So Vespasiano relates the cause of their removal from Pisa. P. 20.

[191] P. 23.

[192] Vespasiano, p. 27.

[193] Ibid. p. 33.

[194] Vespasiano, pp. 25, 27.

[195] Ibid. p. 38.

[196] The latter was intended for Alfonso of Naples.

[197] Tiraboschi is the authority for these details.

[198] The more complete notices which Valla and Decembrio deserve will be given in the history of scholarship at Naples and at Milan.

[199] Of his debt to Niccolo de' Niccoli Poggio speaks with great warmth of feeling in a letter on his death addressed to Carlo Aretino: 'Quem enim patrem habui cui plus debuerim quam Nicolao? Hic mihi parens ab adolescentia, hic postmodum amicus, hic studiorum meorum adjutor atque hortator fuit, hic consilio, libris, opibus semper me ut filium et amicum fovit atque adjuvit.'-Poggii Opera, Basile?, ex ?dibus Henrici Petri, MDXXXVIII. p. 342. To this edition of Poggio's works my future references are made.

[200] 'Stabat impavidus, intrepidus, mortem non contemnens solum sed appetens ut alterum Catonem dixeris.'-Opp. Omnia, p. 301. This most interesting letter, addressed to Lionardo Bruni, is translated by Shepherd, Life of Poggio Bracciolini, pp. 78-88.

[201] Opera Omnia, p. 297. See Shepherd, pp. 67-76, for a translation of this letter to Niccolo de' Niccoli.

[202] Cardinal Beaufort had invited him to England.

[203] Poggi Florentini Facetiarum Libellus Unicus, Londini, 1798, vol. i. p. 282.

[204] 'Mendaciorum veluti officina' is Poggio's own explanation of the phrase.

[205] 'Ibi parcebatur nemini, in lacessendo ea qu? non probabantur a nobis.'

[206] Life of Poggio, p. 423.

[207] Opera Omnia, pp. 155-164.

[208] P. 422.

[209] Ibid. p. 423.

[210] See the correspondence between Filippo Maria and Poggio, Opp. pp. 333-358. Letter to Cosimo, p. 339.

[211] 'The World, the Stammering Simpleton, the Execrable Poet, and the Nobody.' See Auree Francisci Philelphi Poete Oratorisque Celeberrimi Satyre. Paris, 1508. Passim.

[212] Opp. Omn. pp. 164-187. The first invective is the most venomous, and deserves to be read in the original. The last, entitled 'Invectiva Excusatoria et Reconciliatoria,' is amusing from its tone of sulky and sated exhaustion.

[213] Life of Poggio, pp. 263-272, 354. Vita di Filelfo.

[214] The language of the arena was used by these literary combatants. Thus Valla, in the exordium of his Antidote, describes his weapon of attack in this sentence:-'H?c est mea fusana, quandoquidem gladiator a gladiatore fieri cogor, et ea duplex et utraque tridens,' p. 9.

[215] See Rosmini, Vita di Guarino da Verona, vol. ii. p. 96.

[216] Poggii Opera, p. 365.

[217] 'Adolescens quidam auditor meus,' says Valla in the Antidotum, p. 2. The story is told at length, p. 151. I quote from the Cologne edition of 1527: 'Laurentii Vall? viri clarissimi in Pogium Florentinum antidoti libri quatuor: in eundem alii duo libelli in dialogo conscripti.'

[218] See Shepherd's Poggio, pp. 470, 471, for specimens of the scurrility on both sides.

[219] The invectives against Valla fill from p. 188 to p. 251 of Poggio's collected works. Part of them is devoted to a defence of his own Latinity, and to a critique of Valla's Eleganti?. But by far the larger part consists of vehement incriminations. Heresy, theft, lying, forgery, cowardice, filthy living of the most odious description, drunkenness, and insane vanity-such are the accusations, supported with a terrible array of apparent evidence. As in the case of Filelfo, Poggio does not spare his antagonist's father and mother, but heaps the vilest abuse upon everyone connected with him. Valla's Antidote is written in a more tempered spirit and a purer Latin style.

[220] Shepherd, Life of Poggio, p. 474.

[221] Ambrogio Traversari, General of the Camaldolese Order, called her 'fidelissima f?mina.'

[222] Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. ii. cap. 2, sect. 15.

[223] Vespasiano, p. 146.

[224] See Platina's panegyric, quoted by Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. i. cap. 3, 22. Platina and Perotti were among his Italian protégés.

[225] A striking instance of the want of literary enthusiasm at Venice.

[226] He first came to Italy in 1430, professed Greek at Ferrara from 1441 to 1450, and died in Campania about 1478. He translated many works of Aristotle. His own book on Grammar was printed by Aldus in 1495.

[227] Raffaello Volaterrano, quoted by Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. iii. cap. 2, 16.

[228] See Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. iii. cap. 2, 17.

[229] See my Sketches in Italy and Greece, article 'Perugia.'

[230] Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. iii. cap. 5, 46.

[231] I may refer to Petrarch's Letters passim, and to the solemn peroration of the Africa.

[232] See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, pp. 445, 446.

[233] Vita di Alfonso, p. 59. Vita di Manetti, p. 451.

[234] See Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. i. cap. 2, 17.

[235] Pontano, De Principe, and Panormita, De Dictis et Factis Alphonsi Regis, furnish these anecdotes.

[236] The MS. of Livy referred to above is now in the library at Holkham; see Roscoe's Lorenzo, p. 389.

[237] Published at Paris in 1791 among Quinque illustrium Poetarum Lusus in Venerem, and again at Coburg in 1824, with annotations by F.G. Forberg.

[238] A man of about sixty-three, and father of twelve legitimate children.

[239] Poggii Opera, pp. 349-354.

[240] Poggio, while professing to condemn the scandals of these poems, writes thus:-'Delectatus sum mehercle varietate rerum et elegantia versuum, simulque admiratus sum res adeo impudicas, adeo ineptas, tam venuste, tam composite, a te dici, atque ita multa exprimi turpiuscula ut non enarrari sed agi videantur, nec ficta a te jocandi causa, ut existimo, sed acta existimari possint.'-Poggii Opera, p. 349.

[241] Especially Bernardino da Siena, Roberto da Lecce, and Alberto da Sarteano. See the note to p. 353 of Vol. I., Age of the Despots.

[242] See Vespasiano, Vita di Giuliano Cesarini, p. 134.

[243] A curious letter from Guarino to Beccadelli (Rosmini's Vita di Guarino, vol. ii. p. 44, and notes, p. 171) describes the enthusiastic reception given in public to an impostor who pretended to be the author of Hermaphroditus.

[244] De Dictis et Factis Alphonsi Regis Memorabilibus. ?neas Sylvius wrote a commentary on this work, in the preface to which he says, 'Legere potui, quod feci, corrigere vero non potui; nam quid est quod manu tua emissum correctione indigeat?'-Opp. Omnia, p. 472. This proves Beccadelli's reputation as a stylist.

[245] What the biographers, especially Vespasiano, relate of Alfonso's ceremonious piety and love of theological reading makes the contrast between him and his Court poet truly astounding.

[246]

'Hic f?ces varias Veneris moresque profanos,

Quos natura fugit, me docuisse pudet.'

[247] 'Romam, in qua natus sum ... ego sum ortus Rom? oriundus a Placentia.'

[248] The na?ve surprise with which Vespasiano records the fact of virginity (see especially the Lives of Ambrogio Traversari and the Cardinal Portogallo) shows how rare the virtue was, and what mysterious honour it conferred upon men who were reputed to be chaste.

[249] Poggio and Fazio are the authorities for this incident.

[250] De falso Credita et Ementita Constantini Donatione.

[251] It is printed in Muratori, vol. xx.

[252] The protection extended to Manetti and to Filelfo ought, however, to be here mentioned. Nearly all the contemporary scholars of Italy dedicated works to Alfonso.

[253] Above, p. 78.

[254] 'Itaque Chrysoloras, m?rore confectus, compulsus precibus, malo coactus, filiam tibi nuptui dedit a te corruptam, qu? si extitisset integra, ne pilum quidem tibi abrasum ab illius natibus ostendisset. An tu illam unquam duxisses uxorem si virginitatem per te servare potuisset? Tibi pater illam dedisset profugo, ignobili, impuro? Primariis su? civitatis viris servabatur virgo, non tibi, insuls? pecudi et asello bipedali, quem ille domi alebat tanquam canem aliquem solent senio et ?tate confectum.'-Poggii Opp. p. 167. This is just one of the tales with which the invectives of that day abound, and with which it is almost impossible to deal. It may be true; for certainly Filelfo, by his immorality and grossness in after-life, justified the worst calumnies that his enemies could invent. Yet there is little but Poggio's word to prove it, while Rosmini has shown that Filelfo's position at Byzantium was very different from what his foe suggests. Tiraboschi accepts the charge as 'not proven;' but he clearly leans in private against Filelfo, moved by the following passage from a letter of Ambrogio Traversari:-'Nuper a Guarino accepi litteras, quibus vehementer in fortunam invehitur quod filiam Joannis Chrysolor? clarissimi viri is acceperit, exterus, qui quantum libet homo bono ingenio, longe tamen illis nuptiis impar esset, queriturque substomachans uxorem Chrysolor? venalem habuisse pudicitiam, m?chumque ante habuisse quam socerum.' Vol. vi. lib. iii. cap. v. 21. All that can be said now is that Filelfo's own morality and the corruption of Byzantine society render a story believed by Guarino and Traversari, and openly told by Poggio, not improbable.

[255] This retinue shows that Filelfo was at least able to support a large household.

[256] The catalogue of his library, communicated by him in a letter to Ambrogio Traversari, shows so clearly what the most indefatigable student and omnivorous reader of the age, to whom all the museums and bookshops of Byzantium must have been open, could then collect, that I will transcribe it:-'Qui mihi nostri in Italiam libri gesti sunt, horum nomina ad te scribo: alios autem nonnullos per primas ex Byzantio Venetorum naves opperior. Hi autem sunt Plotinus, ?lianus, Aristides, Dionysius Halicarnasseus, Strabo Geographus, Hermogenes, Aristotelis Rhetorice, Dionysius Halicarnasseus de Numeris et Characteribus, Herodotus, Dio Chrysostomus, Appollonius Perg?us, Thucydides, Plutarchi Moralia, Proclus in Platonem, Philo Jud?us, Ethica Aristotelis, Ejus magna Moralia et Eudemia, et ?conomica et Politica, qu?dam Theophrasti Opuscula, Homeri Ilias, Odyssea, Philostrati de Vita Appollonii, Orationes Libanii, et aliqui Sermones Luciani, Pindarus, Aratus, Euripidis Trag?di? Septem, Theocritus, Hesiodus, Suidas, Phalaridis, Hippocratis, Platonis et multorum ex veteribus Philosophis Epistol?, Demosthenes, ?schinis Orationes et Epistol?, Pleraque Xenophontis Opera, Una Lysi? Oratio, Orphei Argonautica et Hymni, Callimachus, Aristoteles de Historiis Animalium, Physica, et Metaphysica, et de Anima, de Partibus Animalium, et alia qu?dam, Polybius, Nonnulli Sermones Chrysostomi, Dionysiaca, et alii Poet? plurimi. Habes qui mihi sint, et his utere ?que ac tuis.'

[257] 'Unum Philelphus audet affirmare, vel insaniente Candido, neminem esse hac tempestate, nec fuisse unquam apud Latinos, quantum constat ex omni hominum memoria, qui pr?ter se unum idem unus tenuerit exercuitque et Gr?cam pariter et Latinam orationem in omni dicendi genere et prosa et versu. Tu si quidem habeas alterum, memora. Quid taces, homo miserrime?' Letter to Piero Candido Decembrio. Cf. what P.C. Decembrio wrote to Poggio in 1453:-'Dixit (i.e. Philelphus) enim neminem litteras scire pr?ter ipsum, alios semilatinos et semigr?cos esse, se autem principatum inter stultos obtinere.' Rosmini, vol. iii. p. 150.

[258]

'Quod si Virgilius superat me carminis ullis

Laudibus, orator ille ego sum melior.

Sin Tulli eloquio pr?stat facundia nostro,

Versibus ille meis cedit ubique minor.

Adde quod et lingua possum h?c pr?stare Pelasga

Et Latia. Talem quem mihi des alium?'

Lib. ix., De Jocis et Seriis. Elegy to Alessandro Sforza. Reported by Rosmini, vol. iii. p. 149. One specimen of these boasts may stand for thousands.

[259] The invitation came from Niccoli, Lionardo Bruni, Ambrogio Traversari, and Palla Strozzi.

[260] Quoted by Cantù, p. 128.

[261] He stayed there from 1429 till the autumn of 1434.

[262] Engagement renewed October 17, 1431, for two years, with stipend of 350 sequins; again, in 1433, with stipend of 450 sequins.

[263] See above, pp. 90, 91.

[264] See Rosmini, vol. i. pp. 43, 48.

[265] Ibid. vol. i. p. 83, for the trial, torture, and confession of this bravo.

[266] The original source of information concerning Filelfo's quarrels with the Florentines is his Satires, divided into ten books or decades, each consisting of ten satires or hecatostich? of one hundred verses each. In the copy of this book, printed at Paris, 1508, by Robert and John Gourmont, these virulent libels are called 'Divinum Francisci Philelphi Poet? Christiani Satyrarum Opus.' As their motto the publishers give these sentences:-'Finis laus Deo, Spes mea Jesus.' For the abuse of the Medicean circle see Dec. i. Hec. 5; Dec. i. Hec. 6; Dec. ii. Hec. 1, 3, 7; Dec. iii. Hec. 10; Dec. vi. 10; Dec. viii. 5. For Filelfo's attack on Cosimo during his imprisonment, see Dec. iv. Hec. 1. For his invective against Cosimo on his return from exile, see Dec. iv. Hec. 9. For an appeal to Filippo Maria Visconti against Cosimo, see Dec. v. Hec. 1. For a similar appeal to Eugenius IV., see Dec. v. Hec. 2. For the episode of the assassin Filippo, see Dec. v. Hec. 6. A political attack on Cosimo addressed to Rinaldo Albizzi is contained in Dec. v. Hec. 8. A furious denunciation of Cosimo's tyranny, in Dec. v. Hec. 9. Palla degli Strozzi, as an opponent of Cosimo, is praised in Dec. iii. 1; Dec. vi. 4. In Dec. vii. 8, Filelfo promises to moderate his fury. In addition to these sources see the MS. invectives mentioned in Rosmini, vol. i. p. 47.

[267] His professorial stipend was soon raised from 500 to 700 golden florins.

[268] Vespasiano says that the concourse of people to Carlo Aretino's lectures was the first cause of Filelfo's feuds at Florence.

[269] Here are the dates of some of these displays:-

1440. Funeral oration on Stefano Federigo Todeschini.

1441. Epithalamial on the Marriage of Giovanni Marliani.

1442. Discourse on Duties of a Magistrate.

1446. Panegyric of Filippo Maria Visconti, and oration on the Election of Jacopo Borromeo to the See of Pavia.

1450. Oration of Welcome to Francesco Sforza.

1455. Epithalamial on the Marriage of Tristano Sforza to Beatrice d'Este.

1458. Epithalamials for Antonio Crivelli and Teodoro Piatti.

1459. Oration to Pius II. on his Crusade.

1460. Oration on the Election of the Bishop of Como.

1464. Funeral oration for the Senator Filippo Borromeo.

1466. Ditto for Francesco Sforza.

It is probable that all of these were not recited; but all were conceived in the lumbering and pedantic style that passed for eloquence at that period. With regard to rewards received on these occasions, note the gift of a silver basin from Jacopo Antonio Marcello in return for a consolatory epistle. Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 127. Cf. p. 197.

[270] The Satires, collected into ten decades, each satire consisting of 100 lines, were dedicated to Alfonso of Naples in 1451. Printed at Milan, 1446. The Odes, entitled De Seriis et Jocis, were finished in 1465, and dedicated partly to Malatesta Novello of Cesena, partly to Alessandro Sforza. There were ten books, each book containing 1,000 lines. Never printed. Rosmini, who inspected the MSS., reports that their obscenity exceeds description, and is only equalled by the vulgarity of the author's fancy and the coarseness of his style. In addition to these unpublished Latin poems, Filelfo collected three books of Greek elegies and epigrams, amounting to 2,400 verses. It is significant that he measured his poetry by lines, and trained his jog-trot muse to paces of 100 verses.

[271] The Epistle to Ladislaus of Hungary on his victories over the Turks, for instance.

[272] He had twelve sons and twelve daughters. They did not all live.

[273] A curious sign of current feeling is that Filelfo frequently boasted of being τρι?ρχη?. See Rosmini, i. p. 15, and the verse quoted, ib. p. 113. He mentioned two natural children in his will and had many more. Rosmini, vol. iii. p. 78.

[274] Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 54. It may be remembered that Pietro Aretino hinted he should like to be a cardinal.

[275] As a specimen of Filelfo's Grub Street style of begging, I transcribe the following elegy (Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 285):-

'H?c autem altisone dum carmina celsius effert

Defecisse suo sentit ab ore tubam,

Nam quia magnifici data non est copia nummi

Cogitur huic uti carmine raucidulo.

Quod neque mireris; vocem pretiosa canoram

Esca dat, et potus excitat ingenium.

Ingenium spurco suevit languescere vino,

Humida mugitum reddere rapa solet.'

Francesco Sforza's anxiety to retain Filelfo in his service is expressed in a letter to his treasurer (ib. p. 295):-'Noi per niuno modo el vogliamo perdere, la qual cosa seguirebbe quando gli paresse essere deluso, e non potesse seguitare per manchamento delli dicti 250 fiorini la nobilissima opera per lui in nostra gloria comenzata nè suplire agli altri suoi bisogni.' The tuba and the nobilissima opera both refer to Filelfo's Sforziad.

[276] I may call particular attention to Filelfo's behaviour with regard to Pius II.-the free pension of 200 florins granted (Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 106), the menaces because it is not paid (ib. p. 115), the scurrilous epigrams on the Pope's death (ib. p. 321), the abusive letter addressed to Paul II. (ib. p. 136), the sentence of imprisonment for calumny issued against him and his son Mario (ib. p. 140), the final palinode in which he basely praises the Pope whom he had basely abused (ib. p. 146). The whole series of transactions is disgraceful.

[277] Letter of Gregorio Lollio to the Cardinal of Pavia, reported by Rosmini (vol. ii. p. 147).

[278] The whole poem ran to sixteen books. Therefore, according to Filelfo's art of poetry, the first eight contained 6,400 verses.

[279] See Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 90. The Greek epistle which he sent is printed, ib. p. 305.

[280] He had long since made peace with the Medici.

[281] See the original letters in Rosmini, vol. ii. pp. 411-419.

[282] Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 261, note.

[283] Ib. p. 248.

[284] I cannot allow this mention of Antiquari's name to pass without a note upon his life and services to letters. He was born and educated at Perugia, entered the service of the Papal Legate Battista Savelli as secretary at Bologna, and afterwards received the post of secretary and diplomatic writer to the Sforza family at Milan. The Duke Galeazzo Maria was his first master. At Milan he played the part of an amiable and refined M?cenas, while he carried on a correspondence in Latin-still delightful to read-with Poliziano and all the greatest scholars of his age. His biography, written at some length, with valuable miscellaneous appendices by Vermiglioli, was published at Perugia in 1819.

[285] Pp. 138, 139.

[286] Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. i. p. 704 b.

[287] 'Usque ad mundandam supellectilem qu? sumpto cibo lavare consuerit.'-Rosmini, Vita di Vittorino, p. 38, note.

[288] In 1422 apparently.

[289] Locandiere. Rosmini, vol. i. p. 67.

[290] P. 111.

[291] Sixty poor scholars were taught, fed, clothed, and provided with implements of study at his cost. He also subsidised their families in distress. Rosmini, Vita di Vittorino, pp. 165, 166.

[292] Rosmini, Vita di Vittorino, p. 165. Vespasiano, p. 492, tells a story which illustrates these relations between Vittorino and the Marquis. Cf., too, p. 494.

[293] P. 492.

[294] Vol. I., Age of the Despots, p. 138.

[295] Pp. 249-476.

[296] See Rosmini, p. 183, and Vespasiano, p. 493, for the record of her virtues, her learning, and her refusal to wed the infamous Oddo da Montefeltro.

[297] See his Life by Rosmini, p. 11, for his brilliant reception at Venice.

[298] See the details collected by Rosmini, Vita di Guarino, pp. 79-87.

[299] Timoteo Maffei, quoted by Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. iii. cap. 5, 8.

[300] He carried on literary feuds with Niccolo de' Niccoli, Poggio, Filelfo, and Georgios Trapezuntios.

[301] 'Placidis Aurispa Cam?nis Deditus,' Sat., dec. i. hec. 5. Valla, Antid. in Pogium, p. 7, describes him as 'virum suavissimum et ab omni contentione remotissimum.'

[302] Cf. Tiraboschi, vi. lib. iii. cap. 5, 58.

[303] Vespasiano, pp. 113-117, gives an interesting account of these lettered and warlike princes.

[304] See pp. 94-99.

[305] P. 99.

[306] Vol. I., Age of the Despots, pp. 136-142.

[307] In the register of his death he is described as Vespasiano, Cartolaro.

[308] See Rosmini, Vita di Filelfo, vol. ii. p. 201. 'I have made up my mind to buy some of those codices they are now making without any trouble, and without the pen, but with certain so-called types, and which seem to be the work of a skilled and exact scribe. Tell me, then, at what price are sold the Natural History of Pliny, the three Decades of Livy, and Aulus Gellius.' Letter to Nicodemo Tranchedino, sent from Siena to Rome, dated July 25, 1470.

[309] See this passage from a panegyric quoted by Angelo Mai:-'Tu profecto in hoc nostro deteriori s?culo hebraic?, gr?c? atque latin? linguarum, omnium voluminum dignorum memoratu notitiam, eorumque auctores memori? tradidisti.'-Vite di Uomini Illustri, preface, p. xxiii.

[310] It may be useful to add a skeleton pedigree of the Medici in this place:-

Cosimo, Pater Patri?

Piero, Il Gottoso

Lorenzo Giuliano

Giulio, Clement VII.

Piero, the exile Giovanni, Leo X.

[311] See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, p. 190.

[312] Marsilio Ficino, the son of Cosimo's physician, was born at Figline in 1433.

[313] Thus Ficino's edition of Plotinus, printed at Lorenzo de' Medici's expense, and published one month after his death, bears this notice:-'Magnifici sumptu Laurentii patri? servatoris.'

[314] See, however, Didot's Alde Manuce, p. 4, where Giovanni Acciaiuoli is credited with this generosity.

[315] See Von Reumont, vol. ii. p. 108.

[316] Fine expression was given to this conception of life by Aldus in the dedication to Alberto Pio of vols. ii., iii., iv. of Aristotle:-'Es nam tu mihi optimus testis an potiores Herculis ?rumnas credam, s?vosque labores, et Venere, et c?nis et plumis Sardanapali. Natus nam homo est ad laborem et ad agendum semper aliquid viro dignum, non ad voluptatem qu? belluarum est et pecudum.' The last sentence is a translation of Ulysses' speech in the Inferno-

'Considerate la vostra semenza,

Fatti non foste a viver come bruti,

Ma per seguir virtude e conoscenza.'

Cf. Aldus's preface to Lascaris' Grammar; Renouard, vol. i. p. 7; and again Alde Manuce, p. 143, for similar passages.

[317] Dated Florence, 1485; in the Aldine edition of Poliziano's Letters, book ix.

[318] In the introduction to Pico's Apologia may be read the account he gives of the codex of the pseudo-Esdras purchased by him.

[319] Poliziano's Greek epigram addressed to Pico on this matter may be quoted from the Carmina Quinque Poetarum, p. 412:-

κα? το?τ' ?στρολ?γοι? ?πιμ?μφομαι ?ερολ?σχαι?,

?ττι σοφου? Π?κου μοι φθον?ου?' ??ρου?.

κα? γ?ρ ? ?νδυκ?ω? το?των τ?ν λ?ρον ?λ?γχων

μουν?ξει ?ν ?γρ? δηρ?ν ?κ?? π?λεω?.

Π?κε τ? σοι κα? το?τοι?? ο? σ' ?π?οικεν ?γ?ρται?

?ντ?ραι τ?ν σ?ν ε?τυχ?α γραφ?δα.

[320] Disputationum Camaldulensium lib. iv., dedicated to Frederick of Urbino.

[321] The legend of the foundation of this Order is well known through Sacchi's picture in the Vatican.

[322] Born at Colle in 1430.

[323] The following verses on Alessandra are so curious a specimen of Poliziano's Greek style that I transcribe them here (Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum, p. 304):-

ε?ρηχ' ε?ρηχ' ?ν θ?λον, ?ν ?ζ?τεον α?ε?,

?ν ?τουν τ?ν ?ρωθ', ?ν κα? ?νειροπ?λουν?

παρθενικ?ν ?? κ?λλο? ?κ?ρατον, ?? ?γε κ?σμο?

ο?κ ε?η τ?χνη? ?λλ' ?φελο?? φ?σεω??

παρθενικ?ν γλ?ττ?σιν ?π' ?μφοτ?ρ?σι κομ?σαν,

?ξοχον ?ντε χορο?? ?ξοχον ?ντε λ?ρ??

?? περ? σωφροσ?ν? τ' ε?η χαρ?τεσσι θ' ?μ?λλα,

τ? κα? τ? τα?την ?ντιμεθελκομ?ναι?.

ε?ρηκ' ο?δ' ?φελο?, κα? γ?ρ μ?λι? ε?? ?νιαυτ?ν

ο?στρο?ντι φλογερ?? ?στιν ?παξ ?δ?ειν.

The satires on Mabilius (so he called Marullus) are too filthy to be quoted. They may be read in the collection cited above, pp. 275-280.

[324] See Carducci, preface to Le Stanze, Florence, 1863, and Isidoro del Lungo in Arch. Stor. series iii. vol. ii.

[325] Julius C?sar Scaliger wrote thus about them in the Hypercriticus:-'Gr?cis vero, qu? puerum se conscripsisse dicit, ?tatem minus prudenter apposuit suam; tam enim bona sunt ut ne virum quidem Latina ?que bene scripsisse putem.'

[326] Quinque Illustrium Poetarum Carmina, pp. 299, 301. These epigrams, as well as two on pp. 303, 307, are significant in their illustration of the poet's morality. Giovio's account of Poliziano's death was certainly accepted by contemporaries:-'Ferunt eum ingenui adolescentis insano amore percitum facile in letalem morbum incidisse.' The whole Elogium, however, is a covert libel, like many of Giovio's sketches.

[327] 'Erat distortis s?pe moribus, uti facie nequaquam ingenua et liberali ab enormi pr?sertim naso, subluscoque oculo perabsurda.' Giovio, Elogia. Cf. Poliziano's own verses to Mabilius, beginning:-

Quod nasum mihi, quod reflexa colla

Demens objicis.

Carmina Quinque Poetarum, p. 277.

[328] The first words of the dedication run as follows:-'Cum tibi superioribus diebus Laurenti Medices, nostra h?c Miscellanea inter equitandum recitaremus.'

[329] Angeli Politiani Epistol?, lib. iii. ed. Ald. 1498. The letter is dated Nov. 1488.

[330] In a letter to Hieronymus Donatus, dated Florence, May 1480, Angeli Politiani Epistol?, lib. ii.

[331] The well-known scandal about Poliziano's death is traceable to the Elogia of Paulus Jovius-very suspicious authority. See above, p. 252, note 2.

[332] The most curious of these elegiac poems are given in Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum, p. 234. It is possible that their language ought not to be taken literally, and that they concealed a joke now lost.

[333] Poliziano's letter to Matthias Corvinus is a good example of his self-laudation.

[334] 'Poliziano lies in this grave, the angel who had one head and, what is new, three tongues. He died September 24, 1494, aged 40.'

[335] 'Behold whereon he spent the substance of the Church of God!' Vespasiano adds that he gave away several hundred volumes to one of the cardinals, whose servants sold them for an old song. Vesp. p. 216. Assemani, the historian of the Vatican Library, on the contrary, asserts that Calixtus spent 40,000 ducats on books. It is not likely, however, that Vespasiano was wholly in error about a matter he understood so well, and had so much at heart.

[336] See the Basle edition of his collected works, 1571.

[337] See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, p. 299.

[338] Vol. I., Age of the Despots, pp. 302-303.

[339] 'P.L. to his kinsmen and relatives, greeting. What you ask cannot be. Farewell.'

[340] See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, p. 220, note.

[341] See the Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty, and the Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth.

[342] From a memorial presented by these printers to Sixtus IV. in 1472 we ascertain some facts about their industry. They had at that date printed in all 12,495 volumes. It was their custom to issue 265 copies each edition; the double of that number for Virgil, Cicero's separate works, and theological books in request. Cantù, Lett. It. p. 112. See Cantù, p. 110, for details of the earliest Latin books.

[343] See above, p. 220.

[344] It is supposed that the earliest paper factory established in Italy was at Fabriano. Colle, a little town near Volterra, made paper from a remote period; by a deed, dated March 6, 1377, now preserved in the Florentine Archivio Diplomatico, one Colo da Colle rented a fall of water there et gualcheriam ad faciendas cartas for twenty years. Both places are still celebrated for their paper mills.

[345] Sansovino, in his Famiglie Illustri, after giving a fabulous pedigree of the Pio family, dates their signorial importance from the reign of Frederick II.

[346] Executed for the Church of the Cordeliers by Paulus Pontius.

[347] Poliziano's epigram addressed to these earliest Greek printers may be quoted here:

Qui colis Aonidas, Grajos quoque volve libellos;

Namque illas genuit Gr?cia, non Latium.

En Paravisinus quanta hos Dionysius arte

Imprimit, en quanto cernitis ingenio!

Te quoque, Demetri, ponto circumsona Crete

Tanti operis nobis edidit artificem.

Turce, quid insultas? tu Gr?ca volumina perdis;

Hi pariunt: hydr? nunc age colla seca!

[348] See Didot's Alde Manuce, p. 417, the passage beginning 'Vix credas.' In the Latin preface to the Thesaurus Cornucopi? et Horti Adonidis, 1495, Aldo complains that he has not been able to rest for one hour during seven years.

[349] 'Tot illico oborta sunt impedimenta malorumque invidia et domesticorum κα? τα?? τ?ν καταρ?των κα? δραπετευ?ντων δο?λων ?πιβο?λαι?.' Preface to the Poet? Christiani Veteres, 1501. Again in the 'monitum' of the same, 'quater jam in ?dibus nostris ab operariis et stipendiariis in me conspiratum et duce malorum omnium matre avaritia quos Deo adjuvante sic fregi ut valde omnes p?niteat su? perfidi?.'

[350] The French publishers of Lyons, the Giunti of Rome, and Soncino of Fano, were particularly troublesome. Didot has extracted some curious information about their tricks as well as Aldo's exposure of them. Pp. 167, 482-486.

[351] See especially the preface to Aristotle, vol. i. 1495; vol. v. 1498.

[352] See Preface to Thesaurus Cornucopi?, quoted by Didot, p. 80; and cf. pp. 210, 221, 521, for further hints about selfish bibliomaniacs, who tried to hoard their treasures from the public and refused them to the press. Aldo, as a genuine lover of free learning, and also as a publisher, detests this class of men.

[353] See Pannizzi's tract on 'Francesco da Bologna,' published by Pickering, 1873. He was probably Francia the painter.

[354] In a letter to Marcello Virgilio Adriani, the teacher of Machiavelli, he mentions some books 'Cum aliis quibusdam communes,' as distinguished from others which were his private property. Didot, p. 233.

[355] On the subject of patents, privileges, and monopolies see Didot, pp. 79, 166, 189, 371, 479-481.

[356] Μουσα?ον τ?ν παλαι?τατον ποιητ?ν ?θ?λησα προοιμι?ζειν τ? τε ?ριστοτ?λει κα? τ?ν σοφ?ν το?? ?τ?ροι? α?τ?κα δι' ?μο? ?ντυπησομ?νοι?. This πρ?δρομο?, or precursor, appeared without a date; but it must have come out earlier than 1494.

[357] John Lascaris had edited four plays of Euripides for Alopa in 1496. This Aldine edition contained eighteen, one of which, the Hercules Furens, turned up while vol. ii. was in the press. The Electra, not discovered till later on, was printed at Rome, 1545.

[358] The Adagia were first printed in 1500 at Paris by John Philippi. After the Aldine edition eleven were issued between 1509 and 1520 by Matthew Schürer, ten by Froben between 1513 and 1539, while seven or eight others appeared in various parts of Germany.

[359] See the passage quoted by Didot, pp. 297-299.

[360] Didot, pp. 147-151, 436-470, gives ample details concerning the foundation, constitution, and members of the Aldine Academy.

[361] We may compare the name of Melanchthon.

[362] A native of Rotino, in Crete (b. 1470, d. at Rome 1517). He acquired Latin so thoroughly that Erasmus wrote of him: 'Latin? lingu? usque ad miraculum doctus, quod vix ulli Gr?co contigit pr?ter Theodorum Gazam et Joannem Lascarem.' John Lascaris was his master.

[363] Etymologicon Magnum, 1499. Didot, pp. 544-578, may be consulted for information about this Greek press. Musurus boasts in his encomiastic verses that the work was accomplished entirely by Cretans. ?ναλ?μασι Βλαστο? π?ν? κα? δεξι?τητι Καλλι?ργου in the colophon.

[364] There is some discrepancy about this Antonio between Renouard and Didot.

[365] 'Sum ipse mihi optimus testis me semper habere comites, ut oportere aiunt, delphinum et anchoram; nam et dedimus multa cunctando, et damus assidue.' Preface to the Astronomici, dedicated to Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino, 1499. The observations of Erasmus on the motto deserve to be read with attention. See Didot, p. 299.

[366] See the passages from his letters and prefaces quoted and referred to on p. 239, above, note 2.

[367] The prospect of his visit to Milan in 1509 called forth these pretty April verses from Antiquari:-

Aldus venit en, Aldus ecce venit!

Nunc, O nunc, juvenes, ubique in urbe

Flores spargite. Vere namque primo

Aldus venit en, Aldus ecce venit.

[368] See above, p. 275, for his hatred of the βιβλιοτ?φοι. He was the very opposite of Henri Estienne the younger, who closed his library against his son-in-law Casaubon.

[369] Didot, pp. 89, 299, 423.

[370] Priscian, at Erfurt, 1501; Alphabet, Batrachomyomachia, Mus?us, Theocritus, Grammar of Chrysoloras, Hesiod's Works and Days, Paris, 1507; Aristotle on Divination by Dreams, Cracow, 1529; Lucian, περ? διψ?δων, Oxford, 1521, are among the earliest Greek books printed out of Italy. The grammars of the Greek humanists were frequently reprinted in the first quarter of the sixteenth century in Germany.

[371]

Namque sub ?bali? memini me turribus altis

Qua niger humectat flaventia culta Galesus

Corycium vidisse senem.-Virg. Georg. lib. iv. 125.

[372] From the exordium to Valeriano's treatise De Infelicitate Literatorum.

[373] Lilius Gyraldus, in his dialogue 'De Poetis Nostri Temporis,' Opp. vol. ii. p. 384, mentions a critic who was so stupid as to desiderare in Pontano et si deis placet in Sanazario Christianam elocutionem, hoc est barbaram!

[374] See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, p. 145.

[375] He held this post under Julius II.

[376] The first Greek book printed in Rome, an edition of Pindar by Cornelius Benignius, 1515, issued from Chigi's press under the superintendence of Zacharias Kalliergos of Crete. Concerning this printer see Didot, Alde Manuce, pp. 544-578.

[377] The epitaph of Bella Imperia proves that the title of Het?ra was thought honourable: 'Imperia, Cortisana Romana, qu? digna tanto nomine, rar? inter homines form? specimen dedit. Vixit a. xxvi. d. xii. Obiit MDXI., die XV. Aug.' Berni's Capitolo sopra un Garzone may be referred to for the second half of the sentence.

[378] See Tiraboschi, vii. 1, lib. i. c. 2.

[379] See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, p. 342.

[380] Written 1504. First printed by Aldo, 1505.

[381] 'De Guido Ubaldo Feretrio deque Elisabetha Gonzaga Urbini Ducibus.'

[382]

Nam pol qua proavusque avusque lingua

Sunt olim meus et tuus loquuti,

Nostr? quaque loquuntur et sorores

Et matertera nunc et ipsa mater,

Nos nescire loqui magis pudendum est,

Qui Grai? damus et damus Latin?

Studi tempora duplicemque curam,

Quam Graia simul et simul Latina.

Hac uti ut valeas tibi videndum est,

Ne dum marmoreas remota in ora

Sumtu construis et labore villas,

Domi te calamo tegas palustri.

Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum, p. 25.

[383] His most famous essays bore these titles: De Liberis Instituendis and De Laudibus Philosophi?.

[384] His Commentary on the Romans was placed upon the Index.

[385] Like the History of Guicciardini, it opens with the year 1494. It is carried down to 1547. A portion of the first decade was lost in the sack of Rome, and never rewritten by the author. Printed at Florence, 1550.

[386] Elogia Virorum literis illustrium, quotquot vel nostra, vel avorum memoria vixere, and Elogia Virorum bellica virtute illustrium, Basel, 1557.

[387] De Piscibus Romanis, Rome, 1524. Ragionamento sopra i Motti e Disegni d'Arme e d'Amore.

[388] The titles of his philosophical works-De Studio divin? et human? philosophi?, De amore Divino, Examen vanitatis doctrin? gentium et veritatis Christian? disciplin?, De rerum pr?notione-show how closely he followed in the footsteps of Giovanni Pico.

[389] Joannis Francisci Pici Mirandol? et Concordi? Comitis Oratio ad Leon X. et Concilium Lateranense de reformandis Ecclesi? moribus.

[390] Inghirami, made librarian 1510, died 1516. Beroaldo held the office two years, and died 1518. Acciaiuoli held it only for a few months. Aleander succeeded him in 1519.

[391] 'Lingua verius quam calamo celebrem ... dictus sui seculi Cicero,' says Erasmus. 'Affluentissimum eloquenti? flumen' is Valeriano's phrase.

[392] See Burckhardt, p. 174. Roscoe's Life of Leo X. vol. i. p. 357.

[393] See above, p. 86.

[394] Cf. Giovio, close of the Elogia.

[395] Andreas Fulvius Sabinus Antiquarius, Antiquitates Urbis Rom?, 1527. Bartholom?us Marlianus, Eques D. Petri, Urbis Rom? Topographia, 1534. Jacobus Mazochius, Epigrammata antiqu? urbis Rom?, 1521. Johannis Pierii Valeriani Hieroglyphica seu de Sacris ?gyptiorum, &c., in his collected works, Ven. 1604.

[396] The architect of Verona who first edited Vitruvius, and was employed by Lorenzo de' Medici in collecting inscriptions for him at Rome.

[397] See above, p. 111.

[398] See Castiglione's verses.

[399] Terzo Commentario del Ghiberti, Frammenti Inediti, in Le Monnier's Vasari, vol. i. pp. xi.-xiii. I have paraphrased rather than translated the original, which is touching by reason of its na?veté.

[400] See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, p. 17.

[401] See Rosmini's Vittorino da Feltre, p. 63, note.

[402] See Ghiberti's Commentario, in Le Monnier's Vasari, vol. i. p. xiv.

[403] Alberi, Relazioni Venete, serie ii. vol. iii. p. 114, &c.

[404] By a brief dated Aug. 27, 1515.

[405] It may be observed that he calls the round-arched buildings of the Middle Ages Gothic; the pointed style German.

[406] 'When we reflect upon the divinity of those intellects of the old world ... when we see the corpse of this noble city, mother and queen of the world, so piteously mangled ... how many Pontiffs have allowed the ruin and defacement of ancient temples, statues, arches, and other buildings, the glory of their founders! How many have suffered their foundations to be undermined for the mere sake of quarrying pozzolana, whereby in a short time the buildings themselves have fallen to earth! How much lime has been made of statues and other antique decorations! I should not hesitate to say that the whole of this new Rome which now meets the eye, great as it is, and fair, and beautified with palaces and churches and other buildings, has been cemented with lime made from antique marbles.'

[407]

Tot proceres Romam, tam longa struxerat ?tas,

Totque hostes et tot s?cula diruerant;

Nunc Romam in Roma qu?rit reperitque Raphael;

Qu?rere magni hominis, sed reperire Dei est.

Celio Calcagnini.

Quod lacerum corpus medica sanaverit arte,

Hippolytum Stygiis et revocarit aquis,

Ad Stygias ipse est raptus Epidaurius undas;

Sic pretium vit? mors fuit artifici.

Tu quoque dum toto laniatam corpore Romam

Componis miro, Raphael, ingenio,

Atque urbis lacerum ferro, igne, armisque cadaver

Ad vitam antiquum jam revocasque decus,

Movisti Superum invidiam; indignataque mors est

Te dudum extinctis reddere posse animam,

Et quod longa dies paullatim aboleverat, hoc te

Mortali spreta lege parare iterum.

Sic miser heu prima cadis intercepte juventa:

Debere et morti nostraque nosque mones.

Baldassare Castiglione.

[408] See Benvenuto Cellini, i. 31.

[409] Vol. I., Age of Despots, App. V.

[410] Printed at Venice, 1620.

[411] 'Quod Rom?, hoc est in sentina omnium rerum atrocium et pudendarum deprehensi fuerimus.' Quoted by Gregorovius, Stadt Rom, vol. viii. p. 598, note 3.

[412] Cf. Filelfo, quoted in a note to the next chapter, who says,'Tuscan is hardly known to all Italians, while Latin is spread far and wide throughout the whole world.'

[413] I purpose in this chapter to use the Deliti? Poetarum Italorum, two parts divided into 4 vols., 1608; Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum, Bergomi, 1753; Poemata Selecta Italorum, Oxonii, 1808; and Selecta Poemata Italorum, accurante A. Pope, Londini, 1740.

[414] Bonucci's edition of Alberti's works, vol. i. Alberti's own preface, in the form of a dedicatory letter to Lionello d'Este, describes how he came to write this comedy, and how it was passed off upon contemporaries as an original play by Lepidus Comicus. Ib. pp. cxxi.-cxxiii.

[415] See above, p. 254, for the purpose fulfilled by the Sylv?.

[416] 'Of men the solace, and of gods the everlasting joy.'

[417] 'As from the heavens we see the stars on all sides fleeing, when the golden torch of the sun-god rises, and the diminished moon appears to fade; so with his burning lamp M?onides obscures the honours of the earlier bards. Him alone, while he sang the divine deeds of heroes, and with his lyre arrayed fierce wars, Apollo, wonder-struck, confessed his equal. Close at his side, or higher even, but for the veneration due to age, Vergil entones the song of arms and the hero-Vergil, to whom from holy tilth and pasture land both Ascra's and Sicilia's shepherds yield their sway with willing homage.'-Quinque Illustrium Poetarum Carmina, p. 167.

[418] 'Far off into the tracts of air and high above the clouds soars Pindar, the Dirc?an swan, whose tender mouth ye gentle bees with nectar fed, while the boy gave rest to weary limbs that breathed soft slumber. But him the maid of Tanagra derided, what time she told him that he sowed his myths from the whole sack to waste; and when he dared contend with her in song, she bore away the victor's palm, triumphant by ?olian moods, and by her seductive beauty too. He with his mighty voice, trained in the school of Agathocles, sang the crowns of Olympia and the garlands wherewith the Isthmus and Delphi, and the Nemean wastes that falsely claimed the moon-born monster, shade the athlete's brows. Then, like a torrent, with swelling soul, he passed to celebrate the powers and virtues of the gods and heroes, and poured forth pious lamentations for the dead. Him Ph?bus, lord of Cirrha, honoured with food and drink from his altar, and made him guest-fellow at his own board: shepherds too saw Pan in lonely caverns charming the woods with a Pindaric song. At last, when he was old, and lay with his neck reclined upon the bosom of the boy he loved, soothing his soul in sleep, Proserpina with still right hand approached and took him straight to join the shades and pace Elysium's fragrant meads. Nay, more: long afterwards, the foeman's flames, which laid seven-gated Thebes in ruins far and wide, these names dared not to burn so great a poet's house; and his descendants, safe 'mid a thousand swords, learned that his ashes still were young through fame that lives for aye.'-Carmina, &c. p. 173.

[419] 'Ninth among lyric bards, ?olian Sappho joins the crew; she who by flowing water plucks Pieria's rose for venturous Love to twine in wreaths for his own brow; who with her dulcet lyre sings fair Cyrinna's charms, and Megara, and Atthis and sweet Anactoria, and Telesippa of the flowing hair. And thee, too, Phaon, beautiful in youth's rathe flower, on thee she gazes, thee she calls again; such power to thee gave Venus for her freightage in thy skiff, or else the herb of love. Yet at the last, not wisely bold, she leaps into the Ambracian waves.' Ib. &c. p. 175.

[420] '?schylus, smitten by a tortoise falling from the air above his head, and he whose triumph, justly won in old age, killed him with excess of joy, and he whose body, torn by raging hounds, the reverent earth of Pella hides.'-Carmina, &c. p. 176.

[421] Ib. p. 177.

[422] 'Nor yet of this meed of honour would I cheat wing-bearing Dante, who flew through hell, through the starry heavens, and o'er the intermediate hill of purgatory beneath the beauteous brows of Beatrice; and Petrarch too, who tells again the tale of Cupid's triumph; or him who in ten days portrays a hundred stories, and lays bare the seeds of hidden love: from whom unmeasured fame and name are thine, by wit and wealth twice potent, Florence, mother of great sons!'-Ib. p. 178.

[423] 'What other men call study and hard toil, that for thee shall be pastime; wearied with deeds of state, to this thou hast recourse, and dost address the vigour of thy well-worn powers to song: blest in thy mental gifts, blest to be able thus to play so many parts, to vary thus the great cares of thy all-embracing mind, and weave so many divers duties into one.'-Carmina, &c. p. 179.

[424] 'Dialogus de Poetis nostri Temporis.' Opp. vol. ii. p. 388. Edition of Basle, 1580.

[425] 'On themes like these I spent my hours of leisure in the grottoes of Fiesole, at the Medicean villa, where the holy hill looks down upon the M?onian city, and surveys the windings of the distant Arno. There good Lorenzo gives his friends a happy home and rest from cares; Lorenzo, not the last of Ph?bus' glorious band; Lorenzo, the firm anchor of the Muses tempest-tost. If only he but grant me greater ease, the inspiration of a mightier god will raise my soul; nor shall the lofty woods alone and mountain rocks resound my words; but thou-such faith have I-thou too shalt sometime hear, kind nurse of mine, nor haply scorn my song, thou, Florence, mother of imperial bards, and learned eloquence in three great tongues shall give me fame.' Carmina, &c. p. 196.

[426] 'Nay, but for everlasting lives our poet's work, abides, and goes forth toward the ages late in time. So long as in the silent firmament the stars shall shine; so long as day shall rise from sun-burned Ind; so long as Phosphor runs before the wheels of light; so long as gloomy winter leads to spring, and summer to autumn; while breathing ocean ebbs and flows by turns, and the mixed elements put on their changing shapes-so long, for ever, shall endure great Maro's fame, for ever shall flow these rivers from his unexhausted fount, for ever shall draughts of learning be drawn from these rills, for ever shall these meadows yield their perfumed flowers, to pasture holy bees, and give the youthful Graces garlands for their hair.'-Carmina, &c. p. 207.

[427] 'Supper was over; Orpheus awakes the lyre, and sings a melody to suit the tune he plays. The men were silent; the winds hushed; the rivers held their waters back to hear; the birds hung motionless in air; and the wild beasts grew calm. From the cliffs the oaks run down with listening ears, and the top of Pelion nods his barren head. And now the bard had soothed the whole world with his mother's song; when he ceased from singing and put down the thrilling lyre. This bold Achilles seizes; he runs his fingers o'er the strings, and chaunts an untaught lay, the simple boy. What was his theme? you ask. He praised the singing of the gentle guest, the mighty murmurs of that lyre divine. The Miny? laughed; but yet, so runs the tale, even all too sweet, Orpheus, to thee was the boy's homage. Just so my praise of mighty Maro's name, if faith be not a dream, gives joy to Maro's self.'-Carmina, &c. p. 197.

[428] 'We also, therefore, with glad homage dedicate to him this garland twined of Pieria's flowers, which Ambra, loveliest of Cajano's nymphs, gave to me, culled from meadows on her father's shores; Ambra, the love of my Lorenzo, whom Umbrone, the horned stream, begat-Umbrone, dearest to his master Arno, Umbrone, who now henceforth will never break his banks again.'-Carmina, &c. p. 224.

[429] Cf. Juvenal, Satire, i. 9-14; vii. 81-87. Persius, Satire, i. 79-82. And cf. Petronius Arbiter for a detailed picture of these Roman recitations.

[430] Carmina Quinque, &c. pp. 250, 272, 276.

[431] The epitaphs on Giotto, Lippo Lippi, the fair Simonetta, and others, are only valuable for their historic interest, such as that is.

[432] I shall quote from his Collected Poems, Aldus, 1513.

[433] See the Elegy of Sannazzaro on the writings of Pontanus, Poemata Selecta, pp. 1-4, and Fracastoro's Syphilis, ib. p. 72.

[434] Deliti? Poetarum Italorum, pt. ii. pp. 668-712. Specimens may also be read in the Poemata Selecta Italorum, pp. 1-24.

[435] See, for instance, the tale of Hylas, lib. v. p. 103; the tale of Cola Pesce, lib. iv. p. 79; the council of the gods, lib. i. p. 18; the planet Venus, lib. i. p. 5.

[436] Lib. v. pp. 105-108. 'For thee I hung the house with wreaths; and thy twin sisters poured forth Syrian perfumes at the marriage chamber. What for our garlands and our perfumes hast thou left? Days without light, nights without a star, long sleepless nights.'

[437] 'Fame herself, seated by my tomb with golden raiment, mighty-mouthed, mighty-voiced, with mighty wings, shall spread abroad among the people my names with mighty sound of praise, and carry through the centuries my titles, and with my glory shall resound applauding airs of heaven; renowned through everlasting ages Jovian shall live.'

[438] 'Lilius Gyraldus,' loc. cit. p. 384, writes about this epic, 'in quibus, ut sic dicam, statarius poeta videri potest. Non enim verborum volubilitate fertur, sed limatius quoddam scribendi genus consectatur, et lima indies atterit, ut de illo non ineleganter dictum illud Apellis de Protogene Pontanus usurpare solitus esset, eum manum de tabula tollere nescire.'

[439] See Deliti? Poetarum Italorum, second part, pp. 713-761. The following couplet on the death of Cesare Borgia is celebrated:-

Aut nihil aut C?sar vult dici Borgia; quidni?

Cum simul et C?sar possit et esse nihil.

[440] 'When Neptune beheld Venice stationed in the Adriatic waters, and giving laws to all the ocean, "Now taunt me, Jupiter, with the Tarpeian rock and those walls of thy son Mars!" he cried. "If thou preferrest Tiber to the sea, look on both cities; thou wilt say the one was built by men, the other by gods."'

[441] See above, p. 288.

[442] Bombycum; Libri duo. Scacchia, Ludus; Liber unus. Pope's Poemata Italorum, vol. i. pp. 103-130; pp. 190-210. The former poem is addressed to Isabella Gonzaga, née d'Este.

[443] Poemata Selecta, pp. 207-266. It will be remembered that Francis I., after Pavia, gave his two sons as hostages to Charles V.

[444] 'Thou, Francis, art the first to answer to my call. Scorn not the sacred Muses, scion of a royal line, to whom the sceptre of the kings of Gallia in due season of maturity will pass. Their sweetness even now shall yield thee some slight solace, exiled from home and fatherland by fate impiteous on the Spanish shore, thee and thy brother Henry. So the fortunes of thy mighty-hearted father willed, condemned to strive against unequal doom. Yet spare thy tears: perchance hard fate will soften, and a day of supreme joy will come at last, when, after thy sad exile, once more given to thy nation, thou shalt behold thy country's gladness, and hear the shouts of all her cities and the ringing songs of happiness, and mothers shall perform their vows for thy return. Meanwhile let the maidens of Pieria attend thee; and, with me for guide, ascend into the groves of high Parnassus.'

[445]

tibi digna supellex

Verborum rerumque paranda est, proque videnda

Instant multa prius, quorum vatum indiget usus.

Poemata Selecta, p. 209.

[446] After mentioning the glories of Virgil, Vida adds:-

Sperare nefas sit vatibus ultra.

Nulla mora, ex illo in pejus ruere omnia visa,

Degenerare animi, atque retro res lapsa referri.

Hic namque ingenio confisus posthabet artem;

Ille furit strepitu, tenditque ?quare tubarum

Voce sonos, versusque tonat sine more per omnes;

Dant alii cantus vacuos, et inania verba

Incassum, sola capti dulcedine vocis.

Poemata Selecta, p. 213. Cf. the advice (p. 214) to follow none but Virgil:-

Ergo ipsum ante alios animo venerare Maronem,

Atque unum sequere, utque potes, vestigia serva.

[447]

Dona de?m Mus?: vulgus procul este profanum.

Poemata Selecta, p. 224; and again, ib. p. 226:-

Tu Jovis ambrosiis das nos accumbere mensis;

Tu nos diis ?quas superis, &c.

[448] 'Ye native gods of Rome! and thou, Apollo, Troy's founder! by whom our race is raised to heaven! let not at least this glory be withdrawn from Latium's children: may Italy for ever hold the heights of art and learning, and most beauteous Rome instruct the nations; albeit all success in arms be lost, so great hath grown the discord of Italia's princes. Yea, one against the other, we draw bloody swords, nor feel we any shame in calling foreign tyrants into our own land.'-Poemata Selecta, p. 245.

[449] 'Hail, light of Italy, thou brightest of the bards! Thee we worship, thee we adore with wreaths, with frankincense, with altars; to thee, as duty bids, for everlasting will we chaunt our holy hymns. Hail, consecrated bard! No increase to thy glory flows from praise, nor needs it voice of ours. Be near, and look upon thy votaries; come, father, and infuse thy fervour into our chaste hearts, and plant thyself within our souls.'-Poemata Selecta, p. 266.

[450] See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, p. 433, note.

[451]

quoniam in primis ostendere multos

Possumus, attactu qui nullius hanc tamen ipsam

Sponte sua sensere luem, primique tulere.

Poemata Selecta, p. 67.

[452]

Quumque animadvertas, tam vast? semina labis

Esse nec in terr? gremio, nec in ?quore posse,

Haud dubie tecum statuas reputesque necesse est,

Principium sedemque mali consistere in ipso

A?re, qui terras circum diffunditur omnes.

Ibid. p. 69.

[453] Ibid. pp. 79, 80.

[454] Ibid. pp. 95, 96.

[455] These phrases he finds for a fowling-piece:-

Cava terrificis horrentia bombis

Aera, et flammiferum tormenta imitantia fulmen.

Poemata Selecta, p. 101.

[456] Cf. the passage about Alessandro Farnese's journeys-

Matre dea comitante et iter monstrante nepoti-

and the reformation in Germany. Poemata Selecta, p. 125. The whole idyll addressed to Julius III., ib. pp. 130-135, is inconceivably uncouth.

[457] Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum, pp. 4 and 9-11.

[458] Ib. pp. 18-23.

[459] Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum, p. 7.

[460] Ib. p. 23.

[461]

None of these things he tried; but only ran,

And clasped with his sweet arms the angry man;

Hung on his neck, rained kisses forth that Heaven

Envied from those red lips to mortals given;

In number like ripe ears of ruddy corn,

Or flowers beneath the breath of April born.

Still doubting, Maximus? Change place with me:

Gladly I'd bear such infidelity.

[462] Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum, pp. 26-34.

[463] Ib. p. 38.

[464] 'When Lorenzo was dead, and Death went by in triumph, drawn by her black horses, her eyes fell on one who madly struck the chords, while sighs convulsed his breast. She turned, and stayed the car; he storms and calls on all the gods for Lorenzo, mixing tears with prayers, and sorrow with his tears, while sorrow suggests words of wilder freedom. Death laughed; remembering her old grudge, when Orpheus made his way to hell, she cried, "Lo, he too seeks to abrogate our laws, and lays his hand upon my rights!" Nor more delay; she struck the poet while he wept, and broke his heart-strings in the middle of his sighs. Alas! thus wast thou taken from us, ravished by harsh fate, Politian, master of the Italian lyre!'

[465] Notice especially 'Thyrsidis vota Veneri,' 'Invitatio ad am?num fontem,' 'Leucippem amicam spe pr?miorum invitat,' 'Vota Veneri ut amantibus faveat,' and 'In Almonem.'-Carmina, &c. pp. 52, 53, 54, 55.

[466] Paolo Giovio noticed this; in his Elogia he writes, 'Epigrammata non falsis aculeatisque finibus, sed tenera illa et pr?dulci prisca suavitate claudebat.'

[467] 'Mighty mother, thou who bringest all things forth to breathe the liquid air, who shinest in thy painted robe of diverse budding lives, thou who from thy teeming bosom givest nourishment to trees and sprouting herbs in every region of the earth, take to thyself the fainting boy, cherish his dying limbs, and make him live for ever by thy aid. Yes, he shall live; and that white loveliness of his, each year as spring returns, shall blossom in a snowy flower.'-Carmina, &c. p. 57.

[468] 'Ad Gelliam rusticantem,' Carmina, &c. pp. 64-66. 'Iolas,' ib. pp. 66-68.

[469] 'Hail, darling of the gods, thou happiest spot of earth! hail chosen haunt of beauty's queen! What joy I feel to see you thus again, and tread your shores after so many toils endured in mind and soul! How from my heart by your free gift I cast all anxious cares!'-Carmina, &c. p. 84.

[470] See the Hendecasyllabics of Johannes Matth?us, Carmina, &c. p. 86.

[471] Basilius Zanchius, Carmina, &c. p. 85.

[472] M. Antonius Flaminius, ib. p. 85.

[473] Poemata Selecta, pp. 203-206. An elegy written by Janus Etruscus, Pope's Poemata Italorum, vol. ii. p. 25, on a similar theme, though very inferior to Molsa's, may be compared with it.

[474] 'I ask for no monument of wrought marble to proclaim my titles: let a vase of baked clay receive these bones. Let earth, quietest of resting-places, take them to herself, and save them from the injury of ravening wolves. And let a running stream divide its waters round my grave, drawn with the sound of music from a mountain-flank. A little tablet carved with simple letters will be enough to mark the spot, and to preserve my name: "Here lies Molsa, slain before his day by wasting sickness: cast dust upon him thrice, and go thy way, gentle shepherd." It may be that after many years I shall turn to yielding clay, and my tomb shall deck herself with flowers; or, better, from my limbs shall spring a white poplar, and in its beauteous foliage I shall rise into the light of heaven. To this place will come, I hope, some lovely maid attended by the master of the flock; and she shall dance above my bones and move her feet to rhythmic music.'

[475] For the picture of the girl dancing on the lover's grave, cf. Omar Khayyam. Cf. too Walt Whitman's metaphor for grass-'the beautiful uncut hair of graves.'

[476] 'Alcon, the darling of Ph?bus and the Muses; Alcon, a part of my own soul; Alcon, the greatest part of my own heart.'-Carmina Quinque Poetarum, p. 89.

[477] 'Alas! poor youth, withdrawn from us by fate malign. Never again shall I behold thee, while the shepherds stand around, win prizes with thy flying shafts or spear, or wrestle for the crown; never again with thee reclining in the shade shall I all through a summer's day avoid the sun. No more shall thy pipe soothe the neighbouring hills, the vales repeat thy artful songs. No more shall thy Lycoris, whose name inscribed by thee the woods remember, and my Galatea hear us both together chaunt our loves. For we like brothers lived our lives till now from infancy: heat and cold, days and nights, we bore; our herds were reared with toil and care together. These fields of mine were also thine: we lived one common life. Why, then, when thou must die, am I still left to live? Alas! in evil hour the wrath of Heaven withdrew me from my native land, nor suffered me to close thy lids with a friend's hands!'-Carmina, &c. p. 91.

[478] Ib. p. 100.

[479] 'Hideous is their face, their grinning mouth, their threatening eyes, and their rough limbs are stiff with snaky scales; their beard hangs long and wide, uncombed, tangled with sea-weed and green ooze, and their dusky hair smells rank of brine.'-Ib. p. 103.

[480] 'De Elisabetta Gonzaga canente,' Carmina, &c. p. 97. Cf. Bembo's 'Ad Lucretiam Borgiam,' ib. p. 14, on a similar theme.

[481] Ib. p. 95.

[482] 'O father, O shepherd of the nations, O great master of the world who rulest all the human race, giver of justice, peace, and tranquil ease; thou to whom alone is committed the life and salvation of men, whom God Himself made lord of hell and heaven, that either realm might open at thy nod.'

[483] 'I do not blame thee for delaying thy return, since neither is it safe nor right for man to set at naught a God's command; and yet so great is Leo's kindness said to be that he inclines a ready ear to human prayers.'-Ib. p. 102.

[484] 'Therefore shall all our shepherds pay thee divine honours, as to Pan or Ph?bus, on fixed days, great Father; and long shalt thou be celebrated in our forests. Thy praise, Julius the Great, the cliffs, the rocks, the hollow valleys, and the woodland echoes shall repeat. Wherever in our groves an oak tree stands, as spring and summer bring the flowers, its branches shall be hung with wreaths, its trunk shall be inscribed with thy auspicious name. As often as our shepherds drive the flocks afield, or bring them pastured home, each one, remembering that he does this under thy protection, shall pour libations of new milk forth to thee, and rear thee tender lambs for sacrifice. Nay, if thou spurn not rustic prayers, before all gods shall we invoke thee in our supplications. I myself will build and dedicate to thee two altars, and will plant twin groves of sacred oak and laurel evergreen for thee.'-Carmina, &c. pp. 58, 59.

[485] 'Thou whom Rome obeys, and royal Tiber, who wieldest upon earth the Thunderer's power, whose it is to lock and open the gates of heaven.'-Ib. p. 260.

[486] 'In this mountain of the Lord shall flocks and herds feed, fat with eternal pastures and golden-fleeced. Living waters too shall leap forth, wherewith the goats shall swell their udders, and the kine likewise.'-Poemata Selecta, p. 132.

[487] 'Him with immortal verse the poets shall exalt to heaven, and call him hero, god, and saviour.'-Ib. p. 133.

[488] See above, pp. 312, 317.

[489] See Carmina Quinque Poetarum, pp. 318-336.

[490] A didactic poem in three books; Pope's Poemata Italorum, vol. i. pp. 211-270. The description of the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, and the entrance of the blessed into Paradise, forming the conclusion of the last book, is an excellent specimen of barocco style and bathos. Virgil had written, 'Ite domum pasti, si quis pudor, ite juvenci!' Paleario makes the Judge address the damned souls thus: 'Ite domum in tristem, si quis pudor, ite ruentes,' &c. How close Milton's path lay to the worst faults in poetry, and how wonderfully he escaped, may well be calculated by the study of such verse as this.

[491] This epigram on Savonarola shows Flaminio's sympathy with the preachers of pure doctrine:-

Dum fera flamma tuos, Hieronyme, pascitur artus,

Relligio, sacras dilaniata comas,

Flevit, et o, dixit, crudeles parcite flamm?,

Parcite, sunt isto viscera nostra rogo.

[492] 'Ad Agellum suum.'-Poemata Selecta, pp. 155, 156, 177.

[493] 'Now shall I see you once again; now shall I have the joy of gazing on the trees my father planted, and falling into gentle slumber in his little room.'

[494] 'Maidens of Helicon, who love the fountains and the pleasant fields, as you are dearer to me than the dear light, have pity now upon your suppliant, take me from the tumult of the noisy town, and place me in my tranquil farm.'

[495] 'I, poor wretch, am prisoned in the noisy town. Kind Jupiter allows you, secluded in your distant farm, to take the joys of peace among Socratic books, among the nymphs and satyrs, unheeding the light honours of the vulgar crowd.'-'Ad Honoratum Fascitellum,' Poemata Selecta, p. 178.

[496] Poemata Selecta, pp. 153, 169, 173.

[497] 'Then, when sleep descends upon your eyes, best friend of mine, I'll lead you to a cave o'ercurtained by the wandering ivy's yellow bunches, whereby the sheltering laurel murmurs with her gently waving leaves. Fear no fever or dull headache. The place is safe. So when you are rested, we will read the rustic songs of Virgil or Theocritus; sweet and more charming verse I know not; and after the day's heat is past, we will stroll in some green valley. A light supper follows, and then you shall return to town.'-Ib. p. 174.

[498] 'Ad Christophorum Longolium,' Ib.

[499] Poemata Selecta, p. 163.

[500] 'No sooner had I left Rome's tainted air for the clear streams and healthful forests of my native land, than strength returned into my wasted limbs; my body lost the pallor and emaciation of disease, and sweet sleep crept upon my wakeful eyes, such as no waters falling with a tinkling sound or Lethe's poppies had induced before.'

[501] Poemata Selecta, p. 162.

[502] 'Plato, the greatest of sages, once described in his long volumes the best form of a State; but this from the beginning of the world till now hath never yet been seen, nor will it afterwards be seen in any city. Contarini in his little book has proved that the best commonwealth is that which now for more than a thousand years has flourished in the Adriatic with peace, letters, and wealth.'-Poemata Selecta, p. 162.

[503] 'Ad Hieronymum Turrianum,' ib. p. 168. 'Her mind was pure, her manners pure; her virtue lively, her courtesy without a taint of earth; her intellect was heavenly, her learning rare; her words sweeter than nectar; her nobility the highest; her features beautiful in their majesty; her wealth liberally open to the use of good men.'

[504] 'Well and happily hast thou lived, my father; neither poor nor rich; learned enough and eloquent enough; of vigorous body and of healthy mind; pleasant to thy friends, and in thy piety unrivalled. Now, after sixteen lustres finished, thou goest to the regions of the blest. Go, father, and soon greet thy son, to stay with thee in heaven's high seat.'-'Ad Patrem morientem,' Poemata Selecta, p. 157.

[505] Poemata Selecta, p. 166. 'These most graceful poets I give you, the offspring of our too, too happy times, which have produced their Catullus and their Horace, their Tibullus and their Maro. Who could have thought, after so many ages of such darkness, and all the ruin that has weighed on Italy, that so many lights could have arisen at one epoch in one little region of the land above the Po? They alone are enough to put to flight the gloom of barbarism, and to restore its antique glory and own splendour to Latin literature.' After this he goes on to add that these poets will confer eternal lustre on Italy. Not only the northern nations of Europe, but America also has begun to study Latin; and races in another hemisphere will take their culture from these pages. The Cardinal is finally reminded that immortality of fame awaits him in their praises.

[506] 'Tam brevi regione Transpadana.'

[507] Cf. Bembo's Benacus, Bonfadio's Gazani Vici Descriptio, Fracastoro's Ad Franciscum Turrianum Veronensem, &c.

[508] 'Gr?culi esurientes.' Lives written by Philostratus.

[509] Aristoph., Clouds, Speeches of Dikaios Logos; Xen., On Hunting, chap. xiii.

[510] Progymnasma adversus Literatos. Op. Omn., Basle, 1582, vol. ii.

[511] 'Pudet me, Pice, pigetque id de literatis afferre quod omnium tamen est in ore, nullos esse cum omnium vitiorum etiam nefandissimorum genere inquinatos magis, tum iis pr?cipue, qu? pr?ter naturam dicuntur,' &c.-Progymnasma adversus Literatos, p. 431.

[512] Lines 22-129.

[513] Quinque Illustrium Poetarum Lusus in Venerem, Parisiis, 1791, p. 107.

[514] See above, p. 185, note 4.

[515] See above, Chapter II.

[516] 'Perfect nose, imperial nose, divine nose, nose to be blessed among all noses; and blessed be the breasts that made you with a nose so lordly, and blessed be all those things you put your nose to!' The above is quoted from Cantù's Storia della Letteratura Italiana. I have not seen the actual address.

[517] The phrase is eulogistically used by F. Villani in his Life of Coluccio Salutato.

[518] See Muratori, vol. xx. 442, 453.

[519] Epist. Rer. Senil. xv. 1. 'Styli hujus per Italiam non auctor quidem, sed instaurator ipse mihi videor, quo cum uti inciperem, adolescens a co?taneis irridebar, qui in hoc ipso certatim me postea sunt secuti.'

[520] See above, pp. 76-78.

[521] Gian Maria Filelfo, son of the celebrated professor, published an Epistolarium of this kind.

[522] Francesco Filelfo, quoted in Rosmini's Life, vol. ii. pp. 304, 282, 448, writes, 'Le cose che non voglio sieno copiate, le scrivo sempre alla grossolana.' 'Hoc autem scribendi more utimur iis in rebus quarum memoriam nolumus transferre ad posteros. Et ethrusca quidem lingua vix toti Itali? nota est, at latina oratio longe ac late per universum orbem est diffusa.' ('Matters I do not wish to have copied I always write off in the vulgar. This style I use for such things as I do not care to transmit to posterity. Tuscan, to be sure, is hardly known to all Italians, while Latin is spread far and wide through the whole world.')

[523] See Voigt, pp. 421, 422, for an account of Filelfo's, Traversari's, Barbaro's, and Bruni's letters.

[524] See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, pp. 216, 217, and above, p. 377.

[525] See above, p. 321.

[526] See the passages quoted by Tiraboschi, vol. vi. lib. iii. cap. v. 71.

* * *

Transcriber's Errata List

Page 8: "Lionardi" should be "Lionardo."

Page 97: "or door or key" likely should be "a door or key."

Page 295: "general tions" likely should be "generations."

Footnote 22: "found" should be followed by "in."