Chapter III

Chapter III

ON THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM 1440 TO THE CLOSE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

SECT. I. 1440-1450.

Classical Literature in Italy--Nicolas V.--Laurentius Valla.

|The year 1440 not chosen as an epoch.|

1. The reader is not to consider the year 1440 as a marked epoch in the annals of literature. It has sometimes been treated as such, by those who have referred the invention of printing to this particular epoch. But it is here chosen as an arbitrary line, nearly coincident with the complete development of an ardent thirst for classical, and especially Grecian, literature in Italy, as the year 1400 was with its first manifestation.

|Continual progress of learning.|

|Nicolas V.|

2. No very conspicuous events belong to this decennial period. The spirit of improvement, already so powerfully excited in Italy, continued to produce the same effects in rescuing ancient manuscripts from the chances of destruction, accumulating them in libraries, making translations from the Greek, and by intense labour in the perusal of the best authors, rendering both their substance and their language familiar to the Italian scholar. The patronage of Cosmo de’ Medici, Alfonso king of Naples, and Nicolas of Este, has already been mentioned. Lionel, successor of the last prince, was by no means inferior to him in love of letters. But they had no patron so important as Nicolas V. (Thomas of Sarzana), who became Pope in 1447; nor has any later occupant of that chair, without excepting Leo X., deserved equal praise as an encourager of learning. Nicolas founded the Vatican library, and left it, at his death in 1455, enriched with 5000 volumes; a treasure far exceeding that of any other collection in Europe. Every scholar who needed maintenance, which was of course the common case, found it at the court of Rome; innumerable benefices, all over Christendom, which had fallen into the grasp of the holy see, and frequently required of their incumbents, as is well known, neither residence, nor even the priestly character, affording the means of generosity, which have seldom been so laudably applied. Several Greek authors were translated into Latin by direction of Nicolas V., among which are the history of Diodorus Siculus, and Xenophon’s Cyropædia, by Poggio,[310] who still enjoyed the office of apostolical secretary, as he had under Eugenius IV., and with still more abundant munificence on the part of the pope; Herodotus and Thucydides by Valla, Polybius by Peroti, Appian by Decembrio, Strabo by Gregory of Tiferno and Guarino of Verona, Theophrastus by Gaza, Plato de Legibus, Ptolemy’s Almagest, and the Præparatio Evangelica of Eusebius, by George of Trebizond.[311] These translations, it has been already observed, will not bear a very severe criticism, but certainly there was an extraordinary cluster of learning round the chair of this excellent pope.

[310] This translation of Diodorus has been ascribed by some of our writers, even since the error has been pointed out, to John Free, an Englishman, who had heard the lectures of the younger Guarini in Italy. Quod opus, Leland observes, Itali Poggio vanissime attribuunt Florentino. De Scriptor. Britann. p. 462. But it bears the name of Poggio in the two editions printed in 1472 and 1493; and Leland seems to have been deceived by some one who had put Free’s name on a manuscript of the translation. Poggio, indeed, in his preface, declares that he undertook it by command of Nicolas V. See Niceron, ix. 158; Zeno, Dissertazioni Vossiane, i. 41; Ginguéné, iii. 245. Pits follows Leland in ascribing a translation of Diodorus to Free, and quotes the first words: thus, if it still should be suggested that this may be a different work, there are the means of proving it.

[311] Heeren, p. 72.

|Justice due to his character.|

3. Corniani remarks, that if Nicolas V., like some popes, had raised a distinguished family, many pens would have been employed to immortalise him; but not having surrounded himself with relations, his fame has been much below his merits. Gibbon, one of the first to do full justice to Nicolas, has made a similar observation. How striking the contrast between this pope and his famous predecessor Gregory I., who, if he did not burn and destroy heathen authors, was at least anxious to discourage the reading of them! These eminent men, like Michael Angelo’s figures of Night and Morning, seem to stand at the two gates of the middle ages, emblems and heralds of the mind’s long sleep, and of its awakening.

|Poggio on the ruins of Rome.|

4. Several little treatises by Poggio, rather in a moral than political strain, display an observing and intelligent mind. Such are those on nobility, and on the unhappiness of princes. For these, which were written before 1440, the reader may have recourse to Shepherd, Corniani, or Ginguéné. A later essay, if we may so call it, on the vicissitudes of fortune, begins with rather an interesting description of the ruins of Rome. It is an enumeration of the more conspicuous remains of the ancient city; and we may infer from it that no great devastation or injury has taken place since the fifteenth century. Gibbon has given an account of this little tract, which is not, as he shows, the earliest description of the ruins of Rome. Poggio, I will add, seems not to have known some things with which we are familiar; as the Cloaca Maxima, the fragments of the Servian wall, the Mamertine prison, the temple of Nerva, the Giano Quadrifonte; and, by some odd misinformation, believes that the tomb of Cecilia Metella, which he had seen entire, was afterwards destroyed.[312] This leads to a conjecture that the treatise was not finished during his residence at Rome, and consequently not within the present decennium.

[312] Ad calcem postea majore ex parte exterminatum.

|Account of the East, by Conti.|

5. In the fourth book of this treatise, De Varietate Fortunæ, Poggio has introduced a remarkable narration of travels by a Venetian, Nicolo di Conti, who, in 1419, had set off from his country, and after passing many years in Persia and India, returned home in 1444. His account of those regions, in some respects the earliest on which reliance could be placed, will be found rendered into Italian from a Portuguese version of Poggio, in the first volume of Ramusio. That editor seems not to have known that the original was in print.

|Laurentius Valla.|

6. A far more considerable work by Laurentius Valla, on the graces of the Latin language, is rightly, I believe, placed within this period; but it is often difficult to determine the dates of books published before the invention of printing. Valla, like Poggio, had long earned the favour of Alfonso, but, unlike him, had forfeited that of the court of Rome. His character was very irascible and overbearing; a fault too general with the learned of the fifteenth century; but he may, perhaps, be placed at the head of the literary republic at this time; for, if inferior to Poggio, as probably he was, in vivacity and variety of genius, he was undoubtedly above him in what was then most valued and most useful, grammatical erudition.

|His attack on the court of Rome.|

7. Valla began with an attack on the court of Rome, in his declamation against the donation of Constantine. Some have in consequence reckoned him among the precursors of Protestantism; while others have imputed to the Roman see, that he was pursued with its hostility for questioning that pretended title to sovereignty. But neither of these representations is just. Valla confines himself altogether to the temporal principality of the pope; but in this his language must be admitted to have been so abusive as to render the resentment of the court of Rome not unreasonable.[313]

[313] A few lines will suffice as a specimen. O Romani pontifices, exemplum facinorum omnium cæteris pontificibus, et improbissimi scribæ et pharisæi, qui sedetis super cathedram Moysi, et opera Dathan et Abyron facitis, itane vestimenta apparatûs, pompa equitatus, omnis denique vita Cæsaris, vicarium Christi decebit? The whole tone is more like Luther’s violence, than what we should expect from an Italian of the fifteenth century. But it is with the ambitious spirit of aggrandisement as temporal princes, that he reproaches the pontiffs; nor can it be denied, that Martin and Eugenius had given provocation for his invective. Nec amplius horrenda vox audiatur, partes contra ecclesiam; ecclesia contra Perusinos pugnat, contra Bononienses. Non contra Christianos pugnat ecclesia, sed papa. Of the papal claim to temporal sovereignty by prescription, Valla writes indignantly. Præscripsit Romana ecclesia; o imperiti, o divini juris ignari. Nullus quantumvis annorum numerus verum abolere titulum potest. Præscripsit Romana ecclesia. Tace, nefaria lingua. Præscriptionem quæ fit de rebus mutis atque irrationalibus, ad hominem transfers; cujus quo diuturnior in servitute possessio, eo detestabilior.

|His treatise on the Latin language.|

8. The more famous work of Valla, De Elegantiis Latinæ Linguæ, begins with too arrogant an assumption. “These books,” he says, “will contain nothing that has been said by any one else. For many ages past, not only no man has been able to speak Latin, but none have understood the Latin they read: the studious of philosophy have had no comprehension of the philosophers,--the advocates of the orators,--the lawyers of the jurists,--the general scholar of any writers of antiquity.” Valla, however, did at least incomparably more than any one who had preceded him; and it would probably appear, that a great part of the distinctions in Latin syntax, inflection, and synonymy, which our best grammars contain, may be traced to his work. It is to be observed, that he made free use of the ancient grammarians, so that his vaunt of originality must be referred to later times. Valla is very copious as to synonyms, on which the delicate, and even necessary understanding of a language mainly depends. If those have done most for any science who have carried it furthest from the point whence they set out, philology seems to owe quite as much to Valla as to any one who has come since. The treatise was received with enthusiastic admiration, continually reprinted, honoured with a paraphrase by Erasmus, commented, abridged, extracted, and even turned into verse.[314]

[314] Corniani, ii. 221. The editions of Valla de Elegantiis, recorded by Panzer, are twenty-eight in the fifteenth century, beginning in 1471, and thirty-one in the first thirty-six years of the next.

|Its defects.|

9. Valla, however, self-confident and of no good temper, in censuring the language of others, fell not unfrequently into mistakes of his own. Vives and Budæus, coming in the next century, and in a riper age of philology, blame the hypercritical disposition of one who had not the means of pronouncing negatively on Latin words and phrases, from his want of sufficient dictionaries: his fastidiousness became what they call superstition, imposing captious scruples and unnecessary observances on himself and the world.[315] And of this species of superstition there has been much since his time in philology.

[315] Vives, De Tradendis Disciplinis, i. 478. Budæus observes: Ego Laurentium Vallensem, egregii spiritus virum, existimo sæculi sui imperitia offensum primum Latine loquendi consuetudinem constituere summa religione institisse; deinde judicii cerimonia singulari, cum profectus quoque diligentiam æquasset, in eam superstitionem sensim delapsum esse, ut et sese ipse et alios captiosis observationibus scribendique legibus obligaret. Commentar. in Ling. Græc. p. 26. (1529). But sometimes, perhaps, Valla is right, and Budæus wrong in censuring him; as, where he disputes the former’s rule, that two epithets, not being placed as predicates, cannot be joined in Latin prose to a substantive without a copula, on no better grounds than such an usage of the pronoun suus, or a phrase like privata res maritima in Cicero, where res maritima is in the nature of a single word, like res publica. The rule is certainly a good one, even if a few better exceptions can be found.

|Heeren’s praise of it.|

10. Heeren, one of the few who have, in modern times, spoken of this work from personal knowledge, and with sufficient learning, gives it a high character. “Valla was, without doubt, the best acquainted with Latin of any man in his age; yet, no pedantic Ciceronian, he had studied in all the classical writers of Rome. His Elegantiæ are a work on grammar; they contain an explanation of refined turns of expression; especially where they are peculiar to Latin. They display not only an exact knowledge of that tongue, but often also a really philosophical study of language in general. In an age when nothing was so much valued as a good Latin style, yet when the helps, of which we now possess so many, were all wanting, such a work must obtain a great success, since it relieved a necessity which every one felt.”[316]

[316] P. 220.

|Valla’s annotations on the New Testament.|

11. We have to give this conspicuous scholar a place in another line of criticism, that on the text and interpretation of the New Testament. His annotations are the earliest specimen of explanations founded on the original language. In the course of these, he treats the Vulgate with some severity. But Valla is said to have had but a slight knowledge of Greek;[317] and it must also be owned, that with all his merit as a Latin critic, he wrote indifferently, and with less classical spirit than his adversary Poggio. The invectives of these against each other do little honour to their memory, and are not worth recording in this volume, though they could not be omitted in a legitimate history of the Italian scholars.

[317] Annis abhinc ducentis Herodotum et Thucydidem Latinis literis exponebat Laurentius Valla, in ea bene et eleganter dicendi copia, quam totis voluminibus explicavit, inelegans tamen, et pæne barbarus, Græcis ad hoc literis leviter tinctus, ad auctorum sententias parum attentus, oscitans sæpe, et alias res agens, fidem apud eruditos decoxit. Huet de claris interpretibus, apud Blount. Daunou, however, in the Biographie Universelle, art. Thucydides, asserts that Valla’s translation of that historian is generally faithful. This would show no inconsiderable knowledge of Greek for that age.

SECT. II. 1450-1460.

Greeks in Italy--Invention of Printing.

|Fresh arrival of Greeks in Italy.|

12. The capture of Constantinople in 1453 drove a few learned Greeks, who had lingered to the last amidst the crash of their ruined empire, to the hospitable and admiring Italy. Among these have been reckoned Argyropulus and Chalcondyles, successively teachers of their own language, Andronicus Callistus, who is said to have followed the same profession both there and at Rome, and Constantine Lascaris, of an imperial family, whose lessons were given for several years at Milan, and afterwards at Messina. It seems, however, to be proved that Argyropulus had been already for several years in Italy.[318]

[318] Hody. Tiraboschi. Roscoe.

|Platonists and Aristotelians.|

13. The cultivation of Greek literature gave rise about this time to a vehement controversy, which had some influence on philosophical opinions in Italy. Gemistus Pletho, a native of the Morea, and one of those who attended the council of Florence in 1439, being an enthusiastic votary of the Platonic theories in metaphysics and natural theology communicated to Cosmo de’ Medici part of his own zeal; and from that time the citizen of Florence formed a scheme of establishing an academy of learned men, to discuss and propagate the Platonic system. This seems to have been carried into effect early in the present decennial period.

|Their controversy.|

14. Meantime, a treatise by Pletho, wherein he not only extolled the Platonic philosophy, which he mingled, as was then usual, with that of the Alexandrian school, and of the spurious writings attributed to Zoroaster and Hermes, but inveighed without measure against Aristotle and his disciples, had aroused the Aristotelians of Greece, where, as in western Europe, their master’s authority had long prevailed. It seems not improbable that the Platonists were obnoxious to the orthodox party, for sacrificing their own church to that of Rome; and there is also strong ground for ascribing a rejection of Christianity to Pletho. The dispute, at least, began in Greece, where Pletho’s treatise met with an angry opponent in Gennadius, patriarch of Constantinople.[319] It soon spread to Italy; Theodore Gaza embracing the cause of Aristotle with temper and moderation,[320] and George of Trebizond, a far inferior man, with invectives against the Platonic philosophy and its founder. Others replied in the same tone; and whether from ignorance or from rudeness, this controversy appears to have been managed as much with abuse of the lives and characters of two philosophers, dead nearly two thousand years, as with any rational discussion of their tenets. Both sides, however, strove to make out, what in fact was the ultimate object, that the doctrine they maintained was more consonant to the Christian religion than that of their adversaries. Cardinal Bessarion, a man of solid and elegant learning, replied to George of Trebizond in a book entitled Adversus Calumniatorem Platonis; one of the first books that appeared from the Roman press, in 1470. This dispute may possibly have originated, at least in Greece, before 1450; and it was certainly continued beyond 1460, the writings both of George and Bessarion appearing to be rather of later date.[321]

[319] Pletho’s death, in an extreme old age, is fixed by Brucker, on the authority of George of Trebizond, before the capture of Constantinople. A letter, indeed, of Bessarion, in 1462 (Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscript. vol. ii.), seems to imply that he was then living; but this cannot have been the case. Gennadius, his enemy, abdicated the patriarchate of Constantinople in 1458, having been raised to it in 1453. The public burning of Pletho’s book was in the intermediate time; and it is agreed that this was done after his death.

[320] Hody, p. 79, doubts whether Gaza’s vindication of Aristotle were not merely verbal, in conversation with Bessarion; which is however implicitly contradicted by Boivin and Tiraboschi, who assert him to have written against Pletho. The comparison of Plato and Aristotle by George of Trebizond was published at Venice in 1523, as Heeren says, on the authority of Fabricius.

[321] The best account, and that from which later writers have freely borrowed, of this philosophical controversy, is by Boivin, in the second volume of the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, p. 15. Brucker, iv. 40, Buhle, ii. 107, and Tiraboschi, vi. 303, are my other authorities.

15. Bessarion himself was so far from being as unjust towards Aristotle as his opponent was towards Plato, that he translated his metaphysics. That philosopher, though almost the idol of the schoolmen, lay still in some measure under the ban of the church, which had very gradually removed the prohibition she laid on his writings in the beginning of the thirteenth century. Nicholas V. first permitted them to be read without restriction in the universities.[322]

[322] Launoy, De Varia Aristotelis Fortuna in Academia Parisiensi, p. 44.

|Marsilius Ficinus.|

16. Cosmo de’ Medici selected Marsilius Ficinus, as a youth of great promise, to be educated in the mysteries of Platonism, that he might become the chief and preceptor of the new academy; nor did the devotion of the young philosopher fall short of the patron’s hope. Ficinus declares himself to have profited as much by the conversation of Cosmo as by the writings of Plato; but this is said in a dedication to Lorenzo, and the author has not, on other occasions, escaped the reproach of flattery. He began as early as 1456, at the age of twenty-three, to write on the Platonic philosophy; but being as yet ignorant of Greek, prudently gave way to the advice of Cosmo and Landino, that he should acquire more knowledge before he imparted it to the world.[323]

[323] Brucker, iv. 50. Roscoe.

|Invention of printing.|

17. The great glory of this decennial period is the invention of printing, or at least, as all must allow, its application to the purposes of useful learning. The reader will not expect a minute discussion of so long and unsettled a controversy as that which the origin of this art has furnished. For those who are little conversant with the subject, a very few particulars may be thought necessary.

|Block-books.|

18. About the end of the fourteenth century we find a practice of taking impressions from engraved blocks of wood, sometimes for playing cards, which came into use not long before that time; sometimes for rude cuts of saints.[324] The latter were frequently accompanied by a few lines of letters cut in the block. Gradually entire pages were impressed in this manner; and thus began what are called block books, printed in fixed characters, but never exceeding a very few leaves. Of these there exist nine or ten, often reprinted, as it is generally thought, between 1400 and 1440.[325] In using the word printed, it is of course not intended to prejudice the question as to the real art of printing. These block books seem to have been all executed in the Low Countries. They are said to have been followed by several editions of the short grammar of Donatus in wooden stereotype.[326] These also were printed in Holland. This mode of printing from blocks of wood has been practised in China from time immemorial.

[324] Heinekke and others have proved that playing cards were known in Germany as early as 1299; but these were probably painted. Lambinet, Origines de l’Imprimerie. Singer’s History of Playing Cards. The earliest cards were on parchment.

[325] Lambinet, Singer, Ottley, Dibdin, &c.

[326] Lambinet.

|Gutenberg and Costar’s claims.|

19. The invention of printing, in the modern sense, from moveable letters, has been referred by most to Gutenberg, a native of Mentz, but settled at Strasburg. He is supposed to have conceived the idea before 1440, and to have spent the next ten years in making attempts at carrying it into effect, which some assert him to have done in short fugitive pieces, actually printed from his moveable wooden characters before 1450. But of the existence of these there seems to be no evidence.[327] Gutenberg’s priority is disputed by those who deem Lawrence Costar, of Haarlem, the real inventor of the art. According to a tradition, which seems not to be traced beyond the middle of the sixteenth century, but resting afterwards upon sufficient testimony to prove its local reception, Costar substituted moveable for fixed letters as early as 1430; and some have believed that a book called Speculum Humanæ Salvationis, of very rude wooden characters, proceeded from the Haarlem press before any other that is generally recognised.[328] The tradition adds, that an unfaithful servant having fled with the secret, set up for himself at Strasburg, or Mentz; and this treachery was originally ascribed to Gutenberg or Fust, but seems, since they have been manifestly cleared of it, to have been laid on one Gensfleisch, reputed to be the brother of Gutenberg.[329] The evidence, however, as to this, is highly precarious; and even if we were to admit the claims of Costar, there seems no fair reason to dispute that Gutenberg might also have struck out an idea, that surely did not require any extraordinary ingenuity, and which left the most important difficulties to be surmounted, as they undeniably were, by himself and his coadjutors.[330]

[327] Mémoires de l’Acad. des Inscript. xvii. 762. Lambinet, p. 113.

[328] In Mr. Ottley’s History of Engraving, the claims of Costar are strongly maintained, though chiefly on the authority of Meerman’s proofs, which go to establish the local tradition. But the evidence of Ludovico Guicciardini is an answer to those who treat it as a forgery of Hadrian Junius. Santander, Lambinet, and most recent investigators are for Mentz against Haarlem.

[329] Gensfleisch seems to have been the name of that branch of the Gutenberg family to which the inventor of printing belonged. Biogr. Univ., art. Gutenberg.

[330] Lambinet, p. 315.

|Progress of the invention.|

20. It is agreed by all, that about 1450, Gutenberg, having gone to Mentz, entered into partnership with Fust, a rich merchant of that city, for the purpose of carrying the invention into effect, and that Fust supplied him with considerable sums of money. The subsequent steps are obscure. According to a passage in the Annales Hirsargienses of Trithemius, written sixty years afterwards, but on the authority of a grandson of Peter Schæffer, their assistant in the work, it was about 1452 that the latter brought the art to perfection, by devising an easier mode of casting types.[331] This passage has been interpreted, according to a lax construction, to mean, that Schæffer invented the method of casting types in a matrix; but seems more strictly to mean, that we owe to him the great improvement in letter-casting, namely, the punches of engraved steel, by which the matrices or moulds are struck, and without which, independent of the economy of labour, there could be no perfect uniformity of shape. Upon the former supposition, Schæffer may be reckoned the main inventor of the art of printing; for moveable wooden letters, though small books may possibly have been printed by means of them, are so inconvenient, and letters of cut metal so expensive, that few great works were likely to have passed through the press, till cast types were employed. Van Praet, however, believes the psalter of 1457 to have been printed from wooden characters; and some have conceived letters of cut metal to have been employed both in that and in the first Bible. Lambinet, who thinks “the essence of the art of printing is in the engraved punch,” naturally gives the chief credit to Schæffer;[332] but this is not the more usual opinion.

[331] Petrus Opilio de Gernsheim, tunc famulus inventoris primi Joannis Fust, homo ingeniosus et prudens, faciliorem modum fundendi characteras excogitavit, et artem, ut nunc est, complevit. Lambinet, i. 101. See Daunou contra. Id. 417.

[332] ii. 213. In another place, he divides the praise better: Gloire donc à Gutenberg, qui, le premier, conçut l’idée de la typographie, en imaginant la mobilité des caractères, qui en est l’âme; gloire à Fust, qui en fît usage avec lui, et sans lequel nous ne jouirions peut-être pas de ce bienfait; gloire à Schæffer, à qui nous devons tout le mécanisme, et toutes les merveilles de l’art. i. 119.

|First printed Bible.|

21. The earliest book, properly so called, is now generally believed to be the Latin Bible, commonly called the Mazarin Bible, a copy having been found, about the middle of the last century, in Cardinal Mazarin’s library at Paris.[333] It is remarkable, that its existence was unknown before; for it can hardly be called a book of very extraordinary scarcity, nearly twenty copies being in different libraries, half of them in those of private persons in England.[334] No date appears in this Bible, and some have referred its publication to 1452, or even to 1450, which few perhaps would at present maintain; while others have thought the year 1455 rather more probable.[335] In a copy belonging to the royal library at Paris, an entry is made, importing that it was completed in binding and illuminating at Mentz, on the feast of the Assumption (Aug. 15), 1456. But Trithemius, in the passage above quoted, seems to intimate that no book had been printed in 1452; and, considering the lapse of time that would naturally be employed in such an undertaking during the infancy of the art, and that we have no other printed book of the least importance to fill up the interval till 1457, and also that the binding and illuminating the above-mentioned copy is likely to have followed the publication at no great length of time, we may not err in placing its appearance in the year 1455, which will secure its hitherto unimpeached priority in the records of bibliography.[336]

[333] The Cologne chronicle says: Anno Domini 1450, qui jubilæus erat, cœptum est imprimi, primusque liber, qui excudebatur, biblia fuere Latina.

[334] Bibliotheca Sussexiana, i. 293. (1827.) The number there enumerated is eighteen; nine in public, and nine in private libraries; three of the former, and all the latter, English.

[335] Lambinet thinks it was probably not begun before 1453, nor published till the end of 1455. i. 130. See, on this Bible, an article by Dr. Dibdin, in Valpy’s Classical Journal, No. 8; which collects the testimonies of his predecessors.

[336] It is very difficult to pronounce on the means employed in the earliest books, which are almost all controverted. This bible is thought by Fournier, himself a letter founder, to be printed from wooden types; by Meerman, from types cut in metal; by Heinekke and Daunou from cast types, which is most probable. Lambinet, i. 417. Daunou does not believe that any book was printed with types cut either in wood or metal; and that, after block books, there were none but with cast letters like those now in use, invented by Gutenberg, perfected by Schæffer, and first employed by them and Fust in the Mazarin Bible. Id. p. 423.

|Beauty of the book.|

22. It is a very striking circumstance, that the high-minded inventors of this great art tried at the very outset so bold a flight as the printing an entire Bible, and executed it with astonishing success. It was Minerva leaping on earth in her divine strength and radiant armour, ready at the moment of her nativity to subdue and destroy her enemies. The Mazarin Bible is printed, some copies on vellum, some on paper of choice quality, with strong, black, and tolerably handsome characters, but with some want of uniformity, which has led, perhaps unreasonably, to a doubt whether they were cast in a matrix. We may see in imagination this venerable and splendid volume leading up the crowded myriads of its followers, and imploring, as it were, a blessing on the new art, by dedicating its first fruits to the service of Heaven.

|Early printed sheets.|

23. A metrical exhortation, in the German language, to take arms against the Turks, dated in 1454, has been retrieved in the present century. If this date unequivocally refers to the time of printing, which does not seem a necessary consequence, it is the earliest loose sheet that is known to be extant. It is said to be in the type of what is called the Bamberg Bible, which we shall soon have to mention. Two editions of Letters of Indulgence from Nicolas V., bearing the date of 1454, are extant in single printed sheets, and two more editions of 1455;[337] but it has justly been observed, that, even if published before the Mazarin Bible, the printing of that great volume must have commenced long before. An almanac for the year 1457 has also been detected; and as fugitive sheets of this kind are seldom preserved, we may justly conclude that the art of printing was not dormant, so far as these light productions are concerned. A Donatus, with Schæffer’s name, but no date, may or may not be older than a psalter published in 1457 by Fust and Schæffer (the partnership with Gutenberg having been dissolved in November, 1455, and having led to a dispute and litigation), with a colophon, or notice, subjoined in the last page, in these words:

Psalmorum codex venustate capitalium decoratus, rubricationibusque sufficienter distinctus, adinventione artificiosa imprimendi ac caracterizandi, absque calami ulla exaratione sic effigiatus, et ad eusebiam Dei industrie est summatus. Per Johannem Fust, civem Moguntinum, et Petrum Schæffer de Gernsheim, anno Domini millesimo cccclvii. In vigilia Assumptionis.[338]

A colophon, substantially similar, is subjoined to several of the Fustine editions. And this seems hard to reconcile with the story that Fust sold his impressions at Paris, as late as 1463, for manuscripts.

[337] Brunet, Supplément au Manuel du Libraire. It was not known till lately that more than one edition out of these four was in existence, Santander thinks their publication was after 1460. Dict. Bibliographique du 15me Siècle, i. 92. But this seems improbable, from the transitory character of the subject. He argues from a resemblance in the letters to those used by Fust and Schæffer in the Durandi Rationale of 1459.

[338] Dibdin’s Bibliotheca Spenceriana. Biogr. Univ., Gutenberg, &c. In the Donatus above mentioned, the method of printing is also mentioned: Explicit Donatus arte nova imprimendi seu caracterizandi per Petrum de Gernsheim in urbe Moguntina effigiatus. Lambinet considers this and the Bible to be the first specimens of typography, for he doubts the Literæ Indulgentiarum, though probably with no cause.

|Psalter of 1459. Other early books.|

24. Another psalter was printed by Fust and Schæffer with similar characters in 1459; and in the same year, Durandi Rationale, a treatise on the liturgical offices of the church; of which Van Praet says, that it is perhaps the earliest with cast types to which Fust and Schæffer have given their name and a date.[339] The two psalters he conceives to have been printed from wood. But this would be disputed by other eminent judges.[340] In 1460, a work of considerable size, the Catholicon of Balbi, came out from an opposition press, established at Mentz by Gutenberg. The Clementine Constitutions, part of the canon law, were also printed by him in the same year.

[339] Lambinet, i. 154.

[340] Lambinet, Dibdin. The former thinks the inequality of letters observed in the psalter of 1457 may proceed from their being cast in a matrix of plaster or clay, instead of metal.

|Bible of Pfister.|

25. These are the only monuments of early typography acknowledged to come within the present decennium. A Bible without a date, supposed by some to have been printed by Pfister at Bamberg, though ascribed by others to Gutenberg himself, is reckoned by good judges certainly prior to 1462, and perhaps as early as 1460. Daunou and others refer it to 1461. The antiquities of typography, after all the pains bestowed upon them, are not unlikely to receive still further elucidation in the course of time.

|Greek first taught at Paris.|

26. On the 19th of January, 1458, as Crevier, with a minuteness becoming the subject, informs us, the university of Paris received a petition from Gregory, a native of Tiferno, in the kingdom of Naples, to be appointed teacher of Greek. His request was granted, and a salary of one hundred crowns assigned to him, on condition that he should teach gratuitously, and deliver two lectures every day, one on the Greek language, and the other on the art of rhetoric.[341] From this auspicious circumstance Crevier deduces the restoration of ancient literature in the university of Paris, and consequently in the kingdom of France. For above two hundred years, the scholastic logic and philosophy had crushed polite letters. No mention is made of rhetoric, that is, of the art that instructs in the ornaments of style, in any statute or record of the university since the beginning of the thirteenth century. If the Greek language, as Crevier supposes, had not been wholly neglected, it was, at least, so little studied, that entire neglect would have been practically the same.

[341] Crevier, Hist. de l’Univ. de Paris, iv. 243.

|Leave unwillingly granted.|

27. This concession was, perhaps, unwillingly made, and, as frequently happens in established institutions, it left the prejudices of the ruling party rather stronger than before. The teachers of Greek and rhetoric were specially excluded from the privileges of regency by the faculty of arts. These branches of knowledge were looked upon as unessential appendages to a good education, very much as the modern languages are treated in our English schools and universities at this day. A bigoted adherence to old systems, and a lurking reluctance that the rising youth should become superior in knowledge to ourselves, were no peculiar evil spirits that haunted the university of Paris, though none ever stood more in need of a thorough exorcism. For many years after this time, the Greek and Latin languages were thus taught by permission, and with very indifferent success.

|Purbach; his mathematical discoveries.|

28. Purbach, or Peurbach, native of a small Austrian town of that name, has been called the first restorer of mathematical science in Europe. Ignorant of Greek, and possessing only a bad translation of Ptolemy, lately made by George of Trebizond,[342] he yet was able to explain the rules of physical astronomy and the theory of the planetary motions far better than his predecessors. But his chief merit was in the construction of trigonometrical tables. The Greeks had introduced the sexagesimal division, not only of the circle, but of the radius, and calculated chords according to this scale. The Arabians, who, about the ninth century, first substituted the sine, or half chord of the double arch, in their tables, preserved the same graduation. Purbach made one step towards a decimal scale, which the new notation by Arabic numerals rendered highly convenient, by dividing the radius, or sinus totus, as it was then often called, into 600,000 parts, and gave rules for computing the sines of arcs; which he himself also calculated, for every minute of the quadrant, as Delambre and Kästner think, or for every ten minutes, according to Gassendi and Hutton, in parts of this radius. The tables of Albaten the Arabian geometer, the inventor, as far as appears, of sines, had extended only to quarters of a degree.[343]

[342] Montucla, Biogr. Univ. It is however certain, and is admitted by Delambre, the author of this article in the Biog. Univ., that Purbach made considerable progress in abridging and explaining the text of this translation, which, if ignorant of the original, he must have done by his mathematical knowledge. Kästner, ii. 521.

[343] Montucla, Hist. des Mathématiques, i. 539. Hutton’s Mathematical Dictionary, and his Introduction to Logarithms. Gassendi, Vita Purbachii. Biogr. Univ. Peurbach (by Delambre). Kästner, Geschichte der Mathematik, i. 529-543, 572; ii. 319. Gassendi twice gives 6,000,000 for the parts of Purbach’s radius. None of these writers seem comparable in accuracy to Kästner.

|Other mathematicians.|

29. Purbach died young, in 1461, when, by the advice of Cardinal Bessarion, he was on the point of setting out for Italy, in order to learn Greek. His mantle descended on Regiomontanus, a disciple, who went beyond his master, though he has sometimes borne away his due credit. A mathematician rather earlier than Purbach, was Nicolas Cusanus, raised to the dignity of cardinal in 1448. He was by birth a German, and obtained a considerable reputation for several kinds of knowledge.[344] But he was chiefly distinguished for the tenet of the earth’s motion, which, however, according to Montucla, he proposed only as an ingenious hypothesis. Fioravanti, of Bologna, is said, on contemporary authority, to have removed, in 1455, a tower with its foundation, to a distance of several feet, and to have restored to the perpendicular one at Cento seventy-five feet high, which had swerved five feet.[345]

[344] A work upon statics, or rather upon the weight of bodies in water, by Cusanus, seems chiefly remarkable, as it shows both a disposition to ascertain physical truths by experiment, and an extraordinary misapprehension of the results. See Kästner, ii. 122. It is published in an edition of Vitruvius, Strasburg, 1550.

[345] Tiraboschi. Montucla. Biogr. Univ.

SECT. III. 1460-1470.

Progress of Art of Printing--Learning in Italy and rest of Europe.

|Progress of printing in Germany.|

30. The progress of that most important invention, which illustrated the preceding ten years, is the chief subject of our consideration in the present. Many books, it is to be observed, even of the superior class, were printed, especially in the first thirty years after the invention of the art, without date of time or place; and this was, of course, more frequently the case with smaller or fugitive pieces. A catalogue, therefore, of books that can be certainly referred to any particular period must always be very defective. A collection of fables in German was printed at Bamberg in 1461, and another book in 1462, by Pfister, at the same place.[346] The Bible which bears his name has been already mentioned. In 1462 Fust published a Bible, commonly called the Mentz Bible, and which passed for the earliest till that in the Mazarin library came to light. But in the same year, the city having been taken by Adolphus count of Nassau, the press of Fust was broken up, and his workmen, whom he had bound by an oath to secrecy, dispersed themselves into different quarters. Released thus, as they seem to have thought, from their obligation, they exercised their skill in other places. It is certain, that the art of printing, soon after this, spread into the towns near the Rhine; not only Bamberg, as before mentioned, but Cologne, Strasburg, Augsburg, and one or two more places, sent forth books before the conclusion of these ten years. Nor was Mentz altogether idle, after the confusion occasioned by political events had abated. Yet the whole number of books printed with dates of time and place, in the German empire, from 1461 to 1470, according to Panzer, was only twenty-four; of which five were Latin, and two German, Bibles. The only known classical works are two editions of Cicero de Officiis, at Mentz, in 1465 and 1466, and another about the latter year at Cologne, by Ulric Zell; perhaps also the treatise de Finibus, and that de Senectute, at the same place. There is also reason to suspect that a Virgil, a Valerius Maximus, and a Terence, printed by Mentelin at Strasburg, without a date, are as old as 1470; and the same has been thought of one or two editions of Ovid de Arte Amandi, by Zell of Cologne. One book, Joannis de Turrecremata Explanatio in Psalterium, was printed by Zainer, at Cracow, in 1465. This is remarkable, as we have no evidence of the Polish press from that time till 1500. Several copies of this book are said to exist in Poland; yet doubts of its authenticity have been entertained. Zainer settled soon afterwards at Augsburg.[347]

[346] Lambinet.

[347] Panzer, Annales Typographici. Biographie Universelle, Zainer.

|Introduced into France.|

31. It was in 1469 that Ulric Gering, with two more, who had been employed as pressmen by Fust at Mentz, were induced by Fitchet and Lapierre, rectors of the Sorbonne, to come to Paris, where several books were printed in 1470 and 1471. The epistles of Gasparin of Barziza appear, by some verses subjoined, to have been the earliest among these.[348] Panzer has increased to eighteen the list of books printed before the close of 1472.[349]

[348] The last four of these lines are the following:

Primos ecce libros quos hæc industria finxit, Francorum in terris, ædibus atque tuis. Michael, Udalricus, Martinusque magistri Hos impresserunt, et facient alios.

[349] See Greswell’s Early Parisian Press.

|Caxton’s first works.|

32. But there seem to be unquestionable proofs that a still earlier specimen of typography is due to an English printer, the famous Caxton. His Recueil des Histoires de Troye appears to have been printed during the life of Philip duke of Burgundy, and consequently before June 15, 1467. The place of publication, certainly within the duke’s dominions, has not been conjectured. It is, therefore, by several years the earliest printed book in the French language. A Latin speech by Russell, ambassador of Edward IV. to Charles of Burgundy, in 1469, is the next publication of Caxton. This was also printed in the Low Countries.[350]

[350] Dibdin’s Typographical Antiquities. This is not noticed in the Biographie Universelle, nor in Brunet; an omission hardly excusable.

|Printing exercised in Italy.|

33. A more splendid scene was revealed in Italy. Sweynheim and Pannartz, two workmen of Fust, set up a press, doubtless with encouragement and patronage, at the monastery of Subiaco in the Apennines, a place chosen either on account of the numerous manuscripts it contained, or because the monks were of the German nation; and hence an edition of Lactantius issued in October, 1465, which one, no longer extant, of Donatus’s little grammar is said to have preceded. An edition of Cicero de Officiis, without a date, is referred by some to the year 1466. In 1467, after printing Augustin de Civitate Dei, and Cicero de Oratore, the two Germans left Subiaco for Rome, where they sent forth not less than twenty-three editions of ancient Latin authors before the close of 1470. Another German, John of Spire, established a press at Venice, in 1469, beginning with Cicero’s Epistles. In that and the next year, almost as many classical works were printed at Venice as at Rome, either by John and his brother Vindelin, or by a Frenchman, Nicolas Jenson. Instances are said to exist of books printed by unknown persons at Milan, in 1469; and in 1470, Zarot, a German, opened there a fertile source of typography, though but two Latin authors were published that year. An edition of Cicero’s Epistles appeared also in the little town of Foligno. The whole number of books that had issued from the press in Italy at the close of that year amounts, according to Panzer, to eighty-two; exclusive of those which have no date, some of which may be referrible to this period.

|Lorenzo de’ Medici.|

34. Cosmo de’ Medici died in 1464. But the happy impulse he had given to the restoration of letters was not suspended; and in the last year of the present decade, his wealth and his influence over the republic of Florence had devolved on a still more conspicuous character, his grandson Lorenzo, himself worthy, by his literary merits, to have done honour to any patron, had not a more prosperous fortune called him to become one.

|Italian poetry of fifteenth century.|

35. The epoch of Lorenzo’s accession to power is distinguished by a circumstance hardly less honourable than the restoration of classical learning,--the revival of native genius in poetry, after the slumber of near a hundred years. After the death of Petrarch, many wrote verses, but none excelled in the art; though Muratori has praised the poetry down to 1400, especially that of Guisto di Conti, whom he does not hesitate to place among the first poets of Italy.[351] But that of the fifteenth century is abandoned by all critics as rude, feeble, and ill expressed. The historians of literature scarcely deign to mention a few names, or the editors of selections to extract a few sonnets. The romances of chivalry in rhyme, Buovo d’Antona, la Spagna, l’Ancroja, are only deserving to be remembered as they led in some measure to the great poems of Boiardo and Ariosto. In themselves they are mean and prosaic. It is vain to seek a general cause for the sterility in the cultivation of Latin and Greek literature, which we know did not obstruct the brilliancy of Italian poetry in the next age. There is only one cause for the want of great men in any period;--nature does not think fit to produce them. They are no creatures of education and circumstance.

[351] Muratori della Perfetta Poesia, p. 193. Bouterwek, Gesch. der Ital. Poesie. i. 216.

|Italian prose of same age.|

36. The Italian prose literature of this interval from the age of Petrarch would be comprised in a few volumes. Some historical memoirs may be found in Muratori, but far the chief part of his collection is in Latin. Leonard Aretin wrote lives of Dante and Petrarch in Italian, which, according to Corniani, are neither valuable for their information nor for their style. The Vita Civile of Palmieri seems to have been written some time after the middle of the fifteenth century; but of this Corniani says, that having wished to give a specimen, on account of the rarity of Italian in that age, he had abandoned his intention, finding that it was hardly possible to read two sentences in the Vita Civile without meeting some barbarism or incorrectness. The novelists Sacchetti, and Ser Giovanni, author of the Pecorone, who belong to the end of the fourteenth century, are read by some; their style is familiar and idiomatic; but Crescimbeni praises that of the former. Corniani bestows some praise on Passavanti and Pandolfini; the first a religious writer, not much later than Boccaccio; the latter a noble Florentine, author of a moral dialogue in the beginning of the fifteenth century. Filelfo, among his voluminous productions, has an Italian commentary on Petrarch, of which Corniani speaks very slightingly. The commentary of Landino on Dante is much better esteemed; but it was not published till 1481.

|Giostra of Politian.|

37. It was on occasion of a tournament, wherein Lorenzo himself and his brother Julian had appeared in the lists, that poems were composed by Luigi Pulci, and by Politian, then a youth, or rather a boy, the latter of which displayed more harmony, spirit, and imagination, than any that had been written since the death of Petrarch.[352] It might thus be seen, that there was no real incompatibility between the pursuits of ancient literature and the popular language of fancy and sentiment; and that, if one gave chastity and elegance of style, a more lively and natural expression of the mind could best be attained by the other.

[352] Extracts from this poem will be found in Roscoe’s Lorenzo, and in Sismondi, Littérature du Midi, ii. 43, who praises it highly, as the Italian critics have done, and as by the passages quoted it seems well to deserve. Roscoe supposes Politian to be only fourteen years old when he wrote the Giostra di Giuliano. But the lines he quotes allude to Lorenzo as chief of the republic, which could not be said before the death of Pietro in December, 1469. If he wrote them at sixteen, it is extraordinary enough; but these two years make an immense difference. Ginguéné is of opinion, that they do not allude to the tournament of 1468, but to one in 1473.

|Paul II. persecutes the learned.|

38. This period was not equally fortunate for the learned in other parts of Italy. Ferdinand of Naples, who came to the throne in 1458, proved no adequate representative of his father Alfonso. But at Rome they encountered a serious calamity. A few zealous scholars, such as Pomponius Lætus, Platina, Callimachus Experiens, formed an academy in order to converse together on subjects of learning, and communicate to each other the results of their private studies. Dictionaries, indexes, and all works of compilation being very deficient, this was the best substitute for the labour of perusing the whole body of Latin antiquity. They took Roman names; an innocent folly, long after practised in Europe. The pope, however, Paul II., thought fit, in 1468, to arrest all this society on charges of conspiracy against his life, for which there was certainly no foundation, and of setting up Pagan superstitions against Christianity, of which, in this instance, there seems to have been no proof. They were put to the torture, and kept in prison a twelvemonth, when the tyrant, who is said to have vowed this in his first rage, set them all at liberty; but it was long before the Roman academy recovered any degree of vigour.[353]

[353] Tiraboschi, vi. 93. Ginguéné. Brucker. Corniani ii. 280. This writer, inferior to none in his acquaintance with the literature of the fifteenth century, but, though not an ecclesiastic, always favourable to the court of Rome, seems to strive to lay the blame on the imprudence of Platina.

|Mathias Corvinus.|

|His library.|

39. We do not discover as yet much substantial encouragement to literature in any country on this side the Alps, with the exception of one where it was least to be anticipated. Mathias Corvinus, king of Hungary, from his accession in 1458 to his death in 1490, endeavoured to collect round himself the learned of Italy, and to strike light into the midst of the depths of darkness that encompassed his country. He determined, therefore, to erect an university, which, by the original plan, was to have been in a distinct city; but the Turkish wars compelled him to fix it at Buda. He availed himself of the dispersion of libraries, after the capture of Constantinople, to purchase Greek manuscripts, and employed four transcribers at Florence, besides thirty at Buda, to enrich his collection. Thus, at his death, it is said that the royal library at Buda contained 50,000 volumes; a number that appears wholly incredible.[354] Three hundred ancient statues are reported to have been placed in the same repository. But when the city fell into the hands of the Turks in 1527, these noble treasures were dispersed, and in great measure destroyed. Though the number of books, as is just observed, must have been exaggerated, it is possible that neither the burning of the Alexandrian library by Omar, if it ever occurred, nor any other single calamity recorded in history, except the two captures of Constantinople itself, has been more fatally injurious to literature; and, with due regard to the good intentions of Mathias Corvinus, it is deeply to be regretted that the inestimable relics once rescued from the barbarian Ottomans, should have been accumulated in a situation of so little security against their devastating arms.[355]

[354] The library collected by Nicolas V. contained only 5,000 manuscripts. The volumes printed in Europe before the death of Corvinus would probably be reckoned highly at 15,000. Heeren suspects the number 50,000 to be hyperbolical; and in fact there can be no doubt of it.

[355] Brucker. Roscoe. Gibbon. Heeren, p. 173, who refers to several modern books expressly relating to the fate of this library. Part of it, however, found its way to that of Vienna.

|Slight signs of literature in England.|

40. England under Edward IV. presents an appearance, in the annals of publication, about as barren as under Edward the Confessor; there is, I think, neither in Latin nor in English, a single book that we can refer to this decennial period.[356] Yet we find a few symptoms, not to be overlooked, of incipient regard for literature. Leland enumerates some Englishmen who travelled to Italy, perhaps before 1460, in order to become disciples of the younger Guarini at Ferrara: Robert Fleming, William Gray, bishop of Ely, John Free, John Gunthorpe, and a very accomplished nobleman, John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester. It is but fairness to give credit to these men for their love of learning, and to observe, that they preceded any whom we could mention on sure grounds either in France or Germany. We trace, however, no distinct fruits from their acquisitions. But, though very few had the means of attaining that on which we set a high value in literature, the mere rudiments of grammatical learning were communicated to many. Nor were munificent patrons, testators, in the words of Burke, to a posterity which they embraced as their own, wanting in this latter period of the middle ages. William of Wykeham, chancellor of England under Richard II. and bishop of Winchester, founded a school in that city, and a college at Oxford in connection with it, in 1373.[357] Henry VI., in imitation of him, became the founder of Eton school, and of King’s College, Cambridge, about 1442.[358] In each of these schools seventy boys, and in each college seventy fellows and scholars, are maintained by these princely endowments. It is unnecessary to observe, that they are still the amplest, as they are much the earliest, foundations for the support of grammatical learning in England. What could be taught in these, or any other schools at this time, the reader has been enabled to judge; it must have been the Latin language, through indifferent books of grammar, and with the perusal of very few heathen writers of antiquity. In the curious and unique collection of the Paston letters we find one from a boy at Eton in 1468, wherein he gives two Latin verses, not very good, of his own composition.[359] I am sensible that the mention of such a circumstance may appear trifling, especially to foreigners: but it is not a trifle to illustrate by any fact the gradual progress of knowledge among the laity; first in the mere elements of reading and writing, as we did in a former chapter; and now, in the fifteenth century, in such grammatical instruction as could be imparted. This boy of the Paston family was well born, and came from a distance; nor was he in training for the church, since he seems by this letter to have had marriage in contemplation.

[356] The University of Oxford, according to Wood, as well as the church generally, stood very low about this time: the grammar schools were laid aside; degrees were conferred on undeserving persons for money. A.D. 1455, 1466. He had previously mentioned those schools as kept up in the university under the superintendence of masters of arts. A.D. 1442. The statutes of Magdalen College, founded in the reign of Edward, provide for a certain degree of learning.--Chandler’s Life of Waynflete, p. 200.

[357] Lowth’s Life of Wykeham. He permits in his statutes a limited number of sons of gentlemen (gentilium) to be educated in his school. Chandler’s Life of Waynflete, p. 5.

[358] Waynflete became the first head master of Eton in 1442. Chandler, p. 26.

[359] Vol. i., p. 301. Of William Paston, author of these lines, it is said, some years before, that he had “gone to school to a Lombard called Karol Giles, to learn and to be read in poetry, or else in French. He said, that he would be as glad and as fain of a good book of French or of poetry as my master Falstaff would be to purchase a fair manor,” p. 173. (1459).

|Paston letters.|

41. But the Paston letters are, in other respects, an important testimony to the progressive condition of society; and come in as a precious link in the chain of the moral history of England, which they alone in this period supply. They stand indeed singly, as far as I know, in Europe; for though it is highly probable that in the archives of Italian families, if not in France or Germany, a series of merely private letters equally ancient may be concealed, I do not recollect that any have been published. They are all written in the reigns of Henry VI., and Edward IV., except a few, that extend as far as Henry VII., by different members of a wealthy and respectable, but not noble, family; and are, therefore, pictures of the life of the English gentry in that age.[360] We are merely concerned with their evidence as to the state of literature. And this, upon the whole, is more favourable than, from the want of authorship in those reigns, we should be led to anticipate. It is plain that several members of the family, male and female, wrote not only grammatically, but with a fluency and facility, an epistolary expertness, which implies the habitual use of the pen. Their expression is much less formal and quaint than that of modern novelists, when they endeavour to feign the familiar style of ages much later than the fifteenth century. Some of them mix Latin with their English, very bad, and probably for the sake of concealment; and Ovid is once mentioned as a book to be sent from one to another.[361] It appears highly probable, that such a series of letters, with so much vivacity and pertinence, would not have been written by any family of English gentry in the reign of Richard II., and much less before. It is hard to judge from a single case; but the letter of Lady Pelham, quoted in the first chapter, is ungrammatical and unintelligible. The seed, therefore, was now rapidly germinating beneath the ground; and thus we may perceive that the publication of books is not the sole test of the intellectual advance of a people. I may add, that although the middle of the fifteenth century was the period in which the fewest books were written, a greater number, in the opinion of experienced judges, were transcribed in that than in any former age.

[360] This collection is in five quarto volumes, and has become scarce. The length has been doubled by an injudicious proceeding of the editor, in printing the original orthography and abbreviations of the letters on each left-hand page, and a more legible modern form on the right. As orthography is of little importance, and abbreviations of none at all, it would have been sufficient to have given a single specimen.

[361] “As to Ovid de Arte Amandi, I shall send him you next week, for I have him not now ready.” iv. 175. This was between 1463 and 1469, according to the editor. We do not know positively of any edition of Ovid de Arte Amandi so early; but Zell of Cologne is supposed to have printed one before 1470, as has been mentioned above. Whether the book to be sent were in print, or manuscript, must be left to the sagacity of critics.

|Low condition of public libraries.|

42. It may be observed here, with reference to the state of learning generally in England down to the age immediately preceding the Reformation, that Leland, in the fourth volume of his Collectanea, has given several lists of books in colleges and monasteries, which do not by any means warrant the supposition of a tolerable acquaintance with ancient literature. We find, however, some of the recent translations made in Italy from Greek authors. The clergy, in fact, were now retrograding, while the laity were advancing; and when this was the case, the ascendency of the former was near its end.

|Rowley.|

|Clotilde de Surville.|

43. I have said that there was not a new book written within these ten years. In the days of our fathers, it would have been necessary at least to mention as a forgery the celebrated poems attributed to Thomas Rowley. But, probably, no one person living believes in their authenticity; nor should I have alluded to so palpable a fabrication at all, but for the curious circumstance that a very similar trial of literary credulity has not long since been essayed in France. A gentleman of the name of Surville published a collection of poems, alleged to have been written by Clotilde de Surville, a poetess of the fifteenth century. The muse of the Ardèche warbled her notes during a longer life than the monk of Bristow; and having sung the relief of Orleans by the Maid of Arc in 1429, lived to pour her swan-like chant on the battle of Fornova in 1495. Love, however, as much as war, is her theme; and it was a remarkable felicity that she rendered an ode of her prototype Sappho into French verse, many years before any one else in France could have seen it. But having, like Rowley, anticipated too much the style and sentiments of a later period, she has, like him, fallen into the numerous ranks of the dead who never were alive.[362]

[362] Auguis, Recueil des Poètes, vol. ii. Biogr. Univ., Surville. Villemain, Cours de Littérature, vol. ii. Sismondi, Hist. des Français, xiii. 593. The forgery is by no means so gross as that of Chatterton; but, as M. Sismondi says, “We have only to compare Clotilde with the Duke of Orleans, or Villon.” The following lines, quoted by him, will give the reader a fair specimen:--

Suivons l’amour, tel en soit le danger; Cy nous attend sur lits charmans de mousse. A des rigueurs; qui voudroit s’en venger? Qui (meme alors que tout désir s’émousse) Au prix fatal de ne plus y songer? Règne sur moi, cher tyran, dont les armes Ne me sauroient porter coups trop puissans! Pour m’epargner n’en crois onc a mes larmes; Sont de plaisir, tant plus auront de charmes Tes dards aigus, que seront plus cuisans.

It has been justly remarked, that the extracts from Clotilde in the Recueil des Anciens Poètes occupy too much space, while the genuine writers of the fifteenth century appear in very scanty specimens.

SECT. IV. 1471-1480.

The same Subjects continued--Lorenzo de’ Medici--Physical Controversy--Mathematical Sciences.

|Number of books printed in Italy.|

44. The books printed in Italy during these ten years amount, according to Panzer, to 1297; of which 234 are editions of ancient classical authors. Books without date are of course not included; and the list must not be reckoned complete as to others.

45. A press was established at Florence by Lorenzo, in which Cennini, a goldsmith, was employed; the first printer, except Caxton and Jenson, who was not a German. Virgil was published in 1471. Several other Italian cities began to print in this period. The first edition of Dante issued from Foligno in 1472; it has been improbably, as well as erroneously, referred to Mentz. Petrarch had been published in 1470, and Boccace in 1471. They were reprinted several times before the close of this decade.

|First Greek printed.|

46. No one had attempted to cast Greek types in sufficient number for an entire book; though a few occur in the early publications by Sweynheim and Pannartz;[363] while in those printed afterwards at Venice, Greek words are inserted by the pen; till, in 1476, Zarot of Milan had the honour of giving the Greek grammar of Constantine Lascaris to the world.[364] This was followed in 1480 by Craston’s lexicon, a very imperfect vocabulary; but which for many years continued to be the only assistance of the kind to which a student could have recourse. The author was an Italian.

[363] Greek types first appear in a treatise of Jerome, printed at Rome in 1468. Heeren, from Panzer.

[364] Lascaris Grammatica Græca, Mediolani ex recognitione Demetrii Cretensis per Dionysium Paravisinum, 4to. The characters in this rare volume are elegant and of a moderate size. The earliest specimens of Greek printing consist of detached passages and citations, found in a very few of the first printed copies of Latin authors, such as the Lactantius of 1465, the Aulus Gellius and Apuleius of Sweynheim and Pannartz, 1469, and some works of Bessarion about the same time. In all these it is remarkable that the Greek typography is legibly and creditably executed, whereas the Greek introduced into the Officia et Paradoxa of Cicero, Milan, 1474, by Zarot, is so deformed as to be scarcely legible. I am indebted for the whole of this note to Greswell’s Early Parisian Greek Press, i. 1.

|Study of antiquities.|

47. Ancient learning is to be divided into two great departments; the knowledge of what is contained in the works of Greek and Roman authors, and that of the matériel, if I may use the word, which has been preserved in a bodily shape, and is sometimes known by the name of antiquities. Such are buildings, monuments, inscriptions, coins, medals, vases, instruments, which by gradual accumulation have thrown a powerful light upon ancient history and literature. The abundant riches of Italy in these remains could not be overlooked as soon as the spirit of admiration for all that was Roman began to be kindled. Petrarch himself formed a little collection of coins; and his contemporary Pastrengo was the first who copied inscriptions; but in the early part of the fifteenth century, her scholars and her patrons of letters began to collect the scattered relics, which almost every region presented to them.[365] Niccolo Niccolì, according to the funeral oration of Poggio, possessed a series of medals, and even wrote a treatise in Italian, correcting the common orthography of Latin words, on the authority of inscriptions and coins. The love of collections increased from this time; the Medici and other rich patrons of letters spared no expense in accumulating these treasures of the antiquary. Ciriacus of Ancona, about 1440, travelled into the East in order to copy inscriptions; but he was naturally exposed to deceive himself and to be deceived; nor has he escaped the suspicion of imposture, or at least of excessive credulity.[366]

[365] Tiraboschi, vols. v. and vi. Andrès, ix. 196.

[366] Tiraboschi. Andrès, ix. 199. Ciriaco has not wanted advocates; some of the inscriptions he was accused of having forged have turned out to be authentic; and it is presumed in his favour, that others which do not appear may have perished since his time. Biogr. Univ., Cyriaque. One that rests on his authority is that which is supposed to record the persecution of the Christians in Spain under Nero. See Lardner’s Jewish and Heathen Testimonies, vol. i, who, though by no means a credulous critic, inclines to its genuineness.

|Works on that subject.|

48. The first who made his researches of this kind collectively known to the world, was Biondo Flavio, or Flavio Biondo,--for the names may be found in a different order, but more correctly in the first,[367]--secretary to Eugenius IV., and to his successors. His long residence at Rome inspired him with the desire, and gave him the opportunity, of describing her imperial ruins. In a work, dedicated to Eugenius IV., who died in 1447, but not printed till 1471, entitled, Romæ Instauratæ libri tres, he describes, examines, and explains by the testimonies of ancient authors, the numerous monuments of Rome. In another, Romæ Triumphantis libri decem, printed about 1472, he treats of the government, laws, religion, ceremonies, military discipline, and other antiquities of the republic. A third work, compiled at the request of Alfonso, king of Naples, and printed in 1474, called Italia Illustrata, contains a description of all Italy, divided into its ancient fourteen regions. Though Biondo Flavio was almost the first to hew his way into the rock, which should cause his memory to be respected, it has naturally happened, that, his works being imperfect and faulty, in comparison with those of the great antiquaries of the sixteenth century, they have not found a place in the collection of Grævius, and are hardly remembered by name.[368]

[367] Zeno, Dissertazioni Vossiane, i. 229.

[368] A superior treatise of the same age on the antiquities of the Roman city is by Bernard Rucellai (de Urbe Româ, in Rer. Ital. Scrip. Florent., vol. ii.). But it was not published before the eighteenth century. Rucellai wrote some historical works in a very good Latin style, and was distinguished also in the political revolutions of Florence. After the death of Lorenzo, he became the protector of the Florentine academy, for the members of which he built a palace with gardens. Corniani, iii. 143. Biogr. Univ., Rucellai.

|Publications in Germany.|

49. In Germany and the Low Countries the art of printing began to be exercised at Deventer, Utrecht, Louvain, Basle, Ulm, and other places, and in Hungary at Buda. We find, however, very few ancient writers; the whole list of what can pass for classics being about thirteen. One or two editions of parts of Aristotle in Latin, from translations lately made in Italy, may be added. Yet it was not the length of manuscripts that discouraged the German printers; for besides their editions of the Scriptures, Mentelin of Strasburg published, in 1473, the great encyclopædia of Vincent of Beauvais, in ten volumes folio, generally bound in four; and, in 1474, a similar work of Berchorius, or Berchœur, in three other folios. The contrast between these labours and those of his Italian contemporaries is very striking.

|In France.|

50. Florus and Sallust were printed at Paris early in this decade, and twelve more classical authors at the same place before its termination. An edition of Cicero ad Herennium appeared at Angers in 1476, and one of Horace at Caen, in 1480. The press of Lyons also sent forth several works, but none of them classical. It has been said by French writers, that the first book printed in their language is Le Jardin de Dévotion, by Colard Mansion of Bruges, in 1473. This date has been questioned in England; but it is of the less importance, as we have already seen that Caxton’s Recueil des Histoires de Troye has the clear priority. Le Roman de Baudouin comte de Flandres, Lyon, 1474, seems to be the earliest French book printed in France. In 1476, Les Grands Chroniques de St. Denis, an important and bulky volume, appeared at Paris.

|In England, by Caxton.|

51. We come now to our own Caxton, who finished a translation into English of his Recueil des Histoires de Troye, by order of Margaret, duchess of Burgundy, at Cologne, in September 1471. It was probably printed there the next year.[369] But soon afterwards he came to England with the instruments of his art; and in 1474, his Game of Chess, a slight and short performance, is supposed to have been the first specimen of English typography.[370] In almost every year from this time to his death in 1483, Caxton continued to publish those volumes which are the delight of our collectors. The earliest of his editions bearing a date in England, is the “Dictes and Sayings,” a translation by Lord Rivers from a Latin compilation, and published in 1477. In a literary history it should be observed, that the Caxton publications are more adapted to the general than the learned reader, and indicate, upon the whole, but a low state of knowledge in England. A Latin translation, however, of Aristotle’s ethics was printed at Oxford in 1479.

[369] This book at the Duke of Roxburgh’s famous sale brought 1060_l._

[370] The Expositio Sancti Hieronymi, of which a copy, in the public library at Cambridge, bears the date of Oxford 1468 on the title-page, is now generally given up. It has been successfully contended by Middleton, and lately by Mr. Singer, that this date should be 1478; the numeral letter x having been casually omitted. Several similar instances occur, in which a pretended early book has not stood the keen eye of criticism: as the Decor Puellarum ascribed to Nicolas Jenson of Venice in 1461, for which we should read 1471; a cosmography of Ptolemy with the date of 1462; a book appearing to have been printed at Tours in 1467, &c.

|In Spain.|

52. The first book printed in Spain was on the very subject we might expect to precede all others, the Conception of the Virgin. It should be a very curious volume, being a poetical contest, on that sublime theme, by thirty-six poets, four of whom had written in Spanish, one in Italian, and the rest in Provençal or Valencian. It appeared at Valencia in 1474. A little book on grammar followed in 1475, and Sallust was printed the same year. In that year printing was also introduced at Barcelona and Saragossa, in 1476 at Seville, in 1480 at Salamanca and Burgos.

|Translations of Scripture.|

53. A translation of the Bible by Malerbi, a Venetian, was published in 1471, and two other editions of that, or a different version, the same year. Eleven editions are enumerated by Panzer in the fifteenth century. The German translation has already been mentioned; it was several times reprinted in this decade; one in Dutch appeared in 1477, one in the Valencian language, at that city, in 1478;[371] the New Testament was printed in Bohemian, 1475, and in French, 1477; the earliest French translation of the Old Testament seems to be about the same date. The reader will of course understand, that all these translations were made from the Vulgate Latin. It may naturally seem remarkable, that not only at this period, but down to the Reformation, no attempt was made to render any part of the Scriptures public in English. But, in fact, the ground was thought too dangerous by those in power. The translation of Wicliffe had taught the people some comparisons between the worldly condition of the first preachers of Christianity and their successors, as well as some other contrasts, which it was more expedient to avoid. Long before the invention of printing it was enacted, in 1408, by a constitution of Archbishop Arundel, in convocation, that no one should thereafter “translate any text of Holy Scripture into English, by way of a book, or little book or tract; and that no book should be read that was composed lately in the time of John Wicliffe, or since his death.” Scarcely any of Caxton’s publications are of a religious nature.

[371] This edition was suppressed or destroyed; no copy is known to exist; but there is preserved a final leaf containing the names of the translator and printer. M’Crie’s Reformation in Spain, p. 192. Andrès says (xix. 154), that this translation was made early in the fifteenth century, with the approbation of divines.

|Revival of literature in Spain.|

54. It would have been strange if Spain, placed on the genial shores of the Mediterranean, and intimately connected through the Aragonese kings with Italy, had not received some light from that which began to shine so brightly. Her progress, however, in letters was but slow. Not but that several individuals are named by compilers of literary biography in the first part of the fifteenth century, as well as earlier, who are reputed to have possessed a knowledge of languages, and to have stood at least far above their contemporaries. Alfonsus Tostatus passes for the most considerable; his writings are chiefly theological, but Andrès praises his commentary on the Chronicle of Eusebius, at least as a bold essay.[372] He contends that learning was not deficient in Spain during the fifteenth century, though admitting that the rapid improvements made at its close, and about the beginning of the next age, were due to Lebrixa’s public instructions at Seville and Salamanca. Several translations were made from Latin authors into Spanish, which, however, is not of itself any great proof of Peninsular learning. The men to whom Spain chiefly owes the advancement of useful learning, and who should not be defrauded of their glory, were Arias Barbosa, a scholar of Politian, and the more renowned, though not more learned or more early propagator of Grecian literature, Antonio of Lebrixa, whose name was latinised into Nebrissensis, by which he is commonly known. Of Arias, who unaccountably has no place in the Biographie Universelle, Nicolas Antonio gives a very high character.[373] He taught the Greek language at Salamanca probably about this time. But his writings are not at all numerous. For Lebrixa, instead of compiling from other sources, I shall transcribe what Dr. M’Crie has said with his usual perspicuous brevity.

[372] ix. 151.

[373] In quo Antonium Nebrissensem socium habuit, qui tamen quicquid usquam Græcarum literarum apud Hispanos esset, ab uno Aria emanâsse in præfatione suarum Introductionum Grammaticarum ingenue affirmavit. His duobus amplissimum illud gymnasium, indeque Hispania tota debet barbariei, quæ longo apud nos bellorum dominatu in immensum creverat, extirpationem, bonarumque omnium disciplinarum divitias. Quas Arias noster ex antiquitatis penu per vicennium integrum auditoribus suis larga et locuplete vena communicavit, in poetica facultate Græcanicaque doctrina Nebrissense melior, a quo tamen in varia multiplicique doctrina superabatur. Bibl. Vetus.

|Character of Lebrixa.|

55. “Lebrixa, usually styled Nebrissensis, became to Spain what Valla was to Italy, Erasmus to Germany, or Budæus to France. After a residence of ten years in Italy, during which he had stored his mind with various kinds of knowledge, he returned home, in 1473, by the advice of the younger Philelphus and Hermolaus Barbarus, with the view of promoting classical literature in his native country. Hitherto the revival of letters in Spain was confined to a few inquisitive individuals, and had not reached the schools and universities, whose teachers continued to teach a barbarous jargon under the name of Latin, into which they initiated the youth by means of a rude system of grammar, rendered unintelligible, in some instances, by a preposterous intermixture of the most abstruse questions in metaphysics. By the lectures which he read in the universities of Seville, Salamanca, and Alcala, and by the institutes which he published on Castilian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew grammar, Lebrixa contributed in a wonderful degree to expel barbarism from the seats of education, and to diffuse a taste for elegant and useful studies among his countrymen. His improvements were warmly opposed by the monks, who had engrossed the art of teaching, and who, unable to bear the light themselves, wished to prevent all others from seeing it; but, enjoying the support of persons of high authority, he disregarded their selfish and ignorant outcries. Lebrixa continued to an advanced age to support the literary reputation of his native country.”[374]

[374] M’Crie’s Hist. of Reformation in Spain, p. 61. It is probable that Lebrixa’s exertions were not very effectual in the present decennium, nor perhaps in the next, but his Institutiones Grammaticæ, a very scarce book, were printed at Seville in 1481.

|Library of Lorenzo.|

56. This was the brilliant æra of Florence, under the supremacy of Lorenzo de’ Medici. The reader is probably well acquainted with this eminent character, by means of a work of extensive and merited reputation. The Laurentian library, still consisting wholly of manuscripts, though formed by Cosmo, and enlarged by his son Pietro, owed not only its name, but an ample increase of its treasures, to Lorenzo, who swept the monasteries of Greece through his learned agent, John Lascaris. With that true love of letters which scorns the monopolising spirit of possession, Lorenzo permitted his manuscripts to be freely copied for the use of other parts of Europe.

|Classics corrected and explained.|

57. It was an important labour of the learned at Florence to correct, as well as elucidate, the text of their manuscripts, written generally by ignorant and careless monks, or trading copyists (though the latter probably had not much concern with ancient writers), and become almost wholly unintelligible through the blunders of these transcribers.[375] Landino, Merula, Calderino, and Politian were the most indefatigable in this line of criticism during the age of Lorenzo. Before the use of printing fixed the text of a whole edition--one of the most important of its consequences--the critical amendments of these scholars could only be made useful through their oral lectures. And these appear frequently to have been the foundation of the valuable, though rather prolix, commentaries we find in the old editions. Thus those of Landino accompany many editions of Horace and Virgil, forming, in some measure, the basis of all interpretative annotations on those poets. Landino in these seldom touches on verbal criticism; but his explanations display a considerable reach of knowledge. They are founded, as Heeren is convinced, on his lectures, and consequently give us some notion of the tone of instruction. In explaining the poets, two methods were pursued, the grammatical and the moral, the latter of which consisted in resolving the whole sense into allegory. Dante had given credit to a doctrine, orthodox in this age, and long afterwards, that every great poem must have a hidden meaning.[376]

[375] Meiners, Vergleich. der Sitten, iii. 108. Heeren, p. 293.

[376] Heeren, pp. 241, 287.

|Character of Lorenzo.|

58. The notes of Calderino, a scholar of high fame, but infected with the common vice of arrogance, are found with those of Landino in the early editions of Virgil and Horace. Regio commented upon Ovid, Omnibonus Leonicenus upon Lucan, both these upon Quintilian, many upon Cicero.[377] It may be observed, for the sake of chronological exactness, that these labours are by no means confined, even principally, to this decennial period. They are mentioned in connection with the name of Lorenzo de’ Medici, whose influence over literature extended from 1470 to his death in 1492. Nor was mere philology the sole, or the leading, pursuit to which so truly noble a mind accorded its encouragement. He sought in ancient learning something more elevated than the narrow, though necessary, researches of criticism. In a villa overhanging the towers of Florence, on the steep slope of that lofty hill crowned by the mother city, the ancient Fiesole, in gardens which Tully might have envied, with Ficino, Landino, and Politian at his side, he delighted his hours of leisure with the beautiful visions of Platonic philosophy, for which the summer stillness of an Italian sky appears the most congenial accompaniment.

[377] Id. 297.

|Prospect from his villa at Fiesole.|

59. Never could the sympathies of the soul with outward nature be more finely touched; never could more striking suggestions be presented to the philosopher and the statesman. Florence lay beneath them; not with all the magnificence that the later Medici have given her, but, thanks to the piety of former times, presenting almost as varied an outline to the sky. One man, the wonder of Cosmo’s age, Brunelleschi, had crowned the beautiful city with the vast dome of its cathedral; a structure unthought of in Italy before, and rarely since surpassed. It seemed, amidst clustering towers of inferior churches, an emblem of the Catholic hierarchy under its supreme head; like Rome itself, imposing, unbroken, unchangeable, radiating in equal expansion to every part of the earth, and directing its convergent curves to heaven. Round this were numbered, at unequal heights, the Baptistery, with its gates worthy of Paradise; the tall and richly decorated belfry of Giotto; the church of the Carmine, with the frescos of Masaccio; those of Santa Maria Novella, beautiful as a bride, of Santa Croce, second only in magnificence to the cathedral, and of St. Mark; the San Spirito, another great monument of the genius of Brunelleschi; the numerous convents that rose within the walls of Florence, or were scattered immediately about them. From these the eye might turn to the trophies of a republican government that was rapidly giving way before the citizen-prince who now surveyed them; the Palazzo Vecchio, in which the signiory of Florence held their councils, raised by the Guelf aristocracy, the exclusive, but not tyrannous faction that long swayed the city; or the new and unfinished palace which Brunelleschi had designed for one of the Pitti family, before they fell, as others had already done, in the fruitless struggle against the house of Medici; itself destined to become the abode of the victorious race, and to perpetuate, by retaining its name, the revolutions that had raised them to power.

60. The prospect, from an elevation, of a great city in its silence, is one of the most impressive, as well as beautiful, we ever behold. But far more must it have brought home thoughts of seriousness to the mind of one who, by the force of events, and the generous ambition of his family, and his own, was involved in the dangerous necessity of governing without the right, and, as far as might be, without the semblance of power; one who knew the vindictive and unscrupulous hostility which, at home and abroad, he had to encounter. If thoughts like these could bring a cloud over the brow of Lorenzo, unfit for the object he sought in that retreat, he might restore its serenity by other scenes which his garden commanded. Mountains bright with various hues, and clothed with wood, bounded the horizon, and, on most sides, at no great distance; but embosomed in these were other villas and domains of his own; while the level country bore witness to his agricultural improvements, the classic diversion of a statesman’s cares. The same curious spirit which led him to fill his garden at Careggi with exotic flowers of the east, the first instance of a botanical collection in Europe, had introduced a new animal from the same regions. Herds of buffaloes, since naturalised in Italy, whose dingy hide, bent neck, curved horns, and lowering aspect, contrasted with the greyish hue and full mild eye of the Tuscan oxen, pastured in the valley, down which the yellow Arno steals silently through its long reaches to the sea.[378]

[378] Taliâ Fæsuleo lentus meditabar in antro, Rure suburbano Medicum, qua mons sacer urbem Mæoniam, longique volumina despicit Arni: Qua bonus hospitium felix placidamque quietem Indulget Laurens. Politiani Rusticus.

And let us from the top of Fiesole, Whence Galileo’s glass by night observed The phases of the moon, look round below On Arno’s vale, where the dove-coloured steer Is ploughing up and down among the vines, While many a careless note is sung aloud, Filling the air with sweetness--and on thee, Beautiful Florence, all within thy walls, Thy groves and gardens, pinnacles and towers, Drawn to our feet.

It is hardly necessary to say that these lines are taken from my friend Mr. Rogers’s Italy, a poem full of moral and descriptive sweetness, and written in the chastened tone of fine taste. With respect to the buffaloes, I have no other authority than these lines of Politian, in his poem of Ambra, on the farm of Lorenzo at Poggio Cajano.

Atque aliud nigris missum, quis credat? ab Indis, Ruminat insuetas armentum discolor herbas.

But I must own, that Buffon tells us, though without quoting any authority, that the buffalo was introduced into Italy as early as the seventh century. I did not take the trouble of consulting Aldrovandus, who would perhaps have confirmed him--especially as I have a better opinion of my readers than to suppose they would care about the matter.

|Platonic academy.|

61. The Platonic academy, which Cosmo had planned, came to maturity under Lorenzo. The academicians were divided into three classes:--the patrons (mecenati), including the Medici; the hearers (ascoltatori, probably from the Greek word ἀκρόαται [akroatai]); and the novices, or disciples, formed of young aspirants to philosophy. Ficino presided over the whole. Their great festival was the 13th of November, being the anniversary of the birth and death of Plato. Much of absurd mysticism, much of frivolous and mischievous superstition, was mingled with their speculations.[379]

[379] Roscoe. Corniani.

|Disputationes Camaldulenses of Landino.|

62. The Disputationes Camaldulenses of Landino were published during this period, though, perhaps, written a little sooner. They belong to a class prominent in the literature of Italy in this and the succeeding century; disquisitions on philosophy in the form of dialogue, with more solicitude to present a graceful delineation of virtue, and to kindle a generous sympathy for moral beauty, than to explore the labyrinths of theory, or even to lay down clear and distinct principles of ethics. The writings of Plato and Cicero, in this manner, had shown a track, in which their idolators, with distant and hesitating steps, and more of reverence than emulation, delighted to tread. These Disputations of Landino, in which, according to the beautiful patterns of ancient dialogue, the most honoured names of the age appear--Lorenzo and his brother Julian; Alberti, whose almost universal genius is now best known by his architecture; Ficino, and Landino himself--turn upon a comparison between the active and contemplative life of man, to the latter of which it seems designed to give the advantage, and are saturated with the thoughtful spirit of Platonism.[380]

[380] Corniani and Roscoe have given this account of the Disputationes Camaldulenses. I have no direct acquaintance with the book.

|Philosophical dialogues.|

63. Landino was not, by any means, the first who had tried the theories of ancient philosophy through the feigned warfare of dialogue. Valla, intrepid and fond of paradox, had vindicated the Epicurean ethics from the calumnious or exaggerated censure frequently thrown upon them, contrasting the true methods by which pleasure should be sought with the gross notions of the vulgar. Several other writings of the same description, either in dialogue or regular dissertation, belong to the fifteenth century, though not always published so early, such as Franciscus Barbarus, De Re Uxoria,[381] Platina, De Falso et Vero Bono, the Vita Civile of Palmieri, the moral treatises of Poggio, Alberti, Pontano, and Matteo Bosso, concerning some of which little more than the names are to be learned from literary history, and which it would not, perhaps, be worth while to mention, except as collectively indicating a predilection for this style, which the Italians long continued to display.[382]

[381] This, which has been already mentioned, may be considered as much the earliest, having been published about 1417. Shepherd’s Poggio, c. 3. Barbaro was a noble Venetian, who had learned Latin under Gasparin of Barziza. He was afterwards chiefly employed in public life. This treatise De Re Uxoria, of which some account may be found in Corniani (ii. 137) made a considerable impression at that early time. Corniani thinks it the only work of moral philosophy in the fifteenth century, which is not a servile copy of some ancient system. The more celebrated Hermolaus was grandson of this Francis Barbarus.

[382] Corniani is much fuller than Tiraboschi on these treatises. Roscoe seems to have read the ethical writing of Matteo Bosso (Life of Leo X., c. xx.), but hardly adverts to any of the rest I have named. Some of them are very scarce.

|Paulus Cortesius.|

64. Some of these related to general criticism, or to that of single authors. My knowledge of them is chiefly limited to the dialogue of Paulus Cortesius, De Hominibus Doctis, written, I conceive, about 1490; no unsuccessful imitation of Cicero, De Claris Oratoribus, from which indeed modern Latin writers have always been accustomed to collect the discriminating phrases of criticism. Cortesius, who was young at the time of writing this dialogue, uses an elegant, if not always a correct Latinity; characterising agreeably, and with apparent taste, the authors of the fifteenth century. It may be read in conjunction with the Ciceronianus of Erasmus, who, with no knowledge, perhaps, of Cortesius has gone over the same ground in rather inferior language.

|Schools in Germany.|

65. It was about the beginning of this decade that a few Germans and Netherlanders, trained in the college of Deventer, or that of Zwoll, or of St. Edward’s near Groningen, were roused to acquire that extensive knowledge of the ancient languages which Italy as yet exclusively possessed. Their names should never be omitted in any remembrance of the revival of letters; for great was their influence upon the subsequent times. Wessel of Groningen, one of those who contributed most steadily towards the purification of religion, and to whom the Greek and Hebrew languages are said, but probably on no solid grounds, to have been known, may be reckoned in this class. But others were more directly engaged in the advancement of literature. Three schools, from which issued the most conspicuous ornaments of the next generation, rose under masters, learned for that time, and zealous in the good cause of instruction. Alexander Hegius became, about 1475, rector of that at Deventer, where Erasmus received his early education.[383] Hegius was not wholly ignorant of Greek, and imparted the rudiments of it to his illustrious pupil. I am inclined to ascribe the publication of a very rare and curious book, the first endeavour to print Greek on this side of the Alps, to no other person than Hegius.[384] Louis Dringeberg founded, not perhaps before 1480, a still more distinguished seminary at Schelstadt in Alsace. Here the luminaries of Germany in a more advanced stage of learning, Conrad Celtes, Bebel, Rhenanus, Wimpheling Pirckheimer, Simler, are said to have imbibed their knowledge.[385] The third school was at Munster; and over this Rodolph Langius presided, a man not any way inferior to the other two, and of more reputation as a Latin writer, especially as a poet. The school of Munster did not come under the care of Langius till 1483, or perhaps rather later; and his strenuous exertions in the cause of useful and polite literature against monkish barbarians extended into the next century. But his life was long: the first, or nearly such, to awaken his countrymen, he was permitted to behold the full establisment of learning, and to exult in the dawn of the Reformation. In company with a young man of rank, and equal zeal, Maurice, count of Spiegelberg, who himself became the provost of a school at Emmerich, Langius visited Italy, and, as Meiners supposes, though, I think, upon uncertain grounds, before 1460. But not long afterwards, a more distinguished person than any we have mentioned, Rodolph Agricola of Groningen, sought in that more genial land the taste and correctness which no cisalpine nation could supply. Agricola passed several years of this decade in Italy. We shall find the effects of his example in the next.[386]

[383] Heeren, p. 149, says that Hegius began to preside over the school of Deventer in 1480; but I think the date in the text is more probable, as Erasmus left it at the age of fourteen, and was certainly born in 1465. Though Hegius is said to have known but little Greek, I find in Panzer the title of a book by him, printed at Deventer in 1501, De Utilitate Lingua Græcæ. The life of Hegius in Melchior Adam is interesting. Primus hic in Belgio literas excitavit, says Revius, in Daventria Illustrata, p. 130. Mihi, says Erasmus, admodum adhuc puero contigit uti præceptore hujus discipulo Alexandro Hegio Westphalo, qui ludum aliquando celebrem oppidi Daventriensis moderabatur, in quo nos olim admodum pueri utriusque linguæ prima didicimus elementa. Adag. Chil. 1, cent. iv. 39. In another place he says of Hegius, ne hic quidem Græcarum literarum omnino ignarus est. Epist. 411, in Appendice. Erasmus left Deventer at the age of fourteen; consequently in 1479 or 1480, as he tells us in an epistle, dated 17th Apr. 1519.

[384] This very rare book, unnoticed by most bibliographers, is of some importance in the history of literature. It is a small quarto tract, entitled, Conjugations verborum Græcæ, Daventriæ noviter extremo labore et impressæ. No date or printer’s name appears. A copy is in the British Museum, and another in Lord Spencer’s library. It contains nothing but the word τυπτω [typtô] in all its voices and tenses, with Latin explanations in Gothic letters. The Greek types are very rude, and the characters sometimes misplaced. It must, I should presume, seem probable to every one who considers this book, that it is of the fifteenth century, and consequently older than any known Greek on this side of the Alps; which of itself should render it interesting in the eyes of bibliographers and of every one else. But fully disclaiming all such acquaintance with the technical science of typographical antiquity, as to venture any judgment founded on the appearance of a particular book, or on a comparison of it with others, I would, on other grounds, suggest the probability that this little attempt at Greek Grammar issued from the Deventer press about 1480. It appears clear that whoever “collected with extreme labour” these forms of the verb τυπτω [typtô], had never been possessed of a Greek and Latin grammar. For would it not be absurd to use such expressions about a simple transcription? Besides which, the word is not only given in an arrangement different from any I have ever seen, but with a nonexistent form of participle, τετυψαμενος [tetypsamenos] for τυψαμενος [typsamenos], which could not surely have been found in any prior grammar. Now the grammar of Lascaris was published with a Latin translation by Craston in 1480. It is indeed highly probable that this book would not reach Deventer immediately after its impression; but it does seem as if there could not long have been any extreme difficulty in obtaining a correct synopsis of the verb τυπτω [typtô].

We have seen that Erasmus, about 1477, acquired a very slight tincture of Greek under Alexander Hegius at Deventer. And here, as he tells us, he saw Agricola, returning probably from Italy to Groningen. Quem mihi puero, ferme duodecim annos nato, Daventriæ videre contigit, nec aliud contigit. (Jortin, ii. 416.) No one could be so likely as Hegius to attempt a Greek grammar; nor do we find that his successors in that college were men as distinguished for learning as himself. But in fact at a later time it could not have been so extraordinarily imperfect. We might perhaps conjecture that he took down these Greek tenses from the mouth of Agricola, since we must presume oral communication rather than the use of books. Agricola, repeating from memory, and not thoroughly conversant with the language, might have given the false tense τετυψαμενος [tetypsamenos]. The tract was probably printed by Pafroet, some of whose editions bear as early a date as 1477. It has long been extremely scarce; for Revius does not include it in the list of Pafroet’s publications he has given in Deventria Illustrata, nor will it be found in Panzer. Beloe was the first to mention it in his Anecdotes of scarce books; and it is referred by him to the fifteenth century; but apparently without his being aware there was anything remarkable in that antiquity. Dr. Dibdin, in Bibliotheca Spenceriana, has given a fuller account; and from him Brunet has inserted it in the Manuel du Libraire. Neither Beloe nor Dibdin seems to have known that there is a copy in the Museum; they speak only of that belonging to Lord Spencer.

If it were true that Reuchlin, during his residence at Orleans, had published, as well as compiled, a Greek grammar, we should not need to have recourse to the hypothesis of this note, in order to give the antiquity of the present decade to Greek typography. Such a grammar is asserted by Meiners, in his Life of Reuchlin, to have been printed at Poitiers: and Eichhorn positively says, without reference to the place of publication, that Reuchlin was the first German who published a Greek grammar. (Gesch. der Litt. iii. 275.) Meiners, however, in a subsequent volume (iii. 10), retracts this assertion, and says it has been proved that the Greek grammar of Reuchlin was never printed. Yet I find in the Bibliotheca Universalis of Gesner: Joh. Capnio [Reuchlin] scripsit de diversitate quatuor idiomatum Græcæ linguæ, lib. i. No such book appears in the list of Reuchlin’s works in Niceron, vol. xxv., nor in any of the bibliographies. If it ever existed, we may place it with more probability at the very close of this century, or at the beginning of the next.

[385] Eichhorn, iii. 231. Meiners, ii. 369. Eichhorn carelessly follows a bad authority in counting Reuchlin among these pupils of the Schelstadt school.

[386] See Meiners, vol. ii., Eichhorn, and Heeren, for the revival of learning in Germany; or something may be found in Brucker.

|Study of Greek at Paris.|

66. Meantime a slight impulse seems to have been given to the university of Paris by the lessons of George Tifernas; for from some disciples of his Reuchlin, a young German of great talents and celebrity, acquired, probably about the year 1470, the first elements of the Greek language. This knowledge he improved by the lessons of a native Greek, Andronicus Cartoblacas, at Basle. In that city he had the good fortune, rare on this side of the Alps, to find a collection of Greek manuscripts, left there at the time of the council by a cardinal Nicolas of Ragusa. By the advice of Cartoblacas, he taught Greek himself at Basle. After the lapse of some years, Reuchlin went again to Paris, and found a new teacher, George Hermonymus of Sparta, who had settled there about 1472. From Paris he removed to Orleans and Poitiers; he is said to have taught, perhaps not the Greek language, in the former city, and to have written a Greek grammar in the second. It seems, however, now to be ascertained, that this grammar was never printed.[387]

[387] Meiners, i. 46. Besides Meiners, Brucker, iv. 358, as well as Heeren, have given pretty full accounts of Reuchlin; and a good life of him will be found in the 25th volume of Niceron: but the Epistolæ ad Reuchlinum throw still more light on the man and his contemporaries.

|Controversy of Realists and Nominalists.|

|Scotus.|

67. The classical literature which delighted Reuchlin and Agricola was disregarded as frivolous by the wise of that day in the university of Paris; but they were much more keenly opposed to innovation and heterodoxy in their own peculiar line, the scholastic metaphysics. Most have heard of the long controversies between the Realists and Nominalists concerning the nature of universals, or the genera and species of things. The first, with Plato and Aristotle, maintained their objective or external reality; either, as it was called, ante rem, as eternal archetypes in the Divine Intelligence, or in re, as forms inherent in matter; the second, with Zeno, gave them only a subjective existence as ideas conceived by the mind, and have hence in later times acquired the name of Conceptualists.[388] Roscelin, the first of the modern Nominalists, went farther than this, and denied, as Hobbes and Berkeley, with many others, have since done, all universality except to words and propositions. Abelard, who inveighs against the doctrine of Roscelin as false logic and false theology, and endeavours to confound it with the denial of any objective reality even in singular things,[389] may be esteemed the restorer of the Conceptualist school. We do not know his doctrines, however, by his own writings, but by the testimony of John of Salisbury, who seems not well to have understood the subject. The words Realist and Nominalist came into use about the end of the twelfth century. But in the next, the latter party by degrees disappeared; and the great schoolmen, Aquinas and Scotus, in whatever else they might disagree, were united on the Realist side. In the fourteenth century William Ockham revived the opposite hypothesis with considerable success. Scotus and his disciples were the great maintainers of Realism. If there were no substantial forms, he argued, that is, nothing real, which determines the mode of being in each individual, men and brutes would be of the same substance; for they do not differ as to matter, nor can extrinsic accidents make a substantive difference. There must be a substantial form of a horse, another of a lion, another of a man. He seems to have held the immateriality of the soul, that is, the substantial form of man. But no other form, he maintained, can exist without matter naturally, though it may, supernaturally, by the power of God. Socrates and Plato agree more than Socrates and an ass. They have, therefore, something in common, which an ass has not. But this is not numerically the same; it must, therefore, be something universal, namely, human nature.[390]

[388] I am chiefly indebted for the facts in the following paragraphs to a dissertation by Meiners, in the transactions of the Göttingen Academy, vol. xii.

[389] Hic sicut pseudo-dialecticus, ita pseudo-christianus--ut eo loco quo dicitur Dominus partem piscis assi comedisse, partem hujus vocis, quæ est piscis assi, non partem rei intelligere cogatur. Meiners, p. 27. This may serve to show the cavilling tone of scholastic disputes; and Meiners may well say: Quicquid Roscelinus peccavit, non adeo tamen insanisse pronuntiandum est, ut Abelardus ilium fecisse invidiose fingere sustinuit.

[390] Id. p. 89.

68. These reasonings, which are surely no unfavourable specimen of the “subtle philosopher,” as Scotus was called, were met by Ockham with others which sometimes appear more refined and obscure. He confined reality to objective things, denying it to the host of abstract entities brought forward by Scotus. He defines a universal to be “a particular intention (meaning probably idea or conception) of the mind itself, capable of being predicated of many things, not for what it probably is itself, but for what those things are; so that, in so far as it has this capacity, it is called universal, but inasmuch as it is one form really existing in the mind, it is called singular.”[391] I have not examined the writings of Ockham, and am unable to determine whether his Nominalism extends beyond that of Berkeley or Stewart, which is generally asserted by the modern inquirers into scholastic philosophy; that is, whether it amounts to Conceptualism; the foregoing definition, as far as I can judge, might have been given by them.

[391] Unam intentionem sìngularem ipsius animæ, natam prædicari de pluribus, non prose, sed pro ipsis rebus; ita quod per hoc, quod ipsa nata est prædicari de pluribus, non pro se sed pro illis pluribus, illa dicitur universalis; propter hoc autem, quod est una forma existens realiter in intellectu, dicitur singulare. P. 42.

|Nominalists in university of Paris.|

69. The later Nominalists of the scholastic period, Buridan, Biel, and several others mentioned by the historians of philosophy, took all their reasonings from the storehouse of Ockham. His doctrine was prohibited at Paris by pope John XXII., whose theological opinions, as well as secular encroachments, he had opposed. All masters of arts were bound by oath never to teach Ockhamism. But after the pope’s death the university condemned a tenet of the Realists, that many truths are eternal, which are not God; and went so far towards the Nominalist theory, as to determine that our knowledge of things is through the medium of words.[392] Peter d’Ailly, Gerson, and other principal men of their age were Nominalists; the sect was very powerful in Germany, and may be considered, on the whole, as prevalent in this century. The Realists, however, by some management gained the ear of Louis XI., who, by an ordinance in 1473, explicitly approves the doctrines of the great Realist philosophers, condemns that of Ockham and his disciples, and forbids it to be taught, enjoining the books of the Nominalists to be locked up from public perusal, and all present as well as future graduates in the university to swear to the observation of this ordinance. The prohibition, nevertheless, was repealed in 1481; the guilty books set free from their chains, and the hypothesis of the Nominalists virtually permitted to be held, amidst the acclamations of the university, and especially one of its four nations, that of Germany. Some of their party had, during this persecution, taken refuge in that empire and in England, both friendly to their cause; and this metaphysical contention of the fifteenth century suggests and typifies the great religious convulsion of the next. The weight of ability, during this later and less flourishing period of scholastic philosophy, was on the Nominalist side; and though the political circumstances to which we have alluded were not immediately connected with their principle, this metaphysical sect facilitated in some measure the success of the Reformation.

[392] Id. p. 45, scientiam habemus de rebus, sed mediantibus terminis.

|Low state of learning in England.|

70. We should still look in vain to England for either learning or native genius. The reign of Edward IV. may be reckoned one of the lowest points in our literary annals. The universities had fallen in reputation and in frequency of students; where there had been thousands, according to Wood, there was not now one; which must be understood as an hyperbolical way of speaking. But the decline of the universities, frequented as they had been by indigent vagabonds withdrawn from useful labour, and wretched as their pretended instruction had been, was so far from an evil in itself, that it left clear the path for the approaching introduction of real learning. Several colleges were about this time founded at Oxford and Cambridge, which, in the design of their munificent founders, were to become, as they have done, the instruments of a better discipline than the barbarous schoolmen afforded. We have already observed, that England was like seed fermenting in the ground through the fifteenth century. The language was becoming more vigorous, and more capable of giving utterance to good thoughts, as some translations from Caxton’s press show, such as the Dicts of Philosophers, by Lord Rivers. And perhaps the best exercise for a schoolboy people is that of schoolboys. The poetry of two Scotsmen, Henryson and Mercer, which is not without merit, may be nearly referred to the present decade.[393]

[393] Campbell’s Specimens of British Poets, vol. i.

|Mathematics.|

|Regiomontanus.|

71. The progress of mathematical science was regular, though not rapid. We might have mentioned before the gnomon erected by Toscanelli in the cathedral at Florence, which is referred to 1468; a work, it has been said, which, considering the times, has done as much honour to his genius as that so much renowned to Bologna at Cassini.[394] The greatest mathematician of the fifteenth century, Muller, or Regiomontanus, a native of Königsberg, or Königshoven, a small town in Franconia, whence he derived his latinised appellation, died prematurely, like his master Purbach, in 1476. He had begun at the age of fifteen to assist the latter in astronomical observations; and having, after Purbach’s death, acquired a knowledge of Greek in Italy, and devoted himself to the ancient geometers, after some years spent with distinction in that country, and at the court of Mathias Corvinus, he settled finally at Nuremberg; where a rich citizen, Bernard Walther, both supplied the means of accurate observations, and became the associate of his labours.[395] Regiomontanus died at Rome, whither he had been called to assist in rectifying the calendar. Several of his works were printed in this decade, and among others his ephemerides, or calculations of the places of the sun and moon, for the ensuing thirty years; the best, though not strictly the first, that had been made in Europe.[396] His more extensive productions did not appear till afterwards; and the treatise on triangles, the most celebrated, not till 1533. The solution of the more difficult cases, both in plane and spherical trigonometry, is found in this work; and with the exception of what the science owes to Napier, it may be said, that it advanced little for more than two centuries after the age of Regiomontanus.[397] Purbach had computed a table of sines to a radius of 600,000 parts. Regiomontanus, ignorant, as has been thought, which appears very strange, of his master’s labours, calculated them to 6,000,000 parts. But perceiving the advantages of a decimal scale, he has given a second table, wherein the ratio of the sines is computed to a radius of 10,000,000 parts, or, as we should say, taking the latter as unity, to seven places of decimals. He subjoined what he calls Canon Fæcundus, or a table of tangents, calculating them, however, only for entire degrees to a radius of 100,000 parts.[398] It has been said, that Regiomontanus was inclined to the theory of the earth’s motion, which indeed Nicolas Cusanus had already espoused.

[394] This gnomon is by much the loftiest in Europe. It would be no slight addition to the glory of Toscanelli if we should suppose him to have suggested the discovery of a passage westward to the Indies in a letter to Columbus, as his article in the Biographie Universelle seems to imply. But the more accurate expressions of Tiraboschi, referring to the correspondence between these great men, leave Columbus in possession of the original idea, at least concurrently with the Florentine astronomer, though the latter gave him strong encouragement to persevere in his undertaking. Toscanelli, however, had, on the authority of Marco Polo, imbibed an exaggerated notion of the distance eastward to China; and consequently believed, as Columbus himself did, that the voyage by the west to that country would be far shorter than, if the continent of America did not intervene, it could have been. Tiraboschi, vi. 189, 207. Roscoe’s Leo X., ch. 20.

[395] Walther was more than a patron of science, honourable as that name was. He made astronomical observations, worthy of esteem relatively to the age. Montucla, i. 545. It is to be regretted that Walther should have diminished the credit due to his name by withholding from the public the manuscripts of Regiomontanus, which he purchased after the latter’s death; so that some were lost by the negligence of his own heirs, and the rest remained unpublished till 1533.

[396] Gassendi, Vita Regiomontani. He speaks of them himself, as quas vulgo vocant almanach; and Gassendi says, that some were extant in manuscript at Paris, from 1442 to 1472. Those of Regiomontanus contained eclipses, and other matters not in former almanacs.

[397] Hutton’s Logarithms, Introduction, p. 3.

[398] Kästner, i. 557.

|Arts of delineation.|

72. Though the arts of delineation do not properly come within the scope of this volume, yet, so far as they are directly instrumental to science, they ought not to pass unregarded. Without the tool that presents figures to the eye, not the press itself could have diffused an adequate knowledge either of anatomy or of natural history. As figures cut in wooden blocks gave the first idea of letter-printing, and were for some time associated with it, an obvious invention, when the latter art became improved, was to arrange such blocks together with types in the same page. We find, accordingly, about this time, many books adorned or illustrated in this manner; generally with representations of saints, or other ornamental delineations not of much importance; but in a few instances with figures of plants and animals, or of human anatomy. The Dyalogus creaturarum moralizatus, of which the first edition was published at Gouda, 1480, seems to be nearly, if not altogether, the earliest of these. It contains a series of fables with rude woodcuts, in little more than outline. A second edition, printed at Antwerp in 1486, repeats the same cuts, with the addition of one representing a church, which is really elaborate.[399]

[399] Both these editions are in the British Museum. In the same library is a copy of the exceedingly scarce work, Ortus Sanitatis. Mogunt. 1491. The colophon, which may be read in De Bure (Sciences, No. 1554), takes much credit for the carefulness of the delineations. The wooden cuts of the plants, especially, are as good as we usually find in the sixteenth century; the form of the leaves and character of the plant are generally well preserved. The animals are also tolerably figured, though with many exceptions, and, on the whole, fall short of the plants. The work itself is a compilation from the old naturalists, arranged alphabetically.

|Maps.|

|Geography.|

73. The art of engraving figures on plates of copper was nearly coëval with that of printing, and is due either to Thomas Finiguerra about 1460, or to some German about the same time. It was not a difficult step to apply this invention to the representation of geographical maps; and this we owe to Arnold Buckinck, an associate of the printer Sweynheim. His edition of Ptolemy’s geography appeared at Rome in 1478. These maps are traced from those of Agathodæmon in the fifth century; and it has been thought that Buckinck profited by the hints of Donis, a German monk, who himself gave two editions of Ptolemy not long afterwards at Ulm.[400] The fifteenth century had already witnessed an increasing attention to geographical delineations. The libraries of Italy contain several unpublished maps, of which that by Fra Mauro, a monk of the order of Camaldoli, in the convent of Murano, near Venice, is the most celebrated. It is still preserved there, and is said to attest the cosmographical science of its delineator, such as he could derive from Ptolemy, and from the astronomy of his own age.[401] Two causes, besides the increase of commerce, and the gradual accumulation of knowledge, had principally turned the thoughts of many towards the figure of the earth on which they trod. Two translations, one of them by Emanuel Chrysoloras, had been made early in the century, from the cosmography of Ptolemy; and from his maps the geographers of Italy had learned the use of parallels and meridians, which might a little, though inadequately, restrain their arbitrary admeasurements of different countries.[402] But the real discoveries of the Portuguese on the coast of Africa, under the patronage of Don Henry, were of far greater importance in stimulating and directing enterprise. In the academy founded by that illustrious prince, nautical charts were first delineated in a method more useful to the pilot, by projecting the meridians in parallel right lines,[403] instead of curves on the surface of the sphere. This first step in hydrographical science entitles Don Henry to the name of its founder. And though these early maps and charts of the fifteenth century are to us but a chaos of error and confusion, it was on them that the patient eye of Columbus had rested through long hours of meditation, while strenuous hope and unsubdued doubt were struggling in his soul.

[400] Biogr. Univ. Buckinck, Donis.

[401] Andrès, ix. 88. Corniani, iii. 162.

[402] Andrès, 86.

[403] Id. 83.

SECT. V. 1480-1490.

Great Progress of Learning in Italy--Italian Poetry--Pulci--Metaphysical Theology--Ficinus--Picus of Mirandola--Learning in Germany--Early European Drama--Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci.

|Greek printed in Italy.|

74. The press of Italy was less occupied with Greek for several years than might have been expected. But the number of scholars was still not sufficient to repay the expenses of impression. The Psalter was published in Greek twice at Milan in 1481, once at Venice in 1486. Craston’s Lexicon was also once printed, and the Grammar of Lascaris several times. The first classical work the printers ventured upon, was Homer’s Battle of Frogs and Mice, published at Venice in 1486, or, according to some, at Milan in 1485; the priority of the two editions being disputed. But in 1488, under the munificent patronage of Lorenzo, and by the care of Demetrius of Crete, a complete edition of Homer issued from the press of Florence. This splendid work closes our catalogue for the present.[404]

[404] See Maittaire’s character of this edition quoted in Roscoe’s Leo X., ch. 21.

|Hebrew printed.|

75. The first Hebrew book, Jarchi’s commentary on the Pentateuch, had been printed by some Jews at Reggio in Calabria, as early as 1475. In this period a press was established at Soncino, where the Pentateuch was published in 1482, the greater prophets in 1486, and the whole Bible in 1488. But this was intended for themselves alone. What little instruction in Hebrew had anywhere hitherto been imparted to Christian scholars, was only oral. The commencement of Hebrew learning, properly so called, was not till about the end of the century, in the Franciscan monasteries of Tubingen and Basle. Their first teacher, however, was an Italian, by name Raimondi.[405]

[405] Eichhorn, ii. 562.

|Miscellanies of Politian.|

76. To enumerate every publication that might scatter a gleam of light on the progress of letters in Italy, or to mention every scholar who deserves a place in biographical collections, or in an extended history of literature, would crowd these pages with too many names. We must limit ourselves to those best deserving to be had in remembrance. In 1480, according to Meiners, or, as Heeren says, in 1483, Politian was placed in the chair of Greek and Latin eloquence at Florence; a station perhaps the most conspicuous and the most honourable which any scholar could occupy. It is beyond controversy, that he stands at the head of that class in the fifteenth century. The envy of some of his contemporaries attested his superiority. In 1489, he published his once celebrated Miscellanea, consisting of one hundred observations illustrating passages of Latin authors, in the desultory manner of Aulus Gellius, which is certainly the easiest, and perhaps the most agreeable method of conveying information. They are sometimes grammatical; but more frequently relate to obscure (at that time) customs or mythological allusions. Greek quotations occur not seldom, and the author’s command of classical literature seems considerable. Thus he explains, for instance, the crambe repetita of Juvenal by a proverb mentioned in Suidas, δὶς χρὰμβη θὰνατος: χρὰμβη [dis chrambê thanatos: chrambê] being a kind of cabbage, which, when boiled a second time, was of course not very palatable. This may serve to show the extent of learning which some Italian scholars had reached through the assistance of the manuscripts collected by Lorenzo. It is not improbable that no one in England at that time had heard the name of Suidas. Yet the imperfect knowledge of Greek which these early writers possessed, is shown when they attempt to write it. Politian has some verses in his Miscellanea, but very bald, and full of false quantities. This remark we may have occasion to repeat; for it is applicable to much greater names in philology than his.[406]

[406] Meiners has praised Politian’s Greek verses, but with very little skill in such matters, p. 214. The compliments he quotes from contemporary Greeks, non esse tam Atticas Athenas ipsas, may not have been very sincere, unless they meant esse to be taken in the present tense. These Greeks, besides, knew but little of their metrical language.

|Their character, by Heeren.|

77. The Miscellanies, Heeren says, were then considered an immortal work; it was deemed an honour to be mentioned in them, and those who missed this made it a matter of complaint. If we look at them now, we are astonished at the different measure of glory in the present age. This book probably sprung out of Politian’s lectures. He had cleared up in these some difficult passages, which had led him on to further inquiries. Some of his explanations might probably have arisen out of the walks and rides he was accustomed to take with Lorenzo, who had advised the publication of the Miscellanies. The manner in which these explanations are given, the light, yet solid mode of handling the subjects, and their great variety, give in fact a charm to the Miscellanies of Politian which few antiquarian works possess. Their success is not wonderful. They were fragments, and chosen fragments, from the lectures of the most celebrated teacher of that age, whom many had heard, but still more had wished to hear. Scarcely had a work appeared in the whole fifteenth century, of which so vast expectations had been entertained, and which was received with such curiosity.[407] The very fault of Politian’s style, as it was that of Hermolaus Barbarus, his affected intermixture of obsolete words, for which it is necessary in almost every page of his Miscellanies to consult the dictionary, would, in an age of pedantry, increase the admiration of his readers.[408]

[407] Heeren, p. 263. Meiners, Lebensbeschreibungen, &c., has written the life of Politian, ii. 111-220, more copiously than any one I have read. His character of the Miscellanies is in p. 136.

[408] Meiners, pp. 155, 209. In the latter passage Meiners censures with apparent justice the affected words of Politian, some of which he did not scruple to take from such writers as Apuleius and Tertullian, with an inexcusable display of erudition at the expense of good taste.

|His version of Herodian.|

78. Politian was the first that wrote the Latin language with much elegance; and while every other early translator from the Greek has incurred more or less of censure at the hands of judges whom better learning had made fastidious, it is agreed by them that his Herodian has all the spirit of his original, and frequently excels it.[409] Thus we perceive that the age of Poggio, Filelfo, and Valla was already left far behind by a new generation: these had been well employed as the pioneers of ancient literature; but for real erudition and taste we must descend to Politian, Christopher Landino, and Hermolaus Barbarus.[410]

[409] Huet. apud Blount in Politiano.

[410] Meiners, Roscoe, Corniani, Heeren, and Greswell’s Memoirs of early Italian scholars, are the best authorities to whom the reader can have recourse for the character of Politian, besides his own works. I think, however, that Heeren has hardly done justice to Politian’s poetry. Tiraboschi is unsatisfactory. Blount, as usual, collects the suffrages of the sixteenth century.

|Cornucopia of Perotti.|

79. The Cornucopia sive Linguæ Latinæ Commentarii, by Nicolas Perotti, bishop of Siponto, suggests rather more by its title than the work itself seems to warrant. It is a copious commentary upon part of Martial; in which he takes occasion to explain a vast many Latin words, and has been highly extolled by Morhof, and by writers quoted in Baillet and Blount. To this commentary is appended an alphabetical index of words, which rendered it a sort of dictionary for the learned reader. Perotti lived a little before this time; but the first edition seems to have been in 1489. He also wrote a small Latin grammar, frequently reprinted in the fifteenth century, and was an indifferent translator of Polybius.[411]

[411] Heeren, 272, Morhof, i. 821, who calls Perotti the first compiler of good Latin, from whom those who followed have principally borrowed. See also Baillet and Blount for testimonies to Perotti.

|Latin poetry of Politian.|

80. We have not thought it worth while to mention the Latin poets of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They are numerous, and somewhat rude, from Petrarch and Boccace to Maphæus Vegius, the continuator of the Æneid in a thirteenth book, first printed in 1471, and very frequently afterwards. This is, probably, the best versification before Politian. But his Latin poems display considerable powers of description, and a strong feeling of the beauties of Roman poetry. The style is imbued with these, not too ambitiously chosen, nor in the manner called Centonism, but so as to give a general elegance to the composition, and to call up pleasing associations in the reader of taste. This, indeed, is the common praise of good versifiers in modern Latin, and not peculiarly appropriate to Politian, who is inferior to some who followed, though to none, as I apprehend, that preceded in that numerous fraternity. His ear is good, and his rhythm, with a few exceptions, musical and Virgilian. Some defects are nevertheless worthy of notice. He is often too exuberant, and apt to accumulate details of description. His words, unauthorised by any legitimate example, are very numerous; a fault in some measure excusable by the want of tolerable dictionaries; so that the memory was the only test of classical precedent. Nor can we deny that Politian’s Latin poetry is sometimes blemished by affected and effeminate expressions, by a too studious use of repetitions, and by a love of diminutives, according to the fashion of his native language, carried beyond all bounds that correct Augustan latinity could possibly have endured. This last fault, and to a man of good taste it is an unpleasing one, belongs to a great part of the lyrical and even elegiac writers in modern Latin. The example of Catullus would probably have been urged in excuse; but perhaps Catullus went farther than the best judges approved; and nothing in his poems can justify the excessive abuse of that effeminate grace, what the stern Persius would have called, “summa delumbe saliva,” which pervades the poetry both of Italian and Cisalpine Latinists for a long period. On the whole, Politian, like many of his followers, is calculated to delight and mislead a schoolboy, but may be read with pleasure by a man.[412]

[412] The extracts from Politian, and other Latin poets of Italy, by Pope, in the two little volumes, entitled Poemata Italorum, are extremely well chosen, and give a just measure of most of them.

|Italian poetry of Lorenzo.|

81. Amidst all the ardour for the restoration of classical literature in Italy, there might seem reason to apprehend that native originality would not meet its due reward, and even that the discouraging notion of a degeneracy in the powers of the human mind might come to prevail. Those who annex an exaggerated value to correcting an unimportant passage in an ancient author, or, which is much the same, interpreting some worthless inscription, can hardly escape the imputation of pedantry; and doubtless this reproach might justly fall on many of the learned in that age, as, with less excuse, it has often done upon their successors. We have already seen that, for a hundred years, it was thought unworthy a man of letters, even though a poet, to write in Italian; and Politian, with his great patron Lorenzo, deserves no small honour for having disdained the false vanity of the philologers. Lorenzo stands at the head of the Italian poets of the fifteenth century in the sonnet as well as in the light lyrical composition. His predecessors, indeed, were not likely to remove the prejudice against vernacular poetry. Several of his sonnets appear, both for elevation and elegance of style, worthy of comparison with those of the next age. But perhaps his most original claim to the title of a poet is founded upon the Canti Carnascialeschi, or carnival songs, composed for the popular shows on festivals. Some of these, which are collected in a volume printed in 1558, are by Lorenzo, and display a union of classical grace and imitation with the native raciness of Florentine gaiety.[413]

[413] Corniani. Roscoe. Crescimbeni (della volgar poesia, ii. 324) strongly asserts Lorenzo to be the restorer of poetry, which had never been more barbarous than in his youth. But certainly the Giostra of Politian was written while Lorenzo was very young.

|Pulci.|

82. But at this time appeared a poet of a truly modern school, in one of Lorenzo’s intimate society, Luigi Pulci. The first edition of his Morgante Maggiore, containing twenty-three cantos, to which five were subsequently added, was published at Venice in 1481. The taste of the Italians has always been strongly inclined to extravagant combinations of fancy, caprices rapid and sportive as the animal from which they take their name. The susceptible and versatile imaginations of that people, and their habitual cheerfulness, enable them to render the serious and terrible instrumental to the ridiculous, without becoming, like some modern fictions, merely hideous and absurd.

|Character of Morgante Maggiore.|

83. The Morgante Maggiore was evidently suggested by some long romances written within the preceding century in the octave stanza, for which the fabulous chronicle of Turpin, and other fictions wherein the same real and imaginary personages had been introduced, furnished the materials. Under pretence of ridiculing the intermixture of sacred allusions with the romantic legends, Pulci carried it to an excess; which, combined with some sceptical insinuations of his own, seems clearly to display an intention of exposing religion to contempt.[414] As to the heroes of his romance, there can be, as it seems, no sort of doubt that he designed them for nothing else than the butts of his fancy; that the reader might scoff at those whom duller poets had held up to admiration. It has been a question among Italian critics, whether the poem of Pulci is to be reckoned burlesque.[415] This may seem to turn on the definition, though I do not see what definition could be given, consistently with the use of language, that would exclude it; it is intended as a caricature of the poetical romances, and might even seem by anticipation a satirical, though not ill-natured, parody on the Orlando Furioso. That he meant to excite any other emotion than laughter cannot, as it seems, be maintained; and a very few stanzas of a more serious character, which may rarely be found, are not enough to make an exception to his general design. The Morgante was to the poetical romances of chivalry, what Don Quixote was to their brethren in prose.

[414] The story of Meridiana, in the eighth canto, is sufficient to prove Pulci’s irony to have been exercised on religion. It is well known to the readers of the Morgante. It has been alleged in the Biographie Universelle, that he meant only to turn into ridicule “ces muses mendiantes du 14me siècle,” the authors of la Spagna or Buovo d’Antona, who were in the habit of beginning their songs with scraps of the liturgy, and even of introducing theological doctrines in the most absurd and misplaced style. Pulci has given us much of the latter, wherein some have imagined that he had the assistance of Ficinus.

[415] This seems to have been an old problem in Italy. Corniani, ii. 302; and the gravity of Pulci has been maintained of late by such respectable authorities as Foscolo and Panizzi. Ginguéné, who does not go this length, thinks the death of Orlando, and his last prayer, both pathetic and sublime. I can see nothing in it but the systematic spirit of parody which we find in Pulci. But the lines on the death of Forisena, in the fourth canto, are really graceful and serious. The following remarks on Pulci’s style come from a more competent judge than myself.

“There is something harsh in Pulci’s manner, owing to his abrupt transition from one idea to another, and to his carelessness of grammatical rules. He was a poet by nature, and wrote with ease, but he never cared for sacrificing syntax to meaning; he did not mind saying anything incorrectly, if he were but sure that his meaning would be guessed. The rhyme very often compels him to employ expressions, words, and even lines which frequently render the sense obscure and the passage crooked, without producing any other effect than that of destroying a fine stanza. He has no similes of any particular merit, nor does he stand eminent in description. His verses almost invariably make sense taken singly, and convey distinct and separate ideas. Hence he wants that richness, fulness, and smooth flow of diction, which is indispensable to an epic poet, and to a noble description or comparison. Occasionally, when the subject admits of a powerful sketch which may be presented with vigour and spirit by a few strokes boldly drawn, Pulci appears to a great advantage.”--Panizzi on romantic poetry of Italians, in the first volume of his Orlando Innamorato, p. 298.

84. A foreigner must admire the vivacity of the narrative, the humorous gaiety of the characters, the adroitness of the satire. But the Italians, and especially the Tuscans, delight in the raciness of Pulci’s Florentine idiom, which we cannot equally relish. He has not been without influence on men of more celebrity than himself. In several passages of Ariosto, especially the visit of Astolfo to the moon, we trace a resemblance not wholly fortuitous. Voltaire, in one of his most popular poems, took the dry archness of Pulci, and exaggerated the profaneness, superadding the obscenity from his own stores. But Mr. Frere, with none of these two ingredients in his admirable vein of humour, has come, in the War of the Giants, much closer to the Morgante Maggiore than any one else.

|Platonic theology of Ficinus.|

85. The Platonic academy, in which the chief of the Medici took so much delight, did not fail to reward his care. Marsilius Ficinus, in his Theologica Platonica (1482), developed a system chiefly borrowed from the later Platonists of the Alexandrian school, full of delight to the credulous imagination, though little appealing to the reason, which, as it seemed remarkably to coincide in some respects with the received tenets of the church, was connived at in a few reveries, which could not so well bear the test of an orthodox standard. He supported his philosophy by a translation of Plato into Latin, executed at the direction of Lorenzo, and printed before 1490. Of this translation Buhle has said, that it has been very unjustly reproached with want of correctness; it is, on the contrary, perfectly conformable to the original, and has even, in some passages, enabled us to restore the text; the manuscripts used by Ficinus, I presume, not being in our hands. It has also the rare merit of being at once literal, perspicuous, and in good Latin.[416]

[416] Hist. de la Philosophie, vol. ii. The fullest account of the philosophy of Ficinus has been given by Buhle. Those who seek less minute information may have recourse to Brucker or Corniani; or, if they are content with still less, to Tiraboschi, Roscoe, Heeren, or the Biographie Universelle.

|Doctrine of Averroes on the soul.|

86. But the Platonism of Ficinus was not wholly that of the master. It was based on the emanation of the human soul from God, and its capacity of reunion by an ascetic and contemplative life; a theory perpetually reproduced in various modifications of meaning, and far more of words. The nature and immortality of the soul, the functions and distinguishing characters of angels, the being and attributes of God, engaged the thoughtful mind of Ficinus. In the course of his high speculations he assailed a doctrine, which, though rejected by Scotus and most of the schoolmen, had gained much ground among the Aristotelians, as they deemed themselves, of Italy; a doctrine first held by Averroes; that there is one common intelligence, active, immortal, indivisible, unconnected with matter, the soul of human kind, which is not in any one man, because it has no material form, but which yet assists in the rational operations of each man’s personal soul, and from those operations which are all conversant with particulars, derives its own knowledge of universals. Thus, if I understand what is meant, which is rather subtle, it might be said, that as in the common theory particular sensations furnish means to the soul of forming general ideas, so, in that of Averroes, the ideas and judgments of separate human souls furnish collectively the means of that knowledge of universals, which the one great soul of mankind alone can embrace. This was a theory built, as some have said, on the bad Arabic version of Aristotle which Averroes used. But, whatever might have first suggested it to the philosopher of Cordova, it seems little else than an expansion of the Realist hypothesis, urged to a degree of apparent paradox. For if the human soul, as an universal, possess an objective reality, it must surely be intelligent; and, being such, it may seem no extravagant hypothesis, though one incapable of that demonstration we now require in philosophy, to suppose that it acts upon the subordinate intelligences of the same species, and receives impressions from them. By this also they would reconcile the knowledge we were supposed to possess of the reality of universals, with the acknowledged impossibility, at least in many cases, of representing them to the mind.

|Opposed by Ficinus.|

87. Ficinus is the more prompt to refute the Averroists, that they all maintained the mortality of the particular soul, while it was his endeavour, by every argument that erudition and ingenuity could supply, to prove the contrary. The whole of his Platonic Theology appears a beautiful, but too visionary and hypothetical, system of theism, the groundworks of which lay deep in the meditations of ancient oriental sages. His own treatise, of which a very copious account will be found in Buhle, soon fell into oblivion; but it belongs to a class of literature, which, in all its extension, has, full as much as any other, engaged the human mind.

|Desire of man to explore mysteries.|

88. The thirst for hidden knowledge, by which man is distinguished from brutes, and the superior races of men from savage tribes, burns generally with more intenseness in proportion as the subject is less definitely comprehensible, and the means of certainty less attainable. Even our own interest in things beyond the sensible world does not appear to be the primary or chief source of the desire we feel to be acquainted with them; it is the pleasure of belief itself, of associating the conviction of reality with ideas not presented by sense; it is sometimes the necessity of satisfying a restless spirit, that first excites our endeavour to withdraw the veil that conceals the mystery of their being. The few great truths in religion that reason discovers, or that an explicit revelation deigns to communicate, sufficient as they may be for our practical good, have proved to fall very short of the ambitious curiosity of man. They leave so much imperfectly known, so much wholly unexplored, that in all ages he has never been content without trying some method of filling up the void. These methods have often led him to folly, and weakness, and crime. Yet as those who want the human passions, in their excess the great fountains of evil, seem to us maimed in their nature, so an indifference to this knowledge of invisible things, or a premature despair of attaining it, may be accounted an indication of some moral or intellectual deficiency, some scantness of due proportion in the mind.

|Various methods employed.|

|Reason and inspiration.|

89. The means to which recourse has been had to enlarge the boundaries of human knowledge in matters relating to the Deity, or to such of his intelligent creatures as do not present themselves in ordinary objectiveness to our senses, have been various, and may be distributed into several classes. Reason itself, as the most valuable, though not the most frequent in use, may be reckoned the first. Whatever deductions have suggested themselves to the acute, or analogies to the observant mind, whatever has seemed the probable interpretation of revealed testimony, is the legitimate province of a sound and rational theology. But so fallible appears the reason of each man to others, and often so dubious are its inferences to himself, so limited is the span of our faculties, so incapable are they of giving more than a vague and conjectural probability, where we demand most of definiteness and certainty, that few, comparatively speaking, have been content to acquiesce even in their own hypothesis upon no other grounds than argument has supplied. The uneasiness that is apt to attend suspense of belief has required, in general, a more powerful remedy. Next to those who have solely employed their rational faculties in theology, we may place those who have relied on a supernatural illumination. These have nominally been many; but the imagination, like the reason, bends under the incomprehensibility of spiritual things; a few excepted, who have become founders of sects, and lawgivers to the rest, the mystics fell into a beaten track, and grew mechanical even in their enthusiasm.

|Extended inferences from sacred books.|

90. No solitary and unconnected meditations, however, either of the philosopher or the mystic, could furnish a sufficiently extensive stock of theological faith for the multitude, who, by their temper and capacities, were more prone to take it at the hands of others than choose any tenets for themselves. They looked, therefore, for some authority upon which to repose; and instead of builders, became as it were occupants of mansions prepared for them by more active minds. Among those who acknowledged a code of revealed truths, the Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, this authority has been sought in largely expansive interpretations of their sacred books; either of positive obligation, as the decisions of general councils were held to be, or at least of such weight as a private man’s reason, unless he were of great name himself, was not permitted to contravene. These expositions, in the Christian Church, as well as among the Jews, were frequently allegorical; a hidden stream of esoteric truth was supposed to flow beneath all the surface of Scripture; and every text germinated, in the hands of the preacher, into meanings far from obvious, but which were presumed to be not undesigned. This scheme of allegorical interpretation began among the earliest fathers, and spread with perpetual expansion through the middle ages.[417] The Reformation swept most of it away; but it has frequently revived in a more partial manner. We mention it here only as one great means of enabling men to believe more than they had done, of communicating to them what was to be received as divine truths, not additional to Scripture, because they were concealed in it, but such as the church could only have learned through its teachers.

[417] Fleury (5me discours), xvii. 37. Mosheim, passim.

|Confidence in traditions.|

91. Another large class of religious opinions stood on a somewhat different footing. They were in a proper sense, according to the notions of those times, revealed from God; though not in the sacred writings which were the chief depositories of his word. Such were the received traditions in each of the three great religions, sometimes, absolutely infallible, sometimes, as in the former case of interpretations, resting upon such a basis of authority, that no one was held at liberty to withhold his assent. The Jewish traditions were of this kind; and the Mahometans have trod in the same path, we may add to these the legends of saints: none, perhaps, were positively enforced as of faith; but a Franciscan was not to doubt the inspiration and miraculous gifts of his founder. Nor was there any disposition in the people to doubt of them; they filled up with abundant measure the cravings of the heart and fancy, till, having absolutely palled both by excess, they brought about a kind of reaction, which has taken off much of their efficacy.

|Confidence in individuals as inspired.|

92. Francis of Assisi may naturally lead us to the last mode in which the spirit of theological belief manifested itself; the confidence in a particular man, as the organ of a special divine illumination. But though this was fully assented to by the order he instituted, and probably by most others, it cannot be said that Francis pretended to set up any new tenets, or enlarge, except by his visions and miracles, the limits of spiritual knowledge. Nor would this, in general, have been a safe proceeding in the middle ages. Those who made a claim to such light from heaven as could irradiate what the church had left dark seldom failed to provoke her jealousy. It is, therefore, in later times, and under more tolerant governments, that we shall find the fanatics, or impostors, whom the multitude has taken for witnesses of divine truth, or at least as interpreters of the mysteries of the invisible world.

|Jewish Cabbala.|

93. In the class of traditional theology, or what might be called complemental revelation, we must place the Jewish Cabbala. This consisted in a very specific and complex system, concerning the nature of the Supreme being, the emanation of various orders of spirits in successive links from his essence, their properties and characters. It is evidently one modification of the oriental philosophy, borrowing little from the Scriptures, at least through any natural interpretation of them, and the offspring of the Alexandrian Jews, not far from the beginning of the Christian æra. They referred it to a tradition from Esdras, or some other eminent person, on whom they fixed as the depositary of an esoteric theology communicated by divine authority. The Cabbala was received by the Jewish doctors in the first centuries after the fall of their state; and after a period of long duration, as remarkable for the neglect of learning in that people as in the Christian world, it revived again in that more genial season, the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when the brilliancy of many kinds of literature among the Saracens of Spain excited their Jewish subjects to emulation. Many conspicuous men illustrate the Hebrew learning of those and the succeeding ages. It was not till now, about the middle of the fifteenth century, that they came into contact with the Christians in theological philosophy. The Platonism of Ficinus, derived, in great measure, from that of Plotinus and the Alexandrian school, was easily connected, by means especially of the writings of Philo, with the Jewish orientalism, sisters as they were of the same family. Several forgeries in celebrated names, easy to affect and sure to deceive, had been committed in the first ages of Christianity by the active propagators of this philosophy. Hermes Trismegistus, and Zoroaster, were counterfeited in books which most were prone to take for genuine, and which it was not then easy to refute on critical grounds. These altogether formed a huge mass of imposture, or, at best, of arbitrary hypothesis, which, for more than a hundred years after this time, obtained an undue credence, and consequently retarded the course of real philosophy in Europe.[418]

[418] Brucker, vol. ii. Buhle, ii. 316. Meiners, Vergl. der Sitten, iii. 277.

|Picus of Mirandola.|

94. They never gained over a more distinguished proselyte, or one whose credulity was more to be regretted, than a young man who appeared at Florence in 1485, John Picus of Mirandola. He was then twenty-two years old, the younger son of an illustrious family, which held that little principality as an imperial fief. At the age of fourteen he was sent to Bologna, that he might study the canon law, with a view to the ecclesiastical profession; but after two years he felt an inexhaustible desire for more elevated though less profitable sciences. He devoted the next six years to the philosophy of the schools, in the chief universities of Italy and France: whatever disputable subtilties the metaphysics and theology of that age could supply, became familiar to his mind; but to these he added a knowledge of the Hebrew and other eastern languages, a power of writing Latin with grace, and of amusing his leisure with the composition of Italian poetry. The natural genius of Picus is well shown, though in a partial manner, by a letter which will be found among those of Politian, in answer to Hermolaus Barbarus. His correspondent had spoken with the scorn, and almost bitterness, usual with philologers, of the Transalpine writers, meaning chiefly the schoolmen, for the badness of their Latin. The young scholastic answered, that he had been at first disheartened by the reflection that he had lost six years’ labour; but considered afterwards, that the barbarians might say something for themselves, and puts a very good defence in their mouths; a defence which wants nothing but the truth of what he is forced to assume, that they had been employing their intellects upon things instead of words. Hermolaus found, however, nothing better to reply than the compliment, that Picus would be disavowed by the schoolmen for defending them in so eloquent a style.[419]

[419] The letter of Hermolaus is dated Apr. 1485. He there says, after many compliments to Picus himself: Nec enim inter autores Latinæ linguæ numero Germanos istos et Teutonas qui ne viventes quidem vivebant, nedum ut extincti vivant, aut si vivunt, vivunt in pœnam et contumeliam. The answer of Picus is dated in June. A few lines from his pleading for the schoolmen will exhibit his ingenuity and elegance. Admirenture nos sagaces in inquirendo, circumspectors in explorando, subtiles in contemplando, in judicando graves, implicitos in vinciendo, faciles in enodando. Admirentur in nobis brevitatem styli, fœtam rerum multarum atque magnarum, sub expositis verbis remotissimas sententias, plenas quæstionum, plenas solutionum, quam apti sumus, quam bene instructi ambiguitates tollere, scrupos diluere, involuta evolvere, flexanimis syllogismis et infirmare falso et vera confirmare. Viximus celebres, o Hermolae, et posthac vivemus, non in scholis grammaticorum et pædagogiis, sed in philosophorum coronis, in conventibus sapientum, ubi non de matre Andromaches, non de Niobes filiis, atque id genus levibus nugis, sed de humanarum divinarumque rerum rationibus agitur et disputatur. In quibus meditandis, inquirendis et enodandis, ita subtiles acuti acresque fuimus, ut anxii quandoque nimium et morosi fuisse forte videamur, si modo esse morosus quispiam aut curiosus nimio plus in indagando veritate potest. Polit. Epist. lib. 9.

|His credulity in the Cabbala.|

95. He learned Greek very rapidly, probably after his coming to Florence. And having been led, through Ficinus, to the study of Plato, he seems to have given up his Aristotelian philosophy for theories more congenial to his susceptible and credulous temper. These led him onwards to wilder fancies. Ardent in the desire of knowledge, incapable, in the infancy of criticism, to discern authentic from spurious writings, and perhaps disqualified, by his inconceivable rapidity in apprehending the opinions of others from judging acutely of their reasonableness, Picus of Mirandola fell an easy victim to his own enthusiasm and the snares of fraud. An impostor persuaded him to purchase fifty Hebrew manuscripts, as having been composed by Esdras, and containing the most secret mysteries of the Cabbala. From this time, says Corniani, he imbibed more and more such idle fables, and wasted in dreams a genius formed to reach the most elevated and remote truths. In these spurious books of Esdras, he was astonished to find, as he says, more of Christianity than Judaism, and trusted them the more confidently for the very reason that demonstrates their falsity.[420]

[420] Corniani, iii. 63. Meiners, Lebensbeschreibungen berühmter Männer ii. 21. Tiraboschi, vii. 325.

|His literary performances.|

96. Picus, about the end of 1486, repaired to Rome, and with permission of Innocent VIII., propounded his famous nine hundred theses, or questions, logical, ethical, mathematical, physical, metaphysical, theological, magical, and cabbalistical; upon every one of which he offered to dispute with any opponent. Four hundred of these propositions were from philosophers of Greece or Arabia, from the schoolmen, or from the Jewish doctors; the rest were announced as his own opinions, which, saving the authority of the church, he was willing to defend.[421] There was some need of this reservation; for several of his theses were ill-sounding, as it was called, in the ears of the orthodox. They raised a good deal of clamour against him; and the high rank, brilliant reputation, and obedient demeanour of Picus were all required to save him from public censure or more serious animadversions. He was compelled, however, to swear that he would adopt such an exposition of his theses as the pope should set forth. But as this was not done, he published an apology, especially vindicating his employment of cabbalistical and magical learning. This excited fresh attacks, which in some measure continued to harass him, till, on the accession of Alexander VI. to the papal chair, he was finally pronounced free from blameable intention. He had meantime, as we may infer from his later writings, receded from some of the bolder opinions of his youth. His mind became more devout, and more fearful of deviating from the church. On his first appearance at Florence, uniting rare beauty with high birth and unequalled renown, he had been much sought by women, and returned their love. But at the age of twenty-five he withdrew himself from all worldly distraction, destroying, as it is said, his own amatory poems, to the regret of his friends.[422] He now published several works, of which the Heptaplus is a cabbalistic exposition of the first chapter of Genesis. It is remarkable that, with his excessive tendency to belief, he rejected altogether, and confuted in a distinct treatise, the popular science of astrology, in which men so much more conspicuous in philosophy have trusted. But he had projected many other undertakings of vast extent; an allegorical exposition of the New Testament, a defence of the Vulgate and Septuagint against the Jews, a vindication of Christianity against every species of infidelity and heresy; and finally, a harmony of philosophy, reconciling the apparent inconsistencies of all writers, ancient and modern, who deserved the name of wise, as he had already attempted by Plato and Aristotle. In these arduous labours he was cut off by a fever at the age of thirty-one, in 1494, on the very day that Charles VIII. made his entry into Florence. A man, so justly called the phœnix of his age, and so extraordinarily gifted by nature, ought not to be slightly passed over, though he may have left nothing which we could read with advantage. If we talk of the admirable Crichton, who is little better than a shadow, and lives but in panegyric, so much superior and more wonderful a person as John Picus of Mirandola should not be forgotten.[423]

[421] Meiners, p. 14.

[422] Meiners, p. 10.

[423] The long biography of Picus in Meiners is in great measure taken from a life written by his nephew, John Francis Picus, count of Mirandola, himself a man of great literary and philosophical reputation in the next century. Meiners has made more use of this than any one else; but much will be found concerning Picus, from this source, and from his own works, in Brucker, Buhle, Corniani, and Tiraboschi. The epitaph on Picus by Hercules Strozza is, I believe, in the church of St. Mark:--

Joannes jacet hic Mirandola; cætera nôrunt Et Tagus et Ganges; forsan et Antipodes.

|State of learning in Germany.|

|Agricola.|

97. If, leaving the genial city of Florence, we are to judge of the state of knowledge in our Cisalpine regions, and look at the books it was thought worth while to publish, which seems no bad criterion, we shall rate but lowly their proficiency in the classical literature so much valued in Italy. Four editions, and those chiefly of short works, were printed at Deventer, one at Cologne, one at Louvain, five perhaps at Paris, two at Lyons.[424] But a few undated books might, probably, be added. Either, therefore, the love of ancient learning had grown colder, which was certainly not the case, or it had never been strong enough to reward the labour of the too sanguine printers. Yet it was now striking root in Germany. The excellent schools of Munster and Schelstadt were established in some part of this decade; they trained those who were themselves to become instructors; and the liberal zeal of Langius extending beyond his immediate disciples, scarce any Latin author was published in Germany in which he did not correct the text.[425] The opportunities he had of doing so were not, as has been just seen, so numerous in this period as they became in the next. He had to withstand a potent and obstinate faction. The mendicant friars of Cologne, the head-quarters of barbarous superstition, clamoured against his rejection of the old school-books, and the entire reform of education. But Agricola addresses his friend in sanguine language: “I entertain the greatest hope from your exertions, that we shall one day wrest from this insolent Italy her vaunted glory of pre-eminent eloquence; and redeeming ourselves from the opprobrium of ignorance, barbarism, and incapacity of expression which she is ever casting upon us, may show our Germany so deeply learned, that Latium itself shall not be more Latin than she will appear.”[426] About 1482, Agricola was invited to the court of the elector palatine at Heidelberg. He seems not to have been engaged in public instruction, but passed the remainder of his life, unfortunately too short, for he died in 1485, in diffusing and promoting a taste for literature among his contemporaries. No German wrote in so pure a style, or possessed so large a portion of classical learning. Vives places him in dignity and grace of language even above Politian and Hermolaus.[427] The praises of Erasmus, as well as of the later critics, if not so marked, are very freely bestowed. His letters are frequently written in Greek; a fashion of those who could; and as far as I have attended to them, seem equal in correctness to some from men of higher name in the next age.

[424] Panzer.

[425] Meiners, Lebensbesch. ii. 328. Eichhorn, iii. 231-239.

[426] Unum hoc tibi affirmo, ingentem de te concipio fiduciam, summamque in spem adducor, fore aliquando, ut priscam insolenti Italiæ, et propemodum occupatam bene dicendi gloriam extorqueamus; vindicemusque nos, et ab ignavia, qua nos barbaros, indoctosque et elingues, et si quid est his incultius, esse nos jactitant, exsolvamus, futuramque tam doctam et literatam Germaniam nostram, ut non Latinius vel ipsum sit Latium. This is quoted by Heeren, p. 154, and Meiners, ii. 329.

[427] Vix et hac nostra et patrum memoria fuit unus atque alter dignior, qui multum legeretur, multumque in manibus haberetur, quam Radulphus Agricola Frisius; tantum est in ejus operibus ingenii, artis, gravitatis, dulcedinis, eloquentiæ, eruditionis; at is paucissimis noscitur, vir non minus, qui ab hominibus cognosceretur, dignus quam Politianus, vel Hermolaus Barbarus, quos mea quidem sententia, et majestate et suavitate dictionis non æquat modo, sed etiam vincit. Vives, Comment. in Augustin. (apud Blount, Censura Auctorum, sub nomine Agricola.)

Agnosco virum divini pectoris, eruditionis reconditæ, stylo minime vulgari, solidum, nervosum elaboratum, compositum. In Italia summus esse poterat, nisi Germanium prætulisset. Erasmus in Ciceroniano. He speaks as strongly in many other places. Testimonies to the merits of Agricola from Huet, Vossius, and others, are collected by Bayle, Blount, Baillet, and Niceron. Meiners has written his life, ii. pp. 332-363; and several of his letters will be found among those addressed to Reuchlin, Epistolæ ad Reuchlinum; a collection of great importance for this portion of literary history.

|Rhenish academy.|

98. The immediate patron of Agricola, through whom he was invited to Heidelberg, was John Camerarius, of the house of Dalberg, bishop of Worms, and chancellor of the Palatinate. He contributed much himself to the cause of letters in Germany; especially if he is to be deemed the founder, as probably he should be, of an early academy, the Rhenish Society, which, we are told, devoted its time to Latin, Greek, and Hebrew criticism, astronomy, music, and poetry; not scorning to relax their minds with dances and feasts, nor forgetting the ancient German attachment to the flowing cup.[428] The chief seat of the Rhenish Society was at Heidelberg; but it had associate branches in other parts of Germany, and obtained imperial privileges. No member of this academy was more conspicuous than Conrad Celtes, who has sometimes been reckoned its founder, which, from his youth, is hardly probable, and was, at least, the chief instrument of its subsequent extension. He was indefatigable in the vineyard of literature, and, travelling to different parts of Germany, exerted a more general influence than Agricola himself. Celtes was the first from whom Saxony derived some taste for learning. His Latin poetry was far superior to any that had been produced in the empire; and for this, in 1487, he received the laurel crown from Frederic III.[429]

[428] Studebant eximia hæc ingenia Latinorum, Græcorum, Ebræorumque scriptorum lectioni, cumprimis criticæ; astronomiam et artem musicam excolebant. Poesin atque jurisprudentiam sibi habebant commendatam; imo et interdum gaudia curis interponebant. Nocturno nimirum tempore, defessi laboribus, ludere solebant, saltare, jocari cum mulierculis, epulari, ac more Germanorum inveterato strenue potare. Jugler, Hist. Litteraria, p. 1993 (vol. iii.). The passage seems to be taken from Ruprecht, Oratio de Societate Litteraria Rhenana, Jenæ, 1752, which I have not seen.

[429] Jugler, ubi suprà. Eichhorn, ii. 557. Heeren, p. 100. Biogr. Universelle, art. Celtes, Dalberg, Trithemius.

|Reuchlin.|

99. Reuchlin, in 1482, accompanied the duke of Wirtemberg on a visit to Rome. He thus became acquainted with the illustrious men of Italy, and convinced them of his own pretensions to the name of a scholar. The old Constantinopolitan Argyropulus, on hearing him translate a passage of Thucydides, exclaimed, “Our banished Greece has now flown beyond the Alps.” Yet Reuchlin, though from some other circumstances of his life a more celebrated, was not probably so learned or so accomplished a man as Agricola; he was withdrawn from public tuition by the favour of several princes, in whose courts he filled honourable offices; and after some years more, he fell unfortunately into the same seducing error as Picus of Mirandola, and sacrificed his classical pursuits for the Cabbalistic philosophy.

|French language and poetry.|

100. Though France contributed little to the philologer, several books were now published in French. In the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, 1486, a slight improvement in polish of language is said to be discernible.[430] The poems of Villon are rather of more importance. They were first published in 1489; but many of them had been written thirty years before. Boileau has given Villon credit for being the first who cleared his style from the rudeness and redundancy of the old romancers.[431] But this praise, as some have observed, is more justly due to the duke of Orleans, a man of full as much talent as Villon, with a finer taste. The poetry of the latter, as might be expected from a life of dissoluteness and roguery, is often low and coarse; but he seems by no means incapable of a moral strain, not destitute of terseness and spirit. Martial d’Auvergne, in his Vigiles de la Mort de Charles VII., which, from its subject, must have been written soon after 1460, though not printed till 1490, displays, to judge from the extracts in Goujet, some compass of imagination.[432] The French poetry of this age was still full of allegorical morality, and had lost a part of its original raciness. Those who desire an acquaintance with it may have recourse to the author just mentioned, or to Bouterwek; and extracts, though not so copious as the title promises, will be found in the Recueil des Anciens Poètes Français.

[430] Essai du C. François de Neufchâteau sur les meilleurs ouvrages en prose; prefixed to Œuvres de Pascal (1819), i. p. cxx.

[431] Villon fut le primer dans des siècles grossiers Debrouiller l’art confus de nos vieux romanciers. Art Poétique, l. i. v. 117.

[432] Goujet, Bibliothèque Française, vol. x.

|European drama.|

|Latin.|

101. The modern drama of Europe is derived, like its poetry, from two sources, the one ancient or classical, the other mediæval; the one an imitation of Plautus and Seneca, the other a gradual refinement of the rude scenic performances, denominated miracles, mysteries, or moralities. Latin plays upon the former model, a few of which are extant, were written in Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and sometimes represented, either in the universities, or before an audience of ecclesiastics and others who could understand them.[433] One of these, the Catinia of Secco Polentone, written about the middle of the fifteenth century, and translated by a son of the author into the Venetian dialect, was printed in 1482. This piece, however, was confined to the press.[434] Sabellicus, as quoted by Tiraboschi, has given to Pomponius Lætus the credit of having re-established the theatre at Rome, and caused the plays of Plautus Terence, as well as some more modern, which we may presume to have been in Latin, to be performed before the pope, probably Sixtus IV. And James of Volterra, in a diary published by Muratori, expressly mentions a History of Constantine represented in the papal palace during the carnival of 1484.[435] In imitation of Italy, but, perhaps, a little after the present decennial period, Reuchlin brought Latin plays of his own composition before a German audience. They were represented by students of Heidelberg. An edition of his Progymnasmata Scenica, containing some of these comedies, was printed in 1498. It has been said that one of them is taken from the French farce Maitre Patelin[436]; while another, entitled Sergius, according to Warton, flies a much higher pitch, and is a satire on bad kings and bad ministers; though, from the account of Meiners, it seems rather to fall on the fraudulent arts of the monks.[437] The book is very scarce, and I have never seen it. Conrad Celtes, not long after Reuchlin, produced his own tragedies and comedies in the public halls of German cities. It is to be remembered, that the oral Latin language might at that time be tolerably familiar to a considerable audience in Germany.

[433] Tiraboschi, vii. 200.

[434] Id. p. 201.

[435] Id. p. 204.

[436] Greswell’s Early Parisian Press, p. 124; quoting la Monnoye. This seems to be confirmed by Meiners, i. 63.

[437] Warton, iii. 203. Meiners, i. 62. The Sergius was represented at Heidelberg about 1497.

|Orfeo of Politian.|

102. The Orfeo of Politian has claimed precedence as the earliest represented drama, not of a religious nature, in a modern language. This was written by him in two days, and acted before the court of Mantua in 1483. Roscoe has called it the first example of the musical drama, or Italian opera; but though he speaks of this as agreed by general consent, it is certain that the Orfeo was not designed for musical accompaniment, except, probably, in the songs and choruses.[438] According to the analysis of the fable in Ginguéné, the Orfeo differs only from a legendary mystery by substituting one set of characters for another; and it is surely by an arbitrary definition that we pay it the compliment upon which the modern historians of literature seem to have agreed. Several absurdities which appear in the first edition are said not to exist in the original manuscripts from which the Orfeo has been reprinted.[439] We must give the next place to a translation of the Menæchmi of Plautus, acted at Ferrara in 1486, by order of Ercole I., and, as some have thought, his own production, or to some original plays said to have been performed at the same brilliant court in the following years.[440]

[438] Burney (Hist. of Music, iv. 17) seems to countenance this; but Tiraboschi does not speak of musical accompaniment to the Orfeo; and Corniani only says, alcuni di essi sembrano dall’autor destinati ad accoppiarsi colla musica. Tali sono i canzoni e i cori alla Greca. Probably Roscoe did not mean all that his words imply; for the origin of recitative, in which the essence of the Italian opera consists, more than a century afterwards, is matter of notoriety.

[439] Tiraboschi, vii. 216. Ginguéné, iii. 514. Andrès (v. 125), discussing the history of the Italian and Spanish theatres, gives the precedence to the Orfeo as a represented play, though he conceives the first act of the Celestina to have been written and well known not later than the middle of the fifteenth century.

[440] Tiraboschi, vii. 203, et post. Roscoe, Leo X., ch. ii. Ginguéné, vi. 18.

|Origin of dramatic mysteries.|

103. The less regular, though in their day not less interesting, class of scenical stories, commonly called mysteries, all of which related to religious subjects, were never in more reputation than at this time. It is impossible to fix their first appearance at any single æra, and the inquiry into the origin of dramatic representation must be very limited in its subject, or perfectly futile in its scope. All nations, probably, have at all times, to a certain extent, amused themselves both with pantomimic and oral representation of a feigned story; the sports of children are seldom without both; and the exclusive employment of the former, instead of being a first stage of the drama, as has sometimes been assumed, is rather a variety in the course of its progress.

|Their early stage.|

104. The Christian drama arose on the ruins of the heathen theatre: it was a natural substitute of real sympathies for those which were effaced and condemned. Hence we find Greek tragedies on sacred subjects almost as early as the establishment of the church, and we have testimonies to their representation at Constantinople. Nothing of this kind being proved with respect to the west of Europe in the dark ages, it has been conjectured, not improbably, though without necessity, that the pilgrims, of whom great numbers repaired to the East in the eleventh century, might have obtained notions of scenical dialogue, with a succession of characters, and with an ornamental apparatus, in which theatrical representation properly consists. The earliest mention of them, it has been said, is in England. Geoffrey, afterwards abbot of St. Albans, while teaching a school at Dunstable, caused one of the shows, vulgarly called miracles, on the story of St. Catherine, to be represented in that town. Such is the account of Matthew Paris, who mentions the circumstance incidentally, in consequence of a fire that ensued. This must have been within the first twenty years of the twelfth century.[441] It is not to be questioned, that Geoffrey, a native of France, had some earlier models in his own country. Le Bœuf gives an account of a mystery written in the middle of the preceding century, wherein Virgil is introduced among the prophets that come to adore the Saviour; doubtless in allusion to the fourth eclogue.

[441] Matt. Paris, p. 1007 (edit. 1684). See Warton’s 34th section (iii. 193-233), for the early drama, and Beauchamps, Hist. du Théâtre Français, vol. i., or Bouterwek, v. 95-117, for the French in particular; Tiraboschi, ubi suprà, or Riccoboni, Hist. du Théâtre Italien, for that of Italy.

|Extant English mysteries.|

105. Fitz-Stephen, in the reign of Henry II., dwells on the sacred plays acted in London, representing the miracles or passions of martyrs. They became very common by the names of mysteries or miracles, both in England and on the Continent, and were not only exhibited within the walls of convents, but upon public occasions and festivals for the amusement of the people. It is probable, however, that the performers for a long time were always ecclesiastics. The earlier of those religious dramas were in Latin. A Latin farce exists on St. Nicholas, older than the thirteenth century.[442] It was slowly that the modern languages were employed; and perhaps it might hence be presumed, that the greater part of the story was told through pantomime. But as this was unsatisfactory, and the spectators could not always follow the fable, there was an obvious inducement to make use of the vernacular language. The most ancient specimens appear to be those which Le Grand d’Aussy found among the compositions of the Trouveurs. He has published extracts from three; two of which are in the nature of legendary mysteries, while the third, which is far more remarkable, and may possibly be of the following century, is a pleasing pastoral drama, of which there seem to be no other instances in the mediæval period.[443] Bouterwek mentions a fragment of a German mystery, near the end of the thirteenth century.[444] Next to this it seems that we should place an English mystery called The Harrowing of Hell. “This,” its editor observes, “is believed to be the most ancient production in a dramatic form in our language. The manuscript from which it is now printed is on vellum, and is certainly as old as the reign of Edward III., if not older. It probably formed one of a series of performances of the same kind, founded upon Scripture history.” It consists of a prologue, epilogue, and intermediate dialogue of nine persons, Dominus, Sathan, Adam, Eve, &c. Independently of the alleged age of the manuscript itself, the language will hardly be thought later than 1350.[445] This, however, seems to stand at no small distance from any extant work of the kind. Warton having referred the Chester mysteries to 1327, when he supposes them to have been written by Ranulph Higden, a learned monk of that city, best known as the author of the Polychronicon, Roscoe positively contradicts him, and denies that any dramatic composition can be found in England anterior to the year 1500.[446] Two of these Chester mysteries have been since printed; but notwithstanding the very respectable authorities which assign them to the fourteenth century, I cannot but consider the language in which we now read them not earlier, to say the least, than the middle of the next. It is possible that they have in some degree been modernised. Mr. Collier has given an analysis of our own extant mysteries, or, as he prefers to call them, Miracle-plays.[447] There does not seem to be much dramatic merit, even with copious indulgence, in any of them; and some, such as the two Chester mysteries, are in the lowest style of buffoonery; yet they are of some importance in the absolute sterility of English literature during the age in which we presume them to have been written, the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV.

[442] Journal des Savans, 1828, p. 297. These farces, according to M. Raynouard, were the earliest dramatic representations, and gave rise to the mysteries.

[443] Fabliaux, ii. 119.

[444] ix. 265. The Tragedy of the Ten Virgins was acted at Eisenach in 1322. This is evidently nothing but a mystery. Weber’s Illustrations of Northern Poetry, p. 19.

[445] Mr. Collier has printed twenty-five copies (why veteris tam parcus aceti?) of this very curious record of the ancient drama. I do not know that any other in Europe of that early age has yet been given to the press.

[446] Lorenzo de’ Medici, i. 399. Roscoe thinks the few extracts in Bouterwek, is rather there is reason to conjecture that the Miracle-play acted at Dunstable was in dumb show; and assumes the same of the “grotesque exhibitions” known by the name of The Harrowing of Hell. In this we have just seen that he was mistaken, and probably in the former.

[447] Hist. of English Dramatic Poetry, vol. ii. The Chester mysteries were printed for the Roxburgh Club, by my friend Mr. Markland; and what are called the Townley mysteries are announced for publication.

|First French theatre.|

106. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were fertile of these religious dramas in many parts of Europe. They were frequently represented in Germany, but more in Latin than in the mother-tongue. The French scriptural theatre, whatever may have been previously exhibited, seems not to be traced in permanent existence beyond the last years of the fourteenth century. It was about 1400, according to Beauchamps, or some years before, as the authorities quoted by Bouterwek imply, that the Confrairie de la Passion de N. S. was established as a regular body of actors at Paris.[448] They are said to have taken their name from the mystery of the passion, which in fact represented the whole life of our Lord from his baptism, and was divided into several days. In pomp of show they far excelled our English mysteries, in which few persons appeared, and the scenery was simple. But in the mystery of the passion, eighty-seven characters were introduced in the first day; heaven, earth, and hell combined to people the stage; several scenes were written for singing, and some for choruses. The dialogue, of which I have only seen similar to that of our own mysteries, though less rude, and with more efforts at a tragic tone.[449]

[448] Beauchamps, Recherches sur le Théâtre Français. Bouterwek, v. 96.

[449] Bouterwek, p. 100.

|Theatrical machinery.|

107. The mysteries, not confined to scriptural themes, embraced those which were hardly less sacred and trustworthy in the eyes of the people, the legends of saints. These afforded ample scope for the gratification which great part of mankind seem to take in witnessing the endurance of pain. Thus, in one of these Parisian mysteries, St. Barbara is hung up by the heels on the stage, and after uttering her remonstrances in that unpleasant situation, is torn with pincers and scorched with lamps before the audience. The decorations of this theatre must have appeared splendid. A large scaffolding at the back of the stage displayed heaven above and hell below, between which extended the world, with representations of the spot where the scene lay. Nor was the machinist’s art unknown. An immense dragon, with eyes of polished steel, sprung out from hell, in a mystery exhibited at Metz in the year 1437, and spread his wings so near to the spectators that they were all in consternation.[450] Many French mysteries, chiefly without date of the year, are in print, and probably belong, typographically speaking, to the present century.[451] One bears, according to Brunet, the date of 1484. These may, however, have been written long before their publication. Beauchamps has given a list of early mysteries and moralities in the French language, beginning near the end of the fourteenth century.

[450] Bouterwek, pp. 103-106.

[451] Brunet, Manuel du Libraire.

|Italian religious dramas.|

108. The religious drama was doubtless full as ancient in Italy as in any other country; it was very congenial to people whose delight in sensible objects is so intense. It did not supersede the extemporaneous performances, the mimi and histriones, who had probably never intermitted their sportive license since the days of their Oscan fathers, and of whom we find mention, sometimes with severity, sometimes with toleration, in ecclesiastical writers;[452] but it came into competition with them; and thus may be said to have commenced in the thirteenth century a war of regular comedy against the lawless savages of the stage, which has only been terminated in Italy within very recent recollection. We find a society del Gonfalone established at Rome in 1264, the statutes of which declare, that it is designed to represent the passion of Jesus Christ.[453] Lorenzo de’ Medici condescended to publish a drama of this kind on the martyrdom of two saints; and a considerable collection of similar productions during the fifteenth century was in the possession of Mr. Roscoe.[454]

[452] Thomas Aquinas mentions the histrionatûs ars, as lawful if not abused. St. Antonin does the same. Riccoboni, i. 23.

[453] Riccoboni. Tiraboschi, however, v. 376, disputes the antiquity of any scenical representations truly dramatic, in Italy; in which he seems to be mistaken.

[454] Life of Lorenzo, i. 402.

|Moralities.|

|Farces.|

109. Next to the mysteries came the kindred class, styled moralities. But as these belong more peculiarly to the next century, both in England and France, though they began about the present time, we may better reserve them for that period. There is still another species of dramatic composition, what may be called the farce, not always very distinguishable from comedy, but much shorter, admitting more buffoonery without reproach, and more destitute of any serious or practical end. It may be reckoned a middle link between the extemporaneous effusions of the mimes and the legitimate drama. The French have a diverting piece of this kind, Maitre Patelin, ascribed to Pierre Blanchet, and first printed in 1490. It was restored to the stage with much alteration, under the name of l’Avocat Patelin, about the beginning of the last century; and contains strokes of humour, which Molière would not have disdained.[455] Of these productions there were not a few in Germany, called Fastnachts-spiele, or Carnival plays, written in the license which that season has generally permitted. They are scarce and of little value. The most remarkable is the Apotheosis of Pope Joan, a tragi-comic legend, written about 1480.[456]

[455] The proverbial expression for quitting a digression, Revenons à nos moutons, is taken from this farce; which is at least short, and as laughable as most farces are. It seems to have been written not long before its publication. See Pasquier, Recherches de la France, l. viii. c. 59; Biogr. Univ., Blanchet; and Bouterwek, v. 118.

[456] Bouterwek, Gesch. der deutschen Poesie, ix. 357-367. Heinsius, Lehrbuch der Sprachtwissenschaft, iv. 125.

|Mathematical works.|

110. Euclid was printed for the first time at Venice in 1482; the diagrams in this edition are engraved on copper, and remarkably clear and neat.[457] The translation is that of Campanus from the Arabic. The cosmography of Ptolemy, which had been already twice published in Italy, appeared the same year at Ulm, with maps by Donis, some of them traced after the plans drawn by Agathodæmon, some modern; and it was reprinted, as well as Euclid, at the same place in 1486. The tables of Regiomontanus were printed both at Augsburg and Venice in 1490. We may take this occasion of introducing two names, which do not exclusively belong to the exact sciences, nor to the present period.

[457] A beautiful copy of this edition, presented to Mocenigo, doge of Venice, is in the British Museum. The diagrams, especially those which represent solids, are better than in our modern editions of Euclid. I will take this opportunity of mentioning, that the earliest book, in which engravings are found, is the edition of Dante by Landino, published at Florence in 1481. See Brunet, Manuel du Libraire, Dibdin’s Bibl. Spencer, &c.

|Leo Baptista Alberti.|

111. Leo Baptista Alberti was a man, who, if measured by the universality of his genius, may claim a place in the temple of glory he has not filled; the author of a Latin comedy, entitled Philodoxios, which the younger Aldus Manutius afterwards published as the genuine work of a certain ancient Lepidus; a moral writer in the various forms of dialogue, dissertation, fable, and light humour; a poet, extolled by some, though not free from the rudeness of his age; a philosopher of the Platonic school of Lorenzo; a mathematician and inventor of optical instruments; a painter, and the author of the earliest modern treatise on painting; a sculptor, and the first who wrote about sculpture; a musician, whose compositions excited the applause of his contemporaries; an architect of profound skill, not only displayed in many works, of which the church of Saint Francis at Rimini is the most admired, but in a theoretical treatise, De Re Ædificatoriâ, published posthumously in 1485. It has been called the only work on architecture which we can place on a level with that of Vitruvius, and by some has been preferred to it. Alberti had deeply meditated the remains of Roman antiquity, and endeavoured to derive from them general theorems of beauty, variously applicable to each description of buildings.[458]

[458] Corniani, ii. 160. Tiraboschi, vii. 360.

112. This great man seems to have had two impediments to his permanent glory: one, that he came a few years too soon into the world, before his own language was become polished, and before the principles of taste in art had been wholly developed; the other, that, splendid as was his own genius, there were yet two men a little behind, in the presence of whom his star has paled; men, not superior to Alberti in universality of mental powers, but in their transcendency and command over immortal fame. Many readers will have perceived to whom I allude,--Lionardo da Vinci, and Michael Angelo.

|Lionardo da Vinci.|

113. None of the writings of Lionardo were published till more than a century after his death; and, indeed, the most remarkable of them are still in manuscript. We cannot, therefore, give him a determinate place under this rather than any other decennium; but as he was born in 1452, we may presume his mind to have been in full expansion before 1490. His Treatise on Painting is known as a very early disquisition on the rules of the art. But his greatest literary distinction is derived from those short fragments of his unpublished writings that appeared not many years since; and which, according, at least, to our common estimate of the age in which he lived, are more like revelations of physical truths vouchsafed to a single mind, than the superstructure of its reasoning upon any established basis. The discoveries which made Galileo, and Kepler, and Mæstlin, and Maurolycus, and Castelli, and other names illustrious, the system of Copernicus, the very theories of recent geologers, are anticipated by Da Vinci, within the compass of a few pages, not perhaps in the most precise language, or on the most conclusive reasoning, but so as to strike us with something like the awe of præternatural knowledge. In an age of so much dogmatism, he first laid down the grand principle of Bacon, that experiment and observation must be the guides to just theory in the investigation of nature. If any doubt could be harboured, not as to the right of Lionardo da Vinci to stand as the first name of the fifteenth century, which is beyond all doubt, but as to his originality in so many discoveries, which, probably, no one man, especially in such circumstances, has ever made, it must be on an hypothesis, not very untenable, that some parts of physical science had already attained a height which mere books do not record. The extraordinary works of ecclesiastical architecture in the middle ages, especially in the fifteenth century, as well as those of Toscanelli and Fioravanti, which we have mentioned, lend some countenance to this opinion; and it is said to be confirmed by the notes of Fra Mauro, a lay brother of a convent near Venice, on a planisphere constructed by him, and still extant. Lionardo himself speaks of the earth’s annual motion, in a treatise that appears to have been written about 1510, as the opinion of many philosophers in his age.[459]

[459] The manuscripts of Lionardo da Vinci, now at Paris, are the justification of what has been said in the text. A short account of them was given by Venturi, who designed to have published a part; but, having relinquished that intention, the fragments he has made known are the more important. As they are very remarkable, and not, I believe, very generally known, I shall extract a few passages from his Essai sur les Ouvrages Physico-mathématiques de Léonard de Vinci. Paris, 1797.

En mécanique Vinci connaissait, entr’autres choses: 1. La théorie des forces appliquées obliquement au bras du levier; 2. La résistance respective des poutres; 3. Les lois du frottement données ensuite par Amontons; 4. L’influence du centre de gravité sur les corps en repos ou en mouvement; 5. L’application du principe des vitesses virtuelles à plusieurs cas que la sublime analyse a porté de nos jours a sa plus grande généralité. Dans l’optique il décrivit la chambre obscure avant Porta, il expliqua avant Maurolycus la figure de l’image du soleil dans un trou de forme anguleuse; il nous apprend la perspective aerienne, la nature des ombres colorées, les mouvemens de l’iris, les effets de la durée de l’impression visible, et plusieurs autres phénomènes de l’œil qu’on ne rencontre point dans Vitellion. Enfin non seulement Vinci avait remarqué tout ce que Castelli a dit un siècle après lui sur le mouvement des eaux; le premier me parait même dans cette partie supérieur de beaucoup à l’autre, que l’Italie cependant a regardé comme le fondateur de l’hydraulique.

Il faut donc placer Léonard à la tête de ceux qui se sont occupés des sciences physico-mathématiques, et de la vraie méthode d’étudier parmi les modernes, p. 5.

The first extract Venturi gives is entitled, On the descent of heavy bodies combined with the rotation of the earth. He here assumes the latter, and conceives that a body falling to the earth from the top of a tower would have a compound motion in consequence of the terrestrial rotation. Venturi thinks that the writings of Nicolas de Cusa had set men on speculating concerning this before the time of Copernicus.

Vinci had very extraordinary lights as to mechanical motions. He says plainly, that the time of descent on inclined planes of equal height is as their length; that a body descends along the arc of a circle sooner than down the chord, and that a body descending an inclined plane will re-ascend with the same velocity as if it had fallen down the height. He frequently repeats, that every body weighs in the direction of its movement, and weighs the more in the ratio of its velocity; by weight evidently meaning what we call force. He applies this to the centrifugal force of bodies in rotation: Pendant tout ce temps elle pèse sur la direction de son mouvement.

Lorsqu’on employe une machine quelconque pour mouvoir un corps grave, toutes les parties de la machine qui ont un mouvement égal à celui du corps grave ont une charge égale au poids entier du même corps. Si la partie qui est le moteur a, dans le même temps, plus de mouvement que le corps mobile, elle aura plus de puissance que le mobile; et celà d’Autant plus qu’elle se mouvra plus vite que le corps même. Si la partie qui est le moteur a moins de vitesse que le mobile, elle aura d’Autant moins de puissance que ce mobile. If in this passage there is not the perfect luminousness of expression we should find in the best modern books, it seems to contain the philosophical theory of motion as unequivocally as any of them.

Vinci had a better notion of geology than most of his contemporaries, and saw that the sea had covered the mountains which contain shells: Ces coquillages ont vécu dans le même endroit lorsque l’eau de la mer le recouvrait. Les bancs, par la suite des temps, ont été recouverts par d’Autres couches de limon de différentes hauteurs; ainsi, les coquilles ont été enclavées sous le bourbier amoncelé au dessus, jusqu’à sortir de l’eau. He seems even to have had an idea of the elevation of the continents, though he gives an unintelligible reason for it.

He explained the obscure light of the unilluminated part of the moon by the reflection of the earth, as Mœstlin did long after. He understood the camera obscura, and describes its effect. He perceived that respirable air must support flame: Lorsque l’air n’est pas dans un état propre à recevoir la flamme, il n’y peut vivre ni flamme ni aucun animal terrestre ou aerien. Aucun animal ne peut vivre dans un endroit ou la flamme ne vit pas.

Vinci’s observations on the conduct of the understanding are also very much beyond his time. I extract a few of them.

Il est toujours bon pour l’entendement d’Acquérir des connaissances quelles qu’elles soient; on pourra ensuite choisir les bonnes et écarter les inutiles.

L’interprète des artifices de la nature, c’est l’expérience. Elle ne se trompe jamais; c’est notre jugement qui quelquefois se trompe lui-même, parcequ’il s’attend à des effets auxquels l’expérience se refuse. Il faut consulter l’expérience, en varier les circonstances jusqu’à ce que nous en ayons tiré des règles générales; car c’est elle qui fournit les vraies règles. Mais à quoi bon ces règles, me direz-vous? Je réponds qu’elles nous dirigent dans les recherches de la nature et les opérations de l’art. Elles empêchent que nous ne nous abusions nous-mêmes ou les autres, en nous promettant des résultats que nous ne saurions obtenir.

Il n’y a point de certitude dans les sciences où on ne peut pas appliquer quelque partie des mathématiques, ou qui n’en dépendent pas de quelque manière.

Dans l’étude des sciences qui tiennent aux mathématiques, ceux qui ne consultent pas la nature, mais les auteurs, ne sont pas les enfans de la nature; je dirais qu’ils n’en sont que les petits fils: elle seule, en effet, est le maitre des vrais génies. Mais voyez la sottise! on se moque d’un homme qui aimera mieux apprendre de la nature elle-même, que des auteurs, qui n’en sont que les clercs. Is not this the precise tone of Lord Bacon?

Vinci says, in another place: Mon dessein est de citer d’Abord l’expérience, et de démontrer ensuite pourquoi les corps sont contraints d’Agir de telle manière. C’est la méthode qu’on doit observer dans les recherches des phénomènes de la nature. Il est bien vrai que la nature commence par le raisonnement, et finit par l’expérience; mais n’importe, il nous faut prendre la route opposée: comme j’ai dit, nous devons commencer par l’expérience, et tâcher par son moyen d’en découvrir la raison.

He ascribes the elevation of the equatorial waters above the polar to the heat of the sun: Elles entrent en mouvement de tous les côtés de cette éminence aqueuse pour rétablir leur sphéricité parfaite. This is not the true cause of their elevation, but by what means could he know the fact?

Vinci understood fortification well, and wrote upon it. Since in our time, he says, artillery has four times the power it used to have, it is necessary that the fortification of towns should be strengthened in the same proportion. He was employed on several great works of engineering. So wonderful was the variety of power in this miracle of nature. For we have not mentioned that his Last Supper at Milan is the earliest of the great pictures in Italy, and that some productions of his easel vie with those of Raphael. His only published work, the Treatise on Painting, does him injustice; it is an ill-arranged compilation from several of his manuscripts. That the extraordinary works, of which this note contains an account, have not been published entire, and in their original language, is much to be regretted by all who know how to venerate so great a genius as Lionardo da Vinci.

SECT. VI. 1491-1500.

State of Learning in Italy--Latin and Italian Poets--Learning in France and England--Erasmus--Popular Literature and Poetry--Other kinds of Literature--General Literary Character of Fifteenth Century--Book-trade, its Privileges and Restraints.

|Aldine Greek editions.|

114. The year 1494 is distinguished by an edition of Musæus, generally thought the first work from the press established at Venice by Aldus Manutius, who had settled there in 1489.[460]

In the course of about twenty years, with some interruption, he gave to the world several of the principal Greek authors; and though, as we have seen, not absolutely the earliest printer in that language, he so far excelled all others in the number of his editions, that he may be justly said to stand at the head of the list. It is right, however, to mention, that Zarot had printed Hesiod and Theocritus in one volume, and also Isocrates, at Milan, in 1493; that the Anthologia appeared at Florence in 1494; Lucian and Apollonius Rhodius in 1496; the lexicon of Suidas, at Milan, in 1499. About fifteen editions of Greek works, without reckoning Craston’s lexicon and several grammars, had been published before the close of the century.[461] The most remarkable of the Aldine editions are the Aristotle, in five volumes, the first bearing date of 1495, the last of 1498, and nine plays of Aristophanes in the latter year. In this Aristophanes, and perhaps in other editions of this time, Aldus had fortunately the assistance of Marcus Musurus, one of the last, but by no means the least eminent, of the Greeks who transported their language to Italy. Musurus was now a public teacher at Padua. John Lascaris, son, perhaps, of Constantine, edited the Anthologia at Florence. It may be doubted whether Italy had as yet produced any scholar, unless it were Varino, more often called Phavorinus, singly equal to the task of superintending a Greek edition. His Thesaurus Cornucopiæ, a collection of thirty-four grammatical tracts in Greek, printed 1496, may be an exception. The Etymologicum Magnum, Venice, 1499, being a lexicon with only Greek explanations, is supposed to be chiefly due to Musurus. Aldus had printed Craston’s lexicon, in 1497, with the addition of an index; this has often been mistaken for an original work.[462]

[460] The Erotemata of Constantino Lascaris, printed by Aldus, bears date Feb. 1494, which Menu to mean 1495. But the Musæus has no date, nor the Galeomyomachia, a Greek poem by one Theodoras Prodromus. Renouard, Hist. de I’Imprimerie des Aldes.

[461] The grammar of Urbano Valeriano was first printed in 1497. It is in Greek and Latin, and of extreme rarity. Roscoe (Leo X., ch. xi.) says, “it was received with such avidity that Erasmus, on inquiring for it in the year 1499, found that not a copy of this impression remained unsold.” I have given, a little below, a different construction to these words of Erasmus.

[462] Renouard. Roscoe’s Leo X., ch. xi.

|Decline of learning in Italy.|

115. The state of Italy was not so favourable as it had been to the advancement of philosophy. After the expulsion of the Medici from Florence, in 1494, the Platonic academy was broken up; and that philosophy never found again a friendly soil in Italy, though Ficinus had endeavoured to keep it up by a Latin translation of Plotinus. Aristotle and his followers began now to regain the ascendant. Perhaps it may be thought that even polite letters were not so flourishing as they had been; no one, at least, yet appeared to fill the place of Hermolaus Barbarus, who died in 1493, or Politian, who followed him the next year.

|Hermolaus Barbarus.|

116. Hermolaus Barbarus was a noble Venetian, whom Europe agreed to place next to Politian in critical learning, and to draw a line between them and any third name. “No time, no accident, no destiny,” says an enthusiastic scholar of the next age, “will ever efface their remembrance from the hearts of the learned.”[463] Erasmus calls him a truly great and divine man. He filled many honourable offices for the republic; but lamented that they drew him away from that learning for which he says he was born, and to which alone he was devoted.[464] Yet Hermolaus is but faintly kept in mind at the present day. In his Latin style, with the same fault as Politian, an affectation of obsolete words, he is less flexible and elegant. But his chief merit was in the restoration of the text of ancient writers. He boasts that he had corrected about five thousand passages in Pliny’s natural history, and more than three hundred in the very brief geography of Pomponius Mela. Hardouin, however, charges him with extreme rashness in altering passages he did not understand. The pope had nominated Hermolaus to the greatest post in the Venetian church, the patriarchate of Aquileia; but his mortification at finding that the senate refused to concur in the appointment is said to have hastened his death.[465]

[463] Habuit nostra hæc ætas bonarum literarum proceres duos, Hermolaum Barbarum atque Angelum Politianum: Deum immortalem! quam acri judicio, quanta facundia, quanta linguarum, quanta disciplinarum omnium scientia præditos! Hi Latinam linguam jampridem squalentem et multa barbariei rubigine exesam, ad pristinum revocare nitorem conati sunt, atque illis suus profecto conatus non infeliciter cessit, suntque illi de Latina lingua tam bene meriti, quam qui ante cos optimi meriti fuere. Itaque immortalem sibi gloriam, immortale decus paraverunt, manebitque semper in omnium eruditorum pectoribus consecrata Hermolai et Politiani memoria, nullo ævo, nullo casu, nullo fato abolenda. Brixeus Erasmo in Erasm. Epist. ccxii.

[464] Meiners, ii. 200.

[465] Bayle. Niceron, vol. xiv. Tiraboschi, vii. 152. Corniani, iii. 197. Heeren, p. 274.

|Mantuan.|

117. A Latin poet once of great celebrity, Baptista Mantuan, seems to fall within this period as fitly as any other, though several of his poems had been separately printed before, and their collective publication was not till 1513. Editions recur very frequently in the bibliography of Italy and Germany. He was, and long continued to be, the poet of school-rooms. Erasmus says that he would be placed by posterity not much below Virgil;[466] and the marquis of Mantua, anticipating this suffrage, erected their statues side by side. Such is the security of contemporary compliments! Mantuan has long been utterly neglected, and does not find a place in most selections of Latin poetry. His Eclogues and Silvæ are said to be the least bad of his numerous works. He was among the many assailants of the church, or at least the court of Rome; and this animosity inspired him with some bitter, or rather vigorous, invectives. But he became afterwards a Carmelite friar.[467] Marullus, a Greek by birth, has obtained a certain reputation for his Latin poems, which are of no great value.

[466] Et nisi me fallit augurium, erit, erit aliquando Baptista suo concive gloriâ celebritateque non ita multo inferior, simul invidiam anni detraxerint. Append. ad Erasm. Epist. cccxcv. (edit. Lugd.) It is not conceivable that Erasmus meant this literally; but the drift of the letter is to encourage the reading of Christian poets.

[467] Corniani, iii. 148. Niceron, vol. xxvii. Such of Mantuan’s eclogues as are printed in Carmina Illustrium Poetarum Italorum, Florent. 1719, are but indifferent. I doubt, however, whether that voluminous collection has been made with much taste; and his satire on the see of Rome would certainly be excluded, whatever might be its merit. Corniani has given an extract, better than what I had seen of Mantuan.

|Pontanus.|

118. A far superior name is that of Pontanus, to whom, if we attend to some critics, we must award the palm, above all Latin poets of the fifteenth century. If I might venture to set my own taste against theirs, I should not agree to his superiority over Politian. His hexameters are by no means deficient in harmony, and may, perhaps, be more correct than those of his rival, but appears to me less pleasing and poetical. His lyric poems are like too much modern Latin, in a tone of languid voluptuousness, and ring changes on the various beauties of his mistress, and the sweetness of her kisses. The few elegies of Pontanus, among which that addressed to his wife, on the prospect of peace, is the best known, fall very short of the admirable lines of Politian on the death of Ovid. Pontanus wrote some moral and political essays in prose, which are said to be full of just observations and sharp satire on the court of Rome, and written in a style which his contemporaries regarded with admiration. They were published in 1490. Erasmus, though a parsimonious distributor of praise to the Italians, has acknowledged their merit in the Ciceronianus.[468]

[468] Roscoe, Leo X., ch. ii. and xx. Niceron, vol. viii. Corniani. Tiraboschi. Pantanus cum illa quatuor complecti summa cura conatus sit nervum dico, numeros, candorem, venustatem, profecto est omnia consecutus. Quintum autem illud quod est horum omnium veluti vita quædam, modum intelligo, penitus ignoravit. Aiunt Virgilium cum multos versus matutino calore effudisset, pomeridianis horis novo judicio solitum ad paucorum numerum revocare. Contra quidem Pontano evenisse arbitror. Quæ prima quaque inventione arrisissent, isis plura postea, dum recognosceret, addita atque ipsis potius carminibus, quam sibi pepercisse. Scaliger de Re Poetica (apud Blount).

|Neapolitan academy.|

119. Pontanus presided at this time over the Neapolitan Academy, a dignity which he had attained upon the death of Beccatelli, in 1471. This was after the decline of the Roman and the Florentine, by far the most eminent reunion of literary men in Italy; and though it was long conspicuous, seems to have reached its highest point in the last years of this century, under the patronage of the mild Frederic of Aragon, and during that transient calm which Naples was permitted to enjoy between the invasions of Charles VIII. and Louis XII. That city and kingdom afforded many lovers of learning and poetry; some of them in the class of its nobles; each district being, as it were, represented in this academy by one or more of its distinguished residents. But other members were associated from different parts of Italy; and the whole constellation of names is still brilliant, though some have grown dim by time. The house of Este, at Ferrara, were still the liberal patrons of genius; none more eminently than their reigning marquis, Hercules I. And not less praise is due to the families who held the principalities of Urbino and Mantua.[469]

[469] Roscoe’s Leo. X., ch. ii. This contains an excellent account of the state of literature in Italy about the close of the century.

|Boiardo.|

120. A poem now appeared in Italy, well deserving of attention for its own sake, but still more so on account of the excitement and direction it gave to one of the most famous poets that ever lived. Matteo Maria Boiardo, count of Scandiano, a man esteemed and trusted at the court of Ferrara, amused his leisure in the publication of a romantic poem, for which the stories of Charlemagne and his paladins, related by one who assumed the name of Turpin, and already woven into long metrical narrations, current at the end of the fourteenth and during the fifteenth century in Italy, supplied materials, which are almost lost in the original inventions of the author. The first edition of this poem is without date, but probably in 1495. The author, who died the year before, left it unfinished at the ninth canto of the third book. Agostini, in 1516, published a continuation, indifferently executed, in three more books; but the real complement of the Innamorato is the Furioso.[470] The Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo has hitherto not received that share of renown which seems to be its due; overpowered by the splendour of Ariosto’s poem, and almost set aside in its original form by the improved edition or remaking (rifaccimento), which Berni afterwards gave, it has rarely been sought or quoted, even in Italy.[471]

The style is uncouth and hard; but without style, which is the source of perpetual delight, no long poem will be read; and it has been observed by Ginguéné with some justice, that Boiardo’s name is better remembered, though his original poem may have been more completely neglected, through the process to which Berni has subjected it. In point of novel invention and just keeping of character, especially the latter, he has not been surpassed by his illustrious follower Ariosto; and whatever of this we find in the Orlando Innamorato, is due to Boiardo alone; for Berni has preserved the sense of almost every stanza. The imposing appearance of Angelica at the court of Charlemagne, in the first canto, opens the poem with a splendour rarely equalled, with a luxuriant fertility of invention, and with admirable art; judiciously presenting the subject in so much singleness, that amidst all the intricacies and episodes of the story, the reader never forgets the incomparable princess of Albracca. The latter city, placed in that remote Cathay which Marco Polo had laid open to the range of fancy, and its siege by Agrican’s innumerable cavalry, are creations of Boiardo’s most inventive mind. Nothing in Ariosto is conceived so nobly, or so much in the true genius of romance. Castelvetro asserts that the names Gradasso, Mandricardo, Sobrino, and others which Boiardo has given to his imaginary characters, belonged to his own peasants of Scandiano; and some have improved upon this by assuring us, that those who take the pains to ascertain the fact may still find the representatives of these sonorous heroes at the plough, which, if the story were true, ought to be the case.[472] But we may give him credit for talent enough to invent those appellations; he hardly found an Albracca on his domains; and those who grudge him the rest acknowledge that, in a moment of inspiration, while hunting, the name of Rodomont occurred to his mind. We know how finely Milton, whose ear pursued, almost to excess, the pleasure of harmonious names, and who loved to expatiate in these imaginary regions, has alluded to Boiardo’s poem in the Paradise Regained. The lines are perhaps the most musical he has ever produced.

Such forces met not, nor so wide a camp, When Agrican with all his northern powers Besieged Albracca, as romances tell, The city of Gallaphron, from thence to win The fairest of her sex, Angelica, His daughter, sought by many prowest knights, Both paynim and the peers of Charlemagne.[473]

[470] Fontanini, dell’Eloquenza Italiana, edit. di Zeno, p. 270.

[471] See my friend Mr. Panizzi’s excellent introduction to his edition of the Orlando Innamorato. This poem had never been reprinted since 1544; so much was Roscoe deceived in fancying that “the simplicity of the original has caused it to be preferred to the same work, as altered or reformed by Francesco Berni.” Life of Leo X., ch. ii.

[472] Camillo Pellegrino, in his famous controversy with the Academy of Florence on the respective merits of Ariosto and Tasso, having asserted this, they do not deny the fact, but say it stands on the authority of Castelvetro. Opere di Tasso, 4to, ii. 94. The critics held rather a pedantic doctrine; that though the names of private men may be feigned, the poet has no right to introduce kings unknown to history, as this destroys the probability required for his fiction.

[473] Book iii.

|Francesco Bello.|

121. The Mambriano of Francesco Bello, sirnamed il Cieco, another poem of the same romantic class, was published posthumously in 1497. Apostolo Zeno, as quoted by Roscoe, attributes the neglect of the Mambriano to its wanting an Ariosto to continue its subject, or a Berni to reform its style.[474] But this seems a capricious opinion. Bello composed it at intervals to amuse the courtiers of the marquis of Mantua. The poem, therefore, wants unity. “It is a reunion,” says Mr. Panizzi, “of detached tales, without any relation to each other, except in so far as most of the same actors are before us.”[475] We may perceive by this, how little a series of rhapsodies, not directed by a controlling unity of purpose, even though the work of a single man, are likely to fall into a connected poem. But that a long poem, of singular coherence and subordination of parts to an end, should be framed from the random and insulated songs of a great number of persons, is almost as incredible as that the annals of Ennius, to use Cicero’s argument against the fortuitous origin of the world, should be formed by shaking together the letters of the alphabet.

[474] Leo X., ch. ii.

[475] Panizzi’s Introduction to Boiardo, p. 360. He does not highly praise the poem, of which he gives an analysis with extracts. See too Ginguéné, vol. iv.

|Italian poetry near the end of the century.|

122. Near the close of the fifteenth century we find a great increase of Italian poetry, to which the patronage and example of Lorenzo had given encouragement. It is not easy to place within such narrow limits as a decennial period, the names of writers whose productions were frequently not published, at least collectively, during their lives. Serafino d’Aquila, born in 1466, seems to fall, as a poet, within this decade; and the same may be said of Tibaldeo and Benivieni. Of these the first is perhaps the best known; his verses are not destitute of spirit, but extravagance and bad taste deform the greater part.[476] Tibaldeo unites false thoughts with rudeness and poverty of diction. Benivieni, superior to either of these, is reckoned by Corniani a link between the harshness of the fifteenth and the polish of the ensuing century. The style of this age was far from the grace and sweetness of Petrach; forced in sentiment, low in choice of words, deficient in harmony, it has been condemned by the voice of all Italian critics.[477]

[476] Bouterwek, Gesch. der Ital. Poesie, i. 321. Corniani.

[477] Corniani. Muratori, della perfetta Poesia. Crescimbeni, Storia della volgar poesia.

|Progress of learning in France and Germany.|

123. A greater activity than before was now perceptible in the literary spirit of France and Germany. It was also regularly progressive. The press of Paris gave twenty-six editions of ancient Latin authors, nine of which were in the year 1500. Twelve were published at Lyons. Deventer and Leipsic, especially the latter, which now took a lead in the German press, bore a part in this honourable labour; a proof of the rapid and extensive influence of Conrad Celtes on that part of Germany. It is to be understood that a very large proportion, or nearly the whole, of the Latin editions printed in Germany were for the use of schools.[478] We should be warranted in drawing an inference as to the progress in literary instruction in these countries from the increase in the number of publications, small as that number still is, and trifling as some of them may appear. It may be accounted for by the gradual working of the schools at Munster and other places, which had now sent out a race of pupils well fitted to impart knowledge in their turn to others; and by the patronage of some powerful men, among whom the first place, on all accounts, is due to the emperor Maximilian. Nothing was so likely to contribute to the intellectual improvement of Germany as the public peace of 1495, which put an end to the barbarous customs of the middle ages, not unaccompanied by generous virtues, but certainly as incompatible with the steady cultivation of literature as with riches and repose. Yet there seems to be no proof that the Greek language had obtained much more attention; no book connected with it is recorded to have been printed, and I do not find mention that it was taught, even superficially, in any university or school, at this time, though it might be conjectured without improbability. Reuchlin had now devoted his whole thoughts to cabbalistic philosophy, and the study of Hebrew; and Eichhorn, though not unwilling to make the most of early German learning, owns that, at the end of the century, no other person had become remarkable for a skill in Greek.[479]

[478] A proof of this may be found in the books printed at Deventer from 1491 to 1500. They consisted of Virgil’s Bucolics three times, Virgil’s Georgics twice, and the eclogues of Calpurnius once, or perhaps twice. At Leipsic the list is much longer, but in great measure of the same kind; single treatises of Seneca or Cicero, or detached parts of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, sometimes very short, as the Culex or the Ibis, form, with not many exceptions, the Cisalpine classical bibliography of the fifteenth century.

[479] Eichhorn, iii. 236. This section in Eichhorn is valuable, but not without some want of precision.

Reuchlin had been very diligent in purchasing Greek manuscripts. But these were very scarce, even in Italy. A correspondent of his, Streler by name, one of the young men who went from Germany to Florence for education, tells him, in 1491, Nullos libros Græcis hic venales reperio; and again, de Græcis libris coemendis hoc scias; fui penes omnes hic librarios, nihil horum prorsus reperio. Epist. ad Reuchl. (1562) fol. 7. In fact, Reuchlin’s own library was so large as to astonish the Italian scholars when they saw the catalogue, who plainly owned they could not procure such books themselves. They had of course been originally purchased in Italy, unless we suppose some to have been brought by way of Hungary.

It is not to be imagined that the libraries of ordinary scholars were to be compared with that of Reuchlin, probably more opulent than most of them. The early printed books of Italy, even the most indispensable, were very scarce, at least in France. A Greek grammar was a rarity at Paris in 1499. Grammaticen Græcam, says Erasmus to a correspondent, summo studio vestigavi, ut emptam tibi mitterem, sed jam utraque divendita fuerat, et Constantini quæ dicitur, quæque Urbani. Epist. lix. See too Epist. lxxiii.

|Erasmus.|

|His diligence.|

124. Two men, however, were devoting incessant labour to the acquisition of that language at Paris, for whom was reserved the glory of raising the knowledge of it in Cisalpine Europe to a height which Italy could not attain. These were Erasmus and Budæus. The former, who had acquired as a boy the mere rudiments of Greek under Hegius at Deventer, set himself in good earnest to that study about 1499, hiring a teacher at Paris, old Hermonymus of Sparta, of whose extortion he complains; but he was little able to pay anything; and his noble endurance of privations for the sake of knowledge deserves the high reward of glory it received. “I have given my whole soul,” he says, “to Greek learning, and as soon as I get any money I shall first buy Greek books, and then clothes.”[480] “If any new Greek book comes to hand, I would rather pledge my cloak than not obtain it; especially if it be religious, such as a psalter or a gospel.”[481] It will be remembered that the books of which he speaks must have been frequently manuscripts.

[480] Epist. xxix.

[481] Epist. lviii.

|Budæus; his early studies.|

125. Budæus, in his proper name Budé, nearly of the same age as Erasmus, had relinquished every occupation for intense labour in literature. In an interesting letter, addressed to Cuthbert Tunstall in 1517, giving an account of his own early studies, he says that he learned Greek very ill from a bad master at Paris, in 1491. This was certainly Hermonymus, of whom Reuchlin speaks more favourably; but he was not quite so competent a judge.[482] Some years afterwards Budæus got much better instruction; “ancient literature having derived within a few years great improvement in France by our intercourse with Italy, and by the importation of books in both the learned languages.” Lascaris, who now lived at the court of Charles VIII., having returned with him from the Neapolitan expedition, gave Budæus some assistance, though not, according to the latter’s biographer, to any great extent.

[482] Hody (de Græcis Illustribus, p. 238) thinks that the master of Budæus could not have been Hermonymus; probably because the praise of Reuchlin seemed to him incompatible with the contemptuous language of Budæus. But Erasmus is very explicit on this subject, Ad Græcas literas utcunque puero degustatas jam grandior redii; hoc est, annos natus plus minus triginta, sed turn cum apud nos nulla Græcorum codicum esset copia, neque minor penuria doctorum. Lutetiæ tantum unus Georgius Hermonymus Græce balbutiebat; sed talis, ut neque potuisset docere si voluisset, neque voluisset si potuisset. Itaque coactus ipse mihi præceptor esse, &c. (A.D. 1524.) I transcribe from Jortin, ii. 419. Of Hermonymus it is said by Beatus Rhenanus in a letter to Reuchlin, that he was non tam doctrina quam patria clarus. (Epist. ad Reuchl. fol. 52.) Roy, in his Life of Budæus, says, that the latter, having paid Hermonymus 500 gold pieces, and read Homer and other books with him, nihilo doctior est factus.

|Latin not well written in France.|

126. France had as yet no writer of Latin, who could be endured in comparison with those of Italy. Robert Gaguin praises Fichet, rector of the Sorbonne, as learned and eloquent, and the first who had taught many to employ good language in Latin. The more certain glory of Fichet is to have introduced the art of printing into France. Gaguin himself enjoyed a certain reputation for his style, and his epistles have been printed. He possessed at least, what is most important, a love of knowledge, and an elevated way of thinking. But Erasmus says of him, that “whatever he might have been in his own age, he would now scarcely be reckoned to write Latin at all.” If we could rely on a panegyrist of Faustus Andrelinus, an Italian who came about 1489 to Paris, and was authorised, in conjunction with one Balbi, and with Cornelio Vitelli, to teach in the university,[483] he was the man who brought polite literature into France, and changed its barbarism for classical purity. But Andrelinus, who is best known as a Latin poet of by no means a high rank, seems not to merit his commendation. Whatever his capacities of teaching may have been, we have little evidence of his success. Yet the number of editions of Latin authors published in France during this decade proves some diffusion of classical learning; and we must admit the circumstance to be quite decisive of the inferiority of England.

[483] This I find quoted in Bettinelli, Risorgimento d’ltalia, i. 250. See also Bayle, and Biogr. Univ., art. Andrelini. They were only allowed to teach for one hour in the evening; the jealousy of the logicians not having subsided. Crevier, iv. 439.

|Dawn of Greek learning in England.|

127. A gleam of light, however, now broke out there. We have seen already that a few, even in the last years of Henry VI., had overcome all obstacles in order to drink at the fountain-head of pure learning in Italy. One or two more names might be added for the intervening period; Milling, abbot of Westminister, and Selling, prior of a convent at Canterbury.[484] It is reported by Polydore Virgil, and is proved by Wood, that Cornelio Vitelli, an Italian, came to Oxford about 1488, in order to give that most barbarous university some notion of what was going forward on the other side of the Alps; and it has been probably conjectured, or rather may be assumed, that he there imparted the rudiments of Greek to William Grocyn.[485] It is certain, at least, that Grocyn had acquired some insight into that language, before he took a better course, and, travelling into Italy, became the disciple of Chalcondyles and Politian. He returned home in 1491, and began to communicate his acquisitions, though chiefly to deaf ears, teaching in Exeter College at Oxford. A diligent emulator of Grocyn, but some years younger, and, like him, a pupil of Politian and Hermolaus, was Thomas Linacre, a physician; but though a first edition of his translation of Galen has been supposed to have been printed at Venice in 1498, it seems to be ascertained that none preceded that of Cambridge in 1521. His only contribution to literature in the fifteenth century was a translation of the very short mathematical treatise of Proclus on the sphere, published in a volume of ancient writers on astronomy, by Aldus Manutius, in 1499.[486]

[484] Warton, iii. 247. Johnson’s Life of Linacre, p. 5. This is mentioned on Selling’s monument now remaining in Canterbury cathedral.

Doctor theologus Selling Græca atque Latina Lingua perdoctus.

Selling, however, did not go to Italy till after 1480, far from returning in 1460, as Warton has said, with his usual indifference to anachronisms.

[485] Polydore says nothing about Vitelli’s teaching Greek, though Knight, in his Life of Colet, translates bonæ literæ, “Greek and Latin.” But the following passages seem decisive as to Grocyn’s early studies in the Greek language. Grocinus, qui prima Græcaæ et Latinæ linguæ, rudimenta in Britannia hausit, mox solidiorem iisdem operam sub Demetrio Chalcondyle et Politiano præceptoribus in Italia hausit. Lilly, Elogia virorum doctorum, in Knight’s Life of Colet, p. 24. Erasmus as positively: Ipse Grocinus, cujus exemplum affers, nonne primum in Anglia Græcæ linguæ rudimenta didicit? Post in Italiam profectus audivit summos viros, sed interim lucro fuit ilia prius a qualibuscunque didicisse. Epist. ccclxiii. Whether the qualescunque were Vitelli or any one else, this can leave no doubt as to the existence of some Greek instruction in England before Grocyn; and as no one can be suggested, so far as appears, except Vitelli, it seems reasonable to fix upon him as the first preceptor of Grocyn. Vitelli had returned to Paris in 1489, and taught in the university, as has just been mentioned; so that he could have little time, if Polydore’s date of 1488 be right, for giving much instruction at Oxford.

[486] Johnson’s Life of Linacre, p. 152.

|Erasmus comes to England.|

128. Erasmus paid his first visit to England in 1497, and was delighted with everything that he found, especially at Oxford. In an epistle dated Dec. 5th, after praising Grocyn, Colet, and Linacre to the skies, he says of Thomas More, who could not then have been eighteen years old, “What mind was ever framed by nature more gentle, more pleasing, more gifted?--It is incredible, what a treasure of old books is found here far and wide.--There is so much erudition, not of a vulgar and ordinary kind, but recondite, accurate, ancient, both Latin and Greek, that you would seek nothing in Italy but the pleasure of travelling.”[487] But this letter is addressed to an Englishman, and the praise is evidently much exaggerated; the scholars were few, and not more than three or four could be found, or at least could now be mentioned, who had any tincture of Greek,--Grocyn, Linacre, William Latimer, who, though an excellent scholar, never published anything, and More, who had learned at Oxford under Grocyn.[488] It should here be added, that, in 1497, Terence was printed by Pynson, being the first edition of a strictly classical author in England; though Boethius had already appeared with Latin and English on opposite pages.

[487] Thomæ Mori ingenio quid unquam finxit natura vel mollius, vel dulcius, vel felicius?... Mirum est dictu, quam hic passim, quam dense veterum librorum seges efflorescat ... tantum eruditionis non illius protritæ ac trivialis, sed reconditæ, exactæ, antiquæ, Latinæ Græcæque, ut jam Italiam nisi visendi gratia non multum desideres. Epist. xiv.

[488] A letter of Colet to Erasmus from Oxford in 1497, is written in the style of a man who was conversant with the best Latin authors. Sir Thomas More’s birth has not been placed by any biographer earlier than 1480.

It has been sometimes asserted, on the authority of Antony Wood, that Erasmus taught Greek at Oxford; but there is no foundation for this, and in fact he did not know enough of the language. Knight, on the other hand, maintains that he learned it there under Grocyn and Linacre; but this rests on no evidence; and we have seen that he gives a different account of his studies in Greek. Life of Erasmus, p. 22.

|He publishes his Adages.|

129. In 1500 was printed at Paris the first edition of Erasmus’s Adages, doubtless the chief prose work of this century beyond the limits of Italy; but this edition should, if possible, be procured, in order to judge with chronological exactness of the state of literature; for as his general knowledge of antiquity, and particularly of Greek, which was now very slender, increased, he made vast additions. The Adages, which were now about eight hundred, amounted in his last edition to 4151; not that he could find so many which properly deserve that name, but the number is made up by explanations of Latin and Greek idioms, or even of single words. He declares himself, as early as 1504, ashamed of the first edition of his Adages, which already seemed meagre and imperfect.[489] Erasmus had been preceded in some measure by Polydore Virgil, best known as the historian of this country, where he resided many years as collector of papal dues. He published a book of adages, which must have been rather a juvenile, and is a superficial production, at Venice in 1498.

[489] Epist. cii., jejunum atque inops videri cœpit, posteoquam Græcos colui auctores.

|Romantic ballads of Spain.|

130. The Castilian poets of the fifteenth century have been collectively mentioned on a former occasion. Bouterwek refers to the latter part of this age most of the romances, which turn upon Saracen story, and the adventures of “knights of Granada, gentlemen, though Moors.” Sismondi follows him without, perhaps, much reflection, and endeavours to explain what he might have doubted. Fear having long ceased in the bosoms of the Castilian Christians, even before conquest had set its seal to their security, hate, the child of fear, had grown feebler; and the romancers felt themselves at liberty to expatiate in the rich field of Mohammedan customs and manners. These had already exercised a considerable influence over Spain. But this opinion seems hard to be supported; nor do I find that the Spanish critics claim so much antiquity for the Moorish class of romantic ballads. Most of them, it is acknowledged, belong to the sixteenth, and some to the seventeenth century; and the internal evidence is against their having been written before the Moorish wars had become matter of distant tradition. We shall therefore take no notice of the Spanish romance-ballads till we come to the age of Philip II., to which they principally belong.[490]

[490] Bouterwek, p. 121. Sismondi, iii. 222. Romances Moriscos, Madr. 1828.

|Pastoral romances.|

131. Bouterwek places in this decade the first specimens of the pastoral romance which the Castilian language affords.[491] But the style is borrowed from a neighbouring part of the peninsula, where this species of fiction seems to have been indigenous. The Portuguese nation cultivated poetry as early as the Castilian; and we have seen that some remains of a date anterior to the fourteenth century. But to the heroic romance they seem to have paid no regard; we do not find that it ever existed among them. Love chiefly occupied the Lusitanian muse; and to trace that passion through all its labyrinths, to display its troubles in a strain of languid melancholy, was the great aim of every poet. This led to the invention of pastoral romances, founded on the ancient traditions as to the felicity of shepherds and their proneness to love, and rendered sometimes more interesting for the time by the introduction of real characters and events under a slight disguise.[492] This artificial and effeminate sort of composition, which, if it may now and then be not unpleasing, cannot fail to weary the modern reader by its monotony, is due to Portugal, and having been adopted in languages better known, became for a long time highly popular in Europe.

[491] P. 123.

[492] Bouterwek’s Hist. of Portuguese Literature, p. 43.

|Portuguese lyric poetry.|

132. The lyrical poems of Portugal were collected by Garcia de Resende, in the Cancioneiro Geral, published in 1516. Some few of these are of the fourteenth century, for we find the name of King Pedro, who died in 1369. Others are by the Infante Don Pedro, son of John I., in the earlier part of the fifteenth. But a greater number belong nearly to the present or preceding decade, or even to the ensuing age, commemorating the victories of the Portuguese in Asia. This collection is of extreme scarcity; none of the historians of Portuguese literature have seen it. Bouterwek and Sismondi declare that they have caused search to be made in various libraries of Europe without success. There is, however, a copy in the British Museum; and M. Raynouard has given a short account of one that he had seen in the Journal des Savans for 1826. In this article he observes, that the Cancioneiro is a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish pieces. I believe, however, that very little Spanish will be found, with the exception of the poems of the Infante Pedro, which occupy some leaves. The whole number of poets is but one hundred and thirty-two, even if some names do not occur twice; which I mention, because it has been erroneously said to exceed considerably that of the Spanish Cancioneiro. The volume is in folio, and contains two hundred and twenty-seven leaves. The metres are those usual in Spanish; some versos de arte mayor; but the greater part in trochaic redondillas. I observed no instance of the assonant rhyme; but there are several glosses, or, in the Portuguese word, grosas.[493] The chief part is amatory; but there are lines on the death of kings, and other political events.[494]

[493] Bouterwek, p. 30, has observed, that the Portuguese employ the glosa, calling it volta. The word in the Cancioneiro is grosa.

[494] A manuscript collection of Portuguese lyric poetry of the fifteenth century belonged to Mr. Heber, and was sold to Messrs. Payne and Foss. It would probably be found on comparison to contain many of the pieces in the Cancioneiro Geral, but it is not a copy of it.

|German popular books.|

133. The Germans, if they did not as yet excel in the higher department of typography, were by no means negligent of their own great invention. The books, if we include the smallest, printed in the empire between 1470 and the close of the century, amount to several thousand editions. A large proportion of these were in their own language. They had a literary public, as we may call it, not merely in their courts and universities, but in their respectable middle class, the burghers of the free cities, and, perhaps, in the artizans whom they employed. Their reading was almost always with a serious end; but no people so successfully cultivated the art of moral and satirical fable. These, in many instances, spread with great favour through cisalpine Europe. Among the works of this kind, in the fifteenth century, two deserve mention; the Eulenspiegel, a book which became popular afterwards in England by the name of Howleglass, and a superior and better known production, the Narrenschiff, or Ship of Fools, by Sebastian Brandt of Strasburg, the first edition of which I do not find referred to any date; but the Latin translation appeared at Lyons in 1488. It was translated into English by Barclay, and published early in 1509. It is a metrical satire on the follies of every class, and may possibly have suggested to Erasmus his Encomium Moriæ. But the idea was not absolutely new; the theatrical company established at Paris, under the name of Enfans de San Souci, as well as the ancient office of jester or fool in our courts and castles, implied the same principle of satirising mankind with ridicule so general, that every man should feel more pleasure from the humiliation of his neighbours, than pain from his own. Brandt does not show much poetical talent; but his morality is clear and sound; he keeps the pure and right-minded reader on his side; and in an age when little better came into competition, his characters of men, though more didactic than descriptive, did not fail to please. The influence such books of simple fiction and plain moral would possess over a people, may be judged by the delight they once gave to children, before we had learned to vitiate the healthy appetite of ignorance by premature refinements and stimulating variety.[495]

[495] Bouterwek, ix. 332-354, v. 113. Heinsius, iv. 113. Warton, iii. 74.

|Historical works.|

|Ph. de Comines.|

134. The historical literature of this century presents very little deserving of notice. The English writers of this class are absolutely contemptible; and if some annalists of good sense and tolerable skill in narration may be found on the Continent, they are not conspicuous enough to arrest our regard in a work which designedly passes over that department of literature, so far as it is merely conversant with particular events. But the memoirs of Philip de Comines, which, though not published till 1529, must have been written before the close of the fifteenth century, are not only of a higher value, but almost make an epoch in historical literature. If Froissart, by his picturesque descriptions, and fertility of historical invention, may be reckoned the Livy of France, she had her Tacitus in Philip de Comines. The intermediate writers, Monstrelet and his continuators, have the merits of neither, certainly not of Comines. He is the first modern writer, (or, if there had been any approach to an exception among the Italians, it has escaped my recollection,) who in any degree has displayed sagacity in reasoning on the characters of men, and the consequences of their actions, or who has been able to generalise his observation by comparison and reflection. Nothing of this could have been found in the cloister; nor were the philologers of Italy equal to a task which required capacities and pursuits very different from their own. An acute understanding and much experience of mankind gave Comines this superiority; his life had not been spent over books; and he is consequently free from that pedantic application of history, which became common with those who passed for political reasoners in the next two centuries. Yet he was not ignorant of former times; and we see the advantage of those translations from antiquity, made during the last hundred years in France, by the use to which he turned them.

|Algebra.|

135. The earliest printed treatise of algebra, for that of Leonard Fibonacci is still in manuscript, was published in 1494, by Luca Pacioli di Borgo, a Franciscan, who taught mathematics in the university of Milan. This book is written in Italian, with a mixture of the Venetian dialect, and with many Latin words. In the first part, he explains the rules of commercial arithmetic in detail, and is the earliest Italian writer who shows the principles of Italian book-keeping by double entry. Algebra he calls l’arte maggiore, detta dal volgo la regola de la cosa, over alghebra e almacabala, which last he explains by restauratio et opposito. The known number is called _n_ᵒ or numero; co. or cosa stands for the unknown quantity; whence algebra was sometimes called the cossic art. In the early Latin treatises Res is used, or R., which is an approach to literal expression. The square is called censo or ce.; the cube, cubo or cu.; p. and m. stand for plus and minus. Thus, 3co. p. 4ce. m. 5cu. p. 2ce. ce. m. 6nᵒ would have been written for what would now be expressed 3_x_ + 4_x_² - 5_x_³ + 2_x_⁴ - 6. Luca di Borgo’s algebra goes as far as quadratic equations; but though he had very good notions on the subject, it does not appear that he carried the science much beyond the point where Leonard Fibonacci had left it three centuries before. And its principles were already familiar to mathematicians; for Regiomontanus, having stated a trigonometrical solution in the form of a quadratic equation, adds, quod restat, præcepta artis edocebunt. Luca di Borgo perceived, in a certain sense, the application of algebra to geometry, observing, that the rules as to surd roots are referrible to incommensurable magnitudes.[496]

[496] Montucla. Kästner. Cossali. Hutton’s Mathem. Dict., art. Algebra. The last writer, and perhaps the first, had never seen the book of Luca Pacioli.

Mr. Colebrooke, in his Indian Algebra, has shown that the Hindoos carried that science considerably farther than either the Greeks or the Arabians (though he thinks they may probably have derived their notions of the science from the former), anticipating some of the discoveries of the sixteenth century.

|Events from 1490 to 1500.|

136. This period of ten years from 1490 to 1500, will ever be memorable in the history of mankind. It is here that we usually close the long interval between the Roman world and this our modern Europe, denominated the Middle Ages. The conquest of Granada, which rendered Spain a Christian kingdom; the annexation of the last great fief of the French crown, Britany, which made France an entire and absolute monarchy; the public peace of Germany; the invasion of Naples by Charles VIII., which revealed the weakness of Italy, while it communicated her arts and manners to the cisalpine nations, and opened the scene of warfare and alliances which may be deduced to the present day; the discovery of two worlds by Columbus and Vasco de Gama, all belong to this decade. But it is not, as we have seen, so marked an era in the progression of literature.

|Close of fifteenth century.|

137. In taking leave of the fifteenth century, to which we have been used to attach many associations of reverence, and during which the desire of knowledge was, in one part of Europe, more enthusiastic and universal than perhaps it has since ever been, it is natural to ask ourselves what harvest had already rewarded their zeal and labour, what monuments of genius and erudition still receive the homage of mankind?

|Its literature nearly neglected.|

138. No very triumphant answer can be given to this interrogation. Of the books then written how few are read! Of the men then famous how few are familiar in our recollection! Let us consider what Italy itself produced of any effective tendency to enlarge the boundaries of knowledge, or to delight the taste and fancy. The treatise of Valla on Latin grammar, the miscellaneous observations of Politian on ancient authors, the commentaries of Landino and some other editors, the Platonic theology of Ficinus, the Latin poetry of Politian and Pontanus, the light Italian poetry of the same Politian and Lorenzo de’ Medici, the epic romances of Pulci and Boiardo. Of these, Pulci alone, in an original shape, is still read in Italy, and by some lovers of that literature in other countries, and the Latin poets by a smaller number. If we look on the other side of the Alps, the catalogue is much shorter, or rather does not contain a single book, except Philip de Comines, that enters into the usual studies of a literary man. Froissart hardly belongs to the fifteenth century, his history terminating about 1400. The first undated edition, with a continuation by some one to 1498, was printed between that time and 1509, when the second appeared.

|Summary of its acquisitions.|

139. If we come to inquire, what acquisitions had been made between the years 1400 and 1500, we shall find that, in Italy, the Latin language was now written by some with elegance, and by most with tolerable exactness and fluency; while, out of Italy, there had been, perhaps, a corresponding improvement, relatively to the point from which they started; the flagrant barbarisms of the fourteenth century having yielded before the close of the next to a more respectable, though not an elegant or exact kind of style. Many Italians had now some acquaintance with Greek, which in 1400 had been hardly the case with any one; and the knowledge of it was of late beginning to make a little progress in cisalpine Europe. The French and English languages were become what we call more polished, though the difference in the former seems not to be very considerable. In mathematical science, and in natural history, the ancient writers had been more brought to light, and a certain progress had been made by diligent, if not very inventive philosophers. We cannot say that metaphysical or moral philosophy stood higher than it had done in the time of the schoolmen. The history of Greece and Rome, and the antiquities of the latter, were, of course, more distinctly known after so many years of attentive study bestowed on their principal authors; yet the acquaintance of the learned with those subjects was by no means exact or critical enough to save them from gross errors, or from becoming the dupes of any forgery. A proof of this was furnished by the impostures of Annius of Viterbo, who, having published large fragments of Megasthenes, Berosus, Manetho, and a great many more lost historians, as having been discovered by himself, obtained full credence at the time, which was not generally withheld for too long a period afterwards, though the forgeries were palpable to those who had made themselves masters of genuine history.[497]

[497] Annius of Viterbo did not cease to have believers after this time. See Blount, Niceron, vol. ii., Corniani, iii. 131, and his article in Biographie Universelle. Apostolo Zeno and Tiraboschi have imputed less fraud than credulity to Annius, but most have been of another opinion; and it is unimportant for the purpose of the text.

|Their imperfection.|

140. We should, therefore, if we mean to judge accurately, not over-value the fifteenth century, as one in which the human mind advanced with giant strides in the kingdom of knowledge. General historians of literature are apt to speak rather hyperbolically in respect of men who rose above their contemporaries; language frequently just, in relation to the vigorous intellects and ardent industry of such men, but tending to produce an exaggerated estimate of their absolute qualities. But the question is at present not so much of men, as of the average or general proficiency of nations. The catalogues of printed books in the common bibliographical collections afford, not quite a gauge of the learning of any particular period, but a reasonable presumption, which it requires contrary evidence to rebut. If these present us very few and imperfect editions of books necessary to the progress of knowledge, if the works most in request appear to have been trifling and ignorant productions, it seems as reasonable to draw an inference one way from these scanty and discreditable lists, as on the other hand we hail the progressive state of any branch of knowledge from the redoubled labours of the press, and the multiplication of useful editions. It is true that the deficiency of one country might be supplied by importation from another; and some cities, especially Paris, had acquired a typographical reputation somewhat disproportioned to the local demand for books; a considerable increase of readers would but naturally have created a press, or multiplied its operations, in any country of Europe.

|Number of books printed.|

141. The bibliographies, indeed, even the best and latest, are always imperfect; but the omissions, after the immense pains bestowed on the subject, can hardly be such as to affect our general conclusions. We will therefore illustrate the literary history of the fifteenth century by a few numbers taken from the typographical annals of Panzer, which might be corrected in two ways; first, by adding editions since brought to light, or secondly, by striking out some inserted on defective authority; a kind of mistake which tends to compensate the former. The books printed at Florence down to 1500 are 300; at Milan, 629; at Bologna, 298; at Rome, 925; at Venice, 2835; fifty other Italian cities had printing presses in the fifteenth century.[498] At Paris, the number of books is 751; at Cologne, 530; at Nuremberg, 382; at Leipsic, 351; at Basle, 320; at Strasburg, 526; at Augsburg, 256; at Louvain, 116; at Mentz, 134; at Deventer, 169. The whole number printed in England appears to be 141; whereof 130 at London and Westminster; seven at Oxford; four at St. Albans. Cicero’s works were first printed entire by Minutianus, at Milan, in 1498; but no less than 291 editions of different portions appeared in the century. Thirty-seven of these bear date on this side of the Alps; and forty-five have no place named. Of ninety-five editions of Virgil, seventy are complete; twenty-seven are cisalpine, and four bear no date. On the other hand, only eleven out of fifty-seven editions of Horace contain all his works. It has been already shown, that most editions of classics printed in France and Germany are in the last decennium of the century.

[498] I find this in Heeren, p. 127, for I have not counted the number of cities in Panzer.

142. The editions of the vulgate registered in Panzer are ninety-one, exclusive of some spurious or suspected. Next to theology, no science furnished so much occupation to the press as the civil and canon laws. The editions of the digest and decretals, or other parts of those systems of jurisprudence, must amount to some hundreds.

|Advantages already reaped from printing.|

143. But while we avoid, for the sake of truth, any undue exaggeration of the literary state of Europe at the close of the fifteenth century, we must even more earnestly deprecate the hasty prejudice, that no good had been already done by the culture of classical learning, and by the invention of printing. Both were of inestimable value, even where their immediate fruits were not clustering in ripe abundance. It is certain that much more than ten thousand editions of books or pamphlets (a late writer says fifteen thousand)[499] were printed from 1470 to 1500. More than half the number appeared in Italy. All the Latin authors, hitherto painfully copied by the scholar, or purchased by him at inconvenient cost, or borrowed for a time from friends, became readily accessible, and were printed, for the most part, if not correctly, according to our improved criticism, yet without the gross blunders of the ordinary manuscripts. The saving of time which the art of printing has occasioned, can hardly be too highly appreciated. Nor was the cisalpine press unserviceable in this century, though it did not pour forth so much from the stores of ancient learning. It gave useful food, and such as the reader could better relish and digest. The historical records of his own nation, the precepts of moral wisdom, the regular metre, that pleased the ear and supplied the memory, the fictions that warmed the imagination, and sometimes ennobled or purified the heart, the repertories of natural phenomena, mingled as truth was on these subjects, and on all the rest, with error, the rules of civil and canon law, that guided the determinations of private right, the subtle philosophy of the scholastics, were laid open to his choice; while his religious feelings might find their gratification in many a treatise of learned doctrine, according to the received creed of the church, in many a legend on which a pious credulity delighted to rely, in the devout aspirations of holy ascetic men; but, above all, in the Scriptures themselves, either in the Vulgate Latin, which had by use acquired the authority of an original text, or in most of the living languages of Europe.

[499] Santander, Dict. Bibliogr. du 15me siècle. I do not think so many would be found in Panzer. I have read somewhere that the library of Munich claims to possess 20,000 Incunabula, or books of the fifteenth century: a word lately so applied in Germany. But unless this comprehends many duplicates, it seems a little questionable. Books were not in general so voluminous in that age as at present.

|Trade of bookselling.|

144. We shall conclude this portion of literary history with a few illustrations of what a German writer calls “the exterior being of books,”[500] for which I do not find an equivalent in English idiom. The trade of bookselling seems to have been established at Paris and at Bologna in the twelfth century; the lawyers and universities called it into life.[501] It is very improbable that it existed in what we properly call the dark ages. Peter of Blois mentions a book which he had bought of a public dealer (a quodam publico mangone librorum). But we do not find, I believe, many distinct accounts of them till the next age. These dealers were denominated Stationarii, perhaps from the open stalls at which they carried on their business, though statio is a general word for a shop, in low Latin.[502] They appear, by the old statutes of the university of Paris, and by those of Bologna, to have sold books upon commission; and are sometimes, though not uniformly, distinguished from the Librarii; a word which, having originally been confined to the copyists of books, was afterwards applied to those who traded in them.[503] They sold parchment and other materials of writing, which, with us, though, as far I know, nowhere else, have retained the name of stationery, and naturally exercised the kindred occupations of binding and decorating. They probably employed transcribers: we find at least that there was a profession of copyists in the universities and in large cities; and by means of these, before the invention of printing, the necessary books of grammar, law, and theology were multiplied to a great extent for the use of students; but with much incorrectness, and far more expense than afterwards. That invention put a sudden stop to their honest occupation. But whatever hatred they might feel towards the new art, it was in vain to oppose its reception: no party could be raised in the public against so manifest and unalloyed a benefit; and the copyists, grown by habit fond of books, frequently employed themselves in the somewhat kindred labour of pressmen.[504]

[500] Aüsseres bucher-wesen. Savigny, iii. 532.

[501] Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 142.

[502] Du Cange, in voc.

[503] The librarii were properly those who transcribed new books; the Antiquarii old ones. This distinction is as old as Cassiodorus; but doubtless it was not strictly observed in later times. Muratori, Dissert. 43. Du Cange.

[504] Crevier, ii. 66, 130, et alibi. Du Cange, in voc. Stationarii, Librarii. Savigny, iii. 532-548. Chevillier, 302. Eichhorn, ii. 531. Meiners, Vergleich der Sitten, ii. 539. Greswell’s Parisian Press, p. 8.

The parliament of Paris, on the petition of the copyists, ordered some of the first printed books to be seized. Lambinet calls this superstition; it was more probably false compassion, and regard for existing interests, combined with dislike of all innovation. Louis XI., however, who had the merit of esteeming literature, evoked the process to the counsel of state, who restored the books. Lambinet, Hist. de l’Imprimerie, p. 172.

|Books sold by printers.|

145. The first printers were always booksellers, and sold their own impressions. These occupations were not divided till the early part of the sixteenth century.[505] But the risks of sale, at a time when learning was by no means general, combined with the great cost of production, paper and other materials being very dear, rendered this a hazardous trade. We have a curious petition of Sweynheim and Pannartz to Sixtus IV., in 1472, wherein they complain of their poverty, brought on by printing so many works, which they had not been able to sell. They state the number of impressions of each edition. Of the classical authors they had generally printed 275; of Virgil and the philosophical works of Cicero, twice that number. In theological publications the usual number of copies had also been 550. The whole number of copies printed was 12,475.[506] It is possible that experience made other printers more discreet in their estimation of the public demand. Notwithstanding the casualties of three centuries, it seems from the great scarcity of these early editions, which has long existed, that the original circulation must have been much below the number of copies printed, as indeed the complaint of Sweynheim and Pannartz shows.[507]

[505] Conversations-Lexicon, art. Buchhandlung.

[506] Maittaire. Lambinet, p. 166. Beckmann, iii. 119, erroneously says that this was the number of volumes remaining in their warehouses.

[507] Lambinet says, that the number of impressions did not generally exceed three hundred, p. 197. Even this seems large, compared with the present scarcity of books unlikely to have been destroyed by careless use.

|Price of books.|

146. The price of books was diminished by four-fifths after the invention of printing. Chevillier gives some instances of a fall in this proportion. But not content with such a reduction, the university of Paris proceeded to establish a tariff, according to which every edition was to be sold, and seems to have set the prices very low. This was by virtue of the prerogatives they exerted, as we shall soon find, over the book-trade of the capital. The priced catalogues of Colinæus and Robert Stephens are extant, relating, of course, to a later period than the present; but we shall not return to the subject. The Greek Testament of Colinæus was sold for twelve sous, the Latin for six. The folio Latin Bible, printed by Stephens in 1532, might be had for one hundred sous, a copy of the Pandacts for forty sous, a Virgil for two sous and six deniers; a Greek grammar of Clenardus for two sous, Demosthenes and Æschines, I know not what edition, for five sous. It would of course be necessary, before we can make any use of these prices, to compare them with that of corn.[508]

[508] Chevillier, Origines de l’Imprimerie de Paris, p. 370 et seq. In the preceding pages he mentions what I should perhaps have introduced before, that a catalogue of the books in the Sorbonne, in 1292, contains above 1000 volumes, which were collectively valued at 3,812 livres, 10 sous, 8 deniers. In a modern English book on literary antiquities, this is set down 3,812_l._ 10_s._ 8_d._; which is a happy way of helping the reader.

Lambinet mentions a few prices of early books, which are not trifling. The Mentz Bible of 1462 was purchased in 1470 by a bishop of Angers for forty gold crowns. An English gentleman paid eighteen gold florins, in 1481, for a missal: upon which Lambinet makes a remark:--Mais on a toujours fait payer plus cher aux Anglais qu’aux autres nations, p. 198. The florin was worth about four francs of present money, equivalent perhaps to twenty-four in command of commodities. The crown was worth rather more.

Instances of an almost incredible price of manuscripts are to be met with in Robertson and other common authors. It is to be remembered that a particular book might easily bear a monopoly price; and that this is no test of the cost of those which might be multiplied by copying.

|Form of books.|

147. The more usual form of books printed in the fifteenth century is in folio. But the Psalter of 1457, and the Donatus of the same year, are in quarto; and this size is not uncommon in the early Italian editions of classics. The disputed Oxford book of 1468, Sancti Jeronymi Expositio, is in octavo, and would, if genuine, be the earliest specimen of that size, which may perhaps furnish an additional presumption against the date. It is at least, however, of 1478, when the octavo form, as we shall immediately see, was of the rarest occurrence. Maittaire, in whom alone I have had the curiosity to make this search, which would be more troublesome in Panzer’s arrangement, mentions a book printed in octavo at Milan in 1470; but the existence of this, and of one or two more that follow, seems equivocal; and the first on which we can rely is the Sallust, printed at Valencia in 1475. Another book of that form, at Treviso, occurs in the same year, and an edition of Pliny’s epistles at Florence in 1478. They become from this time gradually more common; but even at the end of the century form rather a small proportion of editions. I have not observed that the duodecimo division of the sheet was adopted in any instance. But it is highly probable that the volumes of Panzer furnish means of correcting these little notices, which I offer as suggestions to persons more erudite in such matters. The price and convenience of books are evidently not unconnected with their size.

|Exclusive privileges.|

148. Nothing could be less unreasonable than that the printer should have a better chance of indemnifying himself and the author, if in those days the author, as probably he did, hoped for some lucrative return after his exhausting drudgery, by means of an exclusive privilege. The senate of Venice granted an exclusive privilege for five years to John of Spire in 1469, for the first book printed in the city, his edition of Cicero’s epistles.[509] But I am not aware that this extended to any other work. And this seems to have escaped the learned Beckmann, who says that the earliest instance of protected copyright on record appears to be in favour of a book insignificant enough, a missal for the church of Bamberg, printed in 1490. It is probable that other privileges of an older date have not been found. In 1491, one occurs at the end of a book printed at Venice, and five more at the same place within the century; the Aristotle of Aldus being one of the books: one also is found at Milan. These privileges are always recited at the end of the volume. They are, however, very rare in comparison with the number of books published, and seem not accorded by preference to the most important editions.[510]

[509] Tiraboschi, vi. 139. I have a recollection of some more decisive authority than this passage, but cannot find it.

[510] Beckmann’s Hist. of Inventions, iii. 109.

|Power of universities over bookselling.|

149. In these exclusive privileges, the printer was forced to call in the magistrate for his own benefit. But there was often a different sort of interference by the civil power with the press. The destruction of books, and the prohibition of their sale, had not been unknown to antiquity; instances of it occur in the free republics of Athens and Rome; but it was naturally more frequent under suspicious despotisms, especially when to the jealousy of the state was superadded that of the church, and novelty, even in speculation, became a crime.[511] Ignorance came on with the fall of the empire, and it was unnecessary to guard against the abuse of an art which very few possessed at all. With the first revival of letters in the eleventh and twelfth centuries sprang up the reviving shoots of heretical freedom; but with Berenger and Abelard came also the jealousy of the church, and the usual exertion of the right of the strongest. Abelard was censured by the council of Soissons in 1121, for suffering copies of his book to be taken without the approbation of his superiors, and the delinquent volumes were given to the flames. It does not appear, however, that any regulation on this subject had been made.[512] But when the sale of books became the occupation of a class of traders, it was deemed necessary to place them under restraint. Those of Paris and Bologna, the cities, doubtless, where the greatest business of this kind was carried on, came altogether into the power of the universities. It is proved by various statutes of the university of Paris, originating, no doubt, in some authority conferred by the crown, and bearing date from the year 1275 to 1403, that booksellers were appointed by the university, and considered as its officers, probably matriculated by entry on her roll; that they took an oath, renewable at her pleasure, to observe her statutes and regulations; that they were admitted upon security, and testimonials to their moral conduct; that no one could sell books in Paris without this permission; and that they could expose no book to sale without communication with the university, and without its approbation; that the university fixed the prices, according to the tariff of four sworn booksellers, at which books should be sold, or lent to the scholars; that a fine might be imposed for incorrect copies; that the sellers were bound to fix up in their shops a priced catalogue of their books, besides other regulations of less importance. Books, deemed by the university unfit for perusal were sometimes burned by its order.[513] Chevillier gives several prices for lending books (pro exemplari concesso scholaribus) fixed about 1303. The books mentioned are all of divinity, philosophy, or canon law; on an average, the charge for about twenty pages was a sol. The university of Toulouse exercised the same authority; and Albert III., archduke of Austria, founding the university of Vienna about 1384, copied the statutes of Paris in this control over bookselling as well as in other respects.[514] The stationarii of Bologna were also bound by oath, and gave sureties, to fulfil their duties towards the university; one of these was, to keep by them copies of books to the number of one hundred and seventeen, for the hire of which a price was fixed.[515] By degrees, however, a class of booksellers grew up at Paris, who took no oath to the university, and were consequently not admitted to its privileges, being usually poor scholars, who were tolerated in selling books at a low price. These were of no importance, till the privileged, or sworn traders, having been reduced by a royal ordinance of 1488 to twenty-four, this lower class silently increased, at length the practice of taking an oath to the university fell into disuse.[516]

[511] Id.

[512] Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 28.

[513] Chevillier, Origines de l’Imprimerie de Paris, p. 302, et seq. Crevier, ii. 66.

[514] Chevillier, ibid.

[515] Savigny, iii. 540.

[516] Chevillier, 334-351.

|Restraints on sale of printed books.|

150. The vast and sudden extension of the means of communicating and influencing opinion which the discovery of printing afforded, did not long remain unnoticed. Few have temper and comprehensive views enough not to desire the prevention by force of that which they reckon detrimental to truth and right. Hermolaus Barbarus, in a letter to Merula, recommends that, on account of the many trifling publications which took men off from reading the best authors, nothing should be printed without the approbation of competent judges.[517] The governments of Europe cared little for what seemed an evil to Hermolaus. But they perceived that, especially in Germany, a country where the principles that were to burst out in the Reformation were evidently germinating in this century, where a deep sense of the corruptions of the church pervaded every class, that incredible host of popular religious tracts, which the Rhine and Neckar poured forth like their waters, were of no slight danger to the two powers, or at least the union of the two, whom the people had so long obeyed. We find, therefore, an instance, in 1480, of a book called Nosce Teipsum, printed at Heidelberg with the approving testimonies of four persons, who may be presumed, though it is not stated, to have been appointed censors on that occasion.[518] Two others, one of which is a Bible, have been found printed at Cologne in 1479; in the subscription to which, the language of public approbation by the university is more express. The first known instance, however, of the regular appointment of a censor on books is in the mandate of Berthold, archbishop of Mentz, in 1486. “Notwithstanding,” he begins, “the facility given to the acquisition of science by the divine art of printing, it has been found that some abuse this invention, and convert that which was designed for the instruction of mankind to their injury. For books on the duties and doctrines of religion are translated from Latin into German, and circulated among the people, to the disgrace of religion itself; and some have even had the rashness to make faulty versions of the canons of the church into the vulgar tongue, which belong to a science so difficult, that it is enough to occupy the life of the wisest man. Can such men assert, that our German language is capable of expressing what great authors have written in Greek and Latin on the high mysteries of the Christian faith, and on general science? Certainly it is not; and hence they either invent new words, or use old ones in erroneous senses; a thing especially dangerous in sacred Scripture. For who will admit that men without learning, or women, into whose hands these translations may fall, can find the true sense of the gospels, or of the epistles of St. Paul? much less can they enter on questions which, even among catholic writers, are open to subtle discussion. But since this art was first discovered in this city of Mentz, and we may truly say by divine aid, and is to be maintained by us in all its honour, we strictly forbid all persons to translate, or circulate when translated, any books upon any subject whatever from the Greek, Latin, or any other tongue, into German, until, before printing, and again before their sale, such translations shall be approved by four doctors herein named, under penalty of excommunication, and of forfeiture of the books, and of one hundred golden florins to the use of our exchequer.”[519]

[517] Beckmann, iii. 98.

[518] Beckmann, 99.

[519] Beckmann, 101, from the fourth volume of Guden’s Codex Diplomaticus. The Latin will be found in Beckmann.

|Effect of printing on the Reformation.|

151. I have given the substance of this mandate rather at length, because it has a considerable bearing on the preliminary history of the Reformation, and yet has never, to my knowledge, been produced with that view. For it is obvious that it was on account of religious translations, and especially those of the Scripture, which had been very early printed in Germany, that this alarm was taken by the worthy archbishop. A bull of Alexander VI., in 1501, reciting that many pernicious books had been printed in various parts of the world, and especially in the provinces of Cologne, Mentz, Treves, and Magdeburg, forbids all printers in these provinces to publish any books without the licence of the archbishops or their officials.[520] We here perceive the distinction made between these parts of Germany and the rest of Europe, and can understand their ripeness for the ensuing revolution. We perceive, also, the vast influence of the art of printing upon the Reformation. Among those who have been sometimes enumerated as its precursors, a place should be left for Schœffer and Gutenberg; nor has this always been forgotten.[521]

[520] Id. 106.

[521] Gerdes, in his Hist. Evangel. Reformati, who has gone very laboriously into this subject, justly dwells on the influence of the art of printing.

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