THE LATIN AND ALLITERATIONS IN THE ANNALS.
I. Errors in Latin, (_a_) on the part of the transcriber;
(_b_) on the part of the writer.--II. Diction and
Alliterations: Wherein they differ from those of Tacitus.
I.--An anecdote is told of our present sovereign that, on one
occasion, conversing with the celebrated scene painter and naval
artist, Clarkson Stanfield, her Majesty, hearing that he had been
an "able-bodied seaman," was desirous of knowing how he could have
left the Navy at an age sufficiently early to achieve greatness by
pursuing his difficult art. The reply of Stanfield was that he had
received his discharge when quite young in consequence of a fall
from the fore-top which had lamed him,--and for the remainder of
his life,--whereupon the Queen is stated to have exclaimed: "What
a lucky tumble!" In a similar strain the author of the Annals,
after he had handed over his work, according to the custom of his
time, for transcription, must have been induced to exclaim, when
he marked how the monk who had put his thoughts on vellum, had
made him write nonsense in almost every other sentence: "What a
lucky transcriber!" The knowledge that he would have a transcriber,
who was no adept in Latin, must have been one of the greatest
factors in his calculations as a forger. Otherwise how could
he entertain the shadow of a hope that his book could pass current,
when, in order that it should take its place in the first rank
of Roman classics, it was imperative that he should write Latin
to perfection. That was impossible; and his fabrication must
have been detected immediately upon its publication, even though
his age was destitute of philological criticism, unless everybody
had known that the scribes in convents who copied the classics
were famous for committing endless blunders in their transcriptions.
Thus, his good fortune stood steadfastly by him all through his
extraordinary forgery; at its initiation as well as during the
subsequent stages of it.
There was in his time a regular profession of transcribers, who
may be looked upon as the precursors of printers. Numbered among
them were some who had great fame for transcribing;--learned men,
who knew Latin almost, if not quite, as well as they knew their
mother-tongue, Cosimo of Cremona, Leonardo Giustiniani of Venice,
Guarino of Verona, Biondo Flavio, Gasparino Barzizza, Sarzana,
Niccoli, Vitturi, Lazarino Resta, Faccino Ventraria, and some
others;--in fact, a host; for nearly all the literary men, in
consideration of the enormous sums they obtained for copies of the
ancient classics carefully and correctly written, devoted
themselves to the occupation of transcription, as, in these times,
men of the highest attainments in letters, some, too, of the
greatest, even European, celebrity, give their services, for the
handsome remunerations they receive, to the newspaper and
periodical press. But, in the fifteenth century, the vast majority
of writers of manuscripts,--those who were in general employment
from not commanding the high prices obtained by the "crack"
transcribers, and might be compared to "penny-a-liners" among us,
suppliers of scraps of news to the papers,--were still to be found
only in convents, knowing more about ploughs than books, and for
literary acquirements standing on a par with professors of
handwriting and dancing masters of the present day. These monkish
transcribers wrote down words as daws or parrots articulate them;
for just as these birds do not know the meaning of what they
utter, so these scribes in monasteries did not understand the
signification of the phrases which they copied. We can easily
understand how to these manipulators of the pen an infinite number
of passages in the Annals, which are still "posers" to the most
expert classical professors in the leading Universities of Europe,
must have been as dark as the Delphic Oracle,--or the Punic
speech of the Carthaginian in Plautus's Comedy of Poenulus to
everybody (except, of course, the great Oriental linguist, Petit,
who knew all about it, for in the second book of his
"Miscellaneorum Libri Novem" he explains the whole speech, without
the slightest fear of anybody correcting the mistakes into which
he fell).
The jumble occasioned by the interminable blunders of the monastic
writers (for there were two of them, as will he hereafter seen)
causes both the codices of the Annals to be phenomena for
confusion. Unique as literary gems, and preserved in the
Laurentian Medicean Library in Florence, they are the greatest
attraction to literary sightseers visiting the lucky library in
which they are carefully deposited; and, I believe, have a fancy
value set upon them as a fancy value is set upon the Koh-i-noor.
Any member of the medical faculty, even the latest licentiate of
the Apothecaries Hall, who knows the fatal effect of wear and tear
upon the system caused by ceaseless worry, can explain why
Philippo Beroaldi the Younger departed this life five years after
undergoing the labour of preparing for the press at the order of
Leo X. the MS. found in the Westphalian Convent, containing the
first six books of the Annals. When we consider the chaos in which
that dismal MS. presented itself to the eyes of the unfortunate
Professor in the University of Rome, we can readily conceive how
he must have consulted, as he told us he did, "the learned, the
judicious and the subtle" about the correction of errors of the
knottiest nature which came upon him so fast that, to express
their abundance, he instinctively borrows his figure of speech,
from water gushing from a fountain or coming down in a cataract:--
"the old manuscript," says he, "from which I have undertaken to
transcribe and publish this volume, _gushes forth_ with a multiplicity
of blunders:"--"vetus codex, unde hunc ipsum describendum atque
invulgandum curavi, pluribus mendis _scatet_." One example, out
of a legion, will suffice:--In the passage in the eleventh book
where Narcissus is represented begging pardon of Claudius for not
having told him of Messalina's intrigue, the MSS. at Florence and
Rome run thus (according to the report of James Gronovius):
"Is veniam in praeteritum petens quod ci CIS V&CTICIS PLAUCIO
DIMU-lavisset." Half a century before, Vindelinus of Spire,--
who distributed books to all the inhabitants of the world as
Triptolemus of old distributed corn,--broke the back-bone of
this gibberish, when first publishing the concluding books (from
that Vatican MS. which is no longer to be found), by editing
"quod _eicis Vecticis Plautio dissimu_ lavisset." Beroaldi altered
this to "quod _ei cis Vectium Plaucium dissimu_ lavisset." This
was retained in all editions, as the best that could be thought of,
till Justus Lipsius, who collated the MSS. of Tacitus in the
Vatican Library, as he collated the MSS. of other ancient authors
in that and the Farnese and Sfortian Libraries, during his two
years stay in Rome, changed it to "quod _ei cis Vectium cis
Plautium dissimu_ lavisset." So for a century that remained as
the latest improvement till again amended by John Frederic
Gronovius, who, seeing the Vatican and Florentine MSS. while
searching the treasures of literature in Italy during his tour in
that country, edited _cis Vectios cis Plautios_. Most editors
adopt, according to fancy, the rendering of Lipsius or Gronovius,
on account of Vectius Valens and Plautius Lateranus being two
distinguished Romans in the days of Claudius who intrigued with
Messalina. For my own part, I prefer the conjectural emendation of
the Bipontine editors who, giving up as hopeless the corrupted
passage, edit "quod _incestae uxoris flagitia dissimu_ lavisset,"
which, if not precisely what was written, carries with it the
recommendation of being intelligible, and doing away with
the unmeaning _cis_.
On account of the corruption of the text in the two oldest MSS.
that supply the Annals,--the First and Second Florence,--I am
aware what care must be taken, when touching upon the Latin in the
Annals, not to ascribe to the author faults that were the errors
of other people. One ought to be guarded when coming across
"reditus," which ought to be "rediturus" (II. 63), and "datum,"
which ought to be "daturum" (II. 73).
I must pause to observe that, here as elsewhere, in examining the
Latinity of the Annals, I cite from the original editions of the
last six books by Vindelinus of Spire published in 1470, and the
first six books by Beroaldus published in 1515, all editions now
in use having "rediturus" and "daturum," but without the authority
of a single MS.
These blunders we may fairly father on the monkish transcribers,
the more so as their handiworks abound with faults, arising from
one of these four causes,--inability of perceiving propriety of
expression; which people call "stupidity"; disinclination to the
requisite exertion; known as "laziness";--misunderstanding the
meaning of the author, or destitution of knowledge.
The errors that spring from ignorance are the most striking; they
show the purely negative state of the transcribers' minds; how
uninformed they were of facts, and how uninstructed in arts,
literature or science. Evidently the transcriber of the first Six
Books had never heard of the "Sacerdotes Titii," and seeing that
the author had mentioned Tatius in the first portion of the clause
in a passage in the First Book (54), he writes "Sodales _Ta_tios,"
instead of "Sodales _Ti_tios";--"ut quondam Titus _Tatius_ retinendis
Sabinorum sacris sodales _Tatios_ instituerat"; just as evidently,
from ignorance of the language, having no notion what the author
was saying in another passage in the Second Book (2), but seeing
that he had used the word "majorum" in the previous sentence, he
writes nonsensically "ipsorum _majoribus_" for "ipsorum _moribus_"
(II. 2); nor knowing what the "propatulum" was in a Roman house,
but misled by the author having almost immediately before (IV. 72)
spoken of "soldiers being fastened to the patibulum"--or, as we
should say, "hanged on the gallows,"--he writes (IV. 74), "in
_propatibulo_ servitium" instead of "in _propatulo_ servitium,"
the "propatulum" being an open uncovered court-yard, differing
from the "aedium," as being in the forepart of the dwelling.
How illiterate he and the transcriber of the last Six Books were
will be seen in examples and remarks by Kritz in his Prolegomena
to Velleius Paterculus; by Döderlein in his Preface to his edition
of Tacitus; by Ernesti in his Notes to the Annals; by Sauppe, the
able editor of the Oratores Attici, in his Epistolae Criticae,
addressed to his learned relation, Godfrey Hermann, and, above
all, by Herä, in his "Studia Critica," or elaborate treatise on
the Florentine Manuscripts of Tacitus. Both transcribers seem to
have had a taste for rhyming and to have thought that the beauty
of writing Latin consisted in obtaining jingles, to get which they
mix up two words into one, as "san_us_ repert_us_," for "san_e_ is
repertus" (VI. 14); or coining, as "_templores flores_," for
"_templorum fores_" (II. 82); or changing the termination of a word,
in order that it may resemble in sound, the word that follows, as
"don_aria_ mili_taria_" for "_dona militaria_" (I. 44); or the
word that precedes, as "potu_isset_ tradi_disset_" for "potuisset
tradi" (XII. 61).
The same bungling is shown with respect to adjectives, the number,
gender and case of which are changed, as "tris_tios_ primordio,"
for "tris_tiores_ primordio" (I. 7); "amore an odio incert_as_"
for "amore an odio incert_um_" (XIII. 9), and "conqueren_tium_
irritum laborem," for "conqueren_te_ irritum laborem" (XV. 17).
The number, mood and tense of verbs are also changed as "quotiens
concordes agunt sper_nun_tur: Parthus," for "quotiens concords
agunt, sper_ni_tur Parthus" (VI. 42); "nationes promptum habe_re_"
for "nationes promptum habar_et_," and "neque dubium habe_retur_"
for "neque dubium ha_betur_." (XII. 61).
They sometimes succeed, from their stupidity or laziness, in
completely puzzling the reader by omitting syllables, and transposing
and substituting consonants and vowels, thus producing the most
confounding gibberish, as "_pars nipulique_" for "Pharasmani
Polemonique" (XIV. 26); or adding a letter, as "m_orte_m" for
"m_ore_m" (III. 26), or omitting a syllable, as "eff_unt_" for
"eff_und_unt" (VI. 33). From the same fault they every now and
then double a letter, as "Ami_ss_iam" for "Ami_s_iam", or omit
one of the double letters, as "antefe_r_entur" for "antefe_rr_entur"
(1. 8); or, when two words occur, one ending, and the other beginning
with the same letter, they either omit the last letter of the
preceding word, as "event_u_ Suetonius" for "event_us_ Suetonius"
(XIV. 36), or the first letter of the following word as "quipped
_l_apsum" for "quippe _e_lapsum" (V. 10). But it is in single
syllables or words or letters that they most abound in errors,
frequently omitting them without the mark of a _lacuna_, or any
defect; now they omit single letters, when the second word begins
with the same letter as that with which the first ends; at times
in the first word, as "victori_a_ sacrari," for "victoria_s_ sacrari"
(III. 18); at times in the second word, as "ad _e_os" for "ad _d_eos"
(I. 11) now they add single letters as "vitae ejus" for "vit_a_ ejus"
(I. 9), or "a_u_diturus" for "aditurus" (XV. 36); or voluntarily
add a syllable, that the termination of one word may correspond
to the commencement of another, as "Stratonicidi_ve_ _ve_neri" for
"Stratonicidi Veneri" (III. 63), or repeat syllables or words
(what is called "dittography"), as "Cujus adversa pravitati _ipsius_,
prospera ad fortunam _ipsius_ referebat" (XIV. 38). Puteolanus
was the first to throw out the second _ipsius_, and substitute
for it "reipublicae," which most of the editors of Tacitus have
retained, though Brotier edits, I cannot help thinking properly,
on account of the antithesis in which the Author of the Annals
delighted:--"whose adversity he ascribed to his depravity, and
whose prosperity to his good fortune":--"cujus adversa, pravitati
ipsius; prospera, ad fortunam referebat" (XIV. 38); so that the
second _ipsius_ in the MS. is not wrong, only inelegant and unnecessary.
Having thus seen the nature of the errors committed by the transcribers,
we may now pass on to what we must consider as the errors of the
writer. There is very little doubt that he alone is responsible
for the following: using the poetic form "celebris" for the prose
form "celeber"--Romanis haud perinde _celebris_ (II. 88, in fin.),
which so startled Ernesti that he is almost sure the author must
have written "celebratus;" still he would not dare to alter it on
account of its being repeated on two other occasions--Pons Mulvius
in eo tempore _celebris_ (XIII. 47): Servilius, diu foro, mox
tradendis rebus Romanis _celebris_ (XIV. 19);--so merely contents
himself with the observation that "those who are desirous of writing
elegant Latin will not imitate it:" "studiosi elegantiae in scribendo
non imitabuntur." Those desirous of attaining an elegant style
would not write as in the Annals, "exauctorare," with the meaning
of "putting out of the ranks and into the reserve," as when we find
it stated that "a discharge should be given to those who had served
twenty years, and that those should be _put out of the ranks and
into the reserve_, who had gone through sixteen years' service,
there to be kept as auxiliary troops, free from the other duties
which it was customary to render to the State, except that of
repelling the invasion of an enemy":--"missionem dari vicena stipendia
meritis; _exauctorari_, qui senadena fecissent, ac retineri sub
vexillo, ceterorum immunes nisi propulsandi hostis" (An. I. 36);--
here we have a meaning of the word "exauctorare" very different
from its sense of "a final discharge," in which it is understood
by Tacitus towards the opening of his History, when he is
describing the distracted state of Rome, and continues: "during
such a crisis tribunes were _finally discharged_, Antonius
Taurus and Antonius Naso, from the body guard; Aemilius Pacensis
from the troops garrisoned at Rome, and Julius Fronto from the
watch": "_exauctorati_ per cos dies tribuni, e praetorio
Antonius Taurus et Antonius Naso; ex urbanis cohortibus Aemilius
Pacensis; e vigiliis Julius Fronto" (Hist. I. 20);--nor would a
person desirous of writing graceful Latin use "destinari" for
being "elected" to an office, as "_destinari_ consules" (An. I. 3)
where Tacitus uses "designari,"--"consule _designato_"
(Hist I. 6).
Grammatical mistakes of the most extraordinary character are
sometimes made. There is neglect of indispensable attraction; "non
medicinam _illud_" (I. 49) for "_illam_," and "non enim, preces
sunt _istud_" (II. 38) for "_istae_;"--proper Latinity requires
that, in "nihil reliqui faciunt quominus invidi_am_, misericordi_am_,
met_um_ et ir_as_ _per_mov_erent_ (I. 21), the four nouns should
be in either the ablative or genitive, and the verb in the present,
with (as Dr. Nipperdey says) _moveant_ in preference to _permoveant_.
"An" is used as an equivalent to "vel;"--"metu invidiae, _an_ (vel)
ratus" (II. 22,) and as if synonymous with "sive," "sive fatali
vecordia, _an_" (seu, or sive) "imminentium periculorum remedium"
(XI. 26.) In the sentence where Tiberius is described as, according
to rumour, being pained with grief at his own and the Roman people's
contemptible position for no other "reason" more than that Tacfarinas,
a robber and deserter, would treat with them like a regular enemy:--
we have the only instance in a classical composition reputed to be
written by an ancient Roman, of "alias" conveying the idea of _cause_,
instead of being an adverb of _time_:--"Nec _alias_ magis sua
populique Romani contumelia indoluisse Caesarem ferunt, quam quod
desertor et praedo hostium more agerat" (III. 73).
These errors we must believe to be the author's; considering their
gravity, we are compelled to ask ourselves the question: "Could
this writer have been an ancient Roman?" If we answer in the
affirmative, how can we explain coming repeatedly across this sort
of writing, "lacu IN ipso" (XII. 56), that is, a monosyllabic
preposition placed between a substantive and an adjective or
pronoun, a kind of composition found in the poets, but disapproved
by the prose-writers, who, if so placing a preposition, used a
dissyllable and put the adjective first. Independently of a
monosyllabic preposition thus standing frequently between a
substantive and an adjective or pronoun (judice _ab_ uno:
III. 10--urbe _ex_ ipsa: XII. 56--senatuque _in_ ipso and
urbe _in_ ipsa: XIV. 42 & 53.--portu _in_ ipso XV. 18); there
are other occasional abnormal collocations of the preposition,
such as, after two words combined by a copulative particle,
or two of them: diisque et patria _coram_ (IV. 8), Poppaea
et Tigellino _coram_ (XV. 61) and between two words connected
by apposition: montem _apud_ Erycum (IV. 43), uxore _ab_ Octavia
(IV. 43--XIII. 12). These usages are not found in the other
works ascribed to Tacitus, nor any of the ancient Latin
prose-writers; though common enough in the poets, the three
instances being found in Virgil;--the first in the Aeneid:--
"Cum litora fervere late
Prospiceres arce _ex_ summa:"
Aen. IV. 409-10;
"Vespere _ab_ atro
Consurgunt venti:" Aen. V. 19-20
And--
"Graditur bellum _ad_ crudele Camilla:"
Ib. XI. 535;
The second in the Georgics:
"Si non tanta quies iret frigusque caloremque
_Inter_:"
Georg. II. 344;
And shortly after,
"Pagos et compita _circum_:"
Ib. 382;
And the third in the Aeneid:
"Duros mille labores
Rege _sub_ Eurystheo, fatis Junonis iniquae,
Pertulerit:"
Aen. VIII. 291-3.
The Latinity, therefore, is good; but though good, it can scarcely
be said to be that of an ancient Roman; for an ancient Roman never
resorted to such inflexions in prose, only when writing poetry to
get over the difficulties of rhythm; hence a modern European would
easily fall into the error, from taking the Latin of Virgil to be
most perfect; and from deeming that what was done in verse could,
with equal propriety, be done in prose.
Though nothing could be more natural than for a modern European to
think that the right Latin for "good deeds," was "bona facta"
(III. 40), an ancient Roman would have written "_bene_ facta,"
just as he would have used for the expression "if bounds were
observed," "si modus _adhiberetur_," not "si modus _adjiceretur_"
(III. 6). He would have followed "inscitia" with a genitive,
as Tacitus, "inscitiam ceterorum" (Hist. I. 54), and not with
a preposition, as "finis inscitiae _erga_ domum suam" (XI. 25),
for "an end of ignorance of his family"; nor have used that noun
absolutely, as "quo fidem _inscitiae_ pararet" (XV. 58); "in order
that he should create a belief in his ignorance." Instead of
"hi _molium objectus_, hi proximas scaphas scandere" (XIV. 8),
for "some clambered up the heights that lay in front of them,
some into the skiffs that were nigh at hand," he would have used
the participle, "_moles objectas_"; and written "_loca_ opportuna"
instead of "_locorum_ opportuna permunivit" (IV. 24), for "he fortified
convenient places."
Ancient writers among the Romans, such as Cicero and Livy, used
the comparative in both clauses with quanto and tanto; the more
recent writers, such as Tacitus and Sallust, used the comparative
with them in, at least, one clause. We find in the Annals these
ablatives of quantus and tantus, as if their real force was not
known, used with the positive in both clauses. A European putting
into Latin: "the more closely he had at one time applied himself
to public business, the more wholly he gave himself up to secret
debaucheries and vicious idleness;" would think his language quite
correct when he wrote: "quanto _intentus_ olim publicas _ad_ curas"
(mark the place of the monosyllabic preposition), "tanto occultos
_in_ luxus" (again), "et malum otium _resolutus_" (IV. 67).
A Roman did not use the verb "pergere" in the sense of "continuing
or proceeding" in a _matter_, only of "continuing or proceeding"
where there is _bodily motion_. Yet the author of the Annals for
"things would come to a successful issue, that they were going on
with," has "prospere cessura, quae _pergerent_" (I. 28); an ancient
Roman would have written "per_a_gerent," as may be seen from Livy,
who expresses "I will go on with the achievements in peace and war":
"res pace belloque gestas _peragam_" (II. 1); Pliny, "let us now go
on with the remainder": "reliqua nunc _peragemus_" (N.H. VI. 32, 2);
and Cornelius Nepos, "but he went on, not otherwise than one would
have thought, in his purpose": "tamen propositum nihilo secius
_peregit_" (Att. 22). As many will believe, contrary to myself,
that this was a blunder of the copyist (notwithstanding that it
is not in the style of his blundering), I will not insist upon it;
though I must insist upon the following being an error on the part
of the writer for "giving praises and thanks":--"laudes et grates
_habentem_" (I. 69): A Roman could not have said that: had he used
"laudes et grates," his phrase would have been "laudes et grates
_agentem_";--had he used "habentem," his phrase would have been
"laudes et grat_iam_" (or grat_ias_) "habentem." "Diisque et
_patria_ coram)" (IV. 8), is much more in keeping with the ragged
language of St. Jerome in his Vulgate than the precision of Tacitus
in his History:--There are two mistakes: the first is the collocation
of the preposition which has been already noticed; the second is the
phrase "standing before the _eyes_ of a country," which is the real
meaning of "patria _coram_"; it is akin to "looking a matter in the
_face_," which is met with,--(and which I almost deem elegant,)--
in the cumbrous oratory of Lord Castlereagh, but which I should be
very much astonished to discover had originated from the lips of
another statesman, the very opposite in speech of the renowned
Foreign Secretary,--the ornate and correct rhetorician, so famed
for the concinnity of his phrases, the Earl of Beaconsfield.
II. From the diction point of view, the Annals could not have been
written by Tacitus, as the language at times is anybody's but his.
When "ubi" signifies "where" (at the place itself), and not
"whither" (to a distance from the place where a person stands),
"Answer me, Blaesus, _whither_ have you thrown the corpse?"
"Responde, Blaese, _ubi_" (quo?) "cadaver abjeceris?" (I. 22)
it is the language of Suetonius in that passage in the life of
Galba, where he speaks of Patrobius casting the Emperor's head
into that place, where by Galba's order Patrobius's patron had
been assassinated; "eo loco, _ubi_" (quo) "jussu Galbae
animadversum in patronum suum fuerat, abjecit" (Galb. 20). When
two words are coupled with que--que we have the language of the
poets, Virgil, Ovid, Terence, Silius Italicus, Manilius, and among
prose writers, Sallust (exempli gratia) "meque regnumque" (Jug. 10)
when "infecta" is used in the sense of "poisoned," "infected":
"the times were so infected and soiled with sycophancy"--"tempora
illa adeo _infecta_ et adulatione sordida fuere" (III. 65),
we have the language of Pliny the Elder, when speaking of honey
"not being infected with leaves," that is, not having the taste of
leaves--"minime fronde infectum" (N.H. XIII. 13); and when "que,"
as if it were "et," means "too," or "also,"--"till that was _also_
forbidden": "donec id_que_ vetitum" (IV. 74), and "his mines of
gold, _too_": "aurarias_que_ ejus"(VI. 19), we have the language
of Pliny the Younger, "me, _too_, from boyhood," "me_que_ a pueritia"
(Ep. IV. 19). Just as Cicero uses "domestic" for "personal;"--"exempla
domestica, "_my own_ speeches" the author of the Annals uses "at home"
for "personal," and "personally";--"_domi_ artes" (III. 69),
"_personal_ qualities;"--"_domi_ partam" (XIII. 42), "_personally_
acquired." When he desires to put into Latin: "How honourable
their liberty regained by victory, and how much more intolerable
their slavery if again subdued," he writes: "quam decora victoribus
libertas, quanto _intolerantior_ servitus iterum victis" (III. 45),
misapplying "intolerantior" for "intolerabilior" with Florus (IV. 12),
who is clever in committing errors in grammar and geography. There
is ringing the changes with Livy, when we read in the Annals (II. 24)
"_quanto_ violentior, _tantum_" (for tanto) "illa," and in the great
Roman historian, "_quantum_" (for quanto) "laxaverat, _tanto_ magis"
(Livy XXXII. 5). It is using, too, in the sense of Livy (XLI. 8, 5)
the verb "differere," instead of the customary expression, "rejicere."
The language is peculiar to himself when he uses "differre" for
"spargere" in the phrase "and to be spread abroad among foreigners":
"differique etiam per externos" (III. 12), as the style is peculiar
to himself in omitting the past time (fuisse) when no doubt is left
by the preceding context or the immediate sequel in the same sentence,
that the past time is referred to in the passage where Silius
boasts that "his soldiers continued to be loyal, while others fell
into sedition; and that his empire would not have remained to
Tiberius, if there had been a desire for revolution also in those
legions of his": "suum militem in obsequio duravisse, cum alii ad
seditiones prolaberentur: neque mansurum Tiberio imperium, si iis
quoque legionibus cupido novandi fuisset" (IV. 18), where after
"mansurum," according to Dr. Nipperdey, there should be "fuisse."
Further proof is afforded by the use of the word "imperator," that
the diction in the Annals is not that of Tacitus. Having lived in
the time of the Caesars, he never could have heard a countryman in
speech or writing use "Imperator" other than as signifying one
individual, not the commander in chief of the army, but the
occupant of the supreme civil authority, "Imperator" being the
noun proper of "imperium." In this restricted sense Tacitus always
uses the word, because it was understood with that signification
by every Roman of his time. For example, in his Agricola (39), he
means by "imperatoria laus" "the renown in arms of the Emperor,"
who was then Domitian. The author of the Annals, who was not aware
of this nice distinction, uses Imperator, not as it was used in
the time of Tacitus, but as it was used in the days of the
Republic. He, too, like Tacitus, uses the noun in its adjectival
form, but he does not apply it, as Tacitus does, to that which
belongs to the Emperor, but to that which belongs to a general;
for he means by "imperatoria laus" (II. 52), "the fame of a
general," even of Germanicus. He seems to have thought that it
could be given to any member of the imperial house, for he applies
it without distinction to Germanicus, who was the son of an
Emperor, as to the Emperors Caligula, Claudius and Nero, when
speaking of the daughter of Germanicus, Agrippina, who was the
mother of Nero, wife of Claudius and sister of Caligula: "quam
_imperatore genitam_, sororem ejus, qui rerum potitus sit, et
conjugem et matrem fuisse" (XII. 42); he applies it even to the
wife of an Emperor's son, for he styles Agrippina, the wife of
Germanicus, "imperatoria uxor" (I. 41); he gives the title to the
barbarian generals among the Germans (II. 45), which no Roman in
the time of the Empire, or, perhaps, even of the Republic, could
have possibly done; and, further, to military chiefs, who
corresponded then to our present generals of division, for, when
speaking of Caractacus as "superior in rank to other _generals_
of the Britons," he expresses himself: "ceteros Britannorum
_imperatores_ praemineret" (XII. 33).
That a modern European wrote the Annals is also very clear from
the undistinguishing use in that work of the cognate word,
"princeps," which, like "imperator," had two different meanings at
two different periods of Roman history, meaning, in the time of
the Republic, merely "a leading man of the City," and, in the time
of the Empire, the Emperor only. This every Roman, of course,
discriminated; hence Tacitus everywhere uses the word in its
strictly confined sense of "Emperor" (Hist. I. 4, 5, 56, 79 _et al._).
For "the leading men of the Country," his phrase is not, as a
Roman would have expressed himself in the Republican period,
"principes viri urbis," but "primores civitatis." The author of
the Annals, who was in the dark as to this, uses "principes" in
the Republican sense of "leading men," as occurs in the
observation: "the same thing became not the _principal
citizens_ and imperial people" (meaning, the aristocracy and
freemen), "as became humble" homes (meaning, the dregs of the
populace), or, "States" (meaning, the occupants of thrones): "non
cadem decora _principibus viris_ et imperatori populo, quae
modicis domibus aut civitatibus" (III. 6). He also misapplies the
word to the sons of Emperors, as if he were under the impression
that they were styled "princes" by the ancient Romans as by modern
Europeans, for thus he speaks of the sons of Tiberius, Drusus and
Germanicus: "except that Marcus Silanus out of affront to the
Consulate sought that office for the _princes_": "nisi quod
Marcus Silanus ex contumelia consulatus honorem _principibus_
petivit" (III. 57).
The author of the Annals is quite as remarkable as Tacitus for
antithesis: sometimes two antitheses occur together in Tacitus in
the same clause. He is as remarkable for an equal balancing of
phrases. But only in the Annals is the style of Tacitus mingled
with the manner of some other Roman writer, as the easy and
flowing redundance of Livy (I. 32, 33); the peculiar
alliterations, triplets, ring of the sentences and flow of
narrative of Sallust (XIV. 60-4), the antiquated expressions, new
words, Greek idioms, and concise and nervous diction throughout of
that historian; along with words and phrases, borrowed from the
poets, especially Tibullus, Propertius, Catullus, above all,
Virgil.
There is neither in Tacitus, nor the author of the Annals, the
strength and sublimity of expression found in that great master of
rhetoric, Cicero. The eloquence of Tacitus is grave and majestic,
his language copious and florid. The language of the author of the
Annals is cramped; and he maintains a dignified composure, rather
than majesty; occasionally he has an inward laugh in a mood of
irony, as when commending Claudius for "clemency," in allowing a
man,--whom he has sentenced to execution, to choose his own mode
of death. His close, dry way, too, of saying things savours of
harshness, and differs widely from the Greek severeness of manner
observable in Tacitus. The crucial test is to be found in a few
trifling matters of style. So far from displaying the same care as
Tacitus to avoid a discordant jingle of three like endings, he
will write bad Latin to get at the intolerable recurrence. Rather
than have a similar ending to three words Tacitus will depart from
his rule of composition which is to balance phrases,--"dissipation,
industry"; "insolence, courtesy";--"bad, good";--but to avoid
a jingle he writes "luxuria, industria"; _comitate, arrogantia"_;
"malis bonisque artibus mixtus" (Hist. I. 10), his usual style
of composition requiring "luxuri_a_, industri_a_; arroganti_a_,
comitate." He prefers incorrect Latin to such sounds. He writes,
"coque Poppaeam Sabinam--deposuerat" (Hist. I. 13), instead of
what the best Latinity required, "coque j_am_ Poppae_am_
Sabin_am_." The author of the Annals, not having his exquisite
ear, nor abhorrence of inharmonious concurrence of sounds,
actually goes out of his way, by disregarding grammar, carefully
to do Tacitus, also by disregard of grammar, as carefully avoided,
to procure three like endings, as "uter_que_ opibus_que_ at_que_
honoribus pervignere" (An. III. 27), when Tacitus would have
unquestionably written, "uterque opibusque _et,_" and, moreover,
have written correctly, because the Romans never followed "que"
with "atque," always with "et."
The author of the Annals falls into the opposite fault of having
three like beginnings as "_a_dhuc Augustum _a_pud" (I. 5), which
is in the style of Livy or Cicero, but not Tacitus. At the same
time no writer is so fond of alliteration as Tacitus; yet he
resorts to it with so much judgment, that it never grates on the
ear, and with so much art that it all but passes notice. It is
perceptible in the Germany and the Agricola as well as the
History; though in the latter work it is carried to greater
perfection, and is more systematically used, being found in almost
every paragraph. The rule with Tacitus is this:--When he resorts
to alliteration in the middle of a sentence where there is no
pause, he uses words that differ in length, as "_justis
judiciis_ approbatum" (Hist. I. 3), "_tot terrarum_ orbe"
(I. 4), "_pars populi_ integra" (6); and so throughout the
History, till at the close, we find the same thing uniformly going
on:--"_miscebantur minis_ promissa" (V. 24); "_poena
poenitentiam_ fateantur" (V. 25); "_Vespasianum vetus_
mihi observantiam" (V. 26). But--and particular attention is
called to this--when the alliteration is found at the end of a
sentence, or (where there is a pause) in the middle of a sentence,
he prefers words of the same length, but different quantities, as,
at the beginning of the History;--_senectuti seposui_ (I. l);
"_plerumque permixta_; "_sterile saeculum_" (ibid); and so
throughout the work to the end, where we still find the same
regularity of identical alliteration: "_clamore cognitum_"
(V. 18); "_coeptâ coede_" (V. 22); "_oequoris electum_"
(V. 23); "_merito mutare_" (V. 24). This peculiarity of
composition, so distinctive of Tacitus, unfortunately for his
forgery, ENTIRELY escaped the attention of the author of the
Annals; he seems to have thought that any kind of alliteration, so
long as it was constantly carried on, would sufficiently mark the
style of Tacitus. Accordingly he has all kinds of alliterations,
except the right ones, for they are quite different from, and,
indeed, the very reverse of those of Tacitus; sometimes they are
twofold (I. 6); sometimes threefold (I. 5); sometimes even four
together--"posita, puerili praetexta principes" (I. 8);--from
which last Tacitus would have shrunk with horror at the sight, as
Mozart is stated to have rebounded and swooned at the discordant
blare of a trumpet. As to using in the middle of sentences words
that differ in length as a rule they do not, from the first of the
kind, "_ortum octo_" (I. 3), to the last of the kind, "_voce vultu_"
(XVI. 29); at the end of sentences, he uses words that, instead of
not differing, do differ in from the first of the kind, "_Augustum
adsumebatur_" (I. 8), to the last of the kind "_sortem subiret_"
(XVI. 32) and "_sestertium singulis_" (XVI. 33).
After this overwhelming proof of forgery, I need not press another
syllable upon the reader. If not convinced by this, he will be
convinced by nothing; for here is just that little blunder which a
forger is sure to make: so far from being insignificant it is all-
important; it swells out into proportions of colossal magnitude,
at once disclosing the whole imposture, it being absolutely
impossible that Tacitus should have so systematically adhered to a
particular kind of alliteration in that part of his history which
deals with Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian, and have so
suddenly and utterly neglected or ignored it in that part of the
history which deals with Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero.
END OF BOOK THE FIRST.
BOOK THE SECOND.
BRACCIOLINI.
Si per se virtus sine fortuna ponderanda sit, dubito an hunc
primum omnium ponam.
CORNELIUS NEPOS. _Thrasybulus._
CHAPTER I.
BRACCIOLINI IN ROME.
I. His genius and the greatness of his age.--II. His qualifications.
--III. His early career.--IV. The character of Niccolo Niccoli, who
abetted him in the forgery.--V. Bracciolini's descriptive writing
of the Burning of Jerome of Prague compared with the descriptive
writing of the Sham Sea Fight in the Twelfth Book of the Annals.
Though I have dwelt on the harshness of style and manner, and the
occasional inaccuracies in grammar and language of the author of
the Annals, it must not be supposed that I fail to appreciate his
merit. In some of the qualities that denote a great writer he is
superior to Tacitus; nor can anyone, not reading him in his
original form, conceive an adequate notion of how his powers
culminate into true genius,--what a master he is of eloquence, and
how happy in expressing his very beautiful sentiments, which,
sometimes having the nature of a proverb or an epigram, please by
the placing of a word. His general ideas are scarcely retained in
a translation: such a reproduction deprives them of the train of
images and impressions which cluster round them in his language of
poetry and suggestion, giving them spirit and interest, and
imparting to them strength and ornament:--As winter is thrown over
a landscape by the hand of nature, so coldness is thrown over his
page by the hand of a translator: the student who can familiarize
himself with his thoughts as expressed in the tongue in which he
wrote, and reads a translation, is in the position of a man who
can walk in summer along the bank of a majestic river flowing
beautifully calm and stately by meadows pranked with flowers and
woods waving in varied hues of green, yet prefers visiting the
scene in winter when life and freshness are fled, the river being
frozen, the flowers and greenness gone from the fields, and the
leaves fallen from the trees.
The question arises,--Who was this wonderful man? If unknown, can
he not be discovered?
John Leycester Adolphus, famous for his History of George the Third,
discovered the author of the Waverley Novels in Sir Walter Scott,
when the Wizard of the North was styled "The Great Unknown," by
pointing out coincidences in the pieces and poems, known to be
the productions of Scott, in such matters as the correct morals,
the refined manners, the Scotch words and idioms, the descriptive
power, the picturesque and dramatic fancy, the neat, colloquial
turns in dialogue, the quaint similes, the sprinkle of metaphors,
the love of dogs, the eloquent touches with regard to the pure
and tender relations of father and daughter; and clinched the
investigation by showing the freedom and correctness in the use
of law-terms and phrases, which indicated clearly that the author
was a lawyer. It being easy when a way has been shown to follow
in the track, I turned to the period in question, which, I knew,
must be the first half of the fifteenth century, to look for a writer,
whose qualities, literary and moral,--or rather immoral,--could win
for him the triumphal car of being the Author of the Annals--if
triumph can, in any way, be associated with such ingloriousness
as forgery,--and, after a little looking about, I found him in
one whose compositions display, not to a remote, but in a close
degree the energy, the animation, the feeling, the genius, the
true taste, the deep meaning, and glimpses, ever and anon, of that
signal power, which, rising into truly awful magnificence, of
looking deeply into the darkest recesses of the human heart,
runs through the Annals like the shining waters of a river in
whose rich sands roll grains of gold.
The age of that writer was instinct with mental power: men were
giants of intellect: Italy had soared to the highest pinnacle in
the domain of mind, unequalled by preceding ages, except those of
Pericles and Augustus: beginning in the fourteenth Century with
Dante and Petrarch, and ending at the beginning of the sixteenth
with the father of the modern political system, Machiavelli, it
rose to the highest point of its altitude, and remained there
through the whole of the fifteenth, when such bright lights shone
constantly in the meridian of mind, as that Prince of the Church,
Cardinal Sadoleti, great as a poet, equally great as a philosopher,
whose poems on Curtius and the Curtian Lake and the Statue of Laocoon
would have done honour to Virgil, while in his "De Laudibus Philosophiae"
Cicero lives again in style and manner of thinking.
During that long interval of splendour, achievements of the
intellect are upon record that fully establish the existence of
the most remarkable genius. Poliziano in a letter (Ep. XII. 2) to
Prince Pico of Mirandola tells of one of these marvellous feats
that was done by a youthful prodigy, only eleven years old, of the
great family of Orsini (Fabius Ursinus). First young, Fabio Orsini
sang; then recited verses of his own: requested to turn the verse
into prose, he repeated the same thoughts unfettered by measure in
an unassuming manner, and with an appropriate and choice flow of
expression. After that subjects were proposed to him for
epistolary correspondence, on which he was to dictate ex tempore
to five amanuenses at once, the subjects given being "of a nature
so novel, various, and withal so ludicrous that he could not have
been prepared for them": after a moment's pause he dictated a few
words to the first amanuensis on one subject; gave his
instructions on a different theme to the second; proceeded in like
manner with the rest, then returning to the first, "filled up
every chasm and connected the suspended thread of his argument so
that nothing appeared discordant or disjointed," and, at the same
instant, finished the five letters. "If he lives," concluded
Poliziano, "to complete the measure of his days," and "perseveres
in the path of fame, as he has begun, he will, I venture to
predict, prove a person, whom, for admirable qualities and
attainments, mankind must unite to venerate as something more than
human."
In that age some men had such an enthusiastic predilection to
antiquity that they were animated by an ardent zeal for collecting
ancient manuscripts, medals, inscriptions, statues, monumental
fragments, and other ancient and classical remains. Others, again,
were suspected of the intention to impose their own productions on
the public as works of antiquity; one man, who never ceased to
regret that it had not been his lot to live in the days of Roman
splendour, Peter of Calabria, styled himself in his Commentaries
on Virgil, Julius Pomponius Sabinus, and in his notes to
Columella, Julius Pomponius Fortunatus, his object in both
instances being that he should be mistaken for some Roman who had
flourished in the purest ages of Latinity; and Foy-Vaillant, the
celebrated numismatist of the seventeenth century, actually places
him, in one of his numismatical works, in the list of ancient
authors, while Justus Lipsius and Pithaeus both took him to have
been a "Grammaticus", or "writer in Latin," of the earlier middle
ages, all the time that he was an Italian academician, who
flourished in the fifteenth century, having been born in 1425 at a
place that has been called "The Garden of Almond Trees,"--
Amendolara, in Upper Calabria.
It would be idle to suppose that the author of the Annals was
actuated by the simple purpose of Peter of Calabria; there is
ground for believing that some deeper, and less pure, motive
instigated him to commit forgery. Though no Peter of Calabria, he
was a matured Fabio Orsini; and the only drawback from his
fabricated work is that it is not to be looked upon as Roman
history, always in the most reliable shape, but rather as a form
of the imagination which he selected for expressing his views on
humanity;--to paint crime; to castigate tyranny; to vindicate
honesty; to portray the abomination of corruption, the turpitude
of debauchery and the baseness of servility;--to represent
fortitude in its strength and grandeur, innocence in its grace and
beauty, while standing forth the sturdy admirer of heroism and
freedom; the tender friend of virtue in misfortune; the austere
enemy of successful criminality, and the inflexible dispenser of
good and evil repute.
That a man of such great parts and extensive learning, with such
fine thoughts, beautiful sentiments and wise reflections;--such a
cool, abstracted philosopher, yet such an over-refined
politician;--such a gloomy moralist, yet such an acute, fastidious
observer of men and manners, was a cloistered monk or any obscure
individual whatever was an idea to be immediately dispelled from
the mind, for that the Annals was composed by such a man would
have been about as incomprehensible an occurrence, as it would be
impossible to conceive that an acrobat who exercises gymnastic
tricks upon the backs of galloping horses in an American circus
could discharge the functions of a First Lord of the Treasury or a
Justice in the High Court of Judicature, or that a pantaloon in a
Christmas pantomime could think out the Principia of Sir Isaac
Newton or the Novum Organum of Lord Bacon. The fact was, the
author was a conspicuous, shining light of his generation; the
associate of princes and ministers; who, from the commanding
position of his exalted eminence, cast his eyes over wide views of
mankind that stretched into sweeping vistas of artifice and
dissimulation; and who, for close upon half a century,
participated prominently in the active business,--the subdolous
and knavish politics,--of his time.
II. Everybody knows the fable of the old man, the boy and the ass;
but not one in a thousand knows that it was written nearly four
hundred years ago by a man who for forty years was a member of the
Secretariate to nine Popes, from Innocent VII. to Calixtus III.
First in the Bugiale of the Vatican, where the officers of the
Roman Chancery, when discussing the news of the day, were making
merry with sarcasms, jests, tales and anecdotes, one of the party
having observed that those who craved popularity were chained to a
miserable slavery, it being impossible from the variety of
opinions that prevailed to please everybody, some approving one
course of conduct, and others another, the fable in question was
narrated in confirmation of that statement.
Poggio Bracciolini was not only the author of that fable, I am now
about to bring forward reasons for believing, and with the view of
inducing the reader to agree with me, that he,--and nobody else
but he,--was the writer of the Annals of Tacitus.
He was in every way qualified to undertake, and succeed in, that
egregious task. He was one of the most profound scholars of his
age, more learned than Traversari, the Camaldolese, and if less
learned than Andrea Biglia, superior to the Augustinian Hermit in
a more natural, easy and cultivated style of composition and in a
wider knowledge of the world: acquainted somewhat with Greek and
slightly with Hebrew, he possessed a masterly and critical
knowledge of Latin which he had carefully studied in his native
city, Florence, with the most accomplished Latinist of the day,
Petrarch's valued friend, the illustrious Giovanni Malpaghino of
Ravenna.
Bracciolini was not of a character to have revolted at the
baseness of fabrication;--an inordinate love of riches, more
devouring in his breast than his next strongest passion, love of
knowledge, was sufficient to egg him on to it. Throughout life,
his moral conduct was unfavourably influenced by the scantiness of
his means. It was to beguile the anxiety occasioned by his narrow
circumstances that he devoted himself to intense study, from
knowing that superior attainments combined with splendid talents
would secure for him great offices of trust and profit: he saw how
those who were esteemed the most learned as well as the most able
gained the best lucrative posts under the governments of the Popes
and Princes of his day: he, therefore, employed himself in the
pursuit of knowledge for the sake of attaining high rank and great
wealth; knowledge was, accordingly, only so far pursued by him as
it would be productive of money, and get him through the world in
honour and affluence. Up to the age of twenty-six he had the run
of, what was then considered,--when good manuscripts were
uncommonly costly and very scarce,--a magnificent library of 800
volumes, that belonged to his veteran friend, Coluccio Salutati,
Chancellor of the Republic of Florence; amid those stores of
knowledge he courted the Muses ardently, all the while cultivating
diligently the acquaintance of the leaders of society, uniting the
character of the scholar with that of the man of the world, and
becoming as accomplished in politeness and as profound in mastery
of the human heart as in scholarship and learning;--qualities
conspicuous in his acknowledged writings, no less than in that
extraordinary masterpiece, the Annals of Tacitus.
Notwithstanding that the period in which he flourished was
remarkable for its number of men, who, by their genius and
learning revived the golden ages of ancient literature, he was
admitted by all to be without his equal, be it in erudition or
intellect, power of writing or intimacy with Latin. Guarino of
Verona, in spite of the severity with which he was treated by him
in his controversies, likens him, in one of his Epistles (Ep.
Egreg. Viro Poggio Flor. 26 Maji 1455), to "the purest models of
antiquity," and commends him for his "vigorous eloquence and
encyclopaedic stores of information": "pristini socculi floret, et
viget eloquentia, virtutisque thesaurus." Another of the best
spirits of that age, Benedotto Accolti of Arezzo, in his work on
the Eminent Men of his Time, puts him on a level with, if not
superior to any of the ancient historians, Livy and Sallust alone
excepted; for he says, "some of whom" (he is speaking, along with
Bracciolini, of Bruni, Marsuppini, Guarino, Rossi, Manetti, and
Traversari) "so wrote history, that, with the exception of Livy
and Sallust, there were none of the ancients to whom they might
not justly be considered as equal or superior"--"quorum aliqui ita
historias conscripserunt, ut Livio et Sallustio exceptis, nulli
veterum sint, quibus illi non pares aut superiores fuisse recte
existimentur" (Benedict. Accoltus Arez. in Dial. de Praest. Viris
sui aevi. Muratori. t. XX. p. 179). L'Enfant does not make this
exception, for, speaking of Bracciolini's History of Florence, he
says, that in "reading it one is reminded of Livy, Sallust and the
best historians of antiquity":--"A légard de son Histoire, on ne
sauroit le lire sans y reconnoître Tite Live, Salluste, et les
meilleurs historiens de l'antiquité" (Poggiana, Vol. II. p. 83).
Sismondi, too, in the opening pages of the 8th volume of his
"Histoire des Républiques Italiennes du Moyen Age," says in a
footnote (p. 5) that Bracciolini, in common with Leonardo Bruni
and Coluccio Salutati carried off the palm as a Latin writer from
all his predecessors in the fourteenth century:--"à la fin du
siècle on vit paroitre Leonardo Bruni, dit d'Arétin, Poggio
Bracciolini, et Coluccio Salutati, qui devoient l'emporter, comme
écrivains Latins, sur tous leurs prédecesseurs." Although Sismondi
is quite right as to the date when Bruni and Salutati flourished,
he is altogether wrong in supposing that Bracciolini made an
appearance before the public at any time in the fourteenth
century; quite at the end of it he was only in his twentieth year:
the next century had well advanced towards the close of its first
quarter before (with the exception of some Epistles) he began to
write, which was not until after he had passed his fortieth year.
Along with these superior merits of an intellectual writer thus
freely accorded to him by some of his more distinguished
contemporaries and by illustrious historians, Bracciolini
possessed the plastic power that makes the forger. He wrote in a
great variety of styles and manners; sometimes treating subjects
with condensation, and sometimes with diffusiveness. His language
is elevated and his sentences are rounded and smooth in his
Funeral Orations, in which there is no inflation, nothing
declamatory, a perfect absence of straining after effect, yet a
rising with ease into veins of sublime rhetoric, while he is
close, severe and antique:--hence the principal position that is
given to him as an orator by Porcellio in a poem where Marsuppini
is called upon to chaunt the praises of Ciriano of Ancona (see
Tiraboschi, VI. 286): in ascribing to Marsuppini the place of
honour, Porcellio leaves others who are inferior in verse-making
to follow; such as, he says, "_the_ Orator Poggio, the
sublime Vegio, and Flavio, the Historian":--
Tuque, Aretine, prior, qui cantas laude poetam,
Karole, sic jubeo, sit tibi primus honos.
Post alii subeant: Orator Poggius ille,
Vegius altiloquus, Flavius Historicus.
Then it would seem that, as Vegio and Biondo Flavio were, in the
opinion of Porcellio, unsurpassed, the first, for the sublimity of
his diction, and the second, by his historical writing, so
Bracciolini was lifted by his oratory above all his
contemporaries. Wit, polish, and keen sarcasm, with abundance of
acute observations on the human character, distinguish his Essay
on Hypocrisy, published at Cologne in 1535 by Orthuinus Gratius
Daventriensis in his "Fasciculus Rerum Expetendarum et
Fugiendarum." His Letters are written in an easy, agreeable style,
with constant sportiveness and endless felicity of expression. In
his Dialogues he is delicate, lively, and careful. Facility and
happiness of diction are conspicuous in his "Description of the
Ruins of the City of Rome," along with accuracy and
picturesqueness in representation of objects. But whatever he did,
all his writings (including the Annals), bear the stamp of one
mind: they indicate alike the predominance of three powers
exercised in an equal and uncommon degree, and without which no
one can stand, as he does, on the loftiest pedestal of literary
merit,--sensibility, imagination and judgment, working together
like one compact, indivisible faculty.
In addition to this versatility in composition, which enabled him
to imitate any writer, his career fitted him for the production of
the Annals by instilling into his mind the peculiar principles of
morals and behaviour which find apt illustration in that work. No
one could have written that book who had not been admitted within
the veil which hides the daily transactions of the great from the
profane eyes of the vulgar; and who had not come into frequent
personal contact with courts that were corrupt, and with princes,
ministers and leading men of society who were objects of
unqualified abhorrence.
III. Young Bracciolini who as the son of a notary of Florence in
embarrassed circumstances, inherited no advantages of rank or
fortune, when he had attained, at the age of 23, a competent
knowledge of the learned languages under the instruction of
Malpaghino, Chrysolaras [Endnote 136] and a Jewish Rabbi, made his
first entry into life by receiving admission, perhaps,--it being
the common custom in the fifteenth century,--by purchase, into the
Pontifical Chancery as a writer of the Apostolic Letters. At that
early age the scene that opened itself to his eyes was calculated
to destroy all faith in the goodness of human nature. He found in
the occupant of St. Peter's Chair, in Boniface IX., a man,
ambitious, avaricious, insincere in his dealings, and guilty of
the most flagrant simony, bestowing all Church preferments upon
the best bidder, without regard to merit or learning, and making
it his study to enrich his family and relations.
Bracciolini did not come into the closest communion with the Popes
till he became their Principal Secretary, which was when he was
between forty and fifty years of age, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini,
afterwards Pius II., stating in the 54th chapter of his History of
Europe that he "dictated" (or caused to be written) "the
Pontifical Letters during the time of three Popes";-"Poggium ...
qui Secretarius Apostolicas tribus quondam Romanis Pontificibus
dictarat Epistolas";--and though Aeneas Sylvius does not mention
the names of the Pontiffs, he must have meant Martin V. (1417),
Eugenius IV. (1431) and Nicholas V. (1447). Nevertheless, as one
of the writers of the Apostolic Letters, Bracciolini was in a
position to have seen a great deal that left a lasting impression
on his mind of the wickedness of a corrupt court, the Papal one at
this period being thus described by Leonardo Bruni, to Francis,
Lord of Cortona:--"full of ill-designing people, too apt to
suspect others of crimes, which they themselves would not scruple
to commit, and some, out of love for calumny, taking delight in
spreading reports, which they themselves did not credit"; so that
when Innocent VII. died suddenly of apoplexy, the rumour gained
belief that he had been poisoned, a violent death seeming quite a
natural end to a life of leniency to murder.
Not one star of light shone across the long and dreary gloom of
the papal court experiences of Bracciolini. On the deposition of
Gregory XII. for that Pope's duplicity and share in the intrigues
and dissensions which disgraced the Pontifical palace for three
years, Bracciolini seems to have retired from Rome, and to have
remained a resident in Florence during the greater part of the ten
months' reign of the mild, pious and philosophical Alexander V.,
the only able and virtuous divine, who sat in those dark times on
St. Peter's throne.
IV. For losing that one glimpse of light in public life,
Bracciolini was more than compensated by a beam of beneficent
Fortune in his private career, which threw such lustre on his
path, that it rescued him from what must have been his inevitable
fate, morbid cynicism: it was one of the happiest incidents that
ever occurred to him:--he formed the acquaintance of a man,
seventeen years his senior--who, in the lapse of a very short
time, became to him a father and adviser, to whom present or
absent he imparted every one of his schemes, thoughts, cares,
sayings and doings; who was the unfailing allayer of his
anxieties, alleviator of his sorrows, and most constant support of
all his undertakings,--Niccolo Niccoli,--of whom I must take
notice, as he was one of the most active stimulators of the
forgery of the Annals.
Though by no means affluent, and frequently straitened in
circumstances ("homo nequaquam opulens, et rerum persaepe inops,"
says Bracciolini of him, Or. Fun. III.), nevertheless, he made
enough money, as well as possessed the munificent spirit to build
at his own expense, and present to the Convent of the Holy Spirit
in Florence an edifice in which to deposit the books bequeathed to
the Brothers by Boccaccio; and, at his death, he left to the
public in the same City his own manuscripts, which he had
accumulated at great cost and with much pains. He was one of the
few laymen, not to be found out of Italy, who had learning and a
knowledge of Latin, which he had acquired with that eminent
scholar, philosopher and theologian, about half a dozen of whose
works have come down to us, Ludovicus Marsilius; but learning and
Latin were essential to the carrying on of his very pleasant and
most lucrative occupation;--that of amending and collating
manuscripts previous to their disposal for coin; a business, in
which, we are told by Bracciolini, that he surpassed everybody in
excessive expertness ("solertissimus omnium fuit in emendis ac
comparandis libris fructuosissima ac pulcherrima omnium
negotiatione," Or. in Fun. Nic. Nic.); we can, consequently,
conceive what immense sums he must have received for manuscripts
of the best ancient Greek and Roman classics, when properly spelt,
correctly punctuated, and freed from errors.
His qualities, as enumerated by his friend, Bracciolini, in a most
enthusiastic Funeral Oration over his remains (Pog. Op. 273-4),
were such as to show, if there be no exaggeration in the
description of him, that he was as much a wonder as any of the
great Oracles of his age. His attainments were varied; his
information extensive; his judgment sound, and to be relied upon,
being given not for the mere sake of assent nor for flattery, but
for what he believed to be true; "he got into a considerable
sweat," says Bracciolini, "when he read Greek," ("in Graecis
literis plurimum insudavit"), but was enabled to range over every
department of literature in Latin, of which his knowledge was
critical and most masterly, for the same authority assures us "not
a word could be mentioned, the force and etymology of which he did
not know"--"nullum proferebatur verbum cujus vim et originem
ignoraret" in geography he stood without a rival; for, his memory,
being like a vice, retaining everything he read, even to names, he
knew the minutiae, of every country better than those who had been
residents in them; though he rarely practised the art, he was a
master of rhetoric; as a conversationist he held his company in
entranced silence from the wisdom of his remarks, the dulcet flow
of his words, and his transcendent memory bringing together from
all quarters, with appropriateness to every subject under
discussion, the valuable stock of his miscellaneous reading.
Nothing could be more natural than that such a wonderful instance
of the human intellect should court the congenial society of
lovers of learning; he made his house the resort for them; and he
placed at the disposal of the studious his library, which was the
best in Florence, now that Salutati's, after his death, had been
disposed of by his sons at auction.
Bracciolini was so struck by the attainments and captivated by the
character of this man, that an acquaintance casually formed
speedily ripened into an intimacy of the most confidential,
cordial and communicative kind. Bracciolini, during his stay in
Florence, was a guest in the house of Niccoli; and there, for
nearly a year, he resumed and pursued his studies with ardour amid
the rich stores of the large and select assortment of manuscripts,
amounting to not far from a thousand in number. He was thus adding
to the treasures of his lore with daily assiduity, when the news
reached Florence that Cardinal Cossa had (notwithstanding the
well-known virtues of Alexander V.) poisoned his predecessor, and
had been elected to the pontifical chair by the title of John XXIII.
Behold Bracciolini once more in the palace of the Pontiffs of
Rome; and now acting, in the capacity of Secretary, or, more
properly, writer of the Apostolic Letters, to a Pope who was a
poisoner. John XXIII. was even worse than that: he was a most
atrocious violator of laws, human and divine; and some crimes he
committed were so heinous that it would be indecent to place them
before the public. One can imagine how agreeable must have been
the occupation to that Pope of a military rather than an
ecclesiastic turn, and fonder of deeds of violence and bloodshed
than of acts of meekness and Christianity, when he was presiding
at Constance over that General Council, which sent to the stake
those Bohemian followers of the Morning Star of the Reformation,
Huss and Jerome of Prague, to be burnt alive, according to general
belief, with their clothes and everything about them, even to
their purses and the money in them, and their ashes to be thrown
into the Rhine; but, as will be immediately seen, from the account
of an eye-witness, in a state of perfect nudity.
V. Bracciolini, who witnessed the burning of Jerome of Prague,
gives a description of it in one of his Epistles, in a manner
equal to anything that may be found in the Annals;--indeed, many
of his contemporaries thought that his Epistles reflected the
style and spirit of antiquity,--Beccadelli of Bologna, for
example, who says, writing to Bracciolini: "Your Epistles, which,
in my opinion, reflect the very spirit of the ancients, and,
especially, the antique style of Roman expression":--"Epistolae
tuae, quae veterum sane, et antiquum illum eloquentiae Romanae
morem, prae ceteris, mea sententia exprimunt" (at the end of Lusus
ad Vencrem, p. 47). The style is simpler, more unambitious, and
more flowing and smooth than is usually found in the Annals; but,
(as in the descriptive passages in that work), free play is given
to the fancy which works unclogged by verboseness; and judgment
marks the circumstances in a description which progresses,
apparently without art, to the close of the beautiful climax, and
strongly moves the compassion of the reader:--"When he persisted
with increased contumacy in his errors, he was condemned of heresy
by the Council, and sentenced to be burnt alive. With an unruffled
brow and cheerful countenance he went to his end; he was unawed by
fire, or any kind of torture, or death. Never did any Stoic suffer
death with a soul of so much fortitude and courage, as he seemed
to meet it. When he came to the place of death, he stripped
himself of his clothes, then dropping on his bended knees clasped
the stake to which he was to be fastened: he was first bound naked
to the stake with wet ropes, and then with a chain, after which
not small, but large logs of wood with sticks thrown in among them
were piled around him up to his breast; then when they were being
set on fire he began to sing a sort of hymn, which the smoke and
the flames hardly put a stop to. This was the greatest mark of his
soul of fortitude: when the executioner wanted to light the fire
behind his back, so that he should not see it, he called out,
'Come here, and set fire to it before my eyes; for if I had been
afraid of it, I never should have come to this place, which it was
in my power to have avoided.' Thus did this man, perish, who was
excellent in everything but faith. I saw the end of him; I watched
every scene of it. Whether he acted from conviction or contumacy,
you would have pronounced his the death of a man who belonged to
the school of philosophy. I have laid before you a long narrative
for the sake of occupation; having nothing to do I wanted to do
something, and give an account of things very different, indeed,
from the stories of the ancients; for the famous Mutius did not
suffer his arm to be burnt with a soul so bold, as this man his
whole body; nor Socrates drink poison half so willingly as he
endured burning."
I shall now place the passage before the reader in the Latin, as
it was written by Bracciolini, with some words in Italics, upon
which I shall afterwards comment:--
"_Cum pertinacius_ in erroribus perseveraret, per Concilium
haeresis damnatus est, et _igni_ combustus. Jucunda fronte et
alacri vultu ad _exitum_ suum _accessit_, non _ignem_ expavit,
non tormenti genus, non _mortis_. Nullus unquam Stoicorum fuit
_tam constanti animo, tam_ forti _mortem_ perpessus, quam iste
_oppetiisse_ videtur. _Cum_ venisset ad _locum mortis, se ipsum
exuit vestimentis, tum_ procumbens, flexis genibus, veneratus est
_palum_, ad quem ligatus fuit: primum funibus manentibus, _tum_
catena undus ad _palum_ constrictus fuit; ligna deinde circumposita
pectore tenus non minuscula, sed grossa palaeis interjectis,
_tum_ flamma adhibita canere coepit hymnum quendam, quem fumus
et _ignis_ vix interrupit. Hoc maximum _constantis animi_ signum:
_cum_ lector _ignem_ post tergum, ne id _videret_, injicere vellet:
--'huc,' inquit, '_accede_, atque in conspectu accende _ignem_;
si enim illum timuissem, nunquam ad hunc _locum_ quem effugiendi
facultus erat, _accessissem_.' Hoc modo vir, praeter fidem,
egregius, consumptus est. _Vidi_ hunc _exitum_, singulos _actus_
inspexi. Sive perfidia, sive _pertinacia_ id _egerit_, certe
philosophiae schola interitum _viri_ descripsisses. Longam tibi
cantilenam _narravi_ ocii causa, nihil _agens_ aliquid _agere_
volui, et res tibi _narrare_ paulum similes histories priscorum.
Nam neque Mutius ille _tam_ fidenti _animo_ passus est membrum
uri, quam iste universum corpus; neque Socrates _tam_ sponte
venenum bibit, quam iste _ignem_ suscepit." [Endnote 145]
It will be seen, as a peculiarity in composition, that, in this
not very long sentence, several words are re-introduced, and
sometimes over and over again, when the repetition could have been
avoided, as: "accedere," "agere," "videre," "narrare," "pertinacia,"
"constans," "animus," "mors," "exitus," "ignis," "vir," "locus,"
"palus," "cum," "tum," "tam," &c. As this runs through the whole
of Bracciolini's compositions with much frequency, it is to be
expected that it would be found to some extent in the Annals;
because a man who so writes, writes thus unconsciously and
unavoidably, and even when engaged in a forgery, striving to
imitate the style and manner of another, he could not escape
from so marked and distinctive a mannerism. Bracciolini,
accordingly, is found adhering in the Annals to this uniformity of
manner: many passages more forcibly illustrative of this
peculiarity might be quoted; but I select the sham sea-fight in
the XIIth book, for two reasons, because it is pretty much of the
same length as the burning of Jerome of Prague, and because it is
of a similar nature,--descriptive:--
"Sub idem _tempus_, inter _lacum_ Fucinum amnemque Lirin perrupto
monte, quo magnificentia _operis_ a pluribus _viseretur, lacu_ in
ipso navale _proelium_ adornatur; ut quondam Augustus, structo cis
Tiberim stagno, sed levibus navigiis et minore copia _ediderat._
Claudius triremes quadriremesque et undeviginti hominum millia
armavit, cincto _ratibus_ ambitu, ne vaga effugia forent; _ac_
tamen spatium amplexus, ad _vim_ remigii, gubernantium artes,
impetus _navium_, et _proelio_ solita. In _ratibus_ praetoriarum
cohortium manipuli turmaeque adstiterant, antepositis propugnaculis,
ex quis catapultae ballistaeque tenderentur: reliqua _lacus_
classiarii tectis _navibus_ obtinebant. Ripas et colles, _ac_
montium _edita_, in modum theatri _multitudo_ innumera complevit
_proximis_ e municipiis, et alii urbe ex ipsa, _visendi cupidine_
aut officio in _principem_. Ipse insigni paludamento, neque procul
Agrippina chlamyde aurata, praesedere. _Pugnatum_, quamquam inter
sontes, fortium virorum animo; _ac_, post multum vulnerum, occidioni
exempti sunt. Sed perfecto _spectaculo_ apertum _aquarum_ iter.
Incuria _operis_ manifesta fuit, haud satis depressi ad _lacus_
ima vel media. Eoque, _tempore_ interjecto, altius effossi specus,
et contrahendae rursus _multitudini_ gladiatorum _spectaculum editur_,
inditis pontibus pedestrem ad _pugnam_. Quin et convivium effluvio
_lacus_ adpositum, magna formidine cunctos adfecit; quia _vis aquarum_
prorumpens _proxima_ trahebat, convulsis ulterioribus, aut fragore
et sonitu exterritis. Simul Agrippina, trepidatione _principis_ usa,
ministrum _operis_ Narcissum incusat _Cupidinis ac_ praedarum. Nec
ille reticet, impotentiam muliebrem nimiasque spes ejus arguens."
(An. XII. 56-7).
In this passage it will be observed that the same thing takes place
in the repetition of words:--"lacus," "ratis," "vis," "navis," "ac,"
"multitudo," "Cupido," "princeps," "tempus," "spectaculum," "edere,"
"proelium," "visere," "proximus," "aqua," "opus" and "pugna." The
conjunctive particle "ac," is more particularly to be noted as an
out of the way word for the ordinary copulative "et": "_ac_ tamen
spatium amplexus"; "_ac_ montium edita"; "_ac_ post multum vulnerum,"
occurring so frequently in such a brief sentence is just like the
monotony of composition in the extract from Bracciolini with respect
to "cum": "_cum_ pertinacius in erroribus perseveraret"; "_cum_
venisset ad locum mortis"; "_cum_ lictor ignem post tergum," &c.
But this is not all as to the resemblance which the passage from
Bracciolini bears to the writing in the Annals. The expression
"quam iste _oppetiise_," i.e. mortem, "videtur," has its
exact counterpart in the Second Book of the Annals in the phrase:
"vix cohibuere amici, quo minus eodem mari _oppeteret_," i.e.
mortem (II. 24). When, too, Bracciolini says of Jerome of Prague,
"_se ipsum exuit_ vestimentis," "_strips himself_ of his clothes,"
instead of simply, "takes off his clothes,"--"exuit vestimenta,"--
we have an expression precisely like that in the Annals, "_neutrum_
datis a se praemiis _exuit_," that is, "_strips neither_ of the
rewards which he had given him" (XIV. 55), instead of "takes away
the rewards,"--"praemia exuit."
But I will go by-and-bye more fully into matters of this kind. At
present it is necessary that I should still pursue the career of
Bracciolini,--or rather so much of it as is absolutely needed, in
order that the reader may see how curiously it prepared and formed
him to be the author of such a peculiar work as the Annals, which
in its characteristic singularity, could have proceeded from him
only, and by no manner of means from Tacitus.
CHAPTER II.
BRACCIOLINI IN LONDON.
Gaining insight into the darkest passions from associating with
Cardinal Beaufort.--II. His passage about London in the Fourteenth
Book of the Annals examined.--And III. About the Parliament of
England in the Fourth Book.
I. In the autumn of 1418, after the breaking up of the Council of
Constance, Bracciolini left Italy and accompanied to England a
member of the Plantagenet family, the second son of John of Gaunt,
Duke of Lancaster, Henry Beaufort, whose placid and beardless face
the great Florentine seems to have first seen at the Ecumenical
Council which that princely prelate had turned aside to visit in
the course of a pilgrimage he was making to Jerusalem. Henry
Beaufort was then Bishop of Winchester, but afterwards a Cardinal,
and though there was another Prince of the Roman Church, Kemp,
Archbishop of York and subsequently of Canterbury, Beaufort was
always styled by the popular voice and in public acts "The
Cardinal of England," on account, perhaps, of his Royal parentage
and large wealth, more enormous than had been known since the days
of the De Spencers: he had lands in manors, farms, chaces, parks
and warrens in seven counties, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire,
Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Somersetshire, Hampshire and Surrey,
besides having the Customs of England mortgaged to him, and the
cocket of the Port of Southampton with its dependencies,--an
indebtedness of the State which is so far interesting as being the
foundation of our National Debt.
Bracciolini had now an opportunity of watching and unravelling the
wiles of this august prelate and patron of his; he thus gained
still more insight into the ways of the worldly and the feelings
of the ambitious; acquired a masterly knowledge of the dark
passions and became versed in the crooked policy of court
intrigue. He had quitted provinces at home laid waste by hostile
invasions and cities agitated by the discord of contending
parties; Genoa sending warships to ravage in the Mediterranean,
Venice reducing to subjection the smaller States along the
Adriatic, and Florence warring with Pisa, still to fix his eyes on
darkness and the degradation of humanity; for he was visiting a
country,--as England was in the fifteenth century,--buried in the
gloom of barbarism, and forlorn in its literary condition, with
writers, unworthy the name of scholars, Walsingham and
Whethamstede, Otterbourne and Elmham, inditing bald chronicles;
students applying their minds to scholastic philosophy; divines
confounding their wits with theological mysteries; and men with
inclinations to science, as Thomas Northfield, losing themselves
in witchcraft, divination and the barbarous jargon of astrology,
while rendering themselves, at any moment, liable to be
apprehended by order of the doctors and notaries who formed the
Board of Commissioners for the discovery of magicians, enchanters
and sorcerers; for it was the age when invention framed the lie of
the day, the marvellous military leadership of Joan of Arc, and
credulity stood as ready to receive it as little boys in nurseries
the wondrous tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. Through this mist the
figure of Cardinal Beaufort loomed largest, unsociable,
disdainful, avaricious, immeasurably high-stomached (for he deemed
himself on an equality with the king); and, in spite of immoderate
riches, inordinately mean: along with these unamiable qualities,
he upheld the policy of Martin V., which was to destroy the
independence of the National Church of England: he was treacherous
to his associates, and murderous thoughts were not strangers to
his bosom.
Bishop Milner, in his History of Winchester under the Plantagenets
(Vol. I. p. 301), denies that there is solid ground in history for
representing Beaufort as depraved, and condemns Shakespeare for
having endowed Humphry, Duke of Gloucester, with merit of which he
deprived the memory of Cardinal Beaufort. The late Dean Hook, too,
in his elegantly written life of Archbishop Chicheley (p. 97) is
of opinion that Beaufort "has appeared in history with his
character drawn in darker colours than it deserves." Those two
distinguished dignitaries, one of the Roman Catholic and the other
of the English Church, do not then seem to have heard of the
anecdote related by Agnes Strickland, in her Life of Katherine of
Valois (p. 114), that Henry V., when Prince of Wales, was narrowly
saved from murder by the fidelity of his little spaniel, whose
restlessness caused the discovery of a man who was concealed
behind the arras near the bed where the Prince was sleeping in the
Green Chamber in the Palace at Westminster, and a dagger being
found on the person of the intruder, he confessed that he was
there by the order of Beaufort to kill the Prince in the night,
showing that the Cardinal was guilty of a double treachery, for he
was setting on the heir-apparent at the time to seize his father's
crown; nor do Milner and Hook seem to have known that the death of
the Duke of Gloucester was principally contrived by Wykeham's
successor in the See of Winchester, and that, whether poisoned or
not, the Duke was hurried out of the world in a very suspicious
manner, one of the first acts of Margaret of Anjou after her
coronation being, in conjunction with the Wintonian diocesan to
bring about the death of that Prince after arresting him in a
Parliament called for the purpose at St. Edmund's Bury;
Shakespeare, accordingly, had historic truth with him, when he
represented the Cardinal suffering on his death-bed the tortures
of a murderer's guilty conscience, from being implicated in taking
away by violence the life of Humphry, Duke of Gloucester:--
"Alive again! Then show me where he is,
I'll give a thousand pound to look upon him.
He hath no eyes, the dust hath blinded them.
Comb down his hair. Look, look! it stands upright
Like lime twigs set to catch my winged soul.
Give me some drink; and bid the apothecary
Bring the strong poison that I bought of him":--
to which a looker-on observes:--
"O! thou Eternal Mover of the Heavens,
Look with a gentle eye upon this wretch."
It could have been with no gentle eye that Bracciolini looked on
Cardinal Beaufort, whose "bad death," as Shakespeare makes the
Earl of Warwick observe, "argued a monstrous life."
Repeatedly in letters to his friend Niccoli, during two years and
more of anxiety and discontent passed by him from 1420 to 1422 in
the Palace of the Prince Prelate, Bracciolini complained bitterly
of the magnificent promises not being fulfilled that the Cardinal
had held forth to him on condition of his accompanying him to
England. In vain he looked forward to considerable emolument; day
after day he found himself doomed to the common lot of those who
depend on the patronage of the great;--"in suing long to bide":--
"To lose good days that might be better spent;
To waste long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope; to pine on fear and sorrow;
To fret the soul with crosses and with cares;
To eat the heart through comfortless despairs;
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone."
And, really, Bracciolini may be said to have been "undone"; for
when he got what he had bargained to purchase, the frivolous
goodwill of his master, it was, as he expressed it, "the birth of
the mouse after the labour of the mountain": he obtained a
benefice of 120 florins a year, with what he did not anticipate
would be attached to it,--hard work.
In order to have a precise and not a vague and confused idea of
the galling effect produced on his feelings by this offer, it is
necessary to turn to two paragraphs (37, 38), in the Second Book
of the Annals;--for I cannot divest myself of the suspicion that
this incident in his life is there indirectly referred to, where
an account is given that has no historical basis of the "nobilis
juvenis, in paupertate manifesta," Marcus Hortalus, whose noble
parentage and straightened circumstances closely corresponded to
the birth and means of Bracciolini. When seeking recompense from
Tiberius for his four sons, he calls on the Emperor to behold in
them "the scions and offspring of what a multitude of consuls!
what a multitude of dictators! which he says not to mortify, but
to excite commiseration."--"En! stirps et progenies tot consulum!
tot dictatorum! nec ad invidiam ista, sed conciliandae
misericordiae refero;" commenting on which Justus Lipsius bursts
into the angry exclamation: "What a braggart, lying speech on this
man's part! For where was this multitude of consuls, this
multitude of dictators? Why, I can find only one dictator and one
consul in the Hortensian family; the dictator in the year of Rome,
467, when the Commons revolted; and the Consul, Quintus
Hortensius, the grandfather of the speaker,--who, perhaps,
however, reckoned in the ancestors also in his mother's line":
--"Vaniloqua hominis oratio et falsa! Ubi enim isti tot consules,
tot dictatores? Certe ego in Hortensia gente unum, dictatorem
reperio, et Consulem unum; dictatorem anno urbis 467 secessione
plebis; consulem, Q. Hortensium hujus avum. Sed intellegit
fortasse majores suos etiam ex gente materna."
Lipsius would have spared himself the trouble of inditing this
indignant note and throwing out this useless suggestion had he
known that Bracciolini forged the Annals, and playfully
interspersed his fabrication occasionally with fanciful characters
and fictitious events. The picture of Marcus Hortalus, who had
received from Augustus the munificent gift of a million sesterces,
being in the days of Tiberius once more poor, married, with
children, and seeking aid from the State for his four sons, seems
to be all purely imaginary, introduced merely as a photograph from
life, the feelings and conduct of Hortalus, after the treatment of
his sons by Tiberius, being such a faithful reflex, as far as can
be judged from his own confessions, of the feelings and conduct of
Bracciolini himself after the way in which his hopes of preferment
were blasted by Cardinal Beaufort. Just as Hortalus, if he had
been left to himself, would have remained a bachelor, and only
from pressure on the part of Augustus, became a husband, and,
while incapable of supporting children, a father, so Bracciolini
would have remained in Italy and never visited this country, had
it not been for the importunities of the Cardinal, and never
turned his thoughts to preferment in the Church, which he is
invariably telling us he disliked, had not Beaufort given
assurance that he would put him in the way of holding some high
and lucrative post in England; and then when he received a paltry
benefice, instead of expressing thanks like the other dependents
on the Prince Prelate, he was silent, from fear of the power
possessed by Beaufort, or from retaining even in his contracted
fortunes the politeness which he had inherited from his noble
forefathers:--"egere alii grates; siluit Hortalus, pavore, an
avitae nobilitatis, etiam inter angustias fortunae, retinens"
(An. II. 38).
II. We are indebted to Bracciolini's stay among us for one or two
matters that are interesting about our country. His two years'
residence here filled him with a marked admiration of London as
well as with the most confused ideas of the antiquity and
greatness of its commerce; and though comments have already been
made on his description of it as eminently absurd, the passage is
too curious not to be examined again; the more so as it has misled
good historians of London, who believing that the account actually
proceeded from Tacitus, have taken it to be incontrovertibly true,
whereas it is only true, if it be applied, as it is applicable
only to the advanced state of society and the large commercial
town of which Bracciolini was the eye witness towards the close of
the reign of Henry V., and the commencement of that of his infant
son and successor. The slightest investigation will carry
conviction of this.
A hundred years before the birth of Tacitus, Britain was so
monstrously barbarous and obscure, that Julius Caesar, when
wanting to invade it and wishing for information of its state and
circumstances, could not gain that knowledge, because, as he tells
us, "scarcely anybody but merchants visited Britain in those
times, and no part of it, except the seacoast and the provinces
opposite Gaul": ("neque enim temere praeter mercatores illo adiit
quisquam, neque iis ipsis quidquam, praeter oram maritimam, atque
eas regiones, quae sunt contra Gallias." (Caesar De Bell. Gall. IV. 20).
From this we see that, in the middle of the century before the
Christian era, the only trade with Britain was then confined
to the shores, and the southern parts, from Kent to Cornwall: it
is then, against every probability that, in a period extending
over no more than about a hundred years, this trade should have
extended up the navigable rivers and have reached London enough
for it to have risen up, by the year 60 of our era, into an
immense emporium and be known all over the world for its enormous
commerce. That this was not the case we know from Strabo, who
lived in the time of Augustus, and who, though saying a great deal
about our island and its trade, has not a word about London,
howbeit that the author of the Annals does record in his work that
it was exceedingly famous for the number of the merchants who
frequented it and the extent of its commerce; but it is not likely
that it was so, if the whole island did no more trade than Strabo
informs us, the articles exported from all Britain being
insignificant and few;--corn and cattle; such metals as gold,
silver, tin, lead and iron; slaves and hunting dogs (Strabo III.
2. 9.--ib. 5. 11.--IV. 5. 2), which Oppian says were beagles.
Musgrave, in his Belgicum Britannicum adds "cheese," from some
wretched authority, for Strabo says that the natives at that time
were as ignorant of the art of making cheese, as of gardening and
every kind of husbandry:--[Greek: "Mae turopoiein dia taen apeirian,
apeirous d'einai kai kaepeias kai allon georgikon."] (IV. 5. 2).
The statement, then, that London had the very greatest reputation
for the number of its merchants and commodities of trade in Nero's
time is utterly unfounded--nothing more nor less than outrageously
absurd; the picture, however, is quite true if London be considered
at the time when Bracciolini was here. Its merchants then carried
on a considerable trade with a number of foreign countries, to
an extent far greater, and protected by commercial treaties much
more numerous than previous to investigation I could have been
led to suppose. The foreign merchants who principally came to the
Port of London were those of Majorca, Sicily, and the other islands
in the Mediterranean; the western parts of Morocco; Venice, Genoa,
Florence and the other cities of Italy; Spain and Portugal; the
subjects of the Duke of Brabant, Lorraine and Luxemburgh; of the
Duke of Brittany, and of the Duke of Holland, Zealand, Hanneau
and Friesland; the traders of the great manufacturing towns of
Flanders; of the Hanse Towns of Germany, 64 in number, situated
on the shores of the Baltic, the banks of the Rhine, and the other
navigable rivers of Germany; the people of the great seaport towns
of Prussia and Livonia, then subject to the Grand Master of the
Teutonic Order of Knights, along with the traders of Sweden,
Denmark, Norway and Iceland.
In addition to these bringing their goods here in their own
bottoms, a great number of other foreign merchants were
established in London for managing the trade of their respective
States and Cities, performing, in fact, the duties now attached to
the office of Consul, first instituted by the maligned but
enlightened Richard III. These foreign merchants being as powerful
as they were numerous, formed themselves into Companies:
independently of the German merchants of the Steel Yard, there
were the Companies of the Lombards; the Caursini of Rome; the
Peruchi, Scaldi, Friscobaldi and Bardi of Florence, and the
Ballardi and Reisardi of Lucca. The Government protected them,
and, as they were viewed with intense jealousy by the native
traders, they were judged, in all disputes, not by the common law,
but the merchant law, which was administered by the Mayor and
Constables; and of the mediators in these disputes, two only were
native, four being foreigners, two Germans and two Italians.
The Londoners had made prodigious advances upon their forefathers
in the commodities of merchandize in which they dealt. Their most
valuable articles of exportation were wool and woollen clothes in
great varieties and great quantity; corn; metals, particularly
lead and tin; herrings from Yarmouth and Norfolk; salmon, salt,
cheese, honey, wax, tallow, and several articles of smaller value.
But their great trade was in foreign imports and that was entirely
in the hands of foreign merchants who came here in shoals,
bringing with them their gold and silver, in coin and bullion;
different kinds of wines from the finest provinces in the south of
France, and from Spain and Portugal; also from the two last
countries (to enter into a nomenclature that's like the catalogue
of an auctioneer for monotony of names and unconnectedness of
things), figs, raisins, dates, oils, soap, wax, wool, liquorice,
iron, wadmote, goat-fell, red-fell, saffron and quicksilver; wine,
salt, linen and canvas from Brittany; corn, hemp, flax, tar,
pitch, wax, osmond, iron, steel, copper, pelfry, thread, fustian,
buckram, canvas, boards, bow-staves and wool-cards from Germany
and Prussia; coffee, silk, oil, woad, black pepper, rock alum,
gold and cloth of gold from Genoa; spices of all kinds, sweet
wines and grocery wares, sugar and drugs, from Venice, Florence
and the other Italian States; gold and other precious stones from
Egypt and Arabia; oil of palm from the countries about Babylon;
frankincense from Arabia; spiceries, drugs, aromatics of various
kinds, silks and other fine fabrics from Turkey, India and other
Oriental lands; silks from the manufactories established in
Sicily, Spain, Majorca and Ivica; linen and woollen cloths of the
finest texture and the most delicate colours from the looms of
Flanders for the use of persons of high rank; the tapestries of
Arras; and furs of various kinds and in great quantities from
Russia, Norway and other northern countries. The native merchants
of London, the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Normans, carried on an
enormous inland trade. They supplied all parts of the kingdom with
corn from the many granaries which filled the City of London.
There was a constant buying and selling of live horned cattle and
sheep. Trade was great among goldsmiths, jewellers, gilders,
embroiderers, illuminators and painters; and makers of all kinds
of commodities sent their goods from every part of the provinces,
knowing that they were wanted and would meet with immediate
purchasers.
If those were the days when Florence had its Cosmo de' Medici, who
spent millions of florins in building palaces, churches and
charitable foundations to beautify his native town; and when
Bourges had its Jean Coeur who was rich enough to furnish Lewis
VII. with sufficient gold crowns to support the armies with which
that monarch recovered his possessions from the English, London,
too, had its Hende, Whittington and Norbury affluent and
magnificent enough to lend their sovereign immense sums of money,
and adorn the city in which they had amassed their stupendous
fortunes with useful and ornamental buildings--Bridewells,
Colleges, Hospitals, Guildhalls and Public Libraries. Well might
Bracciolini, without the slightest particle of exaggeration, say
of London, as he saw it, that it was "COPIA negotiatorum et
commeatuum MAXIME CELEBRE" (An. XIV. 33).
In leaving this passage I cannot help remarking that the
expression, "copia negotiatorum et commeatuum," has a turn that is
frequently found in the Annals; it is a cast of phrase not
affected by Tacitus; but it is exactly the manner of arranging
words in a sentence to which Sallust is partial: "frequentiam
negotiatorum et commeatuum," he says in his "Jugurtha" (47); it is
obvious that in this passage Sallust means by "commeatuus,"
"supplies of corn and provisions," as it is equally obvious that
Bracciolini (though following the phraseology of his favourite
Latin author,) gives it, in the sentence quoted from the
Fourteenth Book of the Annals, a wider meaning, "commodities of
merchandize."
III. If Bracciolini erred with respect to London, in magnifying it
into a town of superlative commercial splendour in the days of
Nero, which, I repeat, is wildly ridiculous, he more grossly erred
with respect to our form of government; for when he decried it,
and prophesied its decadence and downfall, his sagacity and
judgment were impugned.
When he was here our country was in the infancy of its example as
a land ruled by the most admirable political arrangements. It can
readily be believed with what interest and surprise the proud
Italian, who had seen nothing of the kind in his own land of high
civilization, must have witnessed our parliaments regularly
meeting, as had been the case for generations, since the reign of
Edward I. in 1293, knights and burgesses popularly elected by the
inhabitants of the counties and boroughs sitting in council with
the king, surrounded by his barons and bishops, priors who were
peers and abbots who had mitres. With an outspoken contempt of
England, and an overweening admiration of Italy, he avails himself
of an opportunity of sneering covertly at our harmonious
combination of the three forms of government, the monarchy, the
oligarchy and the republic.
It is scarcely necessary to say that, as reference is made to the
English Parliament, the editors of Tacitus have all been puzzled
as to the meaning of the phrase, "delecta ex his et consociata,"
in the following passage, where the author of the Annals speaks of
"the commonalty, or the aristocracy, or a monarch ruling every
nation and community"; and that "a form of government based on a
SELECTION AND CONJUNCTION OF THESE is easier praised than
realised; or if it is realized, cannot last":--"cunctas nationes
et urbes populus, aut primores, aut singuli regunt: DELECTA EX HIS
ET CONSOCIATA reipublicae forma laudari facilius, quam evenire;
vel si evenit, haud diuturna esse potest" (IV. 33). Now the
phrase, "delecta ex his," selected from these, that is, the
monarchy, the oligarchy and the republic, and meaning that the
selections were of all the excellences and none of the faults of
each, is in every way applicable to only one form of government,--
our Parliamentary government, which is at once legislative and
executive, and, as it is now, it almost was in the days when
Bracciolini was on a visit to us in the opening days of the infant
king, Henry VI. Then not only was the "populus," or "commonalty,"
represented by knights, citizens and burgesses of their own
choosing; but the "primores," or "aristocracy," had their
representatives also in the larger barons, bishops, priors who
were peers and mitred abbots; priors who were not peers, and
abbots who had not mitres, as well as many of the smaller barons,
not receiving writs of summons: the king himself, being an infant
at the breast, had his representative, the "selection" being from
his own family, in the person of his uncle Humphry, Duke of
Gloucester, who was his substitute in the Parliament as the
Protector or Regent; and even when the king was an adult, and
absent in wars, as Edward I. when engaged in the conquest of
Wales, he was represented in Parliament by Commissioners, as our
sovereign is to this day.