But Bracciolini not only said that the selections were from the

monarchic, aristocratic and popular elements, but that they were

"associated" or "conjoined"--"consociata." Here all the editors of

Tacitus by their silence or otherwise fairly admit that the

passage is utterly beyond their comprehension,--"one of those

things," in fact, "which," in the words of Lord Dundreary, "no

fellow is supposed to understand." As for the word, "consociata,"

James Gronovius was of opinion that Tacitus must have written

"concinnata"; but not having the boldness, after the fashion of

Justus Lipsius of making alterations, according to his own sweet

pleasure, without the authority of manuscript or edition, he

followed Beroaldi, who, as much puzzled as any of the subsequent

editors, had substituted "constituta" for the nonsensical word in

the blundering MS. "consciata," though common sense should have

told him that "consociata" was meant, it being evident that the

transcriber, infinitely more puzzled than the editors, for he

could not have had the remotest conception of what he was doing,

had merely omitted a vowel in his usual careless way. It was not

till Ernesti's time, 1772, that the proper word was restored.

Ernesti, too, fancied that he had discovered something in the

Roman government, according to the description by Polybius, which

justified the language in the Annals. "I have no doubt," he says,

"but that Tacitus had in his mind (along with other historians)

Polybius, who, in the 9th and following chapters of the 6th book

of his History, praises the Roman Republic for combining the

excellences of all the three forms of government, while avoiding

the faults of each, and he speaks of that system of government as

being alone perfect which is compounded of these three." "Neque

dubito, Tacitum in animo habuisse cum alios historicos, tum

Polybium qui 6. 9 sqq. rempublicam romanam laudat hoc nomine, quod

omnium illarum trium formarum commoda complexa sit, vitatis

singularum vitiis, eamque solam rempublicam perfectam esse dicit,

quae sit e tribus istis temperata."

Let us then see exactly what it is that Polybius does say. After

speaking of a balance between the three forms of government in the

Roman administration being so fine that it was no easy matter to

decide whether the government was aristocratic, democratic or

monarchical (VI. 11), he proceeds to point out the several powers

appropriated to each branch of the constitution;--the apparently

regal rule of the Consuls, the aristocratic authority of the

Senate, and the share taken by the people in the administration of

affairs (_ibid._ 12, 13, 14). This done, his endeavour is to

show not that there was any "selection and conjunction" as stated

in the Annals, of the several forms, but quite on the contrary,

"counteraction and co-operation": to this he devotes an entire

chapter, with these remarks by way of preface:--"With respect,

then, to the several parts into which the government is divided,

the nature of every one of them has been shown; and it now remains

to be pointed out how each of these forms is enabled to COUNTERACT

the others, and how, on the other hand, it can CO-OPERATE with

them:--[Greek: "Tina men oun tropon diaergaetai ta taes politeias

eis ekaston eidos, eirgaetai tina de tropon ANTIPRATTEIN

boulaethenta, kai SYNERGEIN allaelois palin hekasta ton mergan

dunatai, nun phaethaesetai."] (VI. 15.)

After this, it cannot be supposed that reference is made to the

Commonwealth of Rome. Still less so, when, in the very next

sentence the author of the Annals attempts to show that an equally

blended administration cannot endure, because of the example

afforded by Rome (proving how well he knew that the Romans had

mixed together in their government the elements of the three

forms); he says, that when the Plebeians had the principal power,

there was submission to the will of the populace; when the

Patricians held the sway, the wishes of the aristocratic section

of the community were consulted; and when Rome had her emperors,

the people fared no better than during the reign of the kings:

here are his words:--"Therefore as in the olden time" (during the

Republic), "when the plebeians were paramount, or when the

patricians were superior in power," (in the first instance) "the

whim of the populace was ascertained and the way in which their

humour was to be dealt with, and" (in the second instance) "those

persons were accounted astute in their generation and wise who

made themselves thoroughly conversant with the disposition of the

Senate and the aristocracy; then when a change took place in the

Government" (from the Republic to the Empire), "there was the same

state of things as when a King was the ruler":--"Igitur, ut olim,

plebe valida, vel cum patres pollerent, noscenda vulgi natura et

quibus modis temperanter haberetur, senatusque et optimatium

ingenia qui maxime perdidicerant, callidi temporum et sapientes

credebantur; sic, converso statu, neque alia rerum quam si unus

imperitet." (l.c.)

What he is striving in his usual dark way to establish is this:--

Here was the failure of the Roman form of administration; the

Romans were the most accomplished people in the art of government;

the English, who are semi-barbarous, can know nothing about

government; it is then idle on their part to imagine that they are

endowed with such a vast amount of political knowledge as to be

qualified by their own reflections alone to build up a new and

magnificent form of government; when, too, that form of government

is essentially different from our superb oligarchies in Italy, the

most civilized and cultivated part of the world in everything,

especially politics; the English style of government is, also,

strictly based on the old Roman mode of administration, and when

that failed, how can any sensible man deem that the English method

of administration will ever work successfully. Hence his remarks:

"raking up and relating this," (namely, how the Roman government

never worked well at any time,) "will be of benefit," (to whom?

forsooth, the English,) "because few" (in matters of statesmanship),

"by their own sagacity distinguish the good from the very bad,

the practicable from the pernicious; the many gain their wisdom

from the acts of others; yet as examples bring benefit so do they

meet least with a probation." If that be not the meaning of his

words, then they must remain, as in all translations, without meaning.

Yet the Latin, crabbed as it is, (and it is always crabbed in the Annals),

seems to me to be simple enough:--"haec conquiri tradique in rem fuerit;

quia pauci prudentia honesta ab deterioribus, utilia ab noxiis,

discernunt; plures aliorum eventis docentur; ceterum ut profutura

ita minimum oblectationis adferunt" (l.c.).

That he does not mean the Roman form of government is further seen

by his remark that the kind of administration spoken of is "easier

to be commended than _realized_"--"laudari facilius, quam _evenire_";

just as it is easy to see from his language that he has before him

an instance of some government framed like that which he says will

not exist for any length of time; for whenever he employs the

hypothetical particle, "_si_" about anything that is absolute and

beyond doubt, he always uses it with the indicative and not the

conditional. As he then writes, "si _evenit_," (not "si _eveniat_"),

"if it _is_ realized," (not "if it _be_ realized,") he really has

in his mind some State constituted according to his description.

It should now be borne in mind that he was in this country before

he forged the Annals, and was in the household of Cardinal

Beaufort, who had repeatedly filled the office of Chancellor, on

whom devolved the duty of issuing the writs to the members of the

Parliament, Commoners as well as Peers; for that great officer the

Speaker, was not yet invested with the authority so to do with

respect to the Lower House; not only, then, had Bracciolini heard

of the English Parliament, but the precise nature of it must have

come frequently under his cognizance. In fact, it was no other

than the English Parliament to which he refers.

That being accepted, there were several reasons to induce him to

doubt the durability of our Parliament: the Crown possessed too

great power in those assemblies: it was with difficulty that the

great barons could be got to attend, their delight being to reside

at their castles in the country, and take no part in political

affairs; it was also difficult to get the representatives of the

counties and boroughs to attend, on account of the long distances

that many had to come, and the great expenses of their attendance;

sometimes in a county the properly qualified person,--an actual

knight,--could not be found, and there was no representative from

a county, until upwards of twenty years after Bracciolini had left

us, when esquires and gentlemen could be returned; sometimes a

city or borough would not send a member, either by pleading

poverty in not being able to pay the wages of the two

representatives, or from not finding among their townsmen two

burgesses with the qualifications required by the writ, that is,

sufficiently hale to bear the fatigue of the journey, and

sufficiently sensible to discharge the duties of close attendance

on Parliament; for every member was then required to be present at

the Parliament; hence each small freeholder from a county and each

burgess had to find three or four persons of credit to be sureties

for him that he would attend; and the constituents of each were

forced to bear the cost of his attendance.

In addition to these difficulties there were other drawbacks that

seemed to threaten a speedy termination to these Parliaments. The

session was very short; the business was prepared beforehand, the

laws being drawn up by the bishops, earls, barons, justices, and

others who formed the king's council; and several statutes and

laws were thus hastily and ill considered.

In spite of all these excuses for Bracciolini, experience has

proved that his observation was shallow; and it is possible that,

with his profound insight into the human mind, he might not have

made it had he gone deeply into English character; but it seems

that he deemed it unworthy of his study, England being "a country,

which," as he says, "he did not like at all,"--"hujus patriae,

quam parum diligo" (Ep. I. 2). With such an aversion to us it is

no wonder that he had no faith in the continuance of our

Parliament, for no stronger reason, probably, than that it was an

English institution; but had he foreseen its durability he would

have been a greater wonder than he was from having his eyes more

fully opened than were the eyes of any man at that period to the

rare qualities possessed by Englishmen; their unpretending

magnanimity; their fine talents for business; their keen views in

policy; the great things they had done in the arts of peace and

war, as well as their capability of continuing to accomplish still

greater achievements in both; the solidity of their understandings

and their reflective spirits, which, when directed and applied to

political schemes, devise and consummate sound and lasting reforms

of the State.

CHAPTER III.

BRACCIOLINI SETTING ABOUT THE FORGERY OF THE ANNALS.

I. The Proposal made in February, 1422, by a Florentine, named

Lamberteschi, and backed by Niccoli.--II. Correspondence on the

matter, and Mr. Shepherd's view that it referred to a

Professorship refuted.--III. Professional disappointments in

England determine Bracciolini to persevere in his intention of

forging the Annals.--IV. He returns to the Papal Secretaryship,

and begins the forgery in Rome in October, 1423.

I. About this period Bracciolini commenced the forgery of the

Annals. In noticing the preliminary steps to that fabrication, and

then glancing back at a few circumstances peculiar to his age,

while touching upon some incidents hitherto passed over in his

biography, we shall have all the necessary lights and shades in

his life that will be of use to us in the maintenance and

illustration of our theory.

Although he received in exchange for the living of 120 florins a

year another of the annual worth of £40 with slighter duties

attached to it, he still continued to express dissatisfaction at

his fortunes, and desire a sinecure canonry in England that would

enable him to live in literary ease at home. When, however, an

alternative was presented to him of returning to the Pontifical

Secretariate, through the intercession of one of his powerful

Italian friends, Cardinal Adimari, Archbishop of Pisa, he rudely

scouted the overture upon these grounds: that he would "rather be

a free man than a public slave"; that he had "a smaller opinion of

the Papacy and its limbs than the world believed"; that "if he had

thought as highly of the Secretaryship to the Pope, as many did,

he would long before have gone back to it; and that if he lost

everything, from what he now had, he would not want."--"Video quae

Cardinalis Pisanus scribit de Secretariatu. Sane si ego illud

officium tantum existimarem, quantum nonnulli, ego jamdudum istuc

rediissem: sed si omnia deficerent, hoc quod nunc habeo, non

deerit mihi. Ego minus existimo et Pontificatum et ejus membra

quam credunt. Cupio enim liber esse, non publicus servus"

(Ep. I. 17).

Just as he was in this bad humour, disgusted with his patron and

the world, and in the most cynical of moods, a proposal reached

him from Florence, which, as set forth to view by himself in

communications to his friend Niccoli, is so dimly disclosed as to

be capable of two interpretations: The Rev. William Shepherd in

his Life of him understands his ambiguous terms as having

reference to a professorship, the words of Mr. Shepherd being:

--"Piero Lamberteschi ... offered him a situation, _the nature of

which is not precisely known_, but which was probably that of

public professor in one of the Italian Universities" (Life of

Poggio Bracciolini, p. 138). Now I conceive, and shall attempt to

prove that the proposal was not about a "situation," but to forge

additional books to the hopelessly lost History of Tacitus.

Niccolo Niccoli seems to have been at the bottom of the business;

at any rate, he appears to have advised his bosom friend to

undertake the task; for Bracciolini says that he "thinks he will

follow his advice, while writing to him from the London Palace of

Cardinal Beaufort, in a letter dated the 22nd of February, 1422,

respecting "a suggestion" and "an offer" made by his fellow-

countryman, Piero Lamberteschi, who, he says, "will endeavour to

procure for me in three years 500 gold sequins. If he will make it

600, I will at once close with his proposal. He holds forth

sanguine hopes about several future profitable contingencies,

which, I am inclined to believe, may probably be realized; yet it

is more prudent to covenant for something certain than to depend

on hope alone." "Placent mihi quae Pierus imaginatur, quaeque

offert; et ego, ut puto, sequar consilium vestrum. Scribit mihi se

daturum operam, ut habeam triennio quingentos aureos: fient

sexcenti, et acquiescam. Proponit spem magnam plurium rerum, quam

licet existimem futuram veram, tamen aliquid certum pacisci satius

est, quam ex sola spe pendere" (Ep. I. 17).

Speaking further on in the letter about Lamberteschi, he says: "I

like the occupation to which he has invited me, and hope I shall

be able to produce something WORTH READING; but for this purpose,

as I tell him in my letters, I require the retirement and leisure

that are necessary for literary work." "Placet mihi occupatio, ad

quam me hortatur, et spero me nonnihil effecturum DIGNUM LECTIONE;

sed, ut ad eum scribo, ad haec est opus quiete et otio literarum."

II. The expression of his hope that he would "produce something

worth reading," and the mention of his want, in order that he

should accomplish what was required of him, "retirement and

leisure for literary work," quite set at rest Mr. Shepherd's

theory that the proposal had reference to a Professorship. In the

first place, professors in those days did not collect their

lectures and publish them for the behoof of those who had not the

privilege of hearing them delivered. They did not give their

addresses an elaborate form, nor introduce into them the novel

views and profound and accurate thought with which Professors now

dignify their vocation from chairs in Universities, especially

those of Oxford and Cambridge, or places of public instruction, as

the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street, with its Professor

Tyndall, or the Royal School of Mines and Museum of Practical

Geology in Jermyn Street, with its Professor Huxley. They could

not then "produce something worth reading." In the second place

they did not require the "retirement and leisure necessary for

literary work"; they talked about what they knew in the most

simple and artless manner; made no preparations beforehand; walked

into a class room, and, book in hand, Greek or Roman classic,

discoursed to their pupils about the meaning of this or that

passage or the rendering of this or that word benefiting the

juvenile class with the spontaneous harvest of their cultivated

minds, and giving the opinions of others a great deal more freely

than they gave their own: all that they said, too, was detached

and trite; and if books are valuable, as consisting of perfectly

combined parts, and new or extraordinary contents, the lectures of

the fifteenth century professors would not have been worth the

paper on which they were written. Bracciolini, then, would never,

in the contemplation of turning a professor, have spoken of

"producing something worth reading"; nor, for the discharge of

professorial duties, would he speak of requiring "retirement and

leisure for literary work." It is clear that Mr. Shepherd is

altogether wrong in his conjecture.

And now as to mine. If the dim revelations concerned a plan about

forging the Annals, then "something worth reading" Bracciolini

certainly did produce; for the Annals is,--taking the

circumstances under which it was composed into consideration--

about one of the most wonderful literary creations that we have;

on every page there is indication of the "labour limae,"--the

filing and polishing that are the result of the "retirement and

leisure necessary to literary work"; and, though not bearing a

very striking resemblance to the History of Tacitus, of which it

is intended to be the supplement, it was, nevertheless, contrived

with so much artfulness that, for more than four hundred years, it

has deceived the scholars of Europe: yes, indeed, the author

"Gave out such a seeming

To seal their eyes up,--close as oak,--

They thought 'twas Tacitus."

The more the passages in these interesting letters are considered,

the stronger becomes the impression that they are all about a

scheme for forging the Annals of Tacitus. Even those which seem to

give a colouring to Mr. Shepherd's view in reality favour mine.

A part of the original scheme appears to have been that

Bracciolini was to go to Hungary: what for is not mentioned. It

then becomes a matter of conjecture. Mine is, that, on account of

the belief current in those days that singular treasures of

ancient history were to be found more readily than elsewhere in

barbarous countries, and that the more barbarous the country the

greater the chance of recovering an ancient classic, so

Bracciolini was to go, or feign that he had gone to Hungary, and

then on returning give out that he had there found some of the

lost books of the History of Tacitus. If this be not the right

conjecture, it can barely be understood why Bracciolini should

make a mystery about this visit. "If I undertake a journey to

Hungary," he says, "it will be unknown to everybody but a few, and

down the throats of these I shall cram all sorts of speeches,

since I will pretend that I have come from here," that is, from

England. "Si in Hungariam proficiscar, erit ignotum omnibus,

praeter paucos; quin simulabo me huc venturum, et istos pascam

verbis." (Ep. I. 18). This intention to keep the journey to

Hungary a secret looks as if his going there were connected with

the wrong act suggested, seeing that men usually resort to

concealment when they commit a wrong act, and endeavour to lead

people astray with respect to it (as Bracciolini showed an

inclination to do) by misstatements and falsehoods: then

Bracciolini knew well that the commission of a forgery would be

immediately suspected were it bruited abroad that he had come from

Hungary where he had found a long-lost classic because those were

days when book-finders were in the habit of first forging works,

and then visiting far distant lands to report on their return that

they had there recovered MSS. which they themselves had written.

Another passage strengthens my view, though, at a first glance, it

favours Mr. Shepherd's. After observing that his friend "knew well

how he preferred liberty and literary leisure to the other things

which the vast majority held in the highest estimation and made

the objects of their ambition," Bracciolini proceeds thus: "And if

I were to see that I should get that which our friend Picro

expects, I would go not only to the end of Europe but as far as to

the wilds of Tartary, especially as I should have the opportunity

of paying attention to Greek literature, which it is my desire to

devour with avidity, were it but to avoid those wretched

translations, which so torment me that there is more pain in

reading than pleasure in acquiring knowledge."--"Id primum scias

volo, me libertatem et otium litterarum praeponere rebus caeteris,

quae plures existimant permaximi, atque optant. Sique videro id me

consecuturum, prout sperat Pierius noster, non solum ad Sarmatas,

sed Scythas usque proficiscar, praesertim proposita facultate

dandi operam Graecis litteris, quas avide cupio haurire, ut fugiam

istas molestas translationes, quae ita me torquent, ut pluris sit

molestiae in legendo, quam in discendo suavitatis." (Ep. I. 18.)

This is the passage that must have particularly induced Mr.

Shepherd to think that what was offered to Bracciolini was a

Professorship; and as Bracciolini spoke of the opportunity that

would be afforded to him of studying Greek literature, that the

Professorship was of Greek. But Mr. Shepherd ought not to have

conjectured that the Professorship must have been in some Italian

University; it is clear that if Bracciolini was to carry out the

proposal of Lamberteschi, he was, from the original plan, to have

gone to Hungary. The Professorship must, therefore, have been in

Hungary. But in 1422 no professor was wanted in that country,

because it had no university: Hungary then was, and remained a

wilderness of unlettered barbarism for nearly half a century

after, it not being until 1465, half a dozen years from the death

of Bracciolini, that Matthias Corvinus established in Buda the

first Hungarian University, filling it with valuable works which

he got copied from rare manuscripts in the principal cities of

Italy, especially Rome and Florence, and inviting to it men as

learned as Bracciolini, not only from Italy, but also France and

Germany. What Bracciolini really alludes to is not a

professorship, but the money he was to get for his forgery,--the

500 or 600 gold sequins; and as money was then worth about twenty

times more than it is now, it was a moderate fortune of ten or

twelve thousand pounds; and when he should have such means at his

disposal, he would have quite sufficient for his purpose; he could

then forsake the clerical duties which were so onerous and

distasteful to him, to devote himself in peace and comfort to his

favourite study of Greek literature, with which he became

specially captivated just at this period of his life from reading

for the first time in the magnificent library of Cardinal Beaufort

the works of the Greek fathers, above all, Chrysostom, whom he

looked upon as the greatest of all writers; for writing to Niccoli

from the London palace of Cardinal Beaufort in the summer of 1420,

he speaks of "preferring Chrysostom to everybody else whom he had

ever read,"--"Joannes Chrysostomus, quem omnibus, quos ego unquam

legerim, praefero" (Ep. I. 7); and, on another occasion, in a

letter to the same friend, again referring to Chrysostom, he

bursts into the enthusiastic exclamation: "this man by a good

shoulder, or more, overtops everybody":--"hic vir longe humero

supereminet omnes" (Ep. I. 8). A still greater, nay, "the greatest

reason for his desire of returning to Greek literature," he gives

in a letter to Niccoli dated London, the 17th of July, 1420, that,

in "skimming over Aristotle during the spring of that year, not

for the purpose of studying him then, but reading and seeing what

there was in each of his works,"--he had found that sort of

"perusal not wholly unprofitable, as he had learnt something every

day, superficial though it might be, from understanding Aristotle

in his own language, when he found him in the words of translators

either incomprehensible or nonsensical." "Ego jam tribus mensibus

vaco Aristoteli, non tam discendi causa ad praesens, quam legendi,

ac videndi, quid in quoque opere contineatur: nec est tamen omnino

inutilis haec lectio; disco aliquid in diem, saltem superficie

tenus, et haec est causa potissima, cur amor graecarum litterarum

redierit, ut hunc virum quasi elinguem, et absurdum aliena lingua,

cognoscam sua."

III. As Bracciolini gave his assent to the fabrication of

additional books to the History of Tacitus, his friends Niccoli

and Lamberteschi as well as himself were of opinion that his

presence was required in Italy, in order that the three should

take counsel together, and, discussing the matter in concert,

deliberate fully what was best to be done: "nam maturius

deliberare poterimus, quid sit agendum," he says in a letter

addressed to Niccoli from London on the 5th of March, 1422; and as

he left England for Italy in the summer, and did not begin his

forgery till the autumn of the next year, he spent the interval of

some eighteen, nineteen or twenty months in continually holding

cabinet councils with his two friends, and secretly devising with

them on what plan he could best execute the addition to the

History of Tacitus; no doubt, he thought they had so cleverly

arranged matters in providing against all mishaps that he never

would be found out. "Veniam ad vos," he continues in the same

letter; "et tunc propositis in unum conditionibus, discussisque in

utramque partem rationibus, meliorem, ut spero, eligemus partem."

Bracciolini was, notwithstanding, undesirous of leaving England

just yet, from keeping his eye fixed upon the main chance. There

was the pleasant prospect before him of his living, which had such

heavy duties attached to it, being exchanged for a sinecure worth

£20 a year, "all," he said, "he coveted, and no more"; but it

being uncertain when such good fortune would attend him, he knew

not what to do,--whether, as things now stood, he should return to

Italy, and lose all chance of getting the free benefice, or stay a

little longer in England and wait the possible exchange. "Credo me

inventurum pro hac beneficium liberum, et sine cura XX librarum:

hoc si fieri poterit, satis est mihi, nec opto amplius; veruntamen

nescio quando hoc inveniam; neque scio, an sit melius isto venire,

prout res nunc se habent, an expectare paulum, quaerens an possem

hanc facere permutationem" (Ep. I. 18). Three months passed

without the exchange being effected, whereupon as time progressed,

his hopes, like the courage of Bob Acres, "oozed out at his

fingers' ends." Still he was unwilling to lose what had cost him a

great deal of importunity, as well as much time and anxiety of

mind by any fault on his part, such as being in too great a hurry

over the matter; so he told his friend Niccoli when writing to him

in June; as that "there was nothing else which detained him in

England but the business of effecting the exchange of his

benefice, which from the badness of the times was a much worse

living than it was considered to be:" he also came to the definite

determination that if in two months what he had been looking for

turned up, he would make his arrangements immediately and be off

to his two friends at home; and even if he got nothing, still he

would start for Italy in August at the latest. "Ut alia epistola

ad te scripsi, nihil aliud me hic tenet, nisi cura permutandi hoc

beneficium, quod defectu temporum multo tenuius est, quam

ferebatur. Nollem enim, id quod tanto et temporis impendio

quaesivi, et animi sollicitudine, nunc amittere vitio festinandi.

Si his duobus mensibus emerserit aliquid, quod cupio, concludam

statim, atque ad vos veniam; sin autem nihil invenero, etiam

veniam ad vos." (Ep. I. 22 in.)

Cardinal Beaufort had in the April of 1422 promised to get him a

prebend for his church,--a simple, as distinguished from a

dignitary prebend. If without a dean and chapter inducting him

into a prebendal stall, which he did not want, he could go to

Italy and there draw every year the stipend granted for the

maintenance of a prebendary out of the estate of an English

collegiate church, possibly in the diocese of Winchester, he would

not have visited England in vain. But when he reminded the

Cardinal of his promise, and claimed its performance, Beaufort

receded from his position. "To trust the speeches of such

persons," said Bracciolini, "is like holding a wolf by the ears,"

(quoting what the old Greeks used to say, [Greek: ton oton echein

ton lukon] when they wanted to denote the awkward position of a

man holding on to something when it was difficult for him to cling

to it, and still more dangerous for him to let it go). From that

moment Bracciolini ceased to place any further trust in Cardinal

Beaufort, and turned with redoubled zest to the proposal of

Lamberteschi as one on which he alone relied: "Quidam me duobus

jam mensibus suspensum tenet promittens mihi daturum praebendam

quandam pro hac ecclesia: nunc autem cum rem urgerem, et ad calcem

cuperem pervenire, recessit a promissis suis. Credere verbis

istorum est, ac si auribus lupum teneas. Tu vero da operam, et cum

primum Petrus responderit, me de eo facias certiorem: nam hoc

solum expecto" (Ep. I. 21). From this time his mind was made up:

he would leap the Rubicon: he would go in for the forgery, and his

friend must have confidence in him. So speaking of his powers for

the great task which he meditated he proceeds thus interestingly

in the letter to Niccoli bearing date London, the 10th of June,

1422: "I want you to have no distrust: give me the leisure and the

time for 'writing that HISTORY'" (the nearest approach this to a

disclosure of the grand secret so frequently hinted at by him in

the London letters of the spring and summer of 1422), "and I will

do something you will approve. My heart is in the work, though I

question my powers." Then quoting the sentiment from Virgil about

"labour overcoming everything," he proceeds with unabated

interest: "I have not for four years devoted any attention to

literature, nor read a single book that can be considered well-

written,--as you may judge from these letters of mine which are

not what they used to be; but I shall soon get back into my old

manner. When I reflect on _the merits of the ancient writers of

history, I recoil with fear from the undertaking_" (mark that);

"though when I consider what are the writers of the present day, I

recover some confidence in the hope that if I strive with all my

might, I shall be inferior to few of them." He then implores his

friend to let him know the reply of Lamberteschi as soon as

possible. "Nec dubites volo; si dabitur otium et tempus

DESCRIBENDI GESTA ILLIUS, aliquid agam quod probabis. Cor bonum,

adest mihi; nescio an vires aderint: tamen 'labor omnia vincit

improbus.' Quatuor his annis nullam dedi operam studiis

humanitatis, nec legi librum, quod ad eloquentiam spectaret; quod

ex ipsis litteris meis potes conjicere. Non sunt enim quales esse

consuevere; sed tamen brevi tempore redigar in priorem statum.

_Cum priores rerum scriptores considero, deterreor a scribendo_;

cum vero nostri temporis, nonnihil confido, sperans me paucis

inferiorem futurum, si omnino nervos intendero. Tuum vero sit

studium, ut quam primum certior fiam responsionis Petri" (Ep. I. 21).

IV. He did not remain in England long after this; soon after the

midsummer of 1422 he left this country. His motive for taking this

step may have been that he ended by giving up all hope of

exchanging his laborious living for a sinecure free benefice, or

of obtaining a permanent appointment to a prebend that was without

any jurisdiction attached to it; or, what may be far more likely,

he resolutely abandoned every object he had in view in England for

the far brighter prospects that opened out before him at home if

he undertook the forgery which had been proposed to him by

Lamberteschi, and to which he had been invited by the promise of,

in the first instance, a magnificent pecuniary reward, and

afterwards the possibility of many rare advantages.

Only a fortnight after the last letter to Niccoli he addressed to

him another, the last he wrote from London, on the 25th of June,

1422, couched in language which showed how deeply involved his

Florentine friend was in the plot of the forgery: "If Lamberteschi

would only place something certain before us, which we could adopt

or approve," he wrote; and "How heartily I hope that Lamberteschi

will do what would be so agreeable to us both." "Si Petrus certum

quid responderit, quod sequi ant probare possimus"--"Quam maxime

exopto, ut Petrus perficiat, quae vellemus" (Ep. I. 22).

From this day we hear no more of him in London. Sometime during

the summer of 1422 he returned to Rome, and, following the advice

of the Cardinal Archbishop of Pisa, went back to his old

employment in Rome at the Secretariate, but now, it would appear,

as the Principal Secretary to the Pope,--a post which he obtained

with little or no intercession, as borne testimony to by himself:

--"Ego effectus sum Secretarius Pontificis, et quidem nullis

precibus, vel admodum paucis" (Ep. II. 2).

Here then was Bracciolini again in Rome, not then a city of saints

and sacred things, but of scoffing priests and absolved sinners:

we all know what Luther said on returning to Wittenberg, after his

first visit to Rome: "everything is permitted there except to be

an honest man." If that was true at the commencement of the

sixteenth century, it was much more true at the commencement of

the fifteenth.

Count Corniani, in his "Ages of Italian Literature," is of opinion

that Bracciolini had been in Hungary (II. 76). If so, it must have

been after he left England; he could not then have been so soon,

as I have stated, in Rome: he was there, however, for a certainty,

as some of his letters now extant show, in the earlier portion of

the spring of the following year; even this is against his having

been in Hungary, except on the ground that almost immediately

after he had arrived there, he found that whatever it was that

Lamberteschi had offered to him was neither practicable nor

agreeable; therefore he relinquished it and accepted the office of

Secretary in the Papal Court. Bracciolini, however, does not seem

to have gone to Hungary; nor was there any necessity that he

should have done so, if my theory be correct; for then, so far

from Lamberteschi's offer being neither practicable nor agreeable,

it was both so feasible and pleasant, that it was in order to

accomplish it, he expressly accepted the Secretary's post in the

Court of Rome. He could not have carried out the forgery had he

remained in England, because he would not have had the necessary

leisure, on account of the heavy duties attached to his cure; and

we have seen how he could get neither a sinecure nor a simple

prebend; but to be in the Secretariate of the Papacy was to be the

holder of an office with little or nothing to do, which gave him

ample leisure for literary pursuits. He, therefore, became

reconciled to accepting the Papal Secretaryship; "it being the way

with a wise man," he observed in a philosophic spirit, "to do the

best he can under circumstances, and be satisfied." If by being

Secretary to the Pope he saw he could procure what he wanted,

which was "obtaining a support," stick to the Secretariate he

would; accordingly, he staid in Rome, devoting himself to his

books. "Parere temporis semper sapientis est habitum. Si videro me

hac via consecuturum, quod cupio, hoc est aliquod sustentaculum,

tum adhaeream: quiescens in studiis, hic manebo" (Ep. II. 2).

As if preparing for some great literary undertaking connected with

antiquity, he wrote from Rome on the 15th of May, 1423, to his

friend Niccoli to let him have without the least delay all his

notes and extracts from the various books (and they not a few and

miscellaneous) which he had read; here it may be observed that

what Cortese, Bishop of Urbino, says of the Camaldolese General,

Traversari, is strictly applicable to him:--"Such was his

inexhaustible love of reading, he regretted a moment spent away

from his books; and every day, when not engaged in writing,

devoured the compositions of the ancient Greeks and Romans":

("Erat in hoc homine inexhaustus quidem legendi amor; nullum enim

patiebatur esse vacuum tempus. Quotidie aut scribebat, aut aliquid

ex Graecis Latinisque litteris mandabat"):--"Mittas ad me, rogo,

singula commentariola mea, hoc est, excerpta illa ex variis

libris, quos legi, quae sunt plurima, ac dispersa; collige simul

omnia, oro te, et ad me quamprimum mittas" (Ep. II. 2).

Having, no doubt, obtained in due time the notes and extracts

wanted, apparently in the autumn of 1423, he then set about the

commencement of his immortal and wonderful forgery, or, as he

styles it in the fabrication itself, his "condensed and inglorious

drudgery,"--"nobis in arto et inglorius labor" (Annal. IV. 31);

for in a letter written from Rome in the night of the 8th of

October that year he makes a reflection about "beginnings of any

kind being arduous and difficult," following up the remark with

these striking words: that "what the ancients did pleasantly,

quickly and easily was to him troublesome, tedious and

burdensome"; a remark which he could not have made unless he was

attempting something in the way of the ancients; unless, moreover,

he was just setting about it; then he consoles himself by again

repeating his favourite sage old saw from Virgil: that "hard work

gets over everything":--"In quibusvis quoque rebus principia sunt

ardua et difficilia; ut quod antiquioribus in officio sit

jucundum, promptum ac leve, mihi sit molestum, tardum, onerosum.

Sed 'labor omnia vincit improbus'" (Ep. II. 5).

A month after this significant declaration he was hard at work

forging the Annals of Tacitus; for we find him earnestly plying

for books that were indispensable for any one writing the history

of the early Roman Emperors. In a letter to Niccoli dated Rome,

the 6th of November, 1423, he begs his friend to do all he can to

get him some map of Ptolemy's Geography; to bear it in mind in

case one should happen to fall in his way; also not to forget

Suetonius and the other historians, and, above all, Plutarch's

Lives of Illustrious Characters: "Vellem aliquam Chartam Ptolemaei

Geographiae, si fieri posset; in hoc cogita, si quid forte

inciderit; ac etiam Suetonium, aliosque Historicos, et praesertim

Plutarchi Viros Illustres non obliviscaris" (Ep. II. 7).

If it be said that Bracciolini wrote a History of Florence, and

that these remarks which, unquestionably, refer to some "history"

from the expression "describendi gesta illius," apply to that

work, it must be borne in mind that he did not write that history

until towards the close of his life, that is, more than thirty

years after these letters which passed between him and Niccoli,

for the events recorded in his History of Florence are carried

down to as late as the year 1455; that that historical work is the

only one he wrote under his own name; that it is no more written

in imitation of the ancients, than any other of his acknowledged

productions; and that even if it were, he would not have required

for its composition such maps as Ptolemy's, nor such works as

those of Suetonius and Plutarch. In fact, the most acute ingenuity

cannot rescue Bracciolini from the charge that in October 1423 he,

then resident in Rome, began to forge a work with the intention of

palming it off upon the world as written by an ancient Roman: as I

proceed I shall convincingly show that that ancient Roman was

Tacitus, and that that work was the Annals.

CHAPTER IV.

BRACCIOLINI AS A BOOKFINDER.

I. Doubts on the authenticity of the Latin, but not the Greek

Classics.--II. At the revival of letters Popes and Princes offered

large rewards for the recovery of the ancient classics.--III. The

labours of Bracciolini as a bookfinder.--IV. Belief put about by

the professional bookfinders that MSS. were soonest found in

obscure convents in barbarous lands.--V. How this reasoning throws

the door open to fraud and forgery.--VI. The bands of bookfinders

consisted of men of genius in every department of literature and

science.--VII. Bracciolini endeavours to escape from forging the

Annals by forging the whole lost History of Livy.--VIII. His

Letter on the subject to Niccoli quoted, and examined.--

IX. Failure of his attempt, and he proceeds with the forgery of

the Annals.

I. When we thus see Bracciolini setting to work in this quiet,

business-like manner to forge the Annals of Tacitus, as if it were

a general, common-place occurrence, a grave suspicion enters the

mind whether it was not a thing very ordinarily done in his day;

if so, whether we may not have a wholesale fabrication of the

Latin classics; which is very annoying to contemplate when we

remember the number of works we shall have to reject as not having

been written by ancient Romans but by modern Italians, of the

fifteenth, and possibly the close of the fourteenth centuries. The

suspicion becomes all the stronger with the fact before us that

the literature of the ancient Romans was totally extinguished in

Europe in the very opening centuries of the Christian aera; and

that their language would have been also lost had it not been

preserved till the age of Justinian (527-565) by the pleadings and

writings of the leading lawyers; after which it is generally

believed that it was continued to be preserved, along with the

literature of the ancient Romans, in the buildings founded by the

various monastic orders of Christians. Here again we are met by

another equally vexing circumstance, it being excessively

questionable whether monasteries ever really conserved, to any,

even the least extent, the interests of human knowledge. Monks

never had any love for learning; did not appreciate the volumes of

antiquity; in fact, could not read them; for the Latin was not

their Latin; and they are not likely to have preserved what they

did not appreciate and could not read: the libraries they founded

were for bibles, missals and prayer-books: the schools they

established were for teaching children to read the Testament and

prayer book, and to sing hymns and psalms, while the ancient

manuscripts they transcribed were, at best, the hagiological

productions of the Fathers of the Christian Church.

But even if the works of the ancient Romans were preserved by the

monks in their convent libraries, that was only till the approach

of the last quarter of the sixth century. Then came the dark

period of the conquest of Italy by the last swarm of the northern

barbarians from their native settlements in Pannonia: Italy

continued under the iron yoke of the dominion of these illiterate

Lombards till their final overthrow towards the commencement of

the last quarter of the eighth century by the great conqueror,

warrior, Christian and devoted admirer of learning, Charlemagne:

during that period literature became entirely extinguished, for in

all the vigour and savage freedom of their fresh and unworn

barbarism these Pannonian dunces were as diligent for two whole

centuries (568-774) in demolishing monasteries and destroying

books as in levelling fortresses and ravaging cities. For six

centuries after, a confused assemblage of different races of

boors, Franks, Normans and Saracens, occupied Italy; they cared

not a fig for knowledge; they did not know what a book was, for

they did not know the alphabet, engaged as they were, like those

kindred spirits in after ages, the Ioways, Mohicans and

Ojibbeways, in perpetual wars and bloodshed: all this time the

light of literature never once broke in upon the scene: at length

traces of it were discerned in the revival of learning during the

age of Petrarch and the Father of modern Italian prose, Boccaccio,

in the middle of the fourteenth century. Thus for eight hundred

years there was a moral eclipse of all that was excellent in human

knowledge in Italy and the whole West of Europe.

Fortunately there was no such middle age of darkness in Greece:

there the light of science and literature remained unextinguished:

the knowledge of the works of antiquity was cultivated in the East

with enthusiasm; and while we may be confident that we possess the

works of all those high and gifted spirits who adorned that bright

period which extends from Homer and Hesiod to Plato and Aristotle,

and again the works of all those Greeks who flourished from the

death of Alexander the Great to the death of Augustus Caesar, the

brightest of whom were Menander, Theocritus, Polybius, Strabo, and

a gorgeous array of philosophers, sophists and rhetoricians, we

can be by no means sure that we have the real works of the Roman

classics; there must even be the gravest doubt as to the

probability; for, though during the close of the fourteenth

century, throughout the fifteenth, and at the commencement of the

sixteenth, books purporting to be of their writing were constantly

being recovered, it was invariably under distressingly suspicious

circumstances; exactly the Roman author that was wanted turned up;

and always for a certainty that Roman author for whom the highest

price had been offered; the monastery was rarely famous, seldom in

Italy, but obscure and situated in a barbarous country; the

discoverer, too, was not, as is generally supposed, an ignorant,

unlettered monk or friar, who could not read what he found, and

who could not, therefore be suspected of having forged what he

stated he had discovered; it was invariably a most cultured

scholar, nay, a man of the very highest literary attainments, an

exquisitely accomplished writer, to boot; a "Grammaticus,"

forsooth, who possessed a masterly and critical knowledge of the

Latin language.

II. The unlettered gloom in which Italy had been immersed for ages

was effectually dissipated by the great number of learned and

illustrious Greeks who took refuge in the West of Europe, in order

to escape from Ottoman Power long before the fall of

Constantinople. On account of their enlightenment, literature

revived in Florence, Venice and Rome; it speedily spread from the

Cities of the Great Merchants and of the Popes into the provincial

and inferior towns; thus Italy was the first country in the West

where good taste, enlightened views, and generous emulation in the

sciences and the fine arts took the place of the ignorance, the

avarice and the venality which for centuries had held sole sway in

that civilized portion of the world. Princes and nobles vied with

Popes and Cardinals in the restoration of letters; and now the

best way for a man to advance himself was to show a desire for the

promotion of letters; above all, for the discovery of manuscripts

of the ancient classics, which, when long looked for, and not

found, were usually,--from the too tempting reward, which was a

fortune,--forged by some unscrupulous "Grammaticus," or writer of

Latin.

III. At the commencement of the fifteenth century, a little band

of men lived in Rome: some were Apostolic Secretaries; all were

famous for their abilities; five were scholars endowed with

sterling talents, Antonio Lusco Cincio de Rustici, Leonardo Bruni,

and two others from Florence, Bracciolini, and Dominici, afterwards

Cardinal Archbishop of Ragusa. (Pog. Vita p. 180 from Joannes Baptista

Poggius in Orat. Card. Capranicae (Miscell. Ballutii Tom. 3.) They

were all friends; and their delight was, like their masters, the Popes,

to retire in summer from the heat of Rome into the cool air of the

Campagna; there, after a frugal repast, they held discourse daily,

like men of mind, on a variety of engaging topics: "sumus saepius

una confabulantes variis de rebus," says Bracciolini in a letter

to Francesco Marescalcho of Ferrara (Op. Pog. 307), and continues:

"incidit inter nos sermo de viris doctis et eloquentibus." Thus

"Oft unwearied did they spend the nights,

Till the Ledaean stars, so famed for love,

Wondered at them from above--

They spent them not in toys, or lust, or wine;

But search of deep philosophy,

Wit, eloquence, and poetry,

Arts which they loved."

Of these men, the most extraordinary for superlative qualifications,

and, apparently that inseparable companion of the highest order of

genius, indefatigable energy, was Bracciolini. Muratori, in his

"Annali d'Italia" (anno 1459) speaks of him as "letterato insigne

di questi tempi," and, as leaving behind him when he died on the

30th of October, 1459, "molte opere e gran nome" (Vol. XIII. 481).

When Bracciolini first joined the Papal Court, Guarino of Verona,

Aurispa and Filelfo were making continuous voyages to Greece in

order to fetch home manuscripts of Greek authors yet unknown in

Italy; at this time were found and first brought to the West of

Europe the poems of Callimachus, Pindar, Oppian and Orpheus; the

Commentaries of Aristarchus on the Iliad; the works of Plato,

Proclus, Plotinus, Xenophon and Lucian; the Histories of Arrian,

Cassius Dio, and Diodorus Siculus; the Geography of Strabo;

Procopius and some of the Byzantine historians; Gregory of

Nazianzen, Chrysostom, and other Greek Fathers of the Church. In

emulation of these men Bracciolini and a band of bookfinders,

assisted and rewarded by the wealth of Princes and Popes, went up

and down the countries of Europe to find manuscripts of the

ancient works of the Romans that were supposed to be lost; and it

is generally believed that the republic of letters is more

indebted to him than to anybody else of his manuscript finding age

for the numerous books that were found, and which without such

timely recovery we are given to understand, from the decaying

state of the manuscript and the pernicious place where it was

lighted on, would very soon, in almost every instance, have been

irrecoverably lost.

When Bracciolini accompanied the Papal Court in the capacity of

Secretary to the Council of Constance in 1414, he, one day, went

with two friends, Cincio, the Roman gentleman and scholar of

fortune, of the family de Rustici, and the eminent schoolman and

finished writer Bartolommeo de Montepulciano to the monastery of

St. Gall about twenty miles distant from Constance for the purpose

of finding new manuscripts; his companions found Lactantius, "De

Utroque Homine," Vitruvius on Architecture and the Grammar of

Priscian, while he himself found, in addition to the Commentaries

of Asconius Pedianus on eight of Cicero's Orations,--the three

first books, and half of the fourth of the Argonauticon of

Valerius Flaccus. On this discovery being communicated to

Francesco Barbaro, the latter in his reply spoke of other

discoveries of Bracciolini's, of some of which we have no account

as to where they were found, nor when, except before 1414:

Tertullian, Lucretius, Silius Italicus, Ammianus Marcelinus,

Manilius (his unfinished poem on "Astronomy," clearly a forgery),

Lucius Septimius Caper, Eutychius and Probus; and, adds Barbaro,

"many others,"--"complures alios," among which Aulus Gellius may

be included. All these were found not by Bracciolini alone, but

always in the company of very remarkable characters, and more

frequently than any other, Bartolommeo de Montepulciano, of whom

nothing is known, except that he was a splendid scholar, and great

bookfinder, or forger (the terms are synonymous), and that he

resided in Rome in a pleasant villa situated near the Lateran

Church (Pog. Op. p. 2).

In the oration which he delivered over the remains of his friend

Niccoli (Op. 272) Bracciolini says that he found in French and

German monasteries, besides Quintilian, Silius Italicus, and part

of the poem of Lucretius, some orations of Cicero and Nonius

Marcellus. In his Treatise "de Infelicitate Principum" (p. 394),

and in one of his Letters (II. 7), he mentions having found

Cicero's Orations along with Columella in the Monastery of Cluny

in the Maconnois district of Burgundy; he gives the number of the

Orations of Cicero, which were eight (Ep. IV. 2), and which are

generally supposed to have been those for Caecina, Rubirius and

Roscius, against Rullus and Lucius Piso, and those relating to the

Agrarian Laws. He also found Cicero's two treatises De Legibus and

De Finibus. In his Descriptio Ruinarum Urbis Romae he states that

he found in the Monastery of Monte Casino, near Naples, Frontinus

on the Aqueducts of Rome, and it was, as we know from one of his

letters (III. 37), in July 1429. The Abbé Méhus, in the preface to

his edition of the works of Traversari, adds that he found the

eight books of the Mathematics of Firmicus, which is confirmed by

himself (Ep. III. 37). While in England he recovered the poems of

Julius Calpurnicus who wrote pastorals in the reign of the Emperor

Carus; he also lighted in the monasteries on part of Petronius

Arbiter (Ep. IV. 3), also part of Statius, and book XV. in Cologne

in 1423 (ib.); six years after he found the following twelve plays

of Plautus: Bacchides, Mostellaria, Mercator, Miles Gloriosus,

Pseudolus, Poenulus, Persa, Rudens, Stichus, Trinummus and

Truculentus. In fact, he was occupied nearly all his days, as long

as he was in the vigour of life, in traversing Germany and other

lands in search of ancient manuscripts, which he recovered in

monasteries at different times and in different places; nor was he

to be deterred from these toils, which have been likened to the

labours of Hercules, by any stress of weather, length of journey

or badness of roads.

IV.--The account which he gives in his Dialogue "De Infelicitate

Principum," while dwelling upon a custom of his of going from one

country to another in far distant and barbarous parts for Latin

books, opens our eyes to a very strange state of belief which

obtained at the beginning of the fifteenth century with respect to

the refined works of the ancients;--that, because a number of

these manuscripts were discovered by him, and his band of

bookfinders, in obscure monasteries in barbarous countries, there

was to be deduced therefrom a definite conclusion that many more

were to be discovered in that way; and that this conclusion was so

firmly lodged in the minds of men it prevented Popes and Princes

from continuing to offer that pecuniary aid and those other

rewards which they had been for a long time in the habit of

tendering for the recovery of such manuscripts:--"When these,"

says he in the above-mentioned treatise, "had been brought to

light by him, and when the very sanguine and certain hope was held

forth of more being found, never after that did either a Pope or a

Prince give the slightest attention or assistance to the recovery

of those most illustrious men out of the convents of barbarians:"--

"haec cum ab eo fuissent in lucem edita, cumque uberior et certa

spes proposita esset ampliora inveniendi, nunquam postea aut

pontifex aut princeps vel minimum operae aut auxilii adhibuit ad

liberandos praeclarissimos illos viros ex ergastulis barbarorum"

(p. 393). This statement is so remarkably curious that it requires

a little consideration.

We can easily understand how the valuable works of the Greeks and

Romans, from the importance attached to them and the appreciation

in which they were held, were safest and longest preserved in

their respective countries, and that, therefore, they could have

been found, sooner than elsewhere, in Greece and Italy; but after

those countries had been thoroughly ransacked, it is not so clear

to comprehend how it should follow that their works were to be

just as rapidly and easily found in other, and those barbarous

countries, nay, indeed, more rapidly and more easily. To put this

forth was to endeavour to prepare people's minds for the numbers

of discoveries that were made, or, perhaps, more properly,

pretended to be made in foreign parts. It was, in fact, to pursue

this course of reasoning:--If those works had remained in

civilized hands, centuries would not have elapsed without the

world being cognizant of their existence; the learned could not

have lost sight of them; the select few would have transmitted

copies from generation to generation; but when they passed into

the possession of unlettered men living in barbarous countries,

they would then be altogether hidden from view; such people would

treat them as swine treat pearls; spurn them; not keep them in

libraries, but throw them away as useless lumber into cellars,

pits, dark holes, dirty passages, dry wells; fling them away as

refuse into dustbins or upon dungheaps. Nearly as much says

Bracciolini by these shadowy phrases: "in darkness"; "in a blind

dungeon"; "in a dirty dungeon;" "in dismal dungeons," and "in many

dens," as for instance, "for the sake of finding books that were

kept by them in their convents shut up _in darkness_ and

_in a blind dungeon_" (Op. 393)--"He had rescued renowned

authors out of _the dismal dungeons_ in which, against their

will and without being used, they had been kept concealed (for

they were shut up in _many a den_ and _foul dungeon_" (ib.):--

"in tenebris"; "carcere caeco"; "foedo carcere"; "diris

carceribus," and "multis vinculis," e.g.:--"librorum

perquirendorum gratia, qui in ergastulis apud illos reclusi

detinentur _in tenebris_, et _carcere caeco_" (Op. 393)--

"Autores praeclaros ... _ex diris carceribus_ quibus inviti

obsoletique opprimuntur eruisset (sunt enim _multis vinculis_

et _foedo carcere_ abstrusi" (ib.). Books thrown away in such

places must be regarded, when recovered, as found by the purest

accident; hence it was at once comprehensible how they had

remained unknown to the world for hundreds of years; for who would

think of looking for books in such places?

Yet it was precisely in such places that Bracciolini and his

companions looked for the books that they wanted; what is still

stranger, they always found in such queer places the exact books

they were in search of. It was so, for example, when they

recovered the books in the monastery of St. Gall; the books were

not found where, Bracciolini admits, they ought to have been, on

account of their excellence, on the shelves of the library, but

where slugs and toads are more frequently looked for and found

than books and manuscripts, in an exceedingly dirty and dark

dungeon at the bottom of a tower and one of these books,

Quintilian, though described as "sound and safe," is also

described as being "saturated with moisture and begrimed with

mire," as if it had been made dirty expressly for the occasion of

the recovery: "Quintilianum comperimus, adhuc salvum et incolumem,

plenum tamen situ et pulvere squalentem. Erant non in bibliotheca

libri illi, ut eorum dignitas postulabat, sed in teterrimo quodam

et obscuro carcere, fundo scilicet unius turris." (From a letter

of Bracciolini to Guarino of Verona, preserved in St. Paul's

Library, Leipzic--printed at the end of Poggiana, and dated Jan. 1,

1417).

V. This kind of reasoning, when admitted, throws the door open to

fraud and forgery; but it cannot be admitted, because it is

fallacious in reality, sound in appearance only, as will be seen

by only putting a few natural questions:--How came these books

into such places? Who took them from Italy, Greece, or other

enlightened parts of the globe? If some learned monk, made abbot

or prior of a convent of Germany or Hungary? or some equally

learned priest sent as bishop to christianize the heathen in still

more barbarous lands in the North in a far distant age, why should

succeeding monks, fonder, be it granted, of ploughing and reaping

than reading and writing, treat as refuse books which, though not

deemed by them of any value, as far as their own tastes and

inclinations were concerned, they, nevertheless, knew were held in

the very highest esteem by the studious in more civilized parts;

and that these studious people, understanding the language in

which they were written, and considering their contents most

precious, would willingly give in exchange for them at any time

not large, but enormous sums of money?

These are questions that cannot be answered with satisfaction:

they seem to give the highest colouring of truth to what has been

suggested, that there was a wholesale forgery of these books; and

one is almost inclined to give Father Hardouin credit, for being

quite right, when he expressed as his belief that, perhaps, not

more than two or three of the ancient Latin classics were really

written by the old Romans. [Endnote 208]

VI. The clause in the passage just quoted from the "De

Infelicitate Principum":--"never after" (Bracciolini had found a

great many books abroad, in Germany and elsewhere) "did either a

Pope or a Prince give the slightest attention or assistance

towards the recovery of those most illustrious men out of the

convents of barbarians."--"nunquam postea aut Pontifex aut

Princeps vel minimum operae aut auxilii adhibuit ad liberandos

praeclarissimos illos viros ex ergastulis barbarorum," shows that

before the time of Bracciolini the custom prevailed of valuable

assistance and large money rewards being given by Popes and

Princes for the recovery of ancient classics; and therefore

confirms what was stated in the first portion of this inquiry that

the custom was not confined to the age of Leo X., but ranged back

to, at least, a hundred, if not, half as many more years. In that

way men, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, made large

fortunes. In that way Bracciolini made his.

The finding of any ancient Latin MSS. was a distinct profession in

those days, and Bracciolini may be said to have studied the art,

of which he was one of the greatest experts, so carefully, and to

have practised it with such ability and diligence as to have

elevated it into a science. Many enterprising scholars before him

had devoted themselves with indefatigable perseverance to

traversing, sometimes singly, but more frequently in bands of two,

three, or more, Italy, Greece, Spain, and the more civilized

countries of Europe for the purpose of ransacking,--or pretending

to ransack,--the shelves of convent libraries of their treasures.

As scarcely anything was more profitable than searching for MSS.,--

particularly when it was certain that, after the looking for,

they would be found, if not of the particular authors wanted, yet

of others that would repay for the searching;--and as Emperors and

Popes, Kings, Princes, Cardinals, Ministers and Bishops paid

fabulous prices for the literary treasures of ancient Rome,

Bracciolini improved upon this plan by extending the area of

search into the woods of Germany, the wildernesses of Bohemia and

Hungary, and the not then over civilized fastnesses and forests of

England and marshes and bogs of France: the great thing with him

and his companions was, when they could not find, to forge; all

they had to ascertain was simply which ancient Roman was

particularly wanted and would fetch the highest price; and as the

band consisted of men of genius of different tastes or faculties,--

poetical, historical or narrative, philosophical, grammatical or

critical, and scientific or mathematical, if the reward was

sufficiently munificent to pay for the time and labour, the highly

valued work that was wanted, no matter to what department of

literature or science it belonged, was sure to turn up, sooner or

later; and if the man who was to forge was not in the proper mood

of inspiration for the business, some other fabricated writer was

put forward on the ground that he was quite equivalent in merit to

the author that was desiderated, as when a thief or other vagabond

is wanted by a London Detective, he is certain to turn up in due

time, and if not the actual delinquent, at any rate somebody else

as bad, who serves equally well for the culprit.

VII. Bracciolini now engaged in forging an addition to the History

of Tacitus, impelled to it from his intolerable and restless

passion for the acquisition of a fortune, greater even than his

constantly increasing avidity for knowledge, soon saw that it was

a task beset by enormous difficulties; nay, difficulties of an

apparently insuperable nature. We have no record that he was aware

of this; but we require no record to know it; his proceedings

pointed to it: We have already speculated as to the reasons which

must have induced him to forge the Annals so strangely as he did,

but before those reasons could have entered his mind, they must

have been preceded by others: it is to be presumed that he

endeavoured, in the first instance, to continue the History of

Tacitus, as Tacitus himself would have continued it, by following

up the history of Domitian with that of Nerva; but the few

materials that were left rendered it impossible for him to record

the events in that Emperor's reign on the broad and expansive plan

adopted by Tacitus, which was to spread out the events of one year

so that they should fill four lengthy books. He therefore gave up

the notion as utterly impracticable; but in trying to get out of

the forgery of the Annals he suggested another scheme of

fabrication just as audacious, and which he seems to have imagined

would have been just as remunerative.

Two months after he had written for Ptolemy's maps, Plutarch's

Lives, and the works of Suetonius and other historians of the

first Roman Emperors, he addressed another letter to his

Florentine friend, Niccoli, dated the 8th of January, 1424, in

which he hinted at no less a forgery than the whole of Livy's

History, and if circumstances had been favourable to it, we should

have, doubtless, had a composition so like the original,--even so

much more like than even what was afterwards honourably and

admirably done by Freinshemius,--as to have defied detection. His

statement was that a learned Goth, who had been a great traveller,

had told him he had seen the Ten Decades of Livy's History in the

Cistercian Abbey of Sora, near Roschild, about a day's journey

from Lubeck. He wrote in the highest spirits, as gay as a

butterfly, as playful as a kitten, and as light as a balloon; he

implored his friend to lose no time in seeking out Cosmo de Medici

and get his consent for the finding of these volumes, which he

described as written in two large, oblong volumes in Lombard

characters. He added that the man who had brought the news was not

to be relied upon, yet he wished to believe him in a matter "out

of which coin could be made to such an amount as to be absolutely

incredible,"--"ex qua tantum lucrum fieri posset, quam esse omnino

incredulus" (Ep. II. 9).

He wished it to be further communicated to Leonardo Bruni who had

just been appointed Chancellor of the Republic of Florence, in

hopes, no doubt, that Bruni would further the scheme by money

assistance; he also wrote about it to Leonello d'Este;--all which

eagerness on his part with respect to forging the lost books of

Livy can be easily accounted for, when, in exchange for a mere

copy of Livy's imperfect history he got from Beccadelli of

Bologna, the minister of King Alphonso I. of Arragon, a sum

sufficient wherewith to purchase a landed estate:--"Poggio

vendette un codice di Tito Livio per acquistarsi un podere, e il

Panormita vendette un podere per acquistare il codice di Tito

Livio" (Corniani, tom. II. p. 122). Although, for the purpose of

making a statement with a telling or striking effect, these are

the words of Count Corniani in his "I Secoli della Letteratura

Italiana," it was not exactly "a farm" that was taken and given by

the accepter and disposer of a manuscript copy of Livy; Count

Corniani himself is immediately his own contradicter by quoting in

a note a passage from one of Beccadelli's Letters (Lib. V.), to

the effect that the "farm" in Bracciolini's case was a "villa at

Florence," as Beccadelli thus wrote to King Alphonso: "But I also

want to know who in your judgment acted wiser, Poggio or myself;

he, that he might buy a _villa at Florence_, sold a Livy

which he had written with his own hand and was a most beautiful

copy; I, that I might buy a Livy, sold a farm by auction":--"Sed

et illud a prudentia tua scire desidero, uter ego an Poggius

melius fecerit: is ut _Villam Florentiae_ emerit, Livium

vendidit, quem sua manu pulcherrimus scripserat; ego ut Livium

emam, fundum proscripsi." If Bracciolini could get so much for an

incomplete copy of Livy's History, what might he not hope to get

for a complete one? Imagination wanders into the realms of fairy.

I am confident that if he had received the requisite encouragement

from Niccolo Niccoli, or Leonardo Bruni, or Cosmo de Medici, or

that munificent patron of letters, Leonello d' Este, afterwards

that enormously wealthy prince, the Marquis of Ferrara, and had

undertaken the task, he would have been more successful as an

imitator of Livy than he proved himself to be (marvellous though

he was) as an imitator of Tacitus. The genius of Livy, and also of

Sallust, was more in accord with his own than the staid majestic

coldness and the solemn curt sententiousness of Tacitus. Indeed,

he was such a devoted admirer of Livy and Sallust, that he reminds

the reader of them throughout his History of Florence; in the

Annals, too, he goes out of his way to lavish praises upon them,

and upon them only of all the Roman historians: he speaks of

Sallust as the "finest writer of Roman history": and of Livy, as

"famous, above others, for eloquence and fidelity":--"Caius

Sallustius, rerum Romanarum florentissimus auctor" (III. 30):--

"Titus Livius, eloquentiae ac fidei praeclarus in primis" (IV.

34). Tacitus nowhere expresses such very lofty opinions of his,

two fellow and rival historians; on the contrary, he does not seem

to have so thoroughly approved their style and manner; at any

rate, he carefully avoided their mode of treating history. It is

true that in his Agricola he speaks well of Livy, but at the same

time he places Fabius Rusticus exactly upon the same level with

him:--for he says "that Livy among the ancients, and Fabius

Rusticus among the modern authors were the most eloquent": "Livius

veterum, Fabius Rusticus recentium, eloquentissimi auctores" (10);

he, therefore, never could have spoken of Livy, as Bracciolini

speaks of him in the Annals, as "famous, _above others,_"--

"praeclarus _in primis_." This is another of those little

slips of Bracciolini's, which, without question, at once, bring

his forgery to light.

VIII. After these remarks, it cannot but be highly interesting to

the reader if I now place before him the whole of the very

remarkable, and what should be ever-memorable letter about the

contemplated forgery of Livy, not only for the subject on which it

touches, but as exhibiting Bracciolini in his most playful, and,

it may also be added, most roguish mood:--

"A learned man who is a Goth in race, and has travelled over a

great part of the world, has been here; he is a man of a good

understanding, but unreliable. He said that he had seen the X.

Decades of Livy, in two big and oblong volumes written in Lombard

characters, and there was on the title page of one volume a note

that the codex contained the ten decades of Titus Livy, and that

he had read some parts of these volumes. This he asserts with an

air of truth that commands belief; he told the same tale to

Cardinal Orsini, and to many more, and to all in the very same

words, so that I think this is no fib of his. What more do you

want? This statement of his, and his serious countenance, cause me

to give some credence to him. For it is a very good thing to be

misled in a matter of this kind, out of which coin can be made to

such an amount as to be absolutely incredible. Therefore I have

wanted to write to you about this, that you may talk over it with

Cosmo, and anxiously set to work for these volumes to be searched

for; it will be an easy job for you. The books are in the

Monastery at Sora that belongs to the Cistercian Order, about two

German miles from Roschild, that is, a little more than a day's

journey from Lubeek. Prick up your ears, Pamphilus. Two volumes

big, oblong, in Lombard characters, are in the monastery at Sora

that belongs to the Cistercian Order, about two German miles from

Roschild, and to be reached from Lubeek in two days or so. See

then that Cosmo writes as soon as possible to Gherard de Bueri,

for him to betake himself there when he has the opportunity,--aye,

betake himself at once to the Monastery. For if this is true, it

will be a triumph over the Dacians. The Cardinal will send

somebody there, or commission a person to start post-haste. I

don't want such a big pill as this to slip out of our own throats;

therefore, be on the stir, look alive, and don't sleep over it.

For this is just what the man has stated, and though he might seem

to talk too fast, yet there is no reason why he should tell an

impudent lie, especially as he can gain nothing by telling lies.

Therefore, I, who am such a sort of man as scarcely to believe

what I see, am induced to think that this is not entirely false,

and in a matter of this kind it is a proper thing to be deceived.

Run then to Cosmo,--press him,--importune him to make an advance

for these books to be brought to you safe and sharp. Adieu. Rome,

the 8th of January, 1424. What you do, mind you let me know. In

haste. Tell this to our Chancellor, Leonardo. In that monastery

nearly all the kings of the Dacians are buried:"--

"Venit huc quidam doctus homo natione Gothus, qui peragravit

magnam partem orbis; homo quidem est ingenio acuto, sed

inconstans. Idem retulit se vidisse X. decades Livii, duobus

voluminibus magnis, et oblongis, scriptas litteris Longobardis, et

in titulo esse unius voluminis, in eo contineri decem decades Titi

Livii, seque legisse nonnulla in iis voluminibus. Hoc ita verum

esse asserit, ut credi possit; retulit hoc Cardinali de Ursinis,

multisque praeterea, et omnibus eisdem verbis, ut opinor, non esse

haec ab eo conficta. Quid quaeris? Facit assertio sua, et constans

vultus, ut credam aliquid. Melius est enim peccare in hanc partem,

ex qua tantum lucrum fieri posset, quam esse omnino incredulus.

Itaque volui hoc ad te scribere, ut loquaris cum Cosmo, desque

solicite operam, ut haec volumina quaerantur; nam facile erit

vobis. Libri sunt in Monasterio de Sora, ordinis Cisterciensium,

prope Roschild ad duo milliaria theutonica, hoc est, prope Lubich

paulo amplius quam est iter diei unius. Arrige aures, Pamphile.

Duo sunt volumina, magna, oblonga, litteris Longobardis, in

Monasterio de Sora, ordinis Cisterciensium, prope Roschild, ad duo

milliaria theutonica, quo adiri potest a Lubich biduo amplius.

Cura ergo, ut Cosmus scribat quam primum diligenter ad Gherardum

de Bueris, ut, si opus sit, ipse eo se conferat; imo omnino se

conferat ad Monasterium. Nam si hoc verum est, triumphandum erit

de Dacis. Cardinalis mittet illuc nescio quem, aut committet uni

propediem discessuro. Nollem hunc tantum bolum de faucibus nostris

cadere; itaque matura, ac diligenter; ne dormias. Nam haec vir

ille ita affirmavit, ut quamvis verbosior videretur, tamen nulla

esset causa, cur ita impudenter mentiretur, praesertim nullo

proposito mentiendi praemio. Ego igitur ille, qui vix credo quae

video, adducor, ut hoc non omnino esse falsum putem, et hac una in

re honestum est falli. Tu igitur curre, insta, preme Cosmum, ut

aliquid expendat, quo litterae cito tutae deferantur. Vale. Romae

die VIII. Januarii 1424. Quid autem egeritis, cura, ut sciam. Manu

veloci. Dicas haec Leonardo nostro Cancellario. In eo monasterio

omnes fere Dacorum reges sepeliuntur." (Lib. II. Ep. 9.)

I cannot pass away from this singular letter without some comment.

It is very certain that there never was known to have been any

such copy of Livy in the Monastery of Sora, though Tiraboschi, who

is simple enough to believe in the sincerity of Bracciolini,

speaks of these volumes as having shared the same fate as other

manuscripts, that is, being lost:--"questo si raro codice ha avuta

la stessa sorte degli altri" (Vol. I. p. 452 n.). We may be

assured that the "two big, oblong volumes" never had an

existence:--the two volumes, like Sir John Falstaff's men in

buckram, increase in number in the telling, for in a subsequent

letter addressed by Bracciolini to Leonello d'Este, the "two"

become "THREE": what is more, the learned Goth's "serious

statement" is "a sacred oath"; the "Lombard characters" are

intermixed with some "Gothic" ones, and "another person" is found

who declares that he has also seen the whole of the Decades of

Livy:--"Nicolaus quidam, natione Gothus ... _sancte juravit_

esse ... TRIA praegrandia volumina, et oblonga, conscripta literis

Longobardis et nonnullis praeterea _Gothicis_ intermixtis ...

nunc quoque _alius testis_ horum librorum reperiatur, qui se

quoque decades omnes vidisse asseveret" (Pog. Ep. XXX., post lib.

De Variet. Fortun.). After this one is almost inclined to exclaim

with Shakespeare's Prince Hal: "Prithee, let him alone: we shall

have more anon." Where there is such inconsistency in the putting

of a statement, the account looks uncommonly like a figment. We

may be equally sure that the learned Goth never had an existence,

any more than the "two" volumes, or the "three" volumes; (for,

with the different statements, it is difficult to determine their

number), nor, consequently, can there be any truth about the

communication made by the Goth to Cardinal Orsini, and many

others.

It will have been observed also that Bracciolini himself insists

on the probable myth of the whole tale; the learned Goth is

"unreliable"; he maintains that he is "telling no fib";

Bracciolini doubts himself whether what he hears is "true," but he

can "see no reason why the man should lie": thus repeatedly in a

very short letter he strongly suspects the veracity of the story--

he only believes it because he wishes to believe it.

The whole thing was trumped up by himself for a very obvious

reason: he wanted to ascertain whether Cosmo de' Medici (or any

other rich man) would give money (in fact, a fortune,) for the

recovered portion of the whole History of Livy: that being

ascertained, he had his own scheme of further procedure; he kept

that to himself; it has died with him, and, never having been

revealed, it can only be divined:--my conjecture (looking at the

character of Bracciolini) is that he would have played upon the

credulity of Cosmo de' Medici, Leonardo Bruni, Leonello d'Este (or

any other man whom he could have duped) till he had had time,

which would have been years, to forge what he would have continued

to assert, until the completion of the forgery, was in existence

somewhere in Germany, a mistake only having been made by the

"learned Goth" as to the name and site of the monastery. Hence his

speaking of that imaginary individual as "unreliable,"--or

whatever else he may mean by "inconstans,"--a word that he uses to

denote a man who might fall into mistakes, as, for example, in not

recollecting the exact name or precise situation of a monastery,

but who could not possibly err as to the nature of a book which he

had seen, handled, opened and read, and had learning to understand

what he read.

IX. Notwithstanding the enthusiasm and energy, as well as the

craft and force, with which he laid the foundation for its

acceptance, nothing came of this grand determination--this

indirect proposal of his to produce by imposture the whole lost

portion of the history of Livy; so whether he liked it or not, if

he wanted to get a sum equivalent in these days to a little

fortune of £10,000 at the least, he had to return to the

fabrication of the Annals of Tacitus; and get through the

ungrateful task as best he could. So, "hanging down his ears," as

Horace says,

"ut iniquae mentis asellus,

Cum gravius dorso subiit onus,"

he steadily set to work in the January of 1424, with a patient

soul and an iron will to the completion of the dolorous drudgery

from which he had ascertained to his sorrow there was no escape.

All went on for months,--for years in silence and secresy, as the

case always is when mischief is brewing. Upwards of three years

and a half thus elapsed; then the low and hidden rumblings of the

volcano were again heard; once more vague and mysterious

utterances with respect to Tacitus passed in their correspondence

between Bracciolini and Niccoli. Two years,--or nearly that time,--

again passed: then followed the pangs of labour from the womb of

forgery: through the hands of Bracciolini came a hitherto

thoroughly unknown MS. of Tacitus, which he said had been brought

to him by a monk from a far distant convent in the easternmost

corner of Saxony, on the borders of Bohemia; (the reader will be

pleased to observe not "Hungary" although the country adjacent to

it;--so circumstances shift and vary, in the lapse of years, and

owing to the inconstancy of men's intentions). The new codex was

an affair at once startling and gratifying: it was such a triumph

over darkness in the progress of knowledge that it rivalled a

conquest over the Dacians in the march of civilization: for the

first time it brought to light as the opening portion of the

History of Tacitus what are now known as "The Last Six Books of

the Annals." These I shall now endeavour to point out were the

handiwork of Bracciolini, to whose wondrous power of assimilating

his literary abilities to those of another I must pay this just

tribute;--that in those six books of the Annals he mastered the

simplicity, though he came far short of the elegance of Tacitus.

END OF BOOK THE SECOND.

BOOK THE THIRD.

THE LAST SIX BOOKS OF THE ANNALS.

Quum itaque multa ex Taciti operibus deessent, ut Nicoli

voluntati morem gereret Poggius, nil omisit intentatum, ut per

Monachum nescio quem è Germania Tacitum erueret.

MEHUS, _Praefat. ad Lat. Epistol. Traversarii._

CHAPTER I.

THE CHARACTER OF BRACCIOLINI.

I. The audacity of the forgery accounted for by the mean opinion

Bracciolini had of the intelligence of men.--II. The character and

tone of the last Six Books of the Annals exemplified by what is

said of Sabina Poppaea, Sagitta, Pontia and Messalina.--III. A few

errors that must have proceeded from Bracciolini about the

Colophonian Oracle of Apollo Clarius, the Household Gods of the

Germans, Gotarzes, Bardanes and, above all, Nineveh.--IV. The

estimate taken of human nature by the writer of the Annals the

same as that taken by Bracciolini.--V. The general depravity of

mankind as shown in the Annals insisted upon in Bracciolini's

Dialogue "De Infelicitate Principum".

I. There is a great difference between the first six books of the

Annals and the last six books; the latter portion is more historical,

and less biographical than the first portion: there is an obvious

attempt to assimilate it as closely as possible to the work of

Tacitus; and any material difference in the character of the two

productions is not to be detected at a superficial glance.

Hence many most intelligent readers are led astray in believing

that the Annals and the History of Tacitus proceeded from the same

hand, from not sufficiently bearing in mind that whatever a

history may be, the general character must always be the same;

plots and intrigues being alike, as well as stratagems and

revolutions; also persons and passions: the reason is clear: man

ever remains the same, affording the same examples of virtues and

vices, and carrying on wars in the same way, according to interest

and ambition, while the most important events in which he plays a

part resemble in having their origin from trivial causes, as

rivers, even the mightiest, take their source from insignificant

springs.

But while nobody discerns any such material difference in the

character of the Annals and the History of Tacitus as to be struck

with wonder, everybody is filled with amazement at there being in

the two works two such very different conceptions of historical

composition. In the History only full light is thrown on important

events and leading characters: that this may shine the brighter

every common action is thrown into the shade, and every small

individual passed over unmentioned. But the pages in the last six

books of the Annals are crowded with incidents, great and small,

and figures, good, bad and indifferent. Contrary also to Tacitus,

who disposes materials in a just order, arranging those together

that refer to the same thing at different times, the writer of the

Annals speaks of cognate things, that should be associated,

separately, as they occur from year to year, thus reducing his

narrative from the height of a general history to the level of a

mere diary.

The audacity of the forgery is here something absolutely

marvellous;--and it never would have been attempted by any one who

was not made of the stuff of Bracciolini: it was the stuff that

makes a forger: anyone with proper appreciation of men's

intelligence would not have dared to do this; but, instead of

regarding the majority of his kind as sagacious, or even more so

than they are, and knowing much, or more than they do,--as is the

case with well-disposed people,--Bracciolini, who was far from

being of a benevolent nature, fell into the very opposite extreme,

of looking upon men as remarkably stupid and ignorant. Nothing is

more common than meeting in his works with contemptuous

disparagements of his kind; he scoffs at human nature for its

deficiency of understanding; he does not hesitate decrying its

want of thought, as in his Essay "De Miseriâ Humanae Conditionis":

"we must at times recollect," says he, "that we are men, silly

and shallow in our nature":--"aliquando nos esse homines meminerimus,

hoc est, imbecillis fragilisque naturae" (p. 130); or, "I admit

the silliness of mankind to be great": "fateor--magnam esse humani

generis imbecillitatem" (p. 90); or, "Knowledge is cultivated

by a few on account of the general stupidity": "quoniam communi

stultitia a paucis virtus colitur" (p. 9l): pretty well this for

one work. Then opening his "Historia Disceptativa Convivalis,"

the reader lights on him sneering at the "shallowness and silliness

of his age":--"haec fragilis atque imbecilla aetas" (p. 32). As in

his elaborate and carefully conned works, so in his Epistles thrown

off on the spur of the moment,--as when he is inviting his friend

Bartolomeo Fazio to stay with him in Florence, he continues: "Though

I have lived in this city now for a great many years, from my youth

upwards, yet every day as if a fresh resident I am overcome with

amazement at the number of the remarkable objects, and very often

am roused to enthusiasm at the sight of those public buildings which

fools, from the stupidity of their understandings, speak of as erected

by supernatural beings":--"quamvis in ea jam pluribus annis ab ipsa

juventute fuerim versatus, tamen quotidie tamquam novus incola

tantarum rerum admiratione obstupesco, recreoque persaepe animum

visu eorum aedificiorum, quae stulti propter ingenii imbecillitatem

a daemonibus facta dicunt" (Ep. IX. Bartol. Facii Epist. p. 79, Flor.

Ed. 1745).

II. With such a low notion of men's intelligence and the stupidity

of his age (though it was a clever one,--at least, so far as Italy

was concerned, the country of which he had the closest knowledge

and with which he had the most constant intercourse), it is to be

expected,--quite natural, in fact, that he should have regarded

lightly the difficulties he had to encounter in his endeavours to

imitate Tacitus; and though he must have been thoroughly conscious

that it was not in his power victoriously to surmount them, yet he

cared not, for he did not fear detection, viewing, as he did, with

such withering and lordly disdain the want of perspicacity which,

in his fancy, characterized his species. He worked on, then, as

best he could, with courage and confidence; every now and then

doing things that never would have been done by Tacitus: the

story, for example, of Sabina Poppaea in the 14th book; Tacitus

would have surely passed it over as, though having some relation

to the public, coming within the province of biography.

Unquestionably, Tacitus would have rejected as strictly

unhistorical the dark tale of murder and adultery of the tribune

of the people, Sagitta, and the private woman, Pontia, which has

no more to do with the historical affairs of the Romans, than a

villainous case of adultery in the Divorce Court, or a monstrous

murder tried at the Old Bailey is in any way connected with the

public transactions of Great Britain. [Endnote 231]

What history, then, we have in the last six books of the Annals

does not remind us in its character of the history taken note of

by Tacitus.

The tone and treatment, too, are not his.

The Jesuit, Réné Rapin, in his Comparisons of the Great Men of

Antiquity (Réflexions sur l'Histoire, p. 211), may, with a violent

seizure of ecstacy, fall, like a genuine Frenchman, into a fit of

enthusiasm over the description, as "exquisite in delicacy and

elegance" ("tout y est décrit dans une délicatesse et dans une

élégance exquise" says he), of the lascivious dancing of Messalina

and her wanton crew of Terpsichorean revellers when counterfeiting

the passions and actions of the phrenzied women-worshippers of

Bacchus celebrating a vintage in the youth of the world, when the

age was considered to be as good as gold: the gay touches in the

lively picture may be introduced with sufficient warmth to

enrapture the chaste Jesuit priest, and judiciously enough to

contrast boldly with the dreadful, tragic details of the shortly

ensuing death of the Empress; but they are not circumstances that

would have ever emanated with their emotional particularities from

the solemn soul of Tacitus. The passage is only another powerful

proof how absolutely ineffectual was the attempt of Bracciolini to

render history after the style of the stern, majestic Roman.

III. Every now and then, too, the most extraordinary errors with

respect to facts cannot be explained by the hypothesis that

Tacitus wrote the Annals; for there could not have been such

deviations from truth on the part of any Roman who lived in the

time of the first Caesars: on the other hand, the errors are just

of the character which makes it look uncommonly as if they were

the unhappy blunders of a mediaeval or Renaissance writer such as

Bracciolini. An instance or two will best illustrate what is

meant.

In the Twelfth Book Lollia Paulina is made to consult the

Colophonian Oracle of Apollo Clarius respecting the nuptials of

the Emperor Claudius: "interrogatumque _Apollinis Clarii

simulacrum_ super nuptiis Imperatoris" (An. XII. 22). How could

this be? when Strabo, who lived in the time of Augustus, tells us

that in his day that oracle no longer existed, only the fame of

it, for his words are: "the grove of Apollo Clarius, in which

there used to be the ancient oracle":--[Greek: "alsos tou Klariou

Apollonos, en ho kai manteion aen pote palaion"] (XIV. I. 27).

This is quite convincing that Tacitus could not have written those

words.

There is another reason against Tacitus having made the statement:

he must have been aware from personal knowledge that his

countrymen obtained all their oracular responses from water.

Bracciolini might have known that this custom prevailed among the

Romans during the time of the Caesars, had he consulted Lucian's

Alexander or Pseudomantis, Melek (better known as Porphyry), and,

above all, Jamblicus, who, in his book upon Egyyptian, Chaldaean

and Assyrian Mysteries, speaks (III. 11) of the habit among the

Romans of "interpreting the divine will by water": [Greek: di

hudatos chraematizesthai], and explains the manner how, "for in a

subterraneous temple" (by which, I presume, Jamblicus means a

"sanctified cave or grotto") there was a fountain, from which the

augur drank," [Greek: einai gar paegaen en oiko katageio, kai ap

autaes pinein ton prophaetaen.] How can we believe that Tacitus

was ignorant of such an ordinary native ceremony, and one, too,

that must have come repeatedly within his ken?

Another error is, apparently, very trifling, but it becomes quite

startling when we are to suppose that it was made by Tacitus, an

accepted authority upon the people in question,--the ancient

Germans of the first century of our aera:--that people who

(according to Sanson's Maps and Geographical Tables) inhabited

what was then known as "Germany," namely, the country between the

Danube and the Rhine, with Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the western

portion of Poland and some part of the kingdom of Hungary,--are

represented as having HOUSEHOLD GODS, for we are told that if

Italicus had had the spirit of his father (Flavius, brother of

Armin), he would have done what his parent did, wage war more

rancorously than any man, against his country and his "Household

Gods"; "Si paterna Italico mens esset, non alium infensius coutra

patriam ac _Deos Penates_, quam parentes ejus exercuisse"

(An. XV. 16). Into this mistake Tacitus could not possibly have

fallen, from being thoroughly acquainted with the manners of the

Germans, as he has shown in his work on that subject: he knew that

that people had only one set of gods whom they worshipped publicly

in sacred groves and woods, but none corresponding to the Roman

Dei Penetrales, privately worshipped at home.

We have read scarcely more than a page from the commencement of

that portion of the Annals where the forgery began,--the Eleventh

Book,--before we find that a mistake is made about Gotarzes being

the brother of Artabanus: for he is described as having

"compounded poison for the particular purpose of killing his

'brother' Artabanus and his wife and son": "necem fratri Artabano

conjugique ac filio ejus praeparaverat" (An. XI. 8). Artabanus was

the father, as may be seen in Josephus: "not long after Artabanus

died, leaving his kingdom to his son Vardanes: [Greek: "Met' ou

polun de chronon Artabanos telueta, taen Basileian to paidi

Ouardanae katalipon"] (Antiq. Jud. XX. 3, 4 in init). Vardanes

(according to Josephus), but (according to other writers) Bardanes

was the brother of Gotarzes; as was known to Bracciolini who

speaks of "Gotarzes revealing to his brother," meaning Bardanes,

"a conspiracy of their countrymen which had been disclosed to

him": "cognitis popularium insidiis, quas Gotarzes _fratri_

patefecerat" (An. XI. 9). It cannot be said that Bracciolini was

unacquainted with Josephus; for he follows him closely in the last

six books of the Annals; further he mentions him in his letters,

for he says that he has been "a long while waiting for his works,"

(to make use of them in his forgery): "Jamdiu expectavi Josephi

libros," &c. (Ep. III. 28): his memory, notwithstanding, entirely

failed him with respect to the passage in question, or else he

paid no heed to it.

While he makes this misstatement about Gotarzes and Artabanus he

falls into another blunder with respect to Bardanes: he circumscribes

the limit of his reign to less than one twelvemonth,--the year when

the Secular Games were celebrated which, according to his own account,

was the year 800 from the Foundation of Rome, or the year 47 of the

Christian Aera ("Ludi Saeculares octingesimo post Romam conditam ...

spectati sunt." An. XI. 11).

Soon after his accession Bardanes, (according to the narrative we

have of him in the Annals), found a rebel in his brother Gotarzes,

who waged war against him, defeated him, and, gaining his kingdom,

had him assassinated by a body of Parthians, who "killed him in

his very earliest youth while he was engaged in hunting and not

anticipating any harm:" "incautum venationique intentum interfecere

primam intra juventam" (An. XI. 10). All these circumstances are

made to occur in such rapid succession to each other that they

occupied only one year, if so much; for they are all shown as

taking place during the consulship of Valerius Asiaticus and

Valerius Messalla.

Now let the reader turn to the Life of Apollonius of Tyana by

Philostratus. He will there see that the Magician of Cappadocia on

his arrival in Babylon was told that Bardanes had been reigning

two years and as many months; Apollonius stopped in the palace of

the king twenty months; then he started on a tour to India; he

travelled about the Asiatic Peninsula for a considerable time;

next he went on a visit to the Brahmins with whom he staid four

months; after that he returned to Babylon, where he found Bardanes

as he had left him, still king and in the enjoyment of excellent

health. It is necessary that I should substantiate this by

extracts from Philostratus. In a conversation with one of the

king's courtiers Apollonius asks the question: "What year that was

since Bardanes had recovered his kingdom?" and received the reply

that it was "the third, two months of which they had already

reached": [Greek: "poston de dae touto etos tae anaktaetheisae

archae; pritou, ephae, haptometha duo aedae pou maenes"] (I. 28):

in another conversation with Damis Apollonius says that he "is off

to India"; that he has been staying at the court "already a year

and four months"; though "the king will not let him take his

departure until the completion of the eighth month": [Greek: age,

o Dami, es Indous iomen ... eniautos gar haemin aedae, kai

tettares ... oude anaesei haemas ... ho Basilaeus proteron, ae ton

ogdoon telesai maena]: the biographer then speaking of the visit

to the Brahmins, says that Apollonius spent four months with

them": [Greek: maenon tettaron ekei diatripsanti]: and "on his

return to Babylon he found Bardanes as he had left him," that is,

on the throne and in the enjoyment of health: [Greek: es Babylona

... anapleusai para ton Ouardanon, kai tuchontes auton oion

egignoskon] (III. 58).

We have proof positive here that Bardanes sat on the throne of

Babylon for at least four years and a half; quite contrary to the

account in the Annals. Philostratus is generally regarded as a

most reliable writer of antiquity; we may be, therefore, tolerably

certain, from the look out given us in the pages of the historian

of Lemnos, that Bardanes did not die, as we are told in the

Annals, in his earliest youth by assassination after a short reign

of less than one year, but that he reigned long, lived to a good

old age, and died a natural death.

One more example of this kind, which almost seems to bring home

the forgery to Bracciolini; and then we will pass on to other

matters (for the present).