Nowhere in his works do I find that Bracciolini makes any

reference to Lucian or Strabo, or even mentions their names. I

think if he had read them, he would have known better than to have

spoken of Nineveh being in existence in the reign of the Emperor

Claudius, because this is the reverse of what we are told by

Lucian and Strabo. For all that, we hear in the Annals of troops

"along their march capturing the City of Nineveh, that most

ancient capital of Assyria": "Capta in transitu urbis Ninos

vetustissima sedes Assyriae" (An. XII. 13). In Lucian's amusing

Dialogue, entitled "Charon," when Mercury points out the tomb of

Achilles on Cape Sigaeum and that of Ajax on the Rhoetaean

promontory, Charon wants to see Nineveh, with Troy, Babylon,

Mycenae, and Cleone, the following being the conversation; "I want

to point out to you," says Mercury, "the tomb of Achilles: you see

it on the sea? That's Cape Sigaeum in the Troad: and on the

Rhoetaean promontory opposite Ajax is buried. CHAR. Those tombs, O

Hermes, are no great sights. Rather point out to me those renowned

cities, of which I have heard below,--Nineveh, the capital of

Sardanapalus, Babylon, Mycenae, Cleone and that famous Troy, on

account of which I remember ferrying across there such numbers

that for ten whole years my skiff was never high and dry and never

caught cold," (that being Charon's fun, according to Lucian's

conception, in conveying that all that long time his boat was

_in the water_ (hence "catching cold") from being perpetually

used: [Greek: "Thelo soi deixai ton tou Achilleos taphon, horas

ton epi tae thalattae; Sigeion men ekeino to Troikon, antikru de

ho Aias tethattai en to Rhoiteio. CHAR. Ou megaloi, o Hermae, oi

taphoi tas poleis de tas episaemous deixon moi aedae, has kato

akouomen taen Ninon taen Sardanapalou, kai Babulona, kai Mukaenas,

kai Kleonas, kai taen Ilion autaen, pollous goun memnaemai

diaporthmensas ekeithen, hos deka oloneon maede neolkaesai, maede

diapsuxai to skaphidion."] The reply that then follows of Mercury

shows that not a remnant was left of Nineveh in the very ancient

time of Croesus, and that nobody even then knew of its site:

"Nineveh, O Ferryman, is quite destroyed, and not a trace of it is

left now, nor can you tell where it used to be": [Greek: "Hae

Minos men, o porthmen, apololen aedae, kai ouden ichnos eti loipon

autaes oud an eipois hopou pot' ae"] (Charon 23). Strabo says the

same with respect to the destruction of Nineveh: "The city of

Nineveh was thereupon demolished simultaneously with the

overthrowal of the Syrians: [Greek: Hae men oun Ninos polis

aephanisthae parachraema meta taen ton Suron katalusin"] (XVI. I.3),

--though to speak of the inhabitants as "Syrians," at such a

juncture is hardly correct language on the part of Strabo; it

should have been "_Assyrians_," if Justin is right in saying

that that people only took the name of _Syrians_ after their

empire was at an end: "for thirteen hundred years," says he, "did

the Assyrians, who were _afterwards called the Syrians_,

retain their empire": "Imperium Assyrii, qui _postea Syri dicti

sunt_, mille trecentis annis tenuere" (Justin I. 2).

Had Bracciolini been acquainted with these things, they would have

made such an impression upon his mind that he could never have

forgotten them. But as he wrote ancient history in the fifteenth

century, and did not know what Lucian and Strabo had said of

Nineveh, he took as an authority for his statement a most

indifferent historian who flourished towards the close of the

fourth century of our aera, Ammianus Marcellinus; for I know of

nobody but Marcellinus, who makes this statement; nor is there

likely to be anybody else, because the statement is ridiculous. It

will be remembered that Bracciolini recovered the work of Ammianus

Marcellinus: it is then reasonable to presume that he had read, if

not studied his history. Indeed, there can be very little doubt

that it was Marcellinus who misled him: for when he was setting

about the forgery and importunately soliciting Niccoli to supply

him with books for that purpose in the autumn of 1423, Ammianus

Marcellinus was one of these authorities: in the letter dated the

6th of November that year, he says he was "glad that his friend

had done with Marcellinus, and would be still more glad if he

would send him the book": "Gratum est mihi te absolvisse

Marcellinum, idque gratius si me librum miseris" (Ep. II. 7). We

may be certain the book, being "done with" by Niccoli, was sent to

him on account of the importance of his having it, for the

carrying out of his undertaking; thus he makes Tacitus commit the

same mistake as Marcellinus committed,--that Nineveh was in

existence in the time of the Roman Emperors: "In Adiabena is the

city of Nineveh, which in olden time had possessed an extensive

portion of Persia"; "In Adiabena Ninus EST civitas quae olim

Persidis magna possederat" (XXIII. 6). Tacitus lived a good three

hundred years before that historical epitomist of not much note or

weight; and could not, on his authority, have been dragged, like

his "discoverer" and student, Bracciolini, into this monstrous

error.

IV. But it is in the estimate of human nature, and the invariable

disparagement pervading the delineation of the character of every

individual, in the last six books of the Annals, that the Italian

hand of Bracciolini is unmistakably detected, and the Roman hand

of Tacitus not at all traceable. Shakespeare makes Iago say of

himself: "I am nothing if not critical,"--meaning censorious.

Bracciolini might have said the same of himself. He was never so

much "at home," (by which I mean that he never seemed to have been

so completely "happy"), as when lashing the anti-pope Felix,

Filelfo, Valla, George of Trebizond, Guarino of Verona, or some

other great literary rival of whose fame he was jealous; carping

at others, whose intellectual attainments were at all commensurate

to his own, and accusing of foul enormities persons who were

possessors of rhetorical merit, as he accused the "Fratres

Observantiae," for no other reason that one can see except that

those interlopers in the monastic order (the "Brothers of

Observance" being a new branch of the Franciscans) preached

capital sermons.

There is no getting at any insight as to his nature from the

biographies of him; they are all such faint and imperfect

sketches: we learn nothing of him from that curiosity of

literature, L'Enfant's astonishing performance, "Poggiana"--in

which the pages and the blunders contend for supremacy in number,

and the blunders get it,--nor from that bald, cold business,

entitled "Vita Poggii," which Recanati, flinging aside brilliancy

and clinging fast to fidelity in facts and plainness of speech,

prefixed to his edition of Bracciolini's "Historia Florentina,"

published at Venice in 1715, and which Muratori, sixteen years

after, reprinted at Milan along with the said "History of

Florence, in the 20th volume of his "Rerum Italicarum

Scriptores;"--nor from the Rev. William Shepherd's innocent

affair, "The Life of Poggio Bracciolini"; but the deficiencies of

the biographers have been supplied by a true man of genius,

Poliziano, who has hit off his character in a noun substantive and

an adjective in the superlative. In his History of the Pazzi and

Salviati Conspiracy against Lorenzo de' Medici,--which plot to

overthrow the government Bracciolini's third son, Jacopo, joined,

and was hanged for his pains in front of the first floor windows

of that Prince's palace,--Poliziano says that Jacopo Bracciolini

was "specially remarkable for calumny," in which respect," adds

the historian, "he was exactly like his father, who was a MOST

CALUMNIOUS MAN:"--"Ejus praecipua in maledicendo virtus, in qua

vel patrem HOMINEM MALEDICENTISSIMUM referebat" (Politiani Opera,

p. 637).

Such being the character of Bracciolini, I may glance aside for a

moment to observe that nothing can be more incongruous than that

his statue, which his countrymen originally placed in the portico

of the Church of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence (because he had

praised them in his history of their city and abused all

foreigners), should have been transferred in 1560 by the reigning

Duke of Tuscany into the interior of the sacred building and

placed among the figures of the Twelve Apostles, where it still

remains, the ungodly "Poggio" forming a grotesque portion of the

saintly group.

If the son was such an exact counterpart of the father in evil-

speaking, as borne testimony to by that admirable and accurate

historian, Poliziano, it follows that Bracciolini confirmed by his

tongue and pen the words put by Shakespeare into the mouth of the

Duke in "Measure for Measure":

"Back-wounding calumny

The whitest virtue strikes: What king so strong

Can tie the gall up in a slanderous tongue?"

Indeed, if faith is to be placed in what Poliziano says, then

Bracciolini was, like Thersites in the Iliad, a "systematic

calumniator of kings and princes, while at the same time he must

have indiscriminately inveighed against the characters of private

individuals, run down the productions of all learned men, and, in

fact, vilified everybody"; for that is exactly the estimate formed

of him by Poliziano:--"Semper ille aut principes insectari passim,

aut in mores hominum sine ullo discrimine invehi, aut eujusque

docti scripta lacessere: nemini parcere" (Polit. Op. 1. c.).

If this was, really, the distinguishing characteristic of

Bracciolini, we have then another very strong point in evidence

that he forged the Annals, for the spirit of detraction stands

forth in the boldest relief on every page of that production. From

the beginning to the end of the last six books (with which we are

at present dealing, as we shall hereafter deal separately with the

first six books), there is scarcely such a thing as a good man.

Now though we are all perfectly conscious of our shortcomings and

those of our kind, so that we spontaneously acknowledge the

truthfulness of the smart, though not altogether decorous remark

of Ovid's, that "if Jupiter were to strike men with lightning as

often as they committed sins, he would in a short time be without

his thunderbolts":--

"Si quoties peccant homines, sua fulmina mittat

Jupiter, exiguo tempore inermis erit;"

there is, nevertheless, no necessity for exaggerating those faults

with the persistency met with in the Annals. Scandal without

contradiction is admitted of all persons who are either thought

good or who act properly. Every infamous slander is accepted that

is cast on the eminent statesman and philosopher, Seneca (XIII. 20

and 42.--XIV. 52-3). Piso, who has the reputation of being a good

man, is described as a hypocrite, pretending to have virtues (XV.

48). Fenius Rufus draws no gain nor advantage from his office of

superintendent of the stores (XIV. 51), and is held in general

esteem for his course of life (XIV. 51.--XV. 50); but he is

described as immeasurably severe (XV. 58), harsh towards his

associates (ib.), and wanting in spirit (XV. 61). Sylla's

innocence is ascribed to despicable pusillanimity and cowardice

(XIII. 47). Corbulo, though he took "the shortest route," and

"sped his march day and night without intermission" (XV. 12), to

relieve Poetus when distressed from the approach of Vologeses and

the Parthian army, is said, contrary to these statements, to "have

made no great haste in order that he might gain more praise from

bringing relief when the danger had increased" (XV. 10). Because

Flavius, the brother of the German hero, Armin, takes up his abode

in Rome, he is accused of being a "spy." (XI. 16). This is,

certainly, the writing of a malicious, altogether spiteful man,--a

man, too, irrational in his calumny,--revelling, in short, in the

spirit of detraction.

V. It is, of course, (if there be any truth in the present

theory), a thing by no means strange, but, on the contrary, to be

thoroughly expected, when this temper and turn of mind are

strongly enforced by Bracciolini in his Dialogue "De Infelicitate

Principum"; his friend, Niccoli, one of the interlocutors, when

asked "why he was more prone to blame than praise," replies that

"there was no difficulty at all in giving an explanation, because

he had been taught it by the experience of advanced age and the

antecedents of a long life: he had too often been wrong in

praising men, because he had found them worse than he had thought

them; yet he had never been wrong when he had abused them, for

there was such a multitude of rogues amongst men, such an amount

of vices and crimes, such a superabundance of hypocrites, from

people preferring to seem rather than be good, so many who threw

such a veil of honesty over their rascalities, that it was

perilous, and akin to falsehood, to bestow laudation on anybody."

"'Cur in vituperando sis quam in laudando proclivior.' 'Hoc facile

est ad explicandum,' Nicolaus inquit, 'quod longa aetas et ante

acta vita me docuit. Nam in laudandis hominibus saepius deceptus

sum, cum hi deteriores essent quam existimarem, in vituperandis

vero nunquam me fefellit opinio. Tanta enim inter homines versatur

improborum copia,--ita sceleribus omnia inficiuntur, ita

hypocritae superabundant, qui videri quam esse boni malunt,--ita

quilibet sua vitia aliquo honesti velamento tegit, ut periculosum

sit et mendacio proximum quempiam laudare'" (Pog. Op. 394). Though

these words are ascribed to his friend Niccoli, they exactly

expressed his own sentiments, as may be seen in the letter to his

friend, Bartolommeo Fazio, from which we have already quoted,

where he speaks of himself as being "always excessively averse to

the language of praise," and further reproves it as "a species of

vice":--"non adulandi causa loquor, nam abfuit a me longissime

semper id vitii genus" (Ep. IX. Bartol. Facii Epistol).

In that strongly expressed sentiment of the world being filled

with so many knaves that it was dangerous, and all but destructive

of truth, to believe in honesty, we have the keynote to the whole

of the Annals; and the last six books are marked by a universal

cynical disbelief in human honesty; for from the first character,

Asiaticus, who is accused of every kind of corruption and

abomination (XI. 2), down to Egnatius, with his perfidy,

treachery, avarice, lust, and superficial virtues (XVI. 32), all

are patterns of the vices, few, except the aged Thrasea, being

bright examples of virtue. I have no doubt this description of the

general depravity of Adam's descendants, the dwelling on which was

so delectable to the disposition of Bracciolini, was a very

correct portraiture of the human race in the fifteenth century,

when, in Italy especially, and, above all, in Rome, the light from

the lamp of Diogenes was, I suspect, very much wanted to find an

honest man.

CHAPTER II.

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

I. The intellect and depravity of the age.--II. Bracciolini as its

exponent.--III. Hunter's accurate description of him.--IV.

Bracciolini gave way to the impulses of his age.--V. The Claudius,

Nero and Tiberius of the Annals personifications of the Church of

Rome in the fifteenth century.--VI. Schildius and his doubts.--

VII. Bracciolini not covetous of martyrdom: communicates his fears

to Niccoli.--VIII. The princes and great men in the Annals the

princes and great men of the XVth century, not of the opening

period of the Christian aera.--IX. Bracciolini, and not Tacitus, a

disparager of persons in high places.

I. The fifteenth century was the most curious of all ages: it has

never been properly depicted, except on its darker side,

indirectly, in the Annals. It is usually regarded as an age of

barbarism; it was not that; it must ever be memorable for

splendour of genius and the promotion of letters. A proof of the

esteem in which literary excellence was held is afforded by the

conduct of the Sultan of Turkey, Mahomet II., who deemed a mere

ode by Filelfo a sufficient ransom for that scholar's mother-in-law,

Manfredina Doria, and her two daughters. Astronomers were

treading for the first time in the right track after two thousand

years, since the days of Pythagoras, as may be seen by the

hypothesis of Domenico Maria, about the variability of the axis of

the globe, and by the labours of Mueller, better known by the

Latin name derived from his native town of Koenigsberg,

Regiomontanus, who almost anticipated Copernicus in discovering

the true system of the universe. Few before or since have so

excelled in mathematics and mechanics as Peurbach. Divinity had a

profound and subtle exponent in the mild and gentle Thomas à

Kempis. The age nursed the man who first philosophized in

politics, Machiavelli. Italy was ablaze, like the galaxy, with a

countless number of brilliant lights that shone in classical lore

and accomplishments. Alberti shewed by his Gothic church dedicated

to St. Francis (now the Cathedral at Rimini), that the genius of

architecture was again abroad as much inspired as when Hermogenes

reared the temple of Bacchus at Teos. Chaucer, the morning star of

poetry in England, briefly preceded one greater, and even more

learned, Rowley, whose few fragments recovered, as asserted by the

sprightly boy-finder, Chatterton, in a chest in the muniment room

of the church of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, reveal to us what we

have unfortunately lost; his Battle of Hastings, though far away

from the power and grandeur of the poetry, recalls, if not the

tramp and march of the verse, attempts at the subdued tone, ease

of manner, effect and picturesqueness of thoughts and figures,

along with frequent, rich similes drawn from nature, which meet us

at every turn in the Iliad, then newly brought to Europe, and with

which the delighted poet had evidently saturated his astonished

soul, a few of his expressions being close copies and some of his

language a literal translation from Homer. [Endnote 251] All over

Europe princes and nobles signalized themselves in martial

achievements and the art of war: some revived memories of the

mightiest: the great hero of antiquity, Cyrus, had not a history

more obscured with fable than the great hero of the Tartars,

Tamerlane; the tale of George Castriot, surnamed Scanderbeg, for

his acts of valour and feats of strength, is as mythical as the

tale of Ninus: Francis Sforza, Duke of Milan, could have stood by

the side of Pausanias, having as signally defeated at Mont Olmo

the great general Francis Piccinino as the King of Sparta crushed

at Plataea the brilliant chief, Mardonius; the Hungarian

sovereigns, John Corvinus Hunniades and his son Matthias occupied

the ground that was held by the Theban princes, Pelopidas and

Epaminondas; for the two Woiwodes of Transylvania kept their

country free from the enslavement of the Turk, as the two

Boeotarchs preserved Thebes in independence from the rule of the

Lacedaemonians. Never did Athens produce a general superior to our

own gallant and magnanimous Henry the Fifth:--

"quo justior alter

Nec pictate fuit, nec bello major et armis."

Still the age, though distinguished for intellect and valour, was

degraded by the most monstrous villainies that were ever

perpetrated, and the most detestable characters who ever existed;

and a becoming procreation of such an intellectual and depraved

age was that revolting monster in letters,--the Annals.

The Muses were courted more than the Graces: talents were held in

higher esteem than the virtues. Men were unremitting,

indiscriminate worshippers of money; they were not trained in the

school of good morals; and when people, brought up without the

pale of the precepts of probity, are congenitally cursed with a

greed for pelf and a legion of evil and rascally proclivities,

they become easily pervious to the promptings of all sorts of

knavery.

Profligacy was so wide-spread that it extended to men usually

supposed to be most pious and exemplary in their lives: Bishops,

Archbishops, Cardinals and the Pope himself, though celibats and

holders of ecclesiastical dignities, did not arrive at Delphi

without touching at Cythera: indirect evidence is afforded of this

by the treatises which physicians, shortly after the commencement

of the next century, wrote on the disease then called "Morbus

Gallicus," when Gaspard Torella wrote his for the purpose of

benefiting the manners of the Bishop of Avranches, Ulrich von

Hutten his as a safeguard for the perils that attended the habits

of the Cardinal Archbishop of Mayence, and Peter Pintor his to

warn that gay pope, Alexander VI., of the danger of his ways, the

Spanish physician even expressing the kind hope (which may not

have been fulfilled) that the Holy Father would be preserved

"morbo foedo et occulto his temporibus affligente": there is

direct evidence of this state of abandonment to vice on the part

of consecrated men from Bracciolini, who, during his excursion to

the Baths of Baden in 1416, gave an account of that favourite

watering place of the fifteenth century, where abbots, monks,

friars and priests comported themselves with more licentiousness

than the laity, laid aside all thoughts of religion, and sometimes

bathed with women, whose hair they decked with ribbons and wreaths

of flowers: "hic quoque virgines Vestales, vel, ut verius loquar,

Florales: hic abbates, monachi, fratres, sacerdotes majori

licentia quam caeteri vivunt, et simul quandoque cum mulieribus

lavantes, et sertis quoque comas ornantes, omni religione abjecta"

(Ep. I. 1). Joanna II., Queen of Naples, when a Doctor of Laws of

Florence was sent to her court on an embassy from his fellow-

citizens, and, seeking a private interview, made a coarse

declaration of love, could look with a pleasant smile upon him,

and ask mildly "If that was also in his instructions?" At the

wonderfully numerous assembly that attended at Constance on the

22nd of April, 1418, on the formal dismissal of the Ecumenical

Council by the newly elected Pope, Otto Colonna, who took the name

of Martin V., there were present no fewer (according to one

account) than 1,500 courtezans, many of whom heaped up a great

mass of money, one accumulating 800 gold sequins, equivalent now

to a little fortune of £16,000, not so much, it appears, from

among the 80,000 married laymen, who were Emperors, Kings,

Princes, Dukes, Counts and Knights, bankers, shop-keepers, bakers,

tailors, barbers and merry-andrews, as from among the 18,000

celibats, who were the Pope, the prelates, the priests, the

presbyters, the monks and the friars, grey, white and black.

II. As a notable informer in the Annals of the exact spirit of his

age, Bracciolini necessarily places before his reader not a few

pictures of the deterioration of moral principles in the

aphrodisiac direction; his book reflects in the most vivid light

the strange and very wonderful depravities of his period, some so

huge as to deviate greatly out of the common course of nature.

From time to time the historic and philosophic gravity of the last

six books of the Annals suffers great eclipses by his leaving

aside weighty affairs of State to descend into petty descriptions

of the erratic conduct of Messalina, with her extravagant lewdness

(XI. 26-8), Nero, with his abominable pollutions (XVI. 37), and

that Emperor's mother, Agrippina, with her monstrous incest (XIV. 2).

These matters, even if true of the ancient Romans in the first

century of our aera, Tacitus, we may be certain, would have

avoided as not coming within the scope of the historian's

province, and as being altogether uncongenial to his sublime tone

of elevated sentiments and high-minded refinement. But anyone

conversant with the writings and temper of Bracciolini will know

well that such passages, instead of being in any way distasteful,

would be altogether agreeable. To be convinced, one has only to

glance at the collection of anecdotes, styled "Facetiae," at the

end of his works, which even a frequenter of the Judge and Jury

Society would consider justly liable to objection, howbeit that a

pious gentleman in holy orders who wrote a Life of Bracciolini,

the Reverend William Shepherd, can find words of palliation for

them as sprightly pleasantries. They show us Bracciolini in his

merry mood; they give us a fresh glimpse into the fifteenth

century; they may be considered the best jokes or Joe Millerisms

of the fifteenth century, such as the one commencing "Homo è

nostris rusticanus, et haud multum prudens" (Pog. Op. 423), the

one that follows entitled "De Vidua accensa libidine cum paupere"

(ibid); and that which begins "Adolescens nobilis et forma

insignis" (p. 433).

The taste of Bracciolini which is shown by these "Facetiae," is

still more forcibly exhibited in a letter to Becadelli of Bologna

(Ep. II. 40), in which he gloats over a book of indecent epigrams

which his friend had written; he describes it as a "work at once

waggish and luxuriating in voluptuousness," "opus et jocosum et

plenum voluptatis," and as "a most sweet book," "liber est

suavissimus." With respect to his own feelings on reading it, he

observes, "that he was delighted beyond measure at the variety of

the subjects and the elegance of the poetry; at the same time he

wondered how things so improper and so obscene could be

represented by his friend so gracefully and so neatly, and" he was

of opinion that "the many excessive obscenities were expressed in

such a manner that they seemed not only to be depicted but to have

been actually committed; for he could not help thinking that they

must be considered as facts, and not as fictions merely for the

sake of entertaining the reader":--"Delectatus sum, mehercule,

varietate rerum et elegantia versuum: simulque admiratus sum res

adeo impudicas, adeo ineptas tam venuste, tam composite a te dici,

atque ita multa exprimi turpiuscula, ut non enarrari, sed agi

videantur: neque ficta a te jocandi causa, ut existimo, sed acta

aestimari possunt." Such was his extravagant commendation, and,

consequently, his hearty approbation of a most unnatural

production, "Hermaphroditus," which ultimately received the

censure of the author himself, who was ashamed that he had written

it, as shown in the following epigram preserved by Cardinal

Quirini in his "Diatriba in Epistolas Francisci Barbari":--

"Hic faeces varias Veneris, moresque prophanos,

_Quos natura fugit_, me docuisse _pudet_."

III. We shall now see how accurately a writer in the middle of the

last century, the Reverend Thomas Hunter, in his "Observations on

Tacitus" (p. 51), hit off the character of Bracciolini, all the

while that he fancied he was venting objurgations on the staid old

Roman: "If he is anywhere happy in his description, it is in the

display of ... luxury refined and high-flavoured ... Never writer

had a happier pen at describing wickedness ... Were we to give

room to suspicions ... we should say that he might have been ... a

party in every lewd scene he represents."

Mr. Hunter proceeds: "Messalina's guilty amours with Silius are

described with a gay and festive air, with that pride of

voluptuousness, and feeling taste of pleasure, as show the writer

well versed in court intrigue. The description is too luscious,

and may lead to a perpetration of the crime, rather than an

abhorrence of the criminals."

Only one fault is to be found with this criticism, which is both

excellent and curious,--excellent, because remarkable for its

simple truthfulness,--curious, because it looks as if Hunter, who

knew nothing about Bracciolini, had the eyes of a cat and could

see in the dark;--the fault is that the writer applies the

criticism to one eminently undeserving of its causticity;--because

though we have quoted "If he is," Hunter wrote, "If Tacitus is";

now Tacitus never wrote any descriptions of the nature commented

on by the Vicar of Wrexham; they are not to be found in any of the

works that pass under his name except the Annals; there is this

excuse to be found for Hunter, that, at the time when he wrote, he

was compelled to take the majestic Roman Consul to be the author

of the Annals; but though his criticism is not applicable in a

single syllable to Tacitus, it is strictly applicable in every

word to Bracciolini, whom he never dreamt of as the composer of

the Annals.

IV. It matters not what a man may attempt in literature, what

style he may adopt, or what old pattern imitate,--he cannot get

away from the impulses of his own time, strive he ever so hard:

the tone and colour of his work will be modified by actual history

and current politics; his strongest impressions will be influenced

by the deeds that are being transacted and the lives that are

being passed around him; so that however wide, searching and

vigorous may be his powers of observation, thought and intellect,

he cannot liberate these from contemporary associations; any

endeavour to do that must end in failure, ending, as it must, in

artificial coldness and unemotional lifelessness. Bracciolini

never made the attempt; he gave way to Nature, and never did his

genius shine so brightly, and never was it more prolific, than

when dealing with the diversity required of it by the history

embraced in the Annals.

V. I am now about to make some remarks which I am glad to say,

will get for this book a place in the "Index Expurgatorius" in

Rome; and which will do a great deal more than that,--considerably

amaze the shade of Bracciolini (supposing that he has a shade),

perhaps as much as M. Jourdain was astonished when told that he

had been talking prose all his life.

Every student of the Annals, in order rightly to understand its

meaning and properly to appreciate its greatness, should bear in

mind that the Emperors who play a part in it, Claudius and Nero in

the last six books, and Tiberius in the first six, are intended to

be the representatives or personifications of the Church of Rome

in the fifteenth century. Hence it is that Claudius, Nero and

Tiberius are depicted as superhuman in monstrosities,--colossal in

crime,--perpetrators of enormities that never yet met, and never

will meet, in combination in any single man. Each is, in fact, a

fiend, and not a human being. It was thus only that Bracciolini

could show us in its true light the Church of Rome as it acted in

his day. In the language of Wickliffe it was the "Synagogue of

Satan." A mere trifle was it that reprobates in the form of

bishops and priests ordained, consecrated and sacrificed. See the

Church at an Oecumenical Council; then it capped the climax of

cruelty and crime; it resorted to demoniacal subterfuge to condemn

good men as heretics and burn them alive, believing that death by

fire would inflict the most exquisitely excruciating tortures; at

the Council of Constance it sought to condemn Wickliffe, by making

an inference from some of his principles that he propagated the

doctrine,--"God is obliged to obey the Devil,"--nowhere to be

found in the Trialogue, Dialogue, and all the other works,

treatises, and opuscles or small pieces bearing the name of that

honoured and most pious divine: it consigned to the flames those

two intimate friends and associates, John Huss and Jerome of

Prague, for holding just and virtuous views about the degradation

of the priestly office, and for nobly and fearlessly inveighing

against the corruptions of the pontifical court, the pomp and

pride of prelates, and the dissipated habits and abuses of the

clergy.

When we read in the Annals of men, who, in spite of their

nobility, innocence and virtues, were put to death by the sword of

the executioner or the poisoned bowl, we must not think that we

are reading of real Romans who thus actually suffered: the whole

is a fabrication placing before us fictitious pictures, meant to

be life-like, of what the DOMINATING POWER CAN DO IN SOCIETY: they

are not pictures intended to show with truthfulness monstrosities

positively done by Emperors of Rome in the first century: they are

pictures that reflect with fidelity the atrocities that stained

the Church of Rome in the beginning of the fifteenth century.

Those were the closing days of the ancient period of the most

abominable of all the Inquisitions, that of Spain, before the

establishment by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1481 of the modern

Inquisition in the Iberian Peninsula: that terrible jurisdiction

extended to everybody, dead as well as living, absent as well as

present, princes and subjects, rich and poor,--all were liable

alike on the bare suspicion of such an insignificant matter as

heresy, to corporal punishment, pecuniary fines, confiscation of

property, and loss of life, by being burnt at the stake, or,--as

occurred to Savonarola, towards the close of the century,--first

strangled by the hangman, and then committed to the flames. Only

the Nero of the last part of the Annals, or the Tiberius of the

first six books of that work, can properly stand forth, in his

persecuting spirit, as the counterpart of the Dominican, John de

Torquemada, who, in the performance of his duty, as the Inquisitor

General in Spain, proceeded against upwards of 100,000 persons,

6,000 of whom he condemned to the flames.

VI. So far, then, from being surprised with Professor Schildius

(Professor of History and Greek, and afterwards of Hebrew in the

University of Bremen at the commencement of the seventeenth

century), and induced to doubt with him, the veraciousness of the

Annals, I should have been very much astonished indeed, and,

certainly, called in question its fidelity as representing the

spirit of the fifteenth century, if it had not recorded (to borrow

the language of Schildius) "a number of the most honourable and

innocent men, the prides and ornaments of the State, coming to an

ignominious end, and for no other crime, forsooth, than that which

we call treason-felony": "Quod si non omnium judiciis superior

esset Cornelius Tacitus, laboraret Annalium fides, tot

nobilissimos et innocuos viros, tot decora et ornamenta Civitatis,

indignissimo fine cecidisse crederemus, idque non aliud hercle ob

crimen, quam illum, quem diximus, obtentuin laesae majestatis"

(Schildi Exercitationes in C. Taciti Annal: XV. p. 29). Substitute

for "treason felony" "heresy," and we have the strictest truth

with regard to the unutterable ferocity of the Church of Rome in

the fifteenth century.

VII. Had any man then living been bold enough to tell the world of

the Church of Rome's ferocity in primitive terms, he must have

been particularly desirous of being roasted alive: had he even so

represented it as to render himself comprehensible by the most

quick-witted, he must still have had the martyr's liking for

instruments of torture and the blazing faggot: Bracciolini, whom

nature had not gifted with the taste of Huss and Jerome of Prague,

was so conscious of the perilous position in which he placed

himself by undertaking a composition of this description, that he

communicated his alarm to Niccoli about the care he must take as

to the expression of his views lest he should give offence to

princes, in that memorable letter, from which I have already

quoted, dated Rome, October 8, 1423, in which he indirectly

informed his friend that he had commenced his forgery of the

Annals, by confessing that he was engaged on a certain work (or,

as he puts it, "certain tiny occupations" ("occupatiunculae

quaedam") in the style of Lord Byron, who would speak meanly of

any of his marvellous poems, Childe Harold or Manfred, as "a

thing"). "Besides," said he, "there are certain tiny occupations

in which I am engaged, which do not so much impede me in

themselves, as the way in which I tarry over them; for it is

necessary that I should be on my guard with respect to the

inclinations of princes, that their susceptibilities be not

offended, as they are much more ready to vent their rage than to

extend their forgiveness if anything be done amiss";--he then

ended by making an observation which we have already noticed to

the effect that beginnings were always difficult, especially when

an attempt was made to imitate the ancients: "Sunt praeterea

occupatiuculae quaedam, in quibus versor, quae non tantum ipsae me

impediunt, quantum earum expectatio. Oportet enim paratum esse

etiam ad nutum, ne offiendatur religio principum, quorum

indignatio promptior est, quam remissio, si quid omittatur. In

quibusvis quoque rebus principia sunt ardua ac difficilia; ut quod

antiquioribus in officio sit jucundum, promptum ac leve, mihi sit

molestum, tardum, onerosum" (Ep. II. 5). Therefore, Bracciolini,

in the most strained detortions from literal meaning,--in the

darkest nimbus of far-fetched elaboration of mystical allegory,

--placed before us the unparalleled cruelty of the Church of Rome

in the tiger-like thirst for blood of the Tiberius and the Nero of

the Annals.

VIII. In the same manner as we have in the Annals a true and life-

like picture of the savage and ravenous fierceness of the Church

of Rome in the fifteenth century, so we have the likenesses,

drawn, too, with the spirit and vigour of life about them, of the

persons who flourished at that period as Princes, Ministers, and

their agents and servants, though the likenesses may have been

reproduced with some partial poetical exaggeration with regard to

the peculiar characters, vices and singular debasement of

individuals: this, however, is very certain; people, then, were

altogether abnormal. We have already seen how historians tell us

that Cardinal Beaufort by his intrigues and those of the Queen of

Henry IV. hastened the ruin and untimely fate of Humphry, Duke of

Gloucester. Kings so troubled their subjects by their tyranny and

excesses, they were deposed, imprisoned, or put to death: in

England Richard II. was stripped of his kingdom; in Bohemia

Wenceslaus was twice thrown into prison; in Germany, Frederick,

Duke of Brunswick, was murdered only two days after he had been

elected Emperor; and in France, Jean Sans Peur, Duke of Burgundy,

had his life taken on the bridge of Montereau. In the East things

fared even worse: sovereigns trampled on sovereigns: Tamerlane,

the victor, treated with contumely the once proud conqueror, the

vanquished Bayazid, Sultan of Turkey, used his body as a footstool

or ladder by which to mount his horse; forced him to lie on the

ground while he fed and to pick up the crumbs that fell from his

table, and finally shut him up in an iron cage, where he died of a

broken heart: if these things be false, as they may be, or

exaggerated, as unquestionably they were, yet they point to the

spirit of the age, in the simple fact of their having been

recounted, and in the still more remarkable fact of their having

been believed.

There were no such emperors and persons in high places during the

opening period of the Christian aera; or Tacitus in his "History"

gives us a very wrong account of them; his views of them are, if

not favourable, lenient or apologetic: they do not seem to have

had the vices and faults of most men; Tacitus has otherwise

successfully thrown a veil over them. Were the whole truth known,

it might be found that there is a shameful exaggeration of the

vices of Roman Emperors: this looks most probable when we consider

the significant reflections made about Princes in one of his

miscellaneous productions, by the historian, David Hume,--not the

David Hume, _minor_, who, living a long time among the English,

and becoming fascinated with their ways, manners, customs and

civilization, mooted the union of England and Scotland, more

than a hundred years before the great event came off, in that

famous historical essay printed in London in 1605 and entitled

"De Unione Insulae Britanniae Tractatus;" nor David Hume _minimus_,

who wrote the "History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus" but

the David Hume, _major_, who wrote the "History of England"--that

"there are, perhaps, and have been for two centuries nearly two

hundred absolute princes, great and small in Europe; and allowing

twenty years to each reign, we may suppose that there have been

in the whole two thousand monarchs, or 'tyrants,' as the Greeks

would have called them, yet of these there has not been one, not

even Philip of Spain, so bad as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero or Domitian,

who were four in twelve among the Roman Emperors." When we find

David Hume thus putting the matter, in his Essay on "Civil Liberty,"

it makes us at once see how highly unlikely it is that all the

badness of human nature should have been concentrated in a few

individuals who lived at a particular period and in a particular

country, those individuals being Emperors, that particular period

the commencement of the Christian aera and that particular country

ancient Rome. Somewhere or other there must have been a great deal

of maligning; nor is it difficult to discover who the maligner was

as far as the characters in the Annals are concerned.

IX. No one will accuse Tacitus of disparaging Princes and persons

in high places; but everybody will admit, who is acquainted with

the productions of Bracciolini, that he speaks trumpet-tongued of

their delinquencies. When in his Dialogue, "De Infelicitate

Principum," an attempt is made by Cosmo de' Medici to uphold some

of them as "worthy of all praise and commendation for their

learning and estimable qualities," the passage follows, as the

reply of Niccoli (already quoted), of the hypocrisy and rascality

of all men, consequently, of the hypocrisy and rascality of kings,

ministers and their agents and servants. Nay, more: Cosmo de'

Medici is made to express his astonishment at the spirit of

detraction in Niccoli, but is not surprised as he lashes private

individuals, to find him bitterly inveighing against princes,

being ever ready and fluent in his abuse of the latter, even when

they do no harm, and cannot be reproached for their lives: Cosmo

de' Medici is, therefore, of opinion that exceptions ought to be

made in their favour, and wants to know why Niccoli should be so

strongly given to vituperate them:--"Tum, Cosmus, graviter ut

assolet, "Facillime," inquit, "Nicolae, (qui mos tuus est),

laberis ad detrahendum. Equidem minime miror, si quando es in

privatos dicatior, cum in ipsos principes tam facile inveharis,

et tamen nullius injuria, aut vitae contumelia facit, ut tam sis

promptus, aut copiosus in eorum objurgationem. Novi nonnullos qui

abs te excipi deberent ab reliquorum caterva viri docti, egregii,

omnique laude et commendatione dignissimi. Unde mecum saepius

cogitans addubitare cogor quaenam sit potissimum causa, cur in

vituperando sis quam, &c." (Pog. Op. p. 394)

We who live in these days and know how exemplary, as a rule, for

piety and excellent conduct, are Popes, Cardinals, Bishops and, in

fact, the clergy in the Church of Rome, as well as the dignitaries

and pastors in all the other ecclesiastical establishments of

Europe, and who, at the same time, honour and admire crowned heads

and princes, ministers and great men for their position and

virtues, cannot realize to ourselves how there ever could have

been such hatefully contemptible personages in the sovereign and

loftiest places as are depicted in the Annals, page after page,

nor can we bring ourselves to believe that there ever existed such

a bevy of brilliant malefactors, except in the judgment and fancy

of one who did not shine among the most amiable of mankind as he,

certainly, shone among the most able.

CHAPTER III.

FURTHER PROOFS OF FORGERY.

I. "Octavianus" as the name of Augustus Caesar.--II. Cumanus and

Felix as joint governors of Judaea.--III. The blood relationship

of Italians and Romans.--IV. Fatal error in the _oratio

obliqua_.--V. Mistake made about "locus".--VI. Objections of

some critics to the language of Tacitus examined.--VII. Some

improprieties that occur in the Annals found also in Bracciolini's

works.--VIII. Instanced in (_a_) "nec ... aut", (_b_)

rhyming and the peculiar use of "pariter".--IX. The harmony of

Tacitus and the ruggedness of Bracciolini illustrated.--X. Other

peculiarities of Bracciolini's not shared by Tacitus: Two words

terminating alike following two others with like terminations;

prefixes that have no meaning; and playing on a single letter for

alliterative purposes.

I. If there be one man more than another who might easily fall

into the error of supposing that an ancient Roman could take in

the most capricious and arbitrary way any name he pleased,

Flavius, or Julius, or Pius, it would be a man like Bracciolini,

who, as Secretary of the Popes for forty years, was in the habit

of seeing every now and then, and that, too, at very brief

intervals, a Cardinal, on being raised to the dignity of the

Papacy, take any name from whim or fancy, and, sometimes a very

queer name, too, as a Cossa taking the name of John, or a Colonna

the name of Martin. This being admitted, it seems quite consistent

that Bracciolini should speak of Augustus Caesar, before he was

Emperor, as "Octavianus." When we read in the XIIIth book of the

Annals (6), "imperatori" (Bracciolini's word for "General,"

Tacitus would have written "duci"), "quantum ad robur deesse, cum

octavo decimo aetatis anno Cneius Pompeius, nono decimo Caesar

OCTAVIANUS civilia bella sustinuerint, we may be assured that we

are reading words which were not written by Tacitus, and, as for

the matter of that, any Roman, because he would have known that

Augustus Caesar, before he was called Augustus, did not bear and

never could have borne, the name of Octavianus: the son of

Octavius, he was himself Octavius, not Octavianus, as his sister

was Octavia (so Pliny the Elder writes, "Marcellus _Octavia_"

not Octaviana, "sorore Augusti genitus" N.H. XIX. 6, 1.)

Shakespeare knew better than Bracciolini the name of Augustus,

before he was Emperor, by making Antony say to him:

"And now, _Octavius_,

Listen great things."

_Julius Caesar_, Act IV. sc. 1.

Whenever we find a Roman's name ending in "_ianus_," we know

one of three things: either that he had taken his name from his

wife who was an heiress, as Domitianus; or that he was the eldest

son of a man who had taken his mother's name, which he was himself

allowed to assume by the marriage contract, as Titus Vespasianus;

or, when we find a repetition of the same name ending in "ius" and

"ianus," as "Aemilius Aemilianus," or in "ianus" and "ius" as

"Licinianus Licinius," we know that the individual was of the

Aemilian or Licinian family, and had married the heiress of

another great Roman house. This was the rule among that ancient

people, unless I have been misled by Father Hardouin (See

Harduinus. Praef. ad Histor. August. ex Nummis Antiq. Opera Sel.

p. 683). The termination, then, "ianus," always indicated marriage

with an heiress, just as such a marriage among ourselves is

heraldically marked by the husband and wife's coats of arms being

placed alongside of each other; and just as we never depart from

this custom in escutcheons, so the Romans never varied their rule

with respect to such names; then as Augustus Caesar neither

married an heiress, nor was the eldest son of a man who had formed

such a marriage; and as this custom of changing the termination of

the name was familiar to all the Romans,--if not to every ignorant

or ill-bred man, at least, to every well-informed, well-bred man

among them,--it follows as clearly, as that 2 and 2 make 4, that

Tacitus, the high-born gentleman and consul, could never have

written Caesar _Octavianus_.

I am exceedingly sorry to have made these remarks for the sake of

the writers of classical biographies, whose reputation is at

stake, for one and all, from Lemprière to Dr. William Smith,

mislead those who consult their pages as to the names of Augustus,

among which figures "Octavianus"; this is their own fault; they

will persist in regarding the Annals as the best and most

authentic history we have of the ancient Romans during the period

embraced in its records; they reject all other testimony, when all

other testimony is far more reliable.

I also grieve very much for the authorities of the British Museum

on account of the inscription they have had graved in the Roman

Gallery of Antiquities under the bust numbered 3 which represents

Augustus in his youth,--"_Octavianus_ Caesar Augustus"; I have been

compelled to point out this error in examining a work given out as

the production of the ancient Roman, Caius Cornelius Tacitus, when

it is the glaring forgery of a bungling mediaeval European

"grammaticus," that bungling mediaeval European "grammaticus" being

(as I am showing, and the reader is, I trust, becoming more and more

convinced as he proceeds) no other than Poggio Bracciolini.

II. I am also extremely sorry for Dr. Adam Clarke that his

accuracy in research and his extensive and extraordinary learning,

which have hitherto been indisputable, should be now called in

question; but they are jeoparded: in his valuable Commentary on

the Bible, he says in one of his notes to the Acts of the Apostles

(Ch. XXIV. v. 10): "Cumanus and Felix were, for a time, joint

governors of Judaea; but, after the condemnation of Cumanus, the

government fell entirely into the hands of Felix";--this is not

history. In the first place, Cumanus and Felix were never joint

governors of Judaea; in the second place, when Cumanus was

punished, his government did not "fall" to Felix; Felix succeeded,

for Felix was appointed to it. Dr. Clarke could have made this

statement on no other authority than that of Bracciolini, who in

the 54th chapter of the XIIth book of the Annals, says that Judaea

was under the government of Cumanus conjointly with Felix, the

province being so divided that Cumanus was governor of Galilee and

Felix of Samaria:--"Ventidio Cumano, _cui pars provinciae

habebatur_: ita divisis, ut huic Galilaeorum natio; Felici

Samaritae parerent" (An. XII. 54). Justus Lipsius was rather

startled at the number of mistakes he found in those words: in

addition to Felix and Cumanus never being joint governors, Judaea

was not a divided province, and Cumanus was, certainly, governor

over the Samaritans, as may be seen by reference to Josephus, who

can always be relied upon, for what Julius Caesar Scaliger, one of

the most learned and famous men of the sixteenth century, said of

him everybody knows, from Whiston (quoting it from Bishop Porteus),

placing it at the commencement of his admirable popular translation

of the Hebrew historian, that "he deserved more credit than all

the Greek and Roman writers put together." Well, Josephus, who

"deserved more credit than all the Greek and Roman writers put

together," says that a disturbance broke out between the Jews

and the Samaritans, whereupon "the former burnt and plundered

the villages of the latter, and when what had been done reached

Cumanus, he _armed the Samaritans_ and marched against the Jews,"

clearly showing that by "arming the Samaritans," he was governor

of Samaria, and not Felix:--[Greek: Komas tinas ton Samareon

empraesantes diarpazousi. Koumanos de, taes praxeos eis auton

aphikomenaes ... tous Samareitas kathoplisas, exaelthen epi tous

Ioudaious] (Antiq. Jud. XX. 6). Having said this in his "Antiquities

of the Jews", Josephus more distinctly says in his "Wars of the Jews"

that the Emperor Claudius banished Cumanus, "after which he sent

Felix, the brother of Pallas, to be the governor of Judaea, Galilee,

Samaria and Peraea": [Greek: meta tauta Ioudaias men epitropon

Phaelika ton Pallantos adelphon ekpempei, taes te Galilaias kai

Samareias kai Peraias] (De Bello Jud. II. 12. 8).

Cardinal Baronius, in one of the forty folio volumes of his

"Annales Ecclesiastici" (A.C. 50. Tom I. p. 355), has fallen

exactly into the same mistake as Dr. Adam Clarke, and, from the

very same cause, placing implicit confidence in what is stated in

the Annals. He says that "the same Josephus is, nevertheless,

guilty of an evident mistake when he asserts that Cumanus was

convicted in Rome, and that Claudius thence sent to Judaea the

brother of his freedman Pallas,--Felix; for Felix was sent along

with Cumanus to that province, which was so divided between them,

that Felix ruled Samaria, but Cumanus the remainder of the

province":--"Sed patentis erroris nihilominus idem Josephus

arguitur, dum ait esse damnatum Romae Cumanum ac inde Claudium

Felicem Pallantis liberti Claudii Augusti germanum missum esse in

Judaeam. Nam Felix simul cum Cumano in eam provinciam missus est,

sic ea inter eos divisa, ut Felix Samariam administraret, Cumanus

vero reliquam provinciae partem."

Another Cardinal, Noris, who has the credit of being one of the

most accurate and learned antiquaries, chronologists and

historians of his age (the close of the seventeenth century), for

Zedler says of him (_sub vocibus_, "Heinrich Noris"), that he

was "einer der gelehrtesten Leute seiner Zeit, ein vollkommener

Antiquarius, Chronologus und Historicus," maintains, in his

Commentary on the Two Monumental Stones erected at Pisa in honour

of the two grandsons of the Emperor Augustus, ("Cenotaphia

Pisana",) that Cardinal Baronius was wrong when he made that

statement on the authority of the Jewish historian, because

"Josephus has nowhere said that Felix was sent from Rome as the

successor of Cumanus, but on the contrary, as may be clearly

gathered from the 11th," (it should be the 12th) "chapter of his

second book of the war, for that immediately after he has spoken

of the condemnation of Cumanus by the Emperor Claudius, he says

that that Emperor 'sent Felix, the brother of Pallas, to the Jews,

to administer their country along with Samaria and Galilee, while

he transferred Agrippa from Chalcis to a larger government, giving

him the province also which had been Felix's': now that was

Trachonitis, Bethanea and Gaulanitis: therefore Felix, before the

condemnation of Cumanus, was placed over Judaea, having been the

governor, according to Josephus, of that part of Galilee which lay

between the river Jordan and the hills of Coelesyria and

Philadelphia; and, consequently, he did not go to Judaea from

Rome, as that learned man wrongly ascribes to Josephus, but from

Galilee beyond the Jordan":--"Verum Josephus nusquam dixit Felicem

Roma missum Cumano successorem, immo aperte ex lib. 2. belli cap.

11 oppositum colligitur; siquidem cum dixisset Cumanum Romae

damnatum a Claudio Imperatore, statim ait:--'Post haec Felicem

Pallantis fratrem misit ad Judaeos, qui eorum provinciam cum

Samaria et Galilaea curaret. Agrippam vero de Chalcide in regnum

majus transtulit, tradens ei illam quoque provinciam, quae Felicis

fuisset.' Erat autem ista Trachonitis, Bethanea, Gaulanitis.

Igitur Felix, antequam damnato Cumano, Judaeae imponeretur,

Galilaeam transamnanam quae Jordane ac montibus Coelesyriae, ac

Philadelphiae includitur, auctore Josepho, regebat; ac proinde in

Judaeam non ex Urbe, ut minus recte vir eruditus Josepho imponit,

sed ex Galilaea transamnana advenit." (Cenotaphia Pisana. Diss.

sec. p. 333 ed. Ven. 1681.)

Of course, if Josephus wrote thus, the whole matter is settled;

Felix was governor with Cumanus, for the province over which he

had ruled, Peraea, or Galilee to the eastward of the Jordan, was

transferred to Agrippa: but "litera scripta manet:" on turning to

Josephus it is found that it was Philip, and not Felix, who held

the country that was given to Agrippa:--"And he" (the Emperor

Claudius) "transfers Agrippa from Chalcis to a larger government,

by giving him the tetrachy that had been PHILIP'S":--[Greek: ek de

taes Chalkidos Agrippan ein meizona Basileian metatithaesi, dous

auto taen te PHILIPPOI genomenaen tetrarchian.] (De Bello Jud. II. 12).

For such dishonesty in attempting to carry his point against another

Eminence Cardinal Noris ought to have blushed as scarlet as his

stockings.

Ernesti, quite puzzled at the singular statement that a Roman

province had two governors, is of opinion that the error was

occasioned by statements to be found in the New Testament: "There

is," he says, "the additional testimony of St. Luke, or rather

St. Paul, who says that Felix was many years set over the Jews, in

the third or fourth year after Cumanus had been condemned": "Accedit

Lucae auctoritas, vel potius Pauli, qui Felicem multos annos

Judaeis praefuisse dicit, anno, postquam Cumanus damnatus est,

tertio aut quarto." It is just possible that the passage about

Felix being "many years a judge unto that nation," which occurs in

the Acts of the Apostles (c. XXIV. v. 10), was what actually

misled Bracciolini; the more so, as when he was in this country,

he discharged what Dean Hook called "the heavenly occupations of a

parish priest" (Life of Becket, p. 359), and for the very reason

that he was a consecrated man he must have taken a much greater

interest and placed far more trust in St. Paul, than Tacitus or

any other heathen among the ancient Romans was likely to have

done; but an error so extraordinary about the contemporary

government of his country could barely have been committed by such

an eminent public man and politician as Tacitus: this is the

reason why Cardinal Baronius convicted Josephus of "an evident

mistake," for as he properly observed parenthetically in the

passage we have quoted, that "we ought to attach faith to Tacitus,

whom, certainly, any learned man would clearly prefer to Josephus

in matters especially which appertain to Roman magistracies": "si

Tacito fidem praebemus, quem certe, in his praesertim quae ad

Romanos pertinent magistratus, quivis eruditus Josepho facile

anteferat" (l.c.). But as Tacitus did not write the Annals,

Josephus is to be preferred to Bracciolini; when, too, it is just

the kind of mistake which a writer of the XVth century, as

Bracciolini, however learned and careful he might be, would be

likely to fall into, from the testimony of St. Paul conflicting

with that of Josephus.

III. Another blunder is made by Bracciolini with regard to the

Italians and Romans, whom he looks upon as blood relations, fellow

countrymen, and possessors of a common capital in the City of

Rome. The Italians were not of the same descent as the Romans; and

when they were all brought under subjection to Rome in the first

half of the third century before the Christian aera, they beheld

themselves inhabitants of towns, some of which were "municipia",

(having their own laws and magistracy, enjoying the privilege of

voting in the comitia and soliciting for public offices in Rome),

others "coloni," (conquered places ruled over by poor Romans sent

to keep the inhabitants in subjection, having the jus Romanum,

Latinum or Italicum, and ceasing to be citizens of Rome); but in

either set of towns the freedom and the sacred rites, the laws of

race and of government, the oaths and the guardianship of the

Romans did not prevail; in fact, the Italians had not the private

rights of the Romans, and, therefore, in the language of Livy,

"they were not Roman citizens":--"non eos esse cives Romanos"

(XXXIV. 42). Even the privileges they enjoyed, such as immunity

from the tribute raised in the Roman provinces, they participated

with other people, to whom the privilege had been accorded at

various periods;--for example,--the inhabitants of Laodicaea in

Syria and of Beyroot in Phoenicia in the time of Augustus;--of

Tyre in the time of Severus;--of Antioch and the colony of Emissa

in Upper Syria in the time of Antonine, and of the colonies in

Mauritania in the time of Titus. Tacitus, therefore, as a Roman

citizen, could not, by any possibility, have spoken of Rome being

the "capital" of Italy, and the Italians and Romans being people

of the "same blood," as the author of the Annals does when he

writes: "non adeo aegram Italiam ut senatum suppeditare _urbi

suae_ nequiret; suffecisse olim indigenas _consanguineis

populis_" (XI. 23).

Nobody can understand those last five words; they have not been

understood by the editors, from Justus Lipsius and John Frederic

Gronovius to Ernesti and Heinsius: they are capable of more than

one interpretation on account of the brevity and obscurity of the

expression: I take it that Bracciolini meant to imply that "in the

ancient days the natives of Italy were quite on a par with their

'brethren' in Rome," referring to the time when Romans, Latins,

Etruscans and Sabines stood on the same level; and in order to

make out that Italians are still in the same position, he adds:

"there is no regretting what was anciently done in the State,"

"nec poenitere veteris reipublicae."

An Italian of the fifteenth century, and a Florentine like

Bracciolini, was glad to think, and proud to say, nay, ready to

believe, and to perpetuate the belief, that Italy and Rome were

identical, and the people consanguineous. We see how that pleasing

delusion is still cherished fondly by the living countrymen of

Bracciolini: General Garibaldi, to wit, as well as the late Joseph

Mazzini, always looked upon the City of Rome as the "natural"

capital of the Kingdom of Italy; and we can easily believe, with

what joy, pride, and confidence in its veracity the gallant

general or the devoted patriot, or any other Italian warrior or

politician, would have written, as Bracciolini wrote, the passage

that we have quoted from the eleventh book of the Annals.

IV. Nor is this the only time when Bracciolini does not maintain

the character he assumes of an ancient Roman. Narcissus,

addressing Claudius in the eleventh book of the Annals says: "he

did not _now_ mean to charge him"--that is, Silius, "with

adulteries": "nec _nunc_ adulteria objecturum" (XI. 30). The

language used seems to be very good language. A Roman historian,

though, would have written, "nec _tunc_": he could not have

fallen into the error of failing to define time in reference to

himself when ascribing words to persons, any more than he could

have failed to vary the grammar to the accusative and infinitive.

This elementary principle in Latin composition is known, (as Lord

Macaulay would have said,) "to every schoolboy." It was,

certainly, well known to such an accomplished "grammaticus" as

Bracciolini; and for the very simple reason that he adheres to it

on all other occasions. His neglect of it in this instance is as

strong a proof as any that can be advanced, of his forgery: it

makes that forgery the more obvious, his slip not being

accidental, but intentional: it is a deliberate violation of a

rule that must never be infringed; but as a countryman will

sometimes run after a jack-a-lantern, till running after it he

finds himself in a burying-ground, so Bracciolini suffered himself

to be misled by his literary will-o'-the wisp,--alliteration:

therefore he preferred writing "_n_ec _n_unc," instead

of "nec tunc;" he therefore did that which was fatal to the work

that he wanted to palm off upon the world as the composition of a

Roman, because a Roman would not have done this, because he could

not have done it. Definition of time in reference to himself was a

necessity of expression; he could not have sacrificed it for

alliteration or any other trick of composition, because he would

not have dreamt of changing the time in ascribing words to

persons. A modern, on the other hand, would think that a mere

trifle; left to himself, he would prefer it; he would also know

that his readers, being moderns like himself, would very much

admire his composition for the alliteration, whilst finding

definition of time in reference to the position of the speaker,

much more agreeable to their ears, from their being accustomed to

native historians who wrote in the vernacular so defining time in

all passages of the kind spontaneously, without art or

affectation, and not, as the ancient Romans, stiffly adopting the

harsh, unnatural fashion of defining it in reference to the

position of the writer.

V. Our word "box" (apart from three technical meanings, one in

botany, and two in mechanics), has six different significations for

things that have nothing in common with each other;--"a slap on

the chaps"; "a coffer or case for holding any materials"; "seats

in a theatre"; "a Christmas present"; "the case for the mariner's

compass," and "the seat on a coach for the driver." The Roman

word, too, "locus," has just the same half-dozen meanings for

things as unconnected;--"a passage"; "a country"; "an argument";

"a place"; "a sentence," and "a seat." In five instances "box" is

a primitive noun; when it means "a blow on the cheek with the palm

of the hand," it is a verbal substantive. Exactly the same number

of curiosities distinguished "locus." In five instances it was

masculine; when it signified "a seat in a theatre" it was neuter;

this was familiar to every Roman with a lettered education:

unfortunately it slipped the memory of Bracciolini when he wrote:

An. XV. 32: "equitum Romanorum _locos_ sedilibus plebis

anteposuit apud Circum." Tacitus would have written "loca."

VI. This brings me again to consider the Latin of Tacitus; no

reasonable objection can be found with it; severely captious

critics who carp at trifles, and look at language microscopically,

point out errors; but they are not so great as the mistakes

sometimes made by Cicero and Caesar, Sallust and Livy. As a

specimen of the objections we may give the following: a critic has

been bold enough to say that in the phrase "refractis palatiis

foribus, ruere intus" (Hist. I. 35), Tacitus uses the adverb for

_in_ a place instead of the adverb for _to_ a place. "Intus"

means "into" or "within," just as well as "in," as may be seen

from numerous instances in Cicero, Caesar, Ovid, Plautus, and

other writers of inferior reputation in prose and poetry. The

phrase then is: "having broken open the palace doors, to rush

_within_." Where is the mistake?

Another objection raised is that Tacitus wrongly writes "quantum"

as the corresponding adverb to "tanto," "_quantum_que hebes

ad sustinendum laborem miles, _tanto_ ad discordias promptior"

(Hist. II. 99). It was a common custom among the Romans to use

"quantum," if they preferred it, to "quanto," and to follow

it with "tanto": at any rate it occurs in Livy twice, if not

oftener: _quantum_ augebatur, _tanto_ majore (V. 10);--_quantum_

laxaverat, _tanto_ magis (XXXII. 5). The objections to the

grammar of Tacitus are, as a rule, all on a par with these two;

it is not, however, without some pleasurable feeling that one

comes across charges made against him of using incorrect forms

of speech, were it only from perceiving how extremely happy the

fault-finders seem to be in having such an opportunity of gratifying

their natural malice.

VII. Vossius, the Canon of Canterbury in the seventeenth century,

adopts an entirely different tone in his agreeable treatise on the

Roman historians--"De Historicis Latinis." Commenting on the

statement made by Alciati and Emilio Ferretti that Tacitus wrote

bad Latin, he bursts into an exclamation that may be considered

rather uncourteous when applied to His Eminence a Cardinal and to

an eminent Jurisconsult, that they were both silly and absurd:

"they say," exclaims Gerardus Johannes, "that he did not write

Latin properly: how silly is this! how absurd!"--"aiunt, eum non

Latine satis scribere: quam, hoc insubidum! quam insulsum!" (I.

30). Perhaps Vossius was of opinion that if Tacitus wrote

incorrectly, it must be upon the principle alleged by Quintilian

that "one kind of expression is grammatical, another kind Latin,"

"aliud esse grammatice, aliud Latine loqui" (I. 16) after the

accommodating fashion of that kind gentleman of etymology and

syntax, Valerius Probus, who in Aulus Gellius (XIII. 20. 1), said

"has urb_e_s" or "has urb_is_" was the more correct according

to metrical convenience when writing verses, or sonorous

utterance when delivering a set oration, which (without being

Romans), we can easily understand, when some of our poets rhyme

"clear" to "idea," and a Clerkenwell Green orator prefers

"obstropalous" to "obstreperous." On some such grounds alone can

excuse be found for some anomalous expressions in the Annals; they

are irreconcilable to the common rules of grammar; and what may

seem strange to the reader, though to me it is quite natural, the

very same improprieties that occur in the Annals of words and

phrases not according with the established principles of writing

occur also in the acknowledged works of Bracciolini.

VIII. (_a_). When the Romans used the disjunctive particle,

"nec," in the first branch of a negative sentence, the same word

(or its equivalent "neque,") was used in the subsequent branch of

the proposition. To couple "aut" with "nec" was a wrong correlative.

The rule was so absolute that I know but of one Roman writer who

infringed it; and that was because he was a poet,--Ovid:

"_Nec_ piget, _aut_ unquam stulte elegisse videbor."

Her. XVI. 167.

"_Nec_ plus Atrides animi Menelaus habebit

Quam Paris; _aut_ armis anteferendus erit."

Ib. 355-6.

It will be seen that the error, which is committed twice, occurs

in the same poem, the XVIth Heroic, or The Epistle of Helen to

Paris, and under the same circumstance of pressure,--the want of a

word that began with a vowel,--because a word beginning with a

consonant could not, of course, follow the last foot of a dactyle

ending with a consonant;--therefore Ovid took refuge in what is

called "poetical license," which is a gentle term for expressing

departure from syntax. Ovid never again committed the offence,

quite sufficient to convince us that it went against his grain to

have so written in his XVIth Heroic; he knew that it was not

elegant; it was not, in fact, correct, nor in his style; and he

would not have done it but that he was cramped by verse. But why,

uncramped by verse, the author of the Annals should have written:

"hortatur miles, ut hostem vagum, _neque_ paci _aut_ proelio paratum,"

instead of "_neque_ proelia," is difficult to determine, except

that he was desirous of imitating Bracciolini, who writes in the

letter to his friend Niccoli from which we have already quoted

(Ep. II. 7): "muta igitur propositum, et huc veni, _neque_ te

terreat longitudo itineris, _aut_ hiemis asperitas." The imitation

is, besides, so very close that we find in both cases "neque" is

preferred in the first clause to the more usual form of "nec."

VIII. (_b_.) In order to show how closely the expressions

peculiar to Bracciolini and his artifices of composition resemble,

(as he did not mean them to do, though they did), the style of

writing and the language in the Annals, I need, without wandering

over the whole work, simply confine myself to the remainder of the

sentence from which this fragment is taken; and beg the reader to

mark carefully the italicized syllables and words "hortatur miles,

ut hostem vagum, _neque_ paci _aut_ proelio paratum, sed perfidiam

et ignaviam fuga confitentem exu_erent_ sedibus, gloriaeque _pariter_

et praedae consul_erent_" (An. XIII. 39).

First, there is the correspondence of the two last syllables of

the words at the end of two almost equally balanced clauses, with

more syllables in the first than the second clause: "sed perfidiam,

et ignaviam fuga confitentem exu_erent_ // sedibus, gloriaeque

pariter et praedae consul_erent_ //. It will be seen, (without

multiplying examples), that the very same thing occurs in the

passage quoted in the preceding chapter from Bracciolini's letter

about the Baths of Baden: "et simul quandoque cum mulieribus

lav_antes_, // et sertis quoque comas orn_antes_" // (Ep. I. 1).

There is the altogether peculiar use of "pariter" in the sense of

equality of association or time--"gloriaeque _pariter_ et

praedae consulerent," just as in Bracciolini's Treatise "De

Miseria Humanae Conditionis" (Pog. Op. p. 121): "Victis postmodum

_pariter_ victoribus imperarunt." Three things ought to be

noticed: first, "pariter" is the equivalent of "simul"; secondly,

it is placed between the connected words; and, thirdly, the phrase

ends with a four-syllabled verb--"imperarunt,"--"consulerent."

That this is not only Bracciolini's individual phraseology, but

his stereotyped cast of expression, is at once seen in the

extraordinary sameness of the three things occurring when he again

uses it in the Annals: "vox _pariter_ et spiritus

_raperentur_" (An. XIII. 16).

IX. The composition of any writer can be easily detected from

examining his affinities of language as displayed not only in his

use of words, but in his construction of sentences and combination

of words.

Nobody can read Tacitus, and not come to the conclusion that if

any man ever wrote harmoniously, it is he; but any one reading the

Annals must come to the very opposite conclusion, that Bracciolini

is the very prince of rugged writers. By varying the accents,

Tacitus manages to please the ear even when ending sentences with

ugly polysyllabic words, as (taking the instances from the opening

of his work): "suspectis sollicitis, adoptanti placebat" (I. 14);

"deterius interpretantibus tristior, habebatur" (ib.); "Lusitaniam,

specie legationis, seposuit" (I. 13). This is the unmusical way

in which Bracciolini ends sentences with long words (taking the

instances, also, from the commencement of the forgery): "victores

longinquam militiam aspernabantur" (An. XI. 10):--"potissimum

exaequaebantur officia ceremoniarum" (An. XI. 11):--"Claudio

dolore, injuriae credebatur" (An. XII. 11). Almost the same ring

and ruggedness are to be found in:--"marmorea tabula epigramma

referente" (Ruin. Urb. Rom. Descript. Op. Pog. p. 136);

--"magistratus, officia, imperia deferuntur" (Mis. Hum. Cond. I.

Op. Pog. p. 102); "homines amplissimam materiam suppeditarunt"

(De Nobil. Op. Pogg. p. 77).

X. Tacitus avoids, as much as the genius of his native tongue will

permit, two words following each other with the same terminations;

Bracciolini is not only much given to this, but very partial to a

reduplication of sounds, as if the jingle, instead of being most

disagreeable, was excessively pleasant to the ear, as in his Letter

describing the trial and death of Jerome of Prague (Ep. I. 2):

--"_rerum_ plurim_arum_ sci_entiam_, eloq_uentiam_"; and in the

Annals (XI. 38) "od_ii_, gau_dii_, ir_ae_, tristiti_ae_."

Bracciolini is fond of using prefixes that have no meaning, as in

his Funeral Oration on the death of his friend Niccoli: "moneta

_ob_signari est coepta concipiebant" (Op. Pog. p. 278), where

he uses "_ob_signari" for "signari," "ob" being without meaning:

so in the Annals: "testamentum Acerroniae requiri, bonaque

_ob_signari jubet" (XIV. 6).

Another peculiarity of Bracciolini's is (for alliterative

purposes) the playing upon a single letter that is repeated again

and again at the beginning, in the middle, and, if the letter will

allow it, at the end of words. "P" will not permit of being used

in Latin at the end of words; but we find Bracciolini thus playing

with it in the very first of his letters:--"_p_rojicit eam _p_ersonam

sibi acce_p_tiorem, cum illam multi _p_etant _p_orrectis manibus,

atque i_p_se," &c. (Ep. I. 1). But "m" does admit of being used

at the end of words, and thus we find him, with a friskiness that

the staid Tacitus would have in vain essayed to imitate, frolicking

with it as a juggler with balls; for the rapidity of the repetition

can be compared only to the rapidity of conveyance displayed by a

conjuror when he receives into and passes out of his hands a number

of balls with which he is playing: "_m_ox, ut o_m_itteret _m_aritum,

e_m_ercatur, suu_m m_atri_m_oniu_m_ pro_m_ittens" (An. XIII. 44).

CHAPTER IV.

THE TERMINATION OF THE FORGERY.

I.--The literary merit and avaricious humour of Bracciolini.

--II. He is aided in his scheme by a monk of the Abbey of Fulda.

--III. Expressions indicating forgery.--IV. Efforts to obtain a

very old copy of Tacitus.--V. The forgery transcribed in the Abbey

of Fulda.--VI. First saw the light in the spring of 1429.

I. We have pointed out in the preceding chapter some of the more

glaring errors committed by Bracciolini in style and syntax,

customs and history, not with the view of showing that Niccoli

made any mistake when he recommended him to take the task in hand

of forging the Annals; for in no way did Niccoli overrate the

merit of his friend. The Latin of Bracciolini, though not equal in

its elegance to that of his splendid successor, Poliziano, was,

nevertheless, superior to the Latin of any of his great

contemporaries, none of whom, besides, had his versatility and

varied attainments nor his wisdom and philosophy. The world now

knows, as his Florentine friend then knew, that he had the

requisite splendour of genius to undertake the daring task of

writing history as eminently as Tacitus, that is, with as powerful

a conception, and as superior an expression: he had already

written nobly, sensibly, purely and simply; he had acquired in the

Court of Rome, and, what we may call, the Court of the Royal

Prelate, Beaufort, the necessary experience of public affairs and

leading individuals, which fitted him to pass sovereign judgment

on great men and public events, and he was gifted with the

acuteness, the understanding and the prudence to lay down lessons

of instruction for mankind.

We have seen with what modesty he approached the immortal

production that was fated to lift the name of Tacitus, where it

was not before, above even those of Herodotus, Thucydides and

Xenophon, Caesar, Sallust and Livy: yet he hesitated, questioning

much whether he could clothe himself in the garb of an

authoritative ancient speaking in lofty tones to the whole world

and to all mankind. He had, too, to take as his model a writer who

had not his fluency, and who is never great but when concise. This

is the case with himself in the Annals, from his striving to do

what his prototype did; with this exception, that when he is great

he is never natural. In imitating this conciseness, he is the

happiest instance of a writer illustrating the Horatian adage of

"striving to be brief, and becoming obscure":

"Brevis esse laboro,

Obscurus fio."

_De Arte Poet._ 25-6:

ever and anon he falls into a graceless obscurity from compressing

into a few words what he ought to have said in a more expanded

form: his great fault is that he outdoes Tacitus in conciseness:

hence he keeps his reader in ignorance of things which would have

been known if he had only more fully disclosed them.

His avarice swayed his will stronger than his compunctions. The

five hundred gold sequins, which were to be counted out to him on

the completion of the work, which it was calculated would occupy

three years, was too tempting an offer; and yet the offer was not

sufficiently liberal in his opinion: as we have seen, he suggested

that it should be increased one-fifth; he was right; for in those

days as much, and even twice as much, was sometimes given for a

mere translation: Lorenzo Valla got five hundred gold sequins for

his Latin translation of Thucydides; Filelfo would have received

twice as much, and, in addition to the thousand gold pieces, a

handsome town house in Rome and a good landed estate if he would

have translated the Iliad and the Odyssey into Latin verse.

Bracciolini may, therefore, have succeeded in obtaining the

increased price of six hundred sequins. Still he was not the kind

of man to have been satisfied with this only: when he translated

Diodorus Siculus, he required to be supported while engaged in its

execution; and supported he was by the liberality of the Popes.

The proposal of Lamberteschi included board and lodging, and in

the house of the Florentine; Bracciolini expressed his willingness

to accept that; but on the condition that Lamberteschi did not

move about, for he wanted, as a prime necessity, to remain quite

quiet, as the great literary undertaking in which he was about to

be engaged would call for a more than usual amount of patient

attention and labour: "libenter vivam cum Piero, nisi Scythae

simus, libenter enim quiesco" (Ep. I. 17). We have seen that

Bracciolini did not avail himself of what was proffered to him in

this matter on account of his re-appointment to the Papal

Secretariate: had it not been so he would have unquestionably

called upon his friend Lamberteschi to fulfil this part of the

contract; as before his appointment to an ecclesiastical living in

England, he had been boarded and lodged by Cardinal Beaufort, and

that too, on a scale of regal magnificence. He tells us himself in

one of his Letters (Ep. I. 6), that, while the Cardinal, as

vagrant as a Scythian, was continually absent from home, (it must

have been on his episcopal visitations or in the discharge of his

State duties), he staid behind in the Palace in London, passing

his time peacefully and pleasantly in a splendid library, and

vying at the expense of his princely patron with the magnificence

of the king himself in the sumptuousness of his fare and the

costliness of his apparel: "Dominus meus, quasi continuo abest,

vagus ut Scytha, ego autem hic dego, in quiete libris involvor.

Providetur mihi pro victu et vestitu, idque est satis, neque enim

amplius vel Rex ex hoc tanto apparatu rerum capit." [Endnote 297]

When we bear in mind his strong desire for gain, we may consider

it not unlikely that, adhering to his bargain, he exacted from

Lamberteschi some equivalent in lieu of the board and lodging: be

that as it may, after the lapse of three years, (as may be seen

from letters that passed between himself and Niccoli), he had then

completed, as had been rightly calculated, the first instalment of

his forgery.

II. In those days when so many valuable works ascribed to the

ancients were being constantly recovered, there was a very general

(though as I have shown, very silly) belief abroad, that any

ancient work, consequently, the lost History of Tacitus, might yet

be found in some dark corner of Europe,--some barbarous country

such as Germany, Hungary, or Bohemia. Accident decided that

Bracciolini chose a place for the asserted recovery of what he had

forged different from what had been arranged between himself and

his friends in 1422, while they were devising the fabrication,

namely, Hungary: when Bracciolini said that, "if he did go to

Hungary he would pretend that he had come from England," the

object must have been that no one should know the country where

the MS. had been recovered; any busybody would be thus effectively

foiled in visiting the right spot, and there prying about, making

inquiries and ascertaining all the particulars with respect to the

alleged discovery of some recent rare manuscript. The place thus

decided on by accident was a town in Saxony at the farthest

eastern extremity of that country on the borders of Bohemia, named

Hirschfeldt, formerly the capital of Hesse Cassel, but which,

after the peace of Westphalia, when it was secularized, became

only a part of that principality. In the far-away times, it was

famous for an Abbey of the Benedictine monks, which had been

founded on the banks of the Fulda in the first half of the eighth

century, in the year 737, in the reign of King Pepin, by a

disciple of St. Boniface, St. Lul, who became Boniface's successor

in the Bishopric of Mayence. The accident which caused Bracciolini

to choose this convent, the most famous in Germany, as the place

whence his forgery was to emanate, was his forming the

acquaintance of a member of the abbey, who attended in the name of

his brother Benedictines to watch a case that was being litigated

for the monastery in the ecclesiastical courts of Rome. From some

reason unexplained this monk was under obligation to Bracciolini,

who determined that this holy man should be the medium of his

forgery being placed before the world. The monk had the necessary

qualifications for the tool that was wanted; he was needy and

ignorant; above all things, he was stupid. "The good fellow," says

Bracciolini in his scornful way to Niccoli, "who has not our

attainments, thought that we were equally ignorant of what he

found he did not know himself"--"Vir ille bonus, expers studiorum

nostrorum, quicquid reperit ignotum sibi, id et apud nos

incognitum putavit" (Ep. III 12).

He gave this booby monk a long list of books that he was to hunt

out for him on the library shelves of the Abbey of Fulda,

including in the catalogue the works of Tacitus; and as he wanted

a copy of the latter in the very oldest writing that could be

procured, he enjoined the monk to give him a full description of

certain books that were carefully put down in a list; these being

very numerous, the monk could not possibly divine that the book

particularly wanted was a Tacitus in the oldest characters that

could be found.

III. These instructions were given in May, 1427; and, notwithstanding

the care and wisdom shown in the matter, something before the close

of the summer that year oozed out which seemed to menace a disclosure

of the imposture: rumours had got abroad evidently about what was

transpiring between Niccoli and Bracciolini, which greatly alarmed the

former; but he was quieted by his bolder friend assuring him that "when

Tacitus came, he would keep it a secresy; that he knew all the tittle-

tattle that was going on,--whence it came,--through whom, and how it

was got up; but that he need have no fear, for that not a syllable

should escape him."--"Cornelium Tacitum, cum venerit, observabo penes

me occulte. Scio enim omnem illam cantilenam, et unde exierit, et per

quem, et quis eum vendicet. Sed nil dubites, non exibit a me ne

verbo quidem."

These words occur in a letter that bears date Rome, the 25th of

September, 1427; and whatever interpretation the reader may feel

disposed to put upon them, he must admit, after considering all

that has been said, that they seem to confirm wonderfully the

truth of our theory, pointing, as they unquestionably do, to some

mysterious and deep secret about Tacitus that existed only between

Niccoli and Bracciolini; and what could that secret be? It could

not be about the recovery of a rare and valuable copy of the works

of Tacitus. There would be no necessity of keeping that by one

secretly; on the contrary, the proper thing to do was to noise it

abroad immediately, and as publicly as could be, so that it might

be known to a wide circle of book-collectors, and as large a sum

got for it as could be obtained; but if it were a Tacitus in the

oldest characters that were to be found in order that it should be

made use of as a copy for the letters in a figment, one can then

easily understand the cause for all this secresy. "Thus conscience

doth make cowards of us all." In fact, forgery, and nothing else

than forgery, seems to be the easiest as well as the most feasible

explanation of these remarks, which, were it not for this theory,

would, instead of being very clear, be quite nebulous.

IV. The Tacitus that was to have come from Germany did not,

however, arrive. "I hear nothing of the Tacitus that is in

Germany," he observes towards the close of the letter. "I am

expecting an answer from the monk."--"De Cornelio Tacito qui est

in Germania nil sentio; expecto responsum ab illo monacho."

(Ep. III. 14.)

Towards the close of September, then, 1427, what Bracciolini had

written had not yet been given to the transcriber: time was

passing; and Niccoli sent him in the following month what must

have been the oldest copy of Tacitus he had in his collection.

Bracciolini thanked him for it, but complained that the Lombard

characters, in which it was written, were half effaced; and that

if he had only known what he was about to do, he would have spared

him the trouble. He went on to say that he remembered having read

a copy of Tacitus in antique characters which Niccoli had in his

possession, and which he had purchased at the sale of the library

of his old friend Coluccio Salutati, or some other large book

collector. He was desirous of having that or some other that could

be read; for it would be difficult to find a transcriber who,

without making mistakes, could read the manuscript that he had

sent him:--"Misisti mihi librum Senecae, et Cornelium Tacitum,

quod est mihi gratum; et is est litteris longobardis, et majori ex

parte caducis, quod si scissem, liberassem te eo labore. Legi olim

quemdam apud vos manens litteris antiquis; nescio Colucii ne

esset, an alterius. Illum cupio habere, vel alium, qui legi

possit; nam difficile erit reperire scriptorem qui hunc codicem

recte legat" (Ep. III. 15).

It is clear from these words that the copy of Tacitus which

Bracciolini received in October 1427 from his friend Niccoli so

very badly written in Lombard letters as to be for the most part

indistinguishable, could not have been for his own reading, nor

for his making a copy of it as he was in the habit of doing with

the ancient classics, but from his saying that it could not be

correctly read by a transcriber, it must have been for the purpose

of placing it in the hands of such a person. But why should he put

such a Tacitus in the hands of a transcriber? Let the reader ask

himself that question; and his reply will be, that it could have

been with no other object than that the History and the other

works of Tacitus should be copied into the oldest characters that

could be obtained by Bracciolini; with this further and more

important motive in view, to add to the acknowledged works of

Tacitus the new portion that had just been forged, all uniformly

transcribed in the same equally old letters in order to deceive

the world as to the very great antiquity, and, consequently, the

implied authenticity of the fabrication. Bracciolini is,

accordingly, most anxious to get a very old copy of Tacitus. "Take

care, therefore," he continues in his letter to Niccoli, "that I

have another, if it can be done; but you can do it, if you will

strive your utmost":--"ideo cura ut alium habeam, si fieri potest;

poteris autem, si volueris nervos intendere" (ibid). His anxiety

also is very great for the transcriber to set to work at once by

his adding: "You have, however, sent me the book without the

parchment. I know not the state of mind you were in when you did

this, except that you were as mad as a March hare. For what book

can be transcribed, if there be not the parchment? Have a care to

it, then, and, also, to a second manuscript, but, above all, keep

in mind the vellum."--"Tu tamen misisti librum sine chartis, quod

nescio qua mente effeceris, nisi ut poneres lunam in Ariete.

[Endnote 303] Qui enim potest liber transcribi desint Pergamenae?

Cura ergo de eis, et item de altero codice, sed primum de chartis

confice" (ibid).

The parchment came in good time, as well as a second old copy of

Tacitus that could be read by a transcriber.

V. This was the 2lst of October, 1427. Exactly eleven months and

ten days elapsed, during the whole of which time nothing more is

heard about old copies of Tacitus and transcriptions on calfskin;

all again went on in profound silence and secresy till the llth of

September, 1428, when the mountain again laboured; and a little

bit of news that dropped from Bracciolini bore a close resemblance

to the appearance of a small mouse: "Not a word," says he, "of

Cornelius Tacitus from Germany; nor have I heard thence any

further news of his works," showing that this must have been in

reply to some remark in a letter of Niccoli's expressing surprise,

it may be, at the very long time that was being taken in the

transcription of the works of Tacitus with the additional new

bit:--"Cornelius Tacitus silet inter Germanos, neque quicquam

exinde novi percepi de ejus operibus" (Ep. III. 19).

Evidently the needy, ignorant, stupid monk of Hirschfeldt was not

over busy in the Abbey of Fulda transcribing the forgery of

Bracciolini and incorporating it with the works of Tacitus in

closely copied Lombard characters of great antiquity. The monk was

not only slow at his work; he was also negligent; for when he went

to Rome in the winter following, and should have taken his

transcript to Bracciolini, he had left it behind him at the abbey.

"The Hirschfeldt monk has come without the book," writes

Bracciolini angrily to Niccoli on the 26th February, 1429; "and I

gave him a sound rating for it; he has given me his assurance that

he will be back aoain soon for he is carrying on a suit about his

abbey in the law-courts, and will bring the book. He made heavy

demands upon me; but I told him I would do nothing for him until

_I_ have the book; I am, therefore, in hopes that I shall have it,

as he is in need of my good offices":--"Monachus Hersfeldensis

venit absque libro; multumque est a me increpatus ob eam causam;

asseveravit se cito rediturum, nam litigat nomine Monasterii,

et portaturum librum. Rogavit me multa; dixi me nil facturum,

nisi librum haberemus; ideo spero et illum nos haberemus, quia

eget favore nostro " (Ep. III. 29).

VI. As he anticipated, the book ultimately turned up; it might

have been in a week or two, or it might not have been till two or

three months after; for in a letter that bears the date of neither

the year nor the day,--(which I think was sometime in March 1429,

though the Chevalier de Tonelli, in his Collection of the Letters

of Bracciolini, conjectures must have been in the first week in

May,--some time before the 6th of that month,)--a passage occurs

in which Bracciolini informs his friend Niccoli that, as far as

himself was concerned, everything was "now complete with respect

to the 'Little Work,' concerning which he would on some future

opportunity write to him, and at the same time send it to him to

read in order to get his opinion of it": "Ego jam Opusculum

absolvi, de quo alias ad te scribam, et simul legendum mittam, ut

exquirendum judicium tuum" (Ep. III. 30). I take it that he is

here alluding in his customary jesting manner (from his writing

"opusculum" with a big O, to his "great" undertaking, the Annals.

If he is not joking, but serious, he must, then, of course, be

referring to his treatise, "De Avaritia," which is, certainly, a

"little affair," and which he wrote in 1429. However, the monk in

the Abbey of Fulda, who had taken a very long time in his

transcription of the forgery, had finished his work by the 26th of

February, 1429, and must have placed it in Bracciolini's hands a

little before or after the month of March in that year.

The deed was then now done. With the consummation of the forgery,

all that correspondence suddenly came to an end which had been

carried on for years by Bracciolini with Niccoli relative to

Tacitus; that correspondence has given much additional colouring

of truthfulness to the theory I have proposed to myself to uphold;

if there had been nothing else convincing, it should, by itself,

leave no shadow of a shade of doubt that Bracciolini forged the

Annals of Tacitus. Though, too, we have no positive record of it,

we may be as sure as if we had, that the last six books of that

production first saw the light some time in the spring of the year

1429.

CHAPTER V.

THE FORGED MANUSCRIPT.

I. Recapitulation, showing the certainty of forgery.--II. The

Second Florence MS. the forged MS.--III. Cosmo de' Medici the man

imposed upon.--IV. Digressions about Cosmo de' Medici's position,

and fondness for books, especially Tacitus.--V. The many

suspicious marks of forgery about the Second Florence MS.: the

Lombard characters; the attestation of Salustius.--VI. The

headings, and Tacitus being bound up with Apuleius, seem to

connect Bracciolini with the forged MS.--VII. The first authentic

mention of the Annals.--VIII. Nothing invalidates the theory in

this book.--IX. Brief recapitulation of the whole argument.

I. We have, then, seen, how, from the inception to the

commencement of the forgery;--how, from its first suggestion to

Bracciolini by Lamberteschi and its approval by Niccoli in

February, 1422, down to the finishing of the transcription by the

monk of the Abbey of Fulda in February, 1429, and its delivery

into the hands of Bracciolini in probably the month following,

seven years elapsed. The time was, certainly, long enough for the

fabrication to have been elaborated into the remarkable

completeness by which it is distinguished, and which secured the

signal success with which, to all appearances, it was immediately,

as it has all along, been attended. Nearly two years were passed

in considering how the last Six Books of the Annals could best be

done: the composition of those few books was commenced about

January, 1424, and completed by May, 1427: several months were

then occupied in endeavouring to procure the oldest copy of

Tacitus that could be got to serve as a guide for the copyist, nor

was it until October, 1427, that the transcriber was supplied with

a copy in small Lombard characters; the transcription was then

begun, and, after a year and a few months, in February, 1429, the

work was finally completed, and next month probably placed in the

hands of the fabricator.

Throughout this we see the exercise of an exceeding caution from

the beginning to the end which would have provided against all

mistakes and mischances, if it were in the power of man to be on

his guard against all mischances and mistakes in an achievement of

such a description. We have pointed out a few of these mistakes;

they may in some instances be considered trifling; looked at from

one point of view, trifling they are; but looked at from another

point of view, they are most important, nay, startling, because

they are mistakes that could not, in any instance, have been made

by Tacitus; in several instances they could not have been made by

any ancient Roman whomsoever.

Still, the wonder is, not that Bracciolini made these mistakes,

but that he did not make a great many more. As for the general

merit of his achievement, it is actually marvellous;--the most

phenomenal thing ever known to have been done in literature. It

has not come within the scope of this inquiry that I should point

out the successes of Bracciolini in imitating Tacitus: suffice it

that they are sustained, continuous, close, felicitous,

wonderful;--so much so that frequently in the pursuing of this

investigation I have been induced to throw it aside as a mere

barren paradox instead of a thoroughly sound hypothesis, aye,

based on a foundation as firm as the Great Pyramid; but every now

and then the occurrence of some mistake, which, though at the

first glance, it looked very small, nay, insignificant,--of no

importance whatever, yet considered more minutely, it bulked out

into an egregious, colossal, monstrous blunder which made it

impossible for me to believe that the Annals was a production by

Tacitus.

If errors pointed out in language or style, in statements or

grammar, have shaken the reader's faith in the authenticity of the

Annals, that faith must have been still more shaken by the

mysterious allusions made by Bracciolini in his letters to Niccoli

about Tacitus; the conjectures I have hazarded on these must have

gained additional force when references followed to an unknown

monk of Hirschfeldt, with mention of copies of Tacitus in Lombard

writing, parchment for transcription, and other matters denoting

the completion of a literary work in those days.

II. Now, if there be any truth in my theory,--if Bracciolini

really forged the Annals,--further, if a transcript of it was made

by a monk of the Abbey of Fulda, and if the manuscript is still in

existence, it must necessarily be the oldest containing the last

six books of the Annals; I will add this more, that if there be

one place more likely than another where it would be found, it is

the city whence the offer emanated, namely, Florence, and if there

be one library more likely than another where it would be deposited,

it is the library founded by (for a reason that will be immediately

seen) the Medici family. Well, it does so happen that the oldest

MS. of Tacitus containing the last six books of the Annals is

really preserved in Florence; and in that library, the foundation

of which was laid by Cosmo de' Medici, and which is known by the

name of the Mediceo-Laurentian Library.