As a rule, indeed, it may be said that what was best in the literature

and art of the Italian Renaissance had a much wider influence than the

worse elements in it. It is only in after-times that many of the

unfortunately too human contributions to the intellectual life of this

period have been revived among scholars and have come to be looked

upon as expressive of the spirit of the time. In every movement there

are always the lesser men whose notes are discordant and who

exaggerate the significance of their own ideas and often exhibit the

worst side of human nature. To conclude from them, however, as to the

real temper of the time and its influence would be a sad mistake.

Castiglione meant ever so much more in the Europe of his day than

Cellini. The {461} "Courtier" sank deep into the minds of poets,

artists and literary and educated folk of all classes and aroused what

was best in those who were influencing their generation. The

"Autobiography" was read much more widely, but mainly by people whose

influence over others was to be slight, while the poets and writers

and artists did not take it very seriously, but spent a leisure hour

or two over it as over any other romance, and turned to their work

again.

{462}

CHAPTER III

FRENCH LITERATURE

The French literature of Columbus' Century is but little, if at all,

below that of Italy in world influence and interest. It was ushered in

by that alluring character, the vagabond poet, Villon. He was twenty

the first year of our century, and having, providentially for the

world of literature, escaped hanging, wrote poetry that has always

attracted the attention of poets of every land, and besides has had a

popular vogue whenever men have looked beyond their own time and

country for literary interests. Few poets of modern times have had

among the educated of all countries so many ardent admirers--devotees

they might well be called--as Villon. The power of expression of the

Renaissance that was just opening was incarnate in him, and no one has

ever said better what he sang, though his message was limited enough.

His "Ladies of the Olden Time," probably addressed in its epilogue to

Prince Charles of Orleans, his poetic contemporary, to whom it is said

that he owed his being saved from hanging, is the best known, and is a

typical example of his work which reveals the reason for its enduring

qualities:

"Say where--in what region be

Flora that fair Roman dame,

Hipparchia where, and Thais, she

Who doth kindred beauty claim?

Echo where? who back the same

Voice from lake and river throws,

Lovely beyond human frame:

But--where are the last year's snows?

* * * * * *

Queen Blanche, white as lily is,

Who used to sing with siren strain; {463}

Bertha, Alice, Beatrice,

Ermengarde who held the Maine,

Joan, blessed maiden of Lorraine,

At Rouen burnt by English foes.

Where are they, O Virgin Queen?

But--where are the last year's snows?

Prince, nor in a week or year

Bid me where they be disclose.

Lest you still this burden hear.

But--where are the last year's snows?"

With Villon came Prince Charles of Orleans, of whom we would probably

know very little except for the fact that twenty years of imprisonment

in an English prison gave him the opportunity for devotion to poetry.

His beautiful lines on the death of his wife are a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of

mourning poetry and one of the gems of literature. The Prince's appeal

to Death as to what has made Fate so bold as to take the noble

Princess, who was his comfort, his life, his good, his pleasure, his

richness, demanding why it had not rather taken himself, has been

often translated. There is another of his little poems addressed to

her which has often been quoted and yet cannot be quoted too often:

"How God has made her good to see!

So holy, full of grace, and fair;

For the great gifts that in her be.

All haste her praises to declare.

Of her, what soul could weary be?

Each day her beauty doth repair.

How God has made her good to see!

So holy, full of grace, and fair.

So hither, nor beyond the sea.

No damsel nor dame I know.

Who can like her all graces show;

Only in dreams such thought can be--

How God has made her good to see!"

{464}

One of Clement Marot's shorter poems contains his formula for what

constitutes happiness in life. It is the same formula that has been in

the mouths of all the poets at all times who have cared to express

themselves on the subject, though some critics have been unkind enough

to say that it was not always in their hearts--"Happy the man whose

mind and care a few paternal acres share." Marot goes somewhat more

into detail. His poem is an anticipation of the sonnet of the great

master printer of Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, at the end of this

century. Because of its many associations it deserves a place here:

"This, Clement Marot! (if you wish to know)

Can upon man a happy life bestow.

Goods you don't earn, but by bequest acquire,

A pleasant wholesome house and constant fire.

Hated by none, yourself devoid of hate.

And little meddling with affairs of state:

A wise and simple life, true friends, and like

A good plain fare, with nought the eyes to strike,

With all in easy converse to combine:

Pass careless nights, not careless made by wine;

A wife to have--kind, joyous, chaste and bright;

And well to sleep, which shorter makes the night:

Contented with your rank, nor wish for higher;

And neither death to fear, nor death desire

This, Clement Marot! (if you wish to know)

Can upon man a happy life bestow."

Francis I was himself a poet, and his poems and letters were collected

and published in the first half of the nineteenth century. "In default

of a great talent, he had a real passion for poetry," says Imbert de

Saint-Amand, and like the Trouveres he liked to make use of the lyre

and sword by turns. Sainte-Beuve in his _"Portraits Litteraires"_

declared that "Francis I, from the day he ascended the throne, gave

the signal for this puissant labor which was to aid in expanding and

definitely polishing the French language. Thanks to the impulse given

by him from above, there was soon a universal {465} clearing of the

ground all around him." The verses in which he formulated one of the

most melancholy and most striking judgments that ever monarch

pronounced on the nothingness of the grandeurs of this lower world,

deserve to be quoted:

"The more my goods, the more my sorrow grows;

The more my honors, less is my content;

For one I gain, a hundred I desire.

When nought I have, for nothing I lament;

But having all, the fear doth me torment,

Either to lose it or to make it worse.

Tired, full well may I my misery mourn,

Seeing I die of envy but to have a good.

Which is my death and I esteem it life."

The most important writer in France at this time, however, was

undoubtedly Francis' sister, Margaret of Navarre or Angouleme. Her

"Heptameron" has been widely read in practically every generation

since her own, and though some doubt has been thrown on her authorship

of it, it is probable that the age-long attribution to her must

remain. The book is about as evil in its influence as any that was

ever written. Its author was undoubtedly a saint. She had the best of

intentions, and her work illustrates how easy it is for good

intentions to go wrong. Hell was paved with good intentions then as

now. As I have suggested in the chapter on Some Great Women of the

Century, a corresponding mistake is being made by many good women now

in the crusade of providing sex information as a protection for the

young. Margaret's work is one of the best specimens of French prose of

the time. Saintsbury, in his volume on "The Early Renaissance," calls

it a very remarkable book which has, as a rule, been undervalued,

"presenting almost equal attractions for those who read for mere

amusement, to those who appreciate literature as literature, and to

those who like extra literary puzzles of various kinds from authorship

to allusion."

Margaret's reputation has suffered more than was deserved from the

condemnation of the "Heptameron." Her personality merits to be judged

rather from the charming poetry of a {466} mystical character which

she wrote. Her book, "Les Marguerites de la Marguerite des

Princesses," is too well known to be much more than mentioned here. It

has a charming grace and an exquisite delicacy. It is the true index

to her character. As Imbert de Saint-Amand has said in his "Women of

the Valois Court," "Poetry and religion were her two consolers." Her

resolution when she looked at her crucifix and burst into poetry was:

"It is my will and firm intent

To be no more what I have been,

Nor to amuse myself in this poor world.

Seeing the griefs that reign there and abound.

And which by day and night torment my heart."

There are bursts of piety in her collection worthy of her great

mystical contemporary, St. Teresa. The following would almost remind

one of St. Teresa's cry, "I die that I may die."

"Lord, when shall come the day

I long to see,

When by pure love I shall

Be drawn to Thee?

That nuptial day, O Lord,

So long delays.

That no content I find

In wealth or praise.

Wipe from these sorrowing eyes

The tear that flows,

And grant me Thy best gift,

A sweet repose."

The French poetess, Louise Labe, _la cordiere,_ the cord-wainer's

wife, as she was called, in reference to her husband's occupation,

deserves a place because she represents at once the opportunities even

of the lowly born of her sex for the higher education at this time,

and her writings exhibit a natural grace and ardent passion that place

them in a high rank of lyric poetry. Poetesses of passion there have

been a-plenty since, {467} yet it is doubtful if many of them have

surpassed much the French lady of the Renaissance from the middle

classes. The sonnet form would seem highly unsuitable to us for such

passionate expression, but it was the fashion to use it, and Louise

Labe anticipates by some three hundred years Mrs. Browning's use of

this form for a very similar purpose. One of her sonnets may very well

be read beside some of those of Mrs. Browning.

"As soon as ever I begin to take.

In my soft bed, the rest which I desire,

Forth from my frame does my sad soul retire,

And hastes toward thee its eager way to make.

Then in my tender heart, ere I awake.

The bliss I gain to which I most aspire.

The bliss for which to sigh I never tire.

For which I weep as though my heart would break.

A kindly sleep, O sleep to me so blest,

Happy repose, full of tranquillity.

Grant that each night I may renew my dream.

And if my sad heart, by all love possest.

Must ne'er be happy in reality.

Yet while I sleep so let me falsely seem."

The humor of the end of Columbus' Century is very well illustrated in

some of the epigrams of Melin de Saint Gelais, like Marot, the son of

a poet and brought up in poetic circles, who knew how to write elegant

trivialities, or who was, as the French say, _maitre en l'art de

badiner avec elegance._ Curiously enough, it was he who imported the

sonnet from Italy. It had been hitherto unknown to French poets, but

was unfortunately, as it must seem to most of us, destined to eclipse

the ballades, rondeaux, virelais and other poetic forms that had been

for so long in vogue in France. I prefer to quote here two of his

shorter epigramatic poems which serve to show how old the new is in

wit and humor:

"You find great fault with me, my friend.

Because your neighbor I commend,

And yet from you all praise withhold: {468}

But say, why should I waste my time

Praising your merits or your rhyme?

You do it best a hundredfold."

The second treats in vivid satire the eternal question of the honor

due the scholar:

"Friend! tell of these two things the just degree,

Great learning or great wealth; the better which?

I know not. But the learned still I see

Paying great court and homage to the rich."

The _"Defense et Illustration de la Langue Francaise,"_ which is the

manifesto of the Pleiades, was written by Joachim du Bellay just at

the end of Columbus' Century and published in February, 1550,

according to the modern calendar, but 1549 in the old, which made the

year begin on Lady Day (March 25). With that a group of men, most of

them about twenty-five years of age, entered upon a new period of

French literature. A sham middle age had been lingering on,--the mere

remnants and echo of the Romance of the Rose, and now a new spirit was

to enter into French literature. The genius of it had all been cradled

in Columbus' Century. The poets of the Pleiades came to teach the

modern note. Pierre Ronsard was the greatest of them, and in five

years all Europe knew something of the new birth in French poetry. Two

such very different minds as those of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth

of England became ardent admirers and indeed almost patrons of the new

poets, and particularly of Ronsard. Many of the poems had been

conceived, and some of the best were issued within a year or two after

the close of what we have called Columbus' Century. The little lyric

_"Mignonne! Allons voir si la Rose,"_ which has always been a favorite

in every generation with any poetry in its soul, was known throughout

Europe within a year of its publication in 1552.

There is another ode of Ronsard's of much more serious vein which

serves to show that the poets of the older time could think of other

things besides love and beauty and the rose, and face the sterner

problems of their time and sing the {469} meaning of them with poetic

depth. Because its subject is quite as eternal in its interest as that

of the love poems and has perhaps more significance for our time, I

prefer to quote it:

"Why, poor peasant, should you dread

Sceptered hand or crowned head?

They shall soon--slight shades--be sent

The number of the dead t' augment.

To all mortals--dost not wis?--

Death's wide gate e'er open is.

There th' imperial soul must wend,

There as speedily descend,

Charon's fatal boat to find,

As the soul of serf or hind.

Courage you who delvers are;

These great thunderbolts of war

No more than yourselves shall go

Armed with breastplate there below,

As though battling as of yore.

Mail shall profit them no more--

Lance and shield and battle blade--

Than shall you your scythe and spade.

Rhadamanthus, judge severe,

Be you sure no more will fear

Armor in his dread abode

Than the peasant's wooden goad;

Nor does more or less admire

Richest robe or mean attire,

Or the gorgeous pageantry

Where the king in state doth lie."

Joachim du Bellay, snatched away at the early age of thirty-five

after having passed many years in illness, owed his inspiration to

write poetry to his reading of the classics. It was he who wrote the

proclamation of the Pleiades which I have already mentioned. Had his

fate been happier, doubtless there {470} would have been many great

poems from him and he would have been a serious rival of his friend

Ronsard. As it is, there are from his pen some poems that will always

have an interest for the French and for the educated in every country.

One of the more serious deserves to be quoted.

"If, then, our life is shorter than a day

Lost in all time; if the revolving year

Hurries our days past hope to reappear;

If all things born must fail and pass away--

What, O my prisoned soul, dost dream of? say!

Why so much love our days of darkness here.

If to take flight to an abode more dear,

Well-feathered wings you on your shoulders sway?

There is the good which ever soul desires.

There the repose to which the world aspires,

And there is love and pleasure evermore.

There, O my soul, rapt to the highest skies,

You will in actual substance recognize

Th' ideal beauty which I now adore."

In the French prose of our century there is Comines at the beginning,

a not unworthy fourth in that wonderful quartette of French historical

writers which began with Villehardouin at the end of the twelfth

century, gave us Joinville in the thirteenth, Froissart in the

fourteenth and Comines in the latter half of the fifteenth. He is one

of the historians who will ever be read; with a political sagacity and

philosophic outlook on history that give him a place of his own. He

was no mere chronicler, and the individuality of his work, that

quality by which history is raised into literature, sets him far above

many a modern writer of what is called history, though it is merely a

collection of materials for some historian who will inform them with a

soul. At the end of the century there was Michel de L'Hopital, whose

orations, numerous memoirs and special treatises mainly connected with

explanations of {471} law have the defects of legal writing at all

times, and yet exhibit a power of expression that has seldom been

equalled at any time.

After Rabelais, undoubtedly the greatest of the prose writers of the

time was Amyot, whose first work, a translation of a Greek romance,

"Theagene et Charicle," was published in 1546, and who, in the

subsequent years of a life that reached almost to ninety, published

his translations of Plutarch, a work for which he received the

designation of preceptor of the royal children and the Bishopric of

Auxerre. He was the grand almoner.

Amyot's translation of Plutarch has been declared practically a new

and original work. Montaigne said of it:

"I am grateful to Amyot above all things for having had the wit to

select so worthy and so suitable a work to present his country. We

ignorant folk had been lost, had not this lifted us out of the mire;

thanks to it, we now dare speak and write, and ladies give lessons out

of it to school-masters; 'tis our breviary." For English-speaking

people its significance is greatly enhanced from the consideration

that it was really Amyot's version which, in the English dress of

Florio, became Shakespeare's Plutarch. Anyone who knows how closely

Shakespeare followed his Plutarch will appreciate, then, what an

important influence on world literature Amyot was destined to have.

This translation of Plutarch has come to be looked upon as probably

one of the best translations ever made. It has sometimes been said

that "to translate is to betray" and that the best translations are at

most tapestries seen from the wrong side, but Amyot's "Plutarch" must

be considered an exception to this rule. Erasmus said of Linacre's

translation into Latin of Galen that it was better than the original

Greek. Amyot's "Plutarch" has become a French classic, though the

Greek author was by no means classic in the limited sense of the word

in the original. Racine would read no other because he thought there

was nothing to equal it in French. Amyot's works are a treasure house

of the French language, and modern French critics often regret that

many of his expressions have been allowed to sink into desuetude.

{472}

France glories in the possession of another of these striking

characters of the Renaissance period, Rabelais, about the estimation

of whose character and place in history, just as with regard to

Machiavelli, the world has not quite made up its mind. There is no

doubt at all as to his genius, nor his breadth of view and

comprehensive grasp of the knowledge of his time, nor of his ability

as a vigorous writer, though his crudities of style and frequent

indulgence in vulgarity, have made him a writer largely for men, and

even many of these have been deterred from the study of his writings

because of the glaringness of these faults. His defects were largely

those of his time, for they were accustomed to call a spade a spade in

the Renaissance. It was not because of looseness of his own life that

his crudities of style are so manifest. Careful investigations and

research in our time have made it very clear that there are many

misunderstandings with regard to his personal character which should

be removed. Rabelais ran the whole gamut of life in his time. He was

first a friar, then a monk, took his medical degrees at Montpellier, a

physician who gained considerable prestige for his knowledge of

medicine, a writer of books that were widely read, a scholar whose

journeys to Rome gave him a breadth of knowledge unusual even in his

time, and the intimate friend of some of the great and good churchmen

and literary men of his time.

The old legend which represented him as a gluttonous and wine-bibbing

buffoon, wandering in revels as an unfrocked priest, must now be

abandoned. His transitions from friar to monk, to physician, were all

accomplished with due ecclesiastical permission, and in spite of the

freedom of speech and liberalizing tendencies to be found in his

writings he never got into serious trouble with the ecclesiastical

authorities. Evidently he was looked upon as a genius whose good will

might be depended on to keep him from serious heretical divagations,

though occasionally his superabundant vital spirit would lead him into

expressions that were often indiscreet and sometimes needed

correction. His relations with Guillaume and Jean du Bellay and with

the bishops of Maillezais and Montpellier, as well as the

distinguished jurist, Tiraqueau, furnish most convincing proof of the

high regard in which he was held not {473} only by men of his own

rank, but by those far above him in power and station--Princes of the

Church and patrons of humanism.

In spite of their deterring vulgarity, his works have been much read

ever since and are still often in the hands of scholars and those who

want to appreciate one phase at least of the true inwardness and

all-comprehensiveness of the spirit of the Renaissance. The number of

Greek and Latin writers from whom he quotes is very large, and his

reading must have been very wide. He seems also to have known some

Hebrew. Very few of his contemporaries realized at all that in his

writings he had made an enduring contribution not only to French, but

to world literature. So good a critic, however, as Joachim du Bellay

in the "Defence and Illustration of the French Tongue" alludes to him

as the man "who has brought back Aristophanes to life and who imitates

so well the satirical wit of Lucian."

The fact that his book should be published at this time without its

author incurring serious censure, much less persecution, is a proof

that the usual persuasion of many who write on the history of this

time that heresy-baiting was a favorite occupation of the Churchmen is

unfounded and shows how absurd is the impression entertained by not a

few that the slightest imprudence might have even fatal consequences.

Men like Etienne Dolet and Giordano Bruno lost their lives at this

time on heretical charges, but that was because their writings seemed

to the Church, and above all the civil authorities of the time, to

undermine authority and to propagate anarchy. This has always been a

dangerous suspicion for a philosophic writer to fall under at any

time, and is not without its serious dangers, social rather than

legal, even in our time. In other matters, however, as the example of

Rabelais shows, there was, if not a modern liberty, at least a large

tolerance of expression, provided the thoughts were tempered by humor

and the character of the writer known to be such that genuine ill-will

or anarchic tendencies towards civil and ecclesiastical authorities

were not the manifest purpose of the writings.

The interest of our own generation in Rabelais is best {474}

illustrated by the foundation in 1902 of the Societe des Etudes

Rabelaisiennes at Paris. The organ of the Society, the _Revue des

Etudes Rabelaisiennes,_ made its first appearance in January, 1903,

and has already added much to our knowledge of Rabelais. It has now

been thoroughly demonstrated that Gargantua was a popular and

folk-lore character long before Rabelais' time, and that he assumed

the character only in order to give popular vogue to his own ideas. In

spite of the cruder side of his work he has so much to say that is

valuable with regard to education, valuable even for our time, so much

of correction of popular errors and emphatic restatement of the

philosophy of life by which men may secure their happiness, not

through selfishness, but love for their fellowmen, that whenever men

think deeply for themselves and do not merely drift in the wake of

other thinkers, Rabelais will always attract attention. It is always a

good sign when Rabelais becomes popular in France, for men are usually

thinking more deeply than before. Like Dante, he is a touchstone of

sincerity and honesty of thought and purpose among his countrymen.

Rabelais is a most difficult man to sum up for those who are not

French. Saintsbury in his "Earlier Renaissance" has perhaps furnished

the best brief appreciation when he said:

"On the pure credit side his (Rabelais') assets are so great that

one can only marvel at the undervaluation of them by any competent

auditor. . . . You _may_ say some things against him, and some of

these _some_ things truly. But three things will remain. He is (let

the competent gainsay it if they dare) one of the greatest writers

of the world; he is one of the great satirists of the world; and he

is--as not all great writers and very few great satirists have

been--one who sincerely and strenuously loved his fellowmen."

In the first paragraph of his "Francois Rabelais" [Footnote 45]

(written for the French Men of Letters Series), Arthur Tilley, whose

"Literature of the French Renaissance" had shown how competent he was

to judge, has summed up the character and place of Rabelais. It is to

Tilley that I owe most of the {475} details that are given here, and

his paragraph will serve as a fitting conclusion.

[Footnote 45: Lippincott, Phila., 1907.]

"It is a characteristic of the very greatest writers that they sum

up, with more or less completeness, the thought, the aspirations,

and the temper of their age, and this not only for their own

country, but for the whole civilized world. Of this select band is

Rabelais. He is the embodiment not only of the early French

Renaissance, but of the whole Renaissance in its earlier and fresher

manifestations, in its devotion to humanism, in its restless and

many-sided curiosity, in its robust enthusiasm, in its belief in the

future of the human race."

{476}

CHAPTER IV

SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE LITERATURE

The Spanish literature of the period contains some all-important

material of great significance not only for Spanish literature itself,

but also for the literature of the world. In the chapter on Women of

the Renaissance, I have called attention to the interest of Queen

Isabella in things literary, and while she did not produce any formal

literary work, her letters have been pronounced by the Spanish Academy

classic documents in the Spanish language. The most important

contribution to Spanish literature during the century came also from a

woman, though she doubtless had as little thought of making literature

when she wrote as did the Queen. This was St. Teresa, to whose works

serious writers on spiritual subjects in all countries and at all

times, often in spite of differences of belief, have turned as

classics of spirituality. Her literary work consists of the treatises

which she wrote by order of her confessors on mystical subjects and

then her many letters. It is these last, particularly, that have been

widely read in the modern time and that are world classics in their

order. Probably no one has been more misunderstood than St. Teresa.

She has come to be considered by many, who, as a rule, know nothing at

all of her at first hand, as one of the almost impossible saintly

personages whose hours of concentration in prayer and fasting and

other mortifications have driven them into states of mind bordering on

the irrational, if not frankly hysterical. Indeed she is often

considered to be the most striking type of these.

[Illustration: FRANCIA, VIRGIN WEEPING OVER BODY OF CHRIST (LONDON)]

David Hannay, in his "The Later Renaissance" in Professor Saintsbury's

series, Periods of European Literature (New York: Scribner's, 1898),

who has read her works with care, says: "Her letters, which are not

only the most attractive part of her writing, but even the most

valuable, show her {477} not only as a great saint, but as a great

lady with a very acute mind, a fine wit and an abounding good sense.

Her own great character is stamped on every line. Nobody ever showed

less of the merely emotional saintly character 'meandering about,

capricious, melodious, weak, at the will of devout whim mainly.'"

To get the real charm of St. Teresa's writings, one must read her

letters, and from those it is almost impossible to take such

selections as might be included in the brief space allowed here.

Fortunately they have come to us as she wrote them. Fray Luis de Leon

was himself literary enough to save them from a worthy

father-confessor, who would have "improved upon and polished her

periods." The world came near losing the marvellous language of which

Crashaw said, "Oh it is not Spanish, but it is Heaven she spoke."

Some idea of her simplicity and power of expression can be appreciated

from the "Hymn to Christ Crucified," familiar to English readers in

Dryden's version, which has been attributed also to St. Ignatius

Loyola and St. Francis Xavier, but which seems more appropriately

ascribed to the Seraphic Mother of Crashaw's burning words, "sweet

incendiary," "undaunted daughter of desires" and "fair sister of the

seraphin." The poem is, no matter who may have been its author, at

least a striking example of the style of the time.

"O God, Thou art the object of my love,

Not for the hopes of endless joys above.

Nor for the fear of endless pain below

Which those who love Thee not must undergo:

For me, and such as me, Thou once didst bear

The ignominious cross, the nails, the spear,

A thorny crown transpierced Thy sacred brow.

What bloody sweats from every member flow!

For me, in torture Thou resign'st Thy breath,

Nailed to the cross, and sav'st me by Thy death:

Say, can these sufferings fail my heart to move?

What but Thyself can now deserve my love?

Such as then was and is Thy love to me.

Such is, and shall be still, my love to Thee. {478}

Thy love, O Jesus, may I ever sing,

O God of love, kind Parent, dearest King."

The most original contribution of Spain to pure literature were the

Tales of Chivalry, which became so popular at the end of the fifteenth

century. _"Amadis de Gaul"_ is claimed by the French, but the French

original has been lost and the Spanish one is not only well known, but

characteristically Spanish, partaking of the very temper of the

people. The first known edition is early in the sixteenth century, and

within fifty years Spain produced twelve editions of it. A whole

series of books of similar kind followed it. Many of these were

totally lacking in literary quality, but they achieved popularity. Our

own first novelists were literary folk. They have been succeeded by

hack writers, who watch the fashion of the moment and make ever so

much more money and sell ever so many more copies than did the great

novelists. Something like this happened in Spain. These tales of

chivalry have sometimes been made a matter of reproach to the

intelligence of the Spaniards of the time, but then what shall we say

of our own much more widespread occupation with stories if possible

more trivial and absurd?

We are not without tributes from distinguished men to the interest

they found in some of these stories. The _"Palmerin de Inglaterra"_

which Cervantes' priest "would have kept in such a casket as that

which Alexander found among Darius' spoils intended to guard the works

of Homer," attracted so much attention from Edmund Burke that he

avowed in the House of Commons that he had spent much time over it.

Dr. Johnson confessed to having spent the leisure hours of a summer

upon _"Felixmarte de Hircania." "Amadis de Gaul"_ classed by

Cervantes' barber as "the best in that kind," is perhaps the only one

of the tales of chivalry that a man need read. The usual assumption

that it is a story of France, because of the word Gaul, is quite

mistaken. Amadis is a British Knight, Gaul stands for Wales,

Vindilisora is Windsor, while Bristol becomes Bristoya. The action

occurs "not many years after the Passion of our Redeemer." There are

marvellous adventures, something happens on every page, {479} combats

with giants, magical spells of all kinds, miracles, hair-breadth

escapes, last-moment rescues, till fidelity is rewarded and Amadis

marries Oriana, daughter of the King of Britain, and they all live

happy ever after.

After the Tales of Chivalry came the Novelas de Picaros, picaresque

novels we have called these Tales of Roguery in English. The two modes

of fiction represent the opposite extremes. The tales of chivalry were

almost entirely imaginary. The picaresque novels were rather

naturalistic studies from low life. The first of these was the

_"Celestina"_ but the one that was most influential is the _"Lazarillo

de Tormes,"_ which curiously enough has been attributed, though on

dubious evidence, to the famous Diego Hurtado de Mendoza and also to

Fray Juan de Ortega of the Order of St. Jerome. The stories represent

the ever-recurring tendency of mankind to be interested in a rogue, to

be ready to laugh at his rascalities and especially his capacity for

cheating his betters that has been used so effectively by Plautus and

was the germ of the idea in the plot of Gil Bias and Scarron and

probably suggested Shakespeare's "Jack Falstaff." There are phases of

our modern fiction that display the same tendency.

Fitzmaurice Kelly in his "Spanish Literature" (Appleton's Literatures

of the World Series, New York, 1898) said of the _"Lazarillo de

Tormes"_:

"After three hundred years, it survives all its rivals, and may be

read with as much edification and amusement as on the day of its

first appearance. It set a fashion, a fashion that spread to all

countries, and finds a nineteenth century manifestation in the pages

of 'Pickwick'; but few of its successors match it in satirical

humor, and none approach it in pregnant concision, where no word is

superfluous, and where every word tells with consummate effect.

Whoever wrote the book, he fixed forever the type of the comic prose

epic as rendered by the needy, and he did it in such wise as to defy

all competition."

By a very curious contrast, the literature of Spanish origin from this

century which has most influenced the world, being translated into all

the languages and read and studied deeply, is exactly the opposite

pole of these prose epics. For the {480} world's best-known writers on

spirituality and mysticism have been Spaniards, the greatest of them

lived at this time and they are still being read everywhere, edition

after edition appearing in many languages. The great names among the

mystics whose writings were either completed during our century, or at

least the foundation for whose work was laid because their authors

came to their maturity during this time, were John of Avila, Luis de

Granada and Luis de Leon. John of Avila is the best known of these and

occupied something of the position of master to the others. His most

famous book, "The Spiritual Treatise," is still widely read in

religious institutions and is familiar to all those who have made any

serious study of the religious life. As there are and have been ever

since his time hundreds of thousands of religious in the world, many

of them representing the highest culture and good taste, "the apostle

of Andalusia," as he was called, has had a large circle of chosen

readers for all these centuries. His book is written with an ardent

eloquence in the deeply spiritual passages, and as Hannay has said,

"has always a large share of the religious quality of unction." There

are many profoundly intelligent and seriously thoughtful men of our

time who consider it one of the most wonderful books ever written.

Luis de Granada's book, "The Guide for Sinners," was translated into

all the languages of Europe and read not only by the clergy, but by

the people. His book of "Prayer and Meditation on the Principal

Mysteries of Faith" was much more in the hands of the clergy and

religious, but was scarcely less famous. Luis de Leon's "Perfecta

Casada" gained a wide reputation, and his other books on "The Names of

Christ" and "The Book of Job" had a place in every important religious

community in Europe.

Two names in the Spanish poetry of this period are immortal in Spain,

and their writings are familiar to the students of literature the

world over. They are Boscan and Garcilaso de la Vega. The younger man,

Garcilaso, sent Castiglione's _"Il Cortigiano"_ to Boscan and

suggested its translation into Spanish. Fitzmaurice Kelly, in his

"Spanish Literature," has said, "Though Boscan himself held

translation to be a thing {481} meet for 'men of small parts,' his

rendering is an almost perfect performance." This led Boscan to put

into Spanish form many other Italian pieces, not so much by

translation as by imitation more suited to the genius of the Spanish

language. Not a great genius, not a lordly versifier, endowed with not

one supreme gift, Boscan ranks as an unique instance in the annals of

literature by virtue of his enduring and irrevocable victory.

Garcilaso, his young friend, is far ahead of him in poetic genius. He

was a soldier-poet, "taking now the sword and now the pen," as he said

himself, and he died at the early age of thirty-three. His death

occurred as the leader of a storming party in romantic circumstances,

under the eye of the Emperor and the army. The first to climb the

breach, he fell mortally wounded into the arms of the future

translator of Ariosto and of his more intimate friend, the Marques de

Lombay, whom the world knows best as St. Francis Borgia. "His

illustrious descent, his ostentatious valor, his splendid presence,

his seductive charm, his untimely death: all these, joined to his gift

of song, combined to make him the hero of legend and the idol of a

nation. Like Sir Philip Sidney, Garcilaso personified all

accomplishments and all graces." Curiously enough it is not the

martial but the pastoral that Garcilaso sings and "the light that

never was on land or sea," of peace with poetic melancholy, that may

so easily be the subject of criticism, yet has always been the

favorite retreat of a great many poets at many recurring times.

At the Western end of the Spanish Peninsula the Portuguese, distinct

in language, had a literature of their own which reached its

perfection just after Columbus' Century, but the promise of which can

be seen during our period. The greatest of their poets is Camoeens,

whom the German critic Schlegel did not hesitate to place above not

only his two great contemporaries of the sixteenth century, Ariosto

and Tasso, but above all the modern epic poets and even above Virgil.

His poem has been read in translation in all the languages of Europe.

While it was not written in what we have called Columbus' Century, the

poet had given evidence of the greatness of his genius before 1550,

and some of the sonnets of his {482} early years have deservedly been

looked upon as worthy perhaps of a place among the greatest examples

in that form. Mrs. Browning's reason for calling her "Sonnets from the

Portuguese" by that name was that probably the most beautiful love

sonnets in the world had been written in that language. The Portuguese

language was given the form in which it was to survive at this time,

and it is always when a language is being formed that somehow geniuses

come to round out its powers of expression and at the same time give

it the form which it is to maintain partly as a consequence of their

genius having expressed itself in it in certain enduring modes.

Some of the shorter poems written by Camoeens when he was a young man

between twenty and twenty-five, that is, before the close of Columbus'

Century, are so characteristic of the _vers de societe_ at all times,

and yet are such delightful bits of versification with here and there

a touch of charming poetic quality, that they have more than passing

interest for the modern time. I venture to quote several of them to

illustrate their variety, but at the same time because, though all are

attributed to Camoeens, it is doubtful whether some of them were not

written by others and afterwards transferred to him because of his

greater fame. They illustrate very well the poetic vein of the

Portuguese of the time, though ordinarily it is not assumed that

Portugal was touched by the spirit of the Renaissance to any great

degree or that her literature is of any significance. Most of them are

with regard to love, though not all of them are as serious as the

rondeau so often quoted:

"Just like Love is yonder rose,

Heavenly fragrance round it throws.

Yet tears its dewy leaves disclose,

And in the midst of briars it blows,

Just like Love.

Cull'd to bloom upon the breast.

Since rough thorns the stem invest.

They must be gather'd with the rest.

And with it, to the heart be press'd.

Just like Love.

{483}

And when rude hands the twin-buds sever

They die--and they shall blossom never,

--Yet the thorns be sharp as ever,

Just like Love."

In lighter vein is the canzonet to the lady who swore by her eyes, a

custom which was rather common according to the tales of chivalry so

popular shortly before this time. The first and last stanza will give

a good idea of it:

"When the girl of my heart is on perjury bent,

The sweetest of oaths hides the falsest intent.

And Suspicion, abash'd, from her company flies,

When she smiles like an angel--and swears by her eyes.

Then, dear one, I'd rather, thrice rather believe

Whate'er you assert, even though to deceive.

Than that you 'by your eyes' should so wickedly swear,

And sin against heaven--for heaven is there!"

At times the Portuguese poet could be rather serious. The two stanzas

from the beginning of a canzonet, which contrasts the making of money

with the doing of good as the proper aim of life, has often been

quoted:

"Since in this dreary vale of tears

No certainty but death appears.

Why should we waste our vernal years

In hoarding useless treasure?

No--let the young and ardent mind

Become the friend of humankind,

And in the generous service find

A source of purer pleasure!"

The poet is said to have fallen in love with a maid of honor at the

court far above him in rank. For this impudence, he was banished from

court, and unable to live so near, yet so far, resolved to go as a

soldier to Africa. Somehow or other a {484} last meeting with her (she

died at the early age of twenty) was managed before his departure, and

he discovered in her eyes, as she bade him good-bye, the secret that

she was as deeply in love as he. He went where duty called, fought

bravely, losing the sight of an eye in one of the battles, and, loaded

with martial honor, was permitted to return to court. When he

returned, his inamorata was no more. The sonnet written when he

learned the sad news is more artificial perhaps than he would have

written in his maturity, but it and others gave Portuguese literature

the fame for love sonnets which suggested to Mrs. Browning the title

"Sonnets from the Portuguese" for her love poems:

"Those charming eyes, within whose starry sphere

Love whilom sat, and smil'd the hours away.

Those braids of light that sham'd the beams of day.

That hand benignant, and that heart sincere;

Those virgin cheeks, which did so late appear

Like snow-banks scatter'd with the blooms of May,

Turn'd to a little cold and worthless clay.

Are gone--forever gone--and perish here,

--But not unbath'd by Memory's warmest tear!

--Death! thou hast torn, in one unpitying hour.

That fragrant plant, to which, while scarce a flow'r.

The mellower fruitage of its prime was given;

Love saw the deed--and as he lingered near,

Sigh'd o'er the ruin, and return'd to Heav'n!"

The literature of the Spanish peninsula was to have its flourishing

period in the century following that we have called after Columbus,

but there is enough of enduring literary products to show that men's

minds were deeply affected by the great spirit of the time and to lay

broad and deep foundations for the Golden Age of Spanish literature

that was to follow so soon.

{485}

CHAPTER V

ENGLISH LITERATURE

The English literature of Columbus' Century obtained some of its

triumphs very early in the period in a literary department, that of

dramatics, in which other nations achieved little success. England in

the latter part of the fifteenth century produced a series of plays

whose high place in literature was only recognized properly during the

past two or three generations. Ordinarily it is assumed that dramatic

literature of serious significance did not develop in any modern

language until much later than this time. Indeed, as a rule, the

English drama of Shakespeare's time is supposed to be the first

development of any importance in this department. The Spanish drama

developed almost immediately after our Shakespearean period, the

French came half a century later, and curiously enough Italy and

Germany did not develop a national drama until the nineteenth century.

The mystery and morality plays of the latter half of the fifteenth

century in England have been revived in recent years and have

illustrated beyond all doubt the genius of their authors and the fine

evolution of drama at this time. Specimens that have been played in

many places, in public performances, have proved to possess a gripping

power over audiences, surpassing the dramatic literature of our own

time, and the dramatic ability and genius of the men who wrote them

has now come to be generally recognized.

"Everyman," for instance, has been played to crowded houses in many of

the large cities of the country, audiences listening intently for the

two hours without an intermission and then paying the highest possible

tribute by going out always in silence. The story is only a dramatic

rendition of the place in life of the "four last things to be

remembered"--death, judgment, heaven and hell--of interest to every

man. Such a subject would seem to be quite out of harmony {486} with

the temper of our time and above all with the mood in which our people

attend the theatre. The man who wrote it and was able to give it such

enduring interest was a dramatic genius of the first order, for he was

able to take the familiar things of life, even those to which men are

not prone to give much attention, and make them compelling.

Mystery plays have come to have much more significance for us since

the wide popularity of the Passion Play at Oberammergau. Thousands of

people go up to the little village of scarcely more than a thousand

inhabitants every ten years to see and hear the simple villagers tell

the old, old story of the Passion and Death of Him that died on the

Cross for us. Some, perhaps, of the attendance is due to the fact that

it has become a fad to go, yet most of it is a real act of devotion,

but to a shrine that is literary and truly dramatic as well as

religious. From all over the world people have flocked to it and have

confessed the dramatic force of the story in its simple setting in

such a way as to make us realize what a powerful appeal the old

mystery plays must have had for the people of the later Middle Ages

when they came to their perfection of presentation. The appeal that

the Passion Play had to the older folk, the Nativity Plays had for the

children, though also for their elders and especially the women.

It is exactly during Columbus' Century that these mystery and morality

plays reached their highest development and greatest perfection of

expression and presentation. In England this development proved to be

the fertile field out of which sprang the great Elizabethan dramatic

literature. There are all the elements of a great dramatic literature

in them. There is simplicity and directness with the presentation of

subjects that have the highest appeal and yet very humanly done, so

that wit, and above all, humor, has its role, and the problems

concerned are those which interest all mankind. So little is known

about this phase of dramatic literature, though it represents such a

charmingly simple expression of dramatic poetry, containing a lesson

of sincerity, naturalness and occupation with the higher things, which

our generation needs above all in order to be lifted out of the rut of

over-attention to problem plays, that some review of it seems

necessary not {487} only for a complete picture of the literature of

Columbus' time, but also for the sake of the enduring social

significance of this early dramatic literature.

[Illustration: Page from early popular printed religious book

(woodcut)]

While we have greater examples of this mode of literature from

England, in nearly every country in Europe the Passion Plays had a

wonderful development toward the end of the fifteenth century. They

were particularly striking, both in their literary value and their

presentation in the Teutonic {488} countries and in England. There was

a whole series of plays in England, many of which have come down to

us. There is question whether "Everyman" was originally of Dutch or of

English origin. The first production of it was as a translation of the

Dutch _"Elkerlijk."_ In Germany, the period in which the Passion Play

reached its highest development was from about 1450 to 1550. The great

Frankfurt Passion Play, the Alsfelder and the Friedburger plays came

at this time. Many other towns, however, had their special Passion

Plays written for them and presented in their own way. There was the

Vienna Passion, the St. Gall Passion and the Maestricht Passion. But

there were Passion Plays also at Eger, at Augsburg, Freising and

Lucerne. From very early times Passion Plays were given in various

parts of the Tyrol, always attracting the deep attention of the

people, and it is here that the single example which has survived

still serves to show us how genuinely dramatic and how powerful in

their appeal were these plays. [Footnote 46]

[Footnote 46: It is almost amusing to be told that knowledge of the

Scriptures was kept from the people at this time, before the

Reformation, when these popular plays to which all the countryside

flocked, and in which so many took part, were making them thoroughly

familiar with all the details of Christ's life. There was much more

than this, however, for connected with many of the Passion Plays

were cycles of tableaux or presentations of special scenes in which,

beginning with the Creation, the whole story of the Bible, and

particularly those portions which are related to the coming of

Christ, were set clearly before them. No better way of impressing

upon the people the great truths of Christianity or the life of

Christ as the central fact of the world's history could possibly

have been imagined. The people were not encouraged to read difficult

passages, which even the profoundest theologians find it hard to

understand, to take their own meaning out of them and to argue about

them, convicting everyone of heresy who did not agree with their

interpretations of them, but they were taught the deep moral and

religious significance of all the Old and New Testament. They

learned the value of the Scriptures as literature as well as their

quality as the underlying document of religion, but above all they

were taught their relation to life. All this was so put before them

that it came as an amusement and not a task, and from their earliest

years they became familiar with the great thoughts underlying

religion so as to secure its influence over them.]

Dodsley's collection of Old English Plays, which, in its {489} fourth

edition as edited by W. Carew Hazlitt (London, 1874), contains a

number of old plays little known, is particularly rich in material

from this century of Columbus. The series of morality plays, "The

Interlude of the Four Elements," "Everyman," "The Pardoner and the

Friar," "The World and the Child," "Hick's Corner," "God's Promises,"

and the "Four P's," are typical examples. They all show the true

dramatic spirit, and while lacking the theatrical technique of modern

plays, are almost infinitely superior in their expression of the

realities of human interest and their revelation of the depths of

human sympathy to the presentation of superficialities which now pass

for drama.

It was towards the end of Columbus' Century that the "Marriage of

Witte and Science," which was not published until 1570, was written.

This was marked off into five acts and the scenes designated, being

the first play in which such an arrangement had been made. The modern

dramatic mould was thus created. It is easy to understand that on the

deep foundations, literary and technical, thus laid in the century

before 1550, the great structure of the Elizabethan drama could be

built up.

How much the appreciation for the morality plays has risen may be

judged very well from some recent expressions with regard to them by

students of the drama. Everyone is particularly loud in praise of

"Everyman." In the introduction to "Everyman with other Interludes" in

the Everyman series, the writer says that "to turn from Bayle's play

(one of the later moralities, 'God's Promises') to the heart-breaking

realities of 'Everyman' is like turning from a volume of law to the

edifying sermons of one of the gospels." He adds:

"It was written, no doubt, like most of the plays in this volume, by

a churchman; and he must have been a man of profound imagination and

of the tenderest human soul conceivable. His ecclesiastical habit

becomes clear enough before the end of the play, where he bids every

man go and confess his sins. Like many of the more poignant scenes

and passages in the miracle plays that follow it, this morality too

leaves one exclaiming on how good a thing was the plain English of

the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries."

{490}

It would be a mistake to think that only the serious side of life was

portrayed in these old dramas. Quite the contrary, they were full of

humor, and the writer of the Introduction to Everyman, already quoted,

says in this regard: "In these religious and moral interludes, the

dramatic colouring, however crude, is real and sincere. The humours of

a broad folk-comedy break through the Scriptural web continually in

the guild plays like those in which Noah the ship-builder, or the

proverbial three shepherds, appear in the pageant. Noah's unwilling

wife in the 'Chester Deluge,' and Mak's canny wife in the Wakefield's

shepherd's play, where the sheep-stealing scenes reveal a born

Yorkshire humorist, offer a pair of gossips not easy to match for rude

comedy. Mak's wife, like the shepherd's in the same pastoral, utters

proverbs with every other breath: 'A woman's avyse helpys at the

last!' 'So long goys the pott to the water, at last comys it home

broken!'

"'Now in hot, now in cold,

Full woeful is the household

That wants a woman!'

And her play upon the old north-country asseveration, 'I'll eat my

bairn,'

"'If ever I you beguiled,

That I eat this child

That lies in this cradle,'

(the child being the stolen sheep), must have caused townsfolk and

countryfolk outrageous laughter. Mak's wife is indeed as memorable in

her way as the Wife of Bath, Dame Quickly, or Mrs. Gamp."

Some idea of the extent to which the men of this time went in

attempting spectacles on a large scale may be appreciated from "Mary

Magdalen," which combines elements of all the various kinds of

religious plays of the time. It was a miracle play because it treats

of the life and death of St. Mary Magdalen. It is a mystery play

inasmuch as it introduces scenes from the Life of Christ.

{491}

[Illustration: PICTURE OF THEATRE ON TITLE PAGE OF COMEDIES OF

TERENCE, STRASBURG (1490)]

{492}

It is a morality play because abstract personages are introduced upon

the stage in the presentation of the struggle between good and evil in

human life. Dr. Furnivall has divided the play into two parts, with

fifty-one scenes altogether, twenty in the first and thirty-one in the

second part. There is some evidence that some of the scenes were

inserted only to give time for a shift of scenes. Probably they had

two pageants or movable trucks which would remind one somewhat of the

movable stage that was attempted in the last generation. The burning

of the temple and some of the incidents of the wanderings at sea may

very well have provided opportunity for spectacular effects of

ambitious character. We have no record of how far they went in this

regard, though some hints of attempts in the direction of surprising

scenic introductions are to be found in contemporary documents, and we

know that in Italy they staged an earthquake very effectively.

The play of "The Four Elements" was written just at the beginning of

the sixteenth century. The date of its writing is designated by one of

the speeches of Experience in this play, who says:

"Till now, within this twenty years.

Westward be found new lands,

That we never heard tell of before this

By writing nor other means."

The passage illustrates the tendency to make these plays instructive

as well as entertaining, and many similar passages might be quoted to

show that a definite effort was made to convey information by means of

them, though, as a rule, this had much more reference to religion and

to social life than to things more distant from every-day living.

One of the important dramatic writers of the first half of our

Columbus' Century was John Skelton, born about 1460, and who was one

of the most prominent of literary men of England of his time. He had a

series of literary quarrels with many of the prominent writers,

Alexander Barclay and William Lily, the grammarian, among others, and

for a time he {493} enjoyed the patronage of Wolsey, but apparently

could not restrain his tendency to satire and so fell into the

Cardinal's bad graces. Alexander Dyce edited his works in two volumes

in 1843 and called particular attention to the genuine worth of his

four dramatic compositions, the "Interlude of Virtue," the comedy

called "Achidemoios," the "Nigramansir" (necromancer) and

"Magnyfycence." Only one of these, the last, now remains, though there

are traditions with regard to the others, and the single one left

shows what precious material was lost.

An even more important contributor to this mode of dramatic literature

and very significant predecessor of Shakespeare was John Heywood, a

friend and neighbor of Sir Thomas More in Hertfordshire, who wrote a

series of dramatic works, consisting of five interludes. Of these the

"Four P's" is the best known and is the typical example of this form

of dramatic literature. Its full title is "A Very Mery Enterlude of A

Palmer, A Pardoner, A Pothecary and A Pedlar," and the story turns on

the contest arranged between them, and especially the first three, as

to which could tell the greatest lie. Palmers were real or supposed

returned pilgrims from the Holy Land, bearing palms as a symbol of

their pilgrimage, and were noted as a rule for their ability to tell

strong stories. Pardoners were wandering merchants who sold printed

prayers and various objects of devotion to which indulgences, pardons,

in the language of the day were attached. They too were noted for

drawing the long bow. The Pothecary and the Pedlar, because of their

familiar gossip with the people, knew all the news of the neighborhood

in which they lived, and had the reputation of being able to add to

the vividness and sensational qualities of stories so that the Four

P's might very well be expected to give some fine illustrations of the

ability to lie.

The Palmer takes the prize in the contest with the very first story.

All are agreed at once that no one can even hope to surpass it. The

passage in which he does so is worth while quoting because it gives an

illustration at once of the language and style as well as of the kind

of humor to be found in Heywood's interludes:

{494}

"And this I would ye should understand,

I have seen women five hundred thousand;

And oft with them have long time tarried.

Yet in all places where I have been,

Of all the women that I have seen,

I never saw or knew in my conscience

Any one woman out of patience."

Thus, quietly, and with this force of earnest asseveration, does the

largest and most palpable lie leap out of the Palmer's lips. The

contestants themselves are at once unanimous in their decision.

Pothecary: "By the mass, there is a great lie!"

Pardoner: "I never heard a greater, by our Lady!"

Pedlar: "A greater! Nay, know ye any so great?"

In his account of the Pardoner, Heywood does not hesitate to satirize

many of the pretensions of this class and especially their catering to

the superstition of the ignorant by the sale of impossible relics of

all kinds. Catholics realize very well that such frauds are practised

at all times. Even in our day men go around selling prayers, the

recital of which is supposed to give thousands of years of indulgence

and other like absurdities. Besides, the trade in manufactured relics

is well known, and the ecclesiastical authorities have tried to

regulate it at all times. Heywood has his Pardoner offer for sale such

relics as a bit of the thumb nail of the Holy Trinity and a feather

from the wing of the Holy Ghost and like impossible absurdities.

Impositions in the name of religion are still with us. It is

interesting to know that before the religious revolution they were

fought with that best of weapons, satire.

Before the end of Columbus' Century the first English comedy in the

modern sense had been written. It was by Nicholas Udall and was

called, from its hero, "Ralph Royster Doyster." He was a swaggering

simpleton, a conceited fop of the time who is played upon by one

Matthew Merrygreek, a needy humorist who represents the parasite of

the old Latin drama under the influence of which this first English

comedy was written. For Nicholas Udall was the Headmaster of Eton

School, and the play in lively rhyming couplets, {495} interspersed

with merry songs, was written to be played by the Eton boys according

to their custom of having several plays each year. The play partakes

somewhat of the nature of farce and contains a number of situations of

the kind that have always drawn a laugh and will doubtless always

continue to do so. In one of the scenes in the play, Ralph and his man

are beaten in a brisk battle by the women of the play armed with

broomsticks. A lesson in the need for punctuation is introduced,

showing how completely the sense of writing can be reversed by putting

the stops in the wrong places. Udall wrote some other plays, notably

one called "Ezekias," used for the entertainment of Queen Elizabeth on

her visit to Cambridge.

The other form of literature besides the drama which came to ripe

fruition at this time in England is also of a popular character. It

consists of the stirring English ballads which were gathered into a

volume by Bishop Percy in his "Reliques" at the end of the eighteenth

century. There probably has never been more stirring martial singing

than is to be found in the "Ancient Ballad of Chevy Chase" or "Adam

Bell" or "Clym of the Clough." It has been well said that "in graphic

terseness, in poetic simplicity, in fiery fervor, in tenderness of

pathos, our modern poetry does not approach these old ballads." Sir

Philip Sidney said of "Chevy Chase," "I never heard the old song of

Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart more moved than with a

trumpet." While the language is simple, the verse rude, the thoughts

rugged and the story over-full of sympathy for the outlaw, at all

times, even the most refined, these ballads have stirred English

hearts. The writers of them are unknown, but they had the genius of

true poets, the power of vision and striking ability of expression.

The ballads will live as long as our English tongue and will continue

to be read even by the cultured, distant in every way from the

rudeness of the time in which and the men for whom these ballads were

written.

After the Ballad Poetry of this period came quite naturally Sir Thomas

Malory's _"Morte d'Arthur."_ There have been many and varying

expressions of opinion with regard to the merit of this work, and it

is at best a medley from many {496} sources. What Mr. Andrew Lang has

called its "splendid patchwork" is harmonized and solemnized by the

dignified conclusion "in tenderness and inexpiable sorrow." In spite

of its many sources there is a unity of spirit and feeling, and Malory

was an admirable narrator. Malory's vitality is attested by edition

after edition in the nineteenth century. The book has an appeal to

human nature that is eternal and that will always give it a

distinguished place among the books of the educated at least. Of style

in the literary sense of that term there is very little, and Malory's

anomalous constructions have always puzzled grammarians, but as

Garnett says in his English Literature, [Footnote 47] "These do not

render him obscure for the readers of any period." Caxton laid English

literature under an immense obligation by insuring the preservation of

the work, through his selection of it to be one of his early-printed

books. It has done credit to his taste in popular literature ever

since.

[Footnote 47: "English Literature: an Illustrated Record in Four

Vols." Garnett and Gosse: New York, 1903.]

In the latter part of the fifteenth and the first years of the

sixteenth century a wonderful development of English poetry took place

in Scotland. Just before Columbus' Century opened, James First of

Scotland, who had been detained in an English prison for nineteen

years, began the literature of Scotland in glorious fashion. The

loneliness of these years prompted him to seek and gain that literary

culture which has made his name famous in the world of letters. It is

possible that the "King's Quair" (a quire or book), which is a

poetical record of his sight of Jane Beaufort, granddaughter of John

of Gaunt, from his prison window, and his winning her as his queen,

may not be from his hand. There is no doubt at all, however, of his

taste in literature, his patronage of it and of his establishment of

the tradition which has made the English literature of Scotland so

important during most of the centuries since. Four poets of the middle

of Columbus' Century in Scotland deserve to be named, Blind Harry,

Robert Henryson, Gawin Douglas and William Dunbar. All of them are

still read affectionately by Scotchmen, but there are very few among

the educated people of the English-speaking countries who would {497}

care to confess ignorance of them, and to many they are favorite

poets. Dunbar is the greatest of poets in English from Chaucer to

Shakespeare, and Scottish critics at least have been loud in its

praise. Mr. Craik says:

"This admirable master, alike of serious and of comic song, may

justly be styled the Chaucer of Scotland, whether we look to the

wide range of his genius, or to his eminence in every style over all

the poets of his country who preceded and all who for ages came

after him. Burns is certainly the only name among the Scottish poets

that can yet be placed on the same line with that of Dunbar; and

even the inspired ploughman, though the equal of Dunbar in comic

power and his superior in depth of passion, is not to be compared

with the older poet either in strength or in general fertility of

imagination."

The two English poets of our period are Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey,

and Sir Thomas Wyatt, who, in spite of inequality in merit, possess so

much in common that their names are closely associated. How well they

were appreciated in Elizabeth's time and how much their influence

meant for Shakespeare's contemporaries may be judged from Puttenham's

expression, who said in 1589:

"Henry, Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyatt, between whom I finde

very little difference, I repute them for the two chief lanternes of

light to all others that have since employed their pennes upon

English Poesie; their conceits were loftie, their stiles stately,

their conveyance cleanly, their termes proper, their metres sweete

and well proportioned."

To Surrey, English literature owes two important literary

innovations--the introduction of the sonnet and the use of polished

blank verse. The influence of Italy and of the classic authors can be

seen very clearly, and his version of the second and fourth books of

the AEneid, in what Milton called "English heroic verse without

rhyme," was a fundamental influence in English poetry. His sonnets are

mainly the amatory effusions which were becoming fashionable

everywhere at this time and which Shakespeare indulged in in his turn

a little later. Some of his biographers and editors have woven a

series of fanciful theories over his relations to the {498} "fair

Geraldine," in whose honor many of the best sonnets were written, but

it is doubtful whether these love poems are anything more than the

wandering poetic fancies of the time. Surrey's unmerited death on the

scaffold at the early age of thirty has deepened the romantic interest

that attaches to his name as a poet. Sir Thomas Wyatt, though more

than a dozen years older than his friend Surrey, must be considered

his disciple in poetry. He, too, wrote some of the new sonnets on the

theme that occupied so many of the poets of the time--Love--but, as

in the case of Surrey also, we have from him some satires and metrical

versions of the psalms.

Probably the greatest contribution to the English prose of the time is

Sir Thomas More's "Life of Edward V." Mr. Hallam pronounced it "the

first example of good English--pure and perspicuous, well chosen,

without vulgarisms or pedantry." Many others have declared More the

first great master of English prose and even the father of English

prose. There have been dissentient voices among the critics from these

high praises. There is no doubt, however, that More wrote a direct

straightforward English that deeply influenced the course of English

speech, and tradition has given him a high place among the great

English orators. The language undoubtedly received a deep impress from

him, and though his most important work in literature is "Utopia,"

written in Latin, his high place in English cannot be denied.

Authorities on English have always recognized this, but owing to

religious feelings, and the anti-Catholic tradition created during

Elizabeth and James' time, More's work has been neglected, except by

the deeper scholars. Samuel Johnson, in the "History of the English

Language," prefixed to his dictionary, devotes nearly one-third of all

the space that he takes for his purpose to More. He apologizes

somewhat for his copiousness of quotation from the chancellor, but

justifies it by saying that, "It is necessary to give a larger

specimen both because the language was to a great degree formed and

settled and because it appears from Ben Jonson that his works were

considered as models of pure and elegant style."

A recent writer, [Footnote 48] Prof. J. S. Phillimore, says of More's

style: {499} "His usual prose has the easy elastic abundance of

Boccaccio and a lawyer's love of proving a point exhaustively in

controversy. But he has all the qualities of a great prose style:

sonorous eloquence, less cumbersome than Milton; simplicity and

lucidity of argument, with unfailing sense of the rhythms and

harmonies of English sound. He is a master of Dialogue, the favorite

vehicle of that age; neither too curiously dramatic in the ethopoia of

the persons, nor yet allowing the form to become a hollow convention,

the objector in his great Dialogue (the Quod he and Quod I) is

anything but a man of straw. We can see that if Lucian was his early

love he had not neglected Plato either. Elizabethan prose is tawdry

and mannered compared with his: at his death Chaucer's thread is

dropped, which none picked up till Clarendon and Dryden. With his

colloquial, well-bred, unaffected ease, he is the ancestor of Swift.

His style--so Erasmus tells us--was gained by long and careful studies

and exercises; he took a discipline in Latin, of which the fruits were

to appear in English, when the increasing gravity of the times warned

him that it would be well to speak to a larger public than Latin could

reach. Even where he is prolix--and that may seem prolix in

black-letter folio which reads easy and pleasant enough in modern

form--his merry humor is not long silent."

[Footnote 48: _Dublin Review,_ July, 1913.]

As in French, some of the translations into English at this period are

almost as admirable prose as Amyot's "Plutarch." Even when the

translations of the time have the quaintness of the English of that

period, they are admirable in their closeness to the original and in a

certain rhythm of their sentences. Of Berner's translation of

Froissart's "Chronicles," Snell in "The Age of Transition" ("Handbooks

of English Literature," Scribners) says: "The English is so thoroughly

idiomatic that in reading it one loses all sensation of the book being

merely an interpretation, and resigns one's self to its easy and

familiar flow with the same joyful complacency as if it were an

original work. On the other hand, if one insists on breaking the spell

and comparing it with the French text, one is struck not only with the

felicity, but also the fidelity of the rendering."

The literary quality of the prose of the first half of the {500}

sixteenth century in England is best revealed in the translations of

the Scriptures done into the vernacular at this time and in the

unequalled Collects of the English Prayerbook. Tyndale and Coverdale

are responsible for the translations of the Scriptures, and to Cranmer

is usually attributed the writing of the Collects, though, as has been

said by Saintsbury, "this attribution derives but very faint

corroboration from the Archbishop's known work." It was with these

models of marvellously expressive, thoroughly idiomatic English,

exquisite examples of style, that the translators of the King James

version of the Bible were placed in a position to give us the

wonderful fundamental literary work that was to come from their hand

half a century later. It has been said that one argument of the most

irresistible kind for the divine authorship of the Scriptures lies in

the faculty which they have of making all the translations of them

great literature. It was their influence that is felt in the English

Prayerbook and in those parts of the Breviary which we owe to the

first half of the sixteenth century.

[Illustration: MANTEGNA. ST. GEORGE ]

{501}

CHAPTER VI

SCHOLARSHIP IN ITALY

One of the most important chapters in the great accomplishment of the

men of this century is its scholarship--that is, the critical and

appreciative knowledge of what men had written before their time and

especially of the great classical works of antiquity. In this, almost

needless to say, Italy is not only a pioneer, but was the _alma mater

studiorum_--of whom Linacre was so proud--for those desirous of

knowledge of the classics and true scholarship from all over the

world. From every country, France, Spain, Germany, distant Poland and

Denmark, as well as England, those looking for opportunities for study

that could not be obtained at home flocked to Italy. Besides, Italian

teachers are to be found teaching everywhere, though Italy herself

proved no stepmother to those who came to be nurtured in good learning

at her great institutions. Many a foreigner who had proved his ability

was given a professorship and spent many years in teaching others in

Italy as he had been taught himself.

This is the age of printing, and it was of first importance that good

editions of the classics should be printed as soon as possible in

order to prevent any further degeneration of their texts and avoid all

further risk of losing the precious treasures of antiquity. Scholars

in Italy took up the making of good texts, and within a century after

the invention of printing, all the important Greek and Latin authors

had been published in scholarly editions, the texts of which still

command respect. The amount of labor required for this, the judicious

scholarship demanded, the patience that was needed and the unselfish

devotion to a most trying task, only scholars can properly appreciate.

No debt that we owe to the Renaissance is greater than this, what it

accomplished for classical literature, and by far the greater part of

this debt is owed to Italy.

{502}

Everywhere, that is, in every important city, there was a school of

the New Learning, and usually some munificent patrons of what they

came to call Humanism because it represented humanity's highest

interests, supporting scholars who were writing and correcting

manuscripts and afterwards forming libraries of the printed books and

making it possible for the great printers to continue their work by

subscribing for their first editions. Only that the Church was deeply

interested in this new movement, it would have been quite impossible

for it to have continued. Unfortunately, as always happens whenever

men get new knowledge, many of them, that is, the restless and the

smaller minds among them, who are always likely to be in a great

majority in any new movement, were taken with the idea that they knew

so much more than those who went before them that they could not be

expected to accept old-fashioned ideas in religion and philosophy.

Because of the disturbances produced by such restless characters,

there sometimes seems at this time to be opposition between the Church

and the New Learning. This false impression is partly due to the fact

that in certain countries, notably Germany and England, the reform

doctrines were, as pointed out by Gasquet, often called the New

Learning, to which, of course, there was opposition. Most of the great

classic scholars, however, were ecclesiastics, some of them of very

high rank and influence in the councils of the Church, even Cardinals

and Popes, and in general the vast majority of the prominent scholars

were in the closest of sympathy with the ecclesiastical authorities.

The exceptions are so few as to make the existence of this rule very

clear, though so much of emphasis has been placed on the exceptions in

the modern time that an entirely false impression with regard to

Church opposition to education has been produced in a great many

minds.

The first name that deserves to be mentioned among the scholars of

Italy is AEneas Sylvius of the family of Piccolomini, who is better

known under the name of Pius II, which he bore as Pope. He is a

typical example of the scholars of the Renaissance, in so far as that,

as a younger man, his studies of classical antiquity led him to the

expression of pagan ideas in life as well as in language. At the age

of forty he {503} reformed and became as well known for his devotion

as for his previous looseness of character. He was created Imperial

Poet by the Emperor Frederick III, and his reputation for scholarship

created a fashion in this regard that did great good for the rising

movement of the New Learning. His influence as Pope continued this,

though he made it the main business of his pontificate to organize

Europe against the Turks so as to prevent the further increase of

their power with all that would mean for the destruction of culture as

well as religion. Indeed, his love for letters seems to have been at

least as great an incentive for the organization of the crusade as his

duty as an ecclesiastic. When he heard of the Fall of Constantinople,

he exclaimed, "How many names of mighty men will perish! It is a

second death to Homer and to Plato. The fount of the muses is dried up

forevermore." How much he was thought of by his contemporaries and how

much the example of his scholarship meant will be best appreciated

from the Piccolomini Palace and other buildings of Pienza, but

particularly the exquisitely beautiful Piccolomini Library at Siena.

Pinturicchio's decorations for this library are only added testimony

to the admiration of his generation. Sylvius' letter to Ladislas, the

young king of Bohemia and Hungary who had sought his advice with

regard to education, is one of the important documents in the history

of education. It contains the oft-quoted passage with regard to the

place of memory in education:

"We must first insist upon the overwhelming importance of Memory,

which is in truth the first condition of capacity for letters. A boy

should learn without effort, retain with accuracy, and reproduce

easily. Rightly is memory called 'the nursing mother of learning.'

It needs cultivation, however, whether a boy be gifted with

retentiveness or not. Therefore, let some passage from poet or

moralist be committed to memory every day."

One of the greatest scholars of the period and one of the leaders in

the Renaissance movement towards the classics which brought about the

reawakening of artistic and literary men at this time was Cardinal

Bessarion, whose long life of over eighty years gave him nearly a

quarter of a century in {504} Columbus' period. He came with the

Emperor John Palaeologus to the Council of Ferrara in 1438, where his

reputation for scholarship and vast erudition in all theological

matters gave him great authority among the Greek Bishops. To him more

than any other must be attributed the formal reunion with the Latin

Church, which was the happy issue of that Council. To him, therefore,

was committed the honor of reading the Greek formula of the Act of

Union. Unfortunately, the union was but short-lived, but Bessarion

changed to the Latin rite and in 1439 was created Cardinal.

The Cardinal was high in favor with succeeding Popes and just at the

beginning of Columbus' Century was sent as papal legate to Bologna, as

"an angel of peace," in the hope that he would be able to quell the

factional disturbances and pacify the divided interests. Cardinal

Bessarion succeeded admirably in this difficult mission, calmed the

internal dissensions and succeeded in introducing wise reforms into

the city government and the administration of justice. His principal

attention, however, was given to the University. He rebuilt the

building and gathered there some of the most famous teachers of the

world, encouraging particularly the study of the classics, and above

all of Greek. He himself supplied out of his personal revenues

whatever was lacking in the salaries, and he gathered around him a

notable band of scholars, writers and poets, and began that

magnificent outburst of interest in the intellectual life which was to

make Bologna so famous.

He continued to be active in his influence on the scholarship of Italy

until well beyond eighty years of age, yet was always a factor in the

practical life of his time. When he was eighty-one he wrote for Pope

Paul II a letter on the organization of a new crusade against the

Turks. When he was eighty-three he went on an embassy to Paris in

order to bring about the union of the Western nations for a crusade.

While at Rome during his later years, Bessarion gathered round him the

scholars and writers in all departments. The scientists of the time

particularly owe much to his patronage. He was a friend of Peurbach of

Vienna, of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, of Regiomontanus and many

others. In his house the first Accademia was founded, and he was known

as the patron of {505} letters. He gathered an immense number of

valuable manuscripts at very great expense, had copies of others made

and gave his treasures at his death to found a library in Venice, his

collection forming the nucleus of the famous library of St. Mark.

After these two great Churchmen and patrons of learning and education,

there are a series of scholars whose names deserve to be mentioned for

the influence which they exerted on the learning of Europe at this

time. At the beginning of our century came the Greeks, who were driven

out of their native country by the conquest of the Turks. Demetrius

Chalcondyles, Theodore Gaza, George Trebizond and Joannes Argyropulos,

unable to pursue their studies in peace in the midst of the alarms

produced by the Turks, reached Italy before the Fall of

Constantinople. Gaza was lecturing on Demosthenes at Ferrara in 1448,

where among his pupils was the subsequently distinguished German

scholar Rudolph Agricola. The first year of our century Gaza was

invited to Rome by Pope Nicholas V to fill the chair of philosophy and

take a principal part in the plan which the Pope had conceived for the

translation of the principal Greek classics. Gaza's translations were

mainly concerned with scientific Greek works, Aristotle "On Mechanical

Problems" and "On Animals" and Theophrastus' "Botany." For a time he

withdrew to a monastery, but was recalled to Rome by Pope Paul II to

take part in the _editio princeps_ of Gellius. After the death of

Bessarion he retired once more to his monastery, where he died in

1475. His Greek grammar became famous and was used as a text-book by

Budaeus in Paris and by Erasmus in Cambridge. He is described by

Manutius as easily chief among the Latin and Greek scholars of his

age, an age replete with scholarship be it said, and he is eulogized

by Scaliger over a century later as _magnus vir et doctus,_ a great

man and a learned.

George Trebizond, after teaching for many years in Venice, was invited

to Rome, where he became one of the Papal Secretaries. He also took

part in the plan for translating the Greek classics, and his

translations include the "Rhetoric and Problems of Aristotle" and "The

Laws and Charmenides of Plato." Argyropulos taught first at Padua and

then for {506} fifteen years under the patronage of the Medici at

Florence. He, too, was invited to Rome by the Pope and was highly

esteemed there. His part in the great plan of translation concerned

mainly the works of Aristotle, whose "Ethics," "Politics,"

"Economics," "On the Soul" and "On Heaven" were all printed in his

versions. He was the master of Politian, and his lectures were

attended by Tiptoff, the Earl of Worcester, and by Reuchlin, the great

German humanist. It was to Reuchlin that Argyropulos, after having

heard him read and translate a passage of Thucydides, exclaimed with a

sigh, "Lo! through our exile Greece has flown across the Alps."

Chalcondyles, at the early age of twenty-six, made an immediate

conquest of his Italian audience at Perugia in 1450. Subsequently he

lectured at Padua, being the first teacher of Greek who received a

salary at any of the Universities of Europe. For twenty years he

lectured in Florence, and there prepared the _editio princeps_ of

Homer, the first great Greek author to be printed. After the death of

Lorenzo de Medici he withdrew to Milan and there edited "Isocrates"

and "Suidas." His emendation of Greek texts is the best proof of his

scholarship, and few men of his time equalled his power in this. He

was noted for the gentleness of his disposition and his integrity of

character, and he made many friends. There is a famous picture by

Ghirlandajo in Santa Maria Novella at Florence which contains

portraits of Ficino, Landino, Politian and Chalcondyles.

The work of all of these men was greatly assisted by Pope Nicholas V,

who was himself distinguished as a scholar in this scholarly time.

During his pontificate in the first years of Columbus' Century he did

more for the encouragement of learning than anyone else of the time.

His wide knowledge of manuscripts made him personally an expert, and

he gathered from all lands and is the founder of the Vatican

collection of manuscripts. Besides the translations of Aristotle,

Thucydides, Herodotus, Xenophon, Polybius and Epictetus, Diodorus

Siculus, Strabo and Appian were translated under his direction. The

catholicity of his taste, and above all the inclusion of the

scientific books of the Greeks, is a tribute to the liberty of spirit

of the Pope. On his death-bed he declared that his {507} greatest

consolation was that he had been liberal in the rewarding of learned

men.

After the Papal influence, the most important factor for the

encouragement of scholarship was the academies which were founded at

this time. Lorenzo de Medici revived, after an interval of 1200 years,

the ancient custom of celebrating the memory of Plato by an annual

banquet. Out of this arose the _Accademia_ of Florence, nearly every

one of the members of which were distinguished scholars. The best

known among them are Landino and Ficino, both of whom had been

Lorenzo's tutors, Pico della Mirandola and Politian. The first account

that we have of the Academy is to be found in the introduction to

Ficino's edition of Plato's "Symposium." He tells that his rendering

of all the seven speeches in the "Symposium" was read aloud and

discussed by five of the guests. Undoubtedly Ficino was the centre of

the _Accademia_ and one of the greatest scholarly influences of the

time. At the age of forty he took Holy Orders and was noted for the

next twenty-five years, until his death, as a faithful priest whose

scholarship was devoted to showing how Plato illuminated Christianity.

In the latter part of his life he lectured on and translated Plotinus.

The best known of these scholars in Florence was undoubtedly Politian,

much more interested in Latin than in Greek, though Sandys, in his

"History of Classical Scholarship" (Cambridge University Press, 1908),

says that he was probably the first teacher in Italy whose mastery of

Greek was equal to that of the Greek immigrants. Though he died at the

early age of forty, we owe to him valuable textual criticisms of

Lucretius, Propertius, Ovid, Statius, Ausonius, Celsus, Quintilian,

Festus, and Catullus and Tibullus. His monograph on the chronology of

Cicero's letters, his discussion of the use of the aspirate in Latin

and Greek and of the differences between the aorist and the imperfect

as illustrated by the signatures of Greek sculptors, as well as his

power of solving textual difficulties, made him one of the great

contributors to the magnificent work accomplished at this time for

classical scientific grammar and erudition, as well as for the

provision of proper texts of the classics for the world. Besides pure

{508} literature, he was interested very much in law and made a

special study of the "Pandects" of Justinian. He refused to follow

those who slavishly imitated Cicero, and denounces the Ciceronians as

the mere apes of Cicero. His expressions in the matter are famous. "To

myself the face of a bull or a lion appears far more beautiful than

that of an ape, although the ape has a closer resemblance to man. But,

someone will say you do not express Cicero. I answer I am not Cicero,

what I really express is myself."

Academies were formed in other cities and accomplished excellent

results for scholarship, though at times they fell under the suspicion

of the authorities of dabbling in politics or of actually favoring

political factions or even revolutionary ideas. Nearly always they owe

their origin to the patronage of high ecclesiastics or those who were

in very close sympathy with the Church and always they contained

clergymen of distinction. After that of Florence the next in

chronological order was that of Rome. There is even some question

whether the Roman Academy was not the first in time, only it did not

receive this name until after it had been adopted in Florence. The

most important figure in the Roman Academy was the man who, for want

of a better, assumed the old Roman name Pomponius Laetus. He was

narrow enough of intellect to refuse to learn Greek, because he feared

that it would spoil his Latin style. The members of the Roman Academy,

under his ruling spirit, celebrated the foundation of Rome on the

annual return of the festival of the Palilia, a custom which is still

retained by many of the Roman academies. Pomponius did his gardening

according to the precepts of Varro and Columella, the Latin writers on

agriculture, and nothing pleased him better than to be regarded as a

second Cato. It is to him that is due the revival of the regular

performances of Plautus' plays.

[Illustration: CORREGGIO, BLESSED VIRGIN AND ST. SEBASTIAN]

Among the most important members of the Academy were Platina, who

became the Librarian of the Vatican, and Sabellicus, who afterwards

became the Prefect of the Library of San Marco in Venice. For a time,

owing to suspicion of its political, perhaps also its religious,

tendencies, the Roman Academy was suppressed and some of its members

put in prison, but under Pope Sixtus IV it was revived and all its

{509} old customs restored. Pomponius wrote commentaries on the whole

of Virgil, on Sallust and Curtius, on Pliny's letters and Quintilian

and on his agricultural favorites, Varro and Columella, and his

equally great favorites, Festus and Nonius Marcellus, the grammarians.

In order to complete his similarity with the old Romans, he had

expressed the desire at one time in life that after death his body

should simply be placed in an ancient Roman tomb on the Appian Way.

When he died at the age of seventy he had changed the views of his

earlier years and was given a magnificent Christian funeral. So great

was the veneration for his scholarship that his obsequies in the

Church of _Ara Coeli,_ in the midst of the Roman antiquities that he

had loved so well, were attended, as Gregorovius tells us, by some

forty bishops.

This Roman Academy continued to exist, now flourishing, now occupied

with trivialities, as is the way with such institutions, until the

sack of Rome in 1527. As Sandys says ("Harvard Lectures on the Revival

of Learning," Cambridge University Press, 1905), "Its palmy days were

in the age of Leo X, when it included the most brilliant members of

the literary society of Rome, men like the future Cardinals, Bembo and

Sadoleto, as well as Paolo Giovio and Castiglione. It encouraged very

much the study of Latin particularly, and its members wrote Latin

poems and delivered Latin orations and above all encouraged the

development of Roman Archaeology, the preservation of Roman remains of

all kinds, the editing of books and the recovery of every possible

phase of information with regard to Roman life."

There were minor academies in Rome, one of which, the Vitruvian

Academy, occupied itself mainly with architecture. But as was true

also at Florence, where there were a number of minor academies, some

at least of these were only cloaks for political discussions and

organizations, and as a consequence brought other and more serious

bodies of the same name under suspicion.

The next academy of importance is that of Naples, which came into

existence probably just about the beginning of Columbus' Century

during the reign of Alfonso of Aragon, the magnanimous patron of

learning. Its most prominent {510} members were Antonio of Palermo,

whose Italian name of Beccadelli is often used; Pontano and

Sannazzaro, the poets, and Laurentius Valla, the historian and

professor of rhetoric. Valla subsequently became professor of rhetoric

in Rome at the invitation of Pope Nicholas V, who wanted his

assistance for the carrying out of the great plan of translations from

Greek to Latin of all the great authors which he constantly cherished.

Valla became Papal Secretary under Nicholas' successor, Pope Calixtus

III, but unfortunately he died at the early age of fifty. He deserves

extended notice because he is one of the founders of historical

criticism, and he began that denunciation of exaggerated belief in

Aristotle very proper in itself, but which unfortunately went too far

and led to under-estimation of the medieval scholars who had studied

Aristotle so sedulously, and even of Aristotle himself. His discussion

of the Donation of Constantine attracted much attention and showed

very clearly how scholarship might be used to good purpose for the

correction of false notions even long after events had happened.

The _Accademia_ at Venice deserves more than a passing mention

because, though founded much later than the others, it set itself the

very practical purpose of bringing about a systematic publication of

the Greek classics. It was founded by Aldus in 1500, who called it the

New Academy of Hellenists, and was as strongly Grecian as Pomponius'

Academy was Roman. Its constitution was written in Greek, Greek was

spoken at its meetings and Greek names were adopted by its Italian

members. Fortiguerra of Pistoia, the Secretary of the Academy, thus

became Carteromachus. The principal aim of the Academy was to produce

in each month an edition of at least 1,000 copies of some good author.

Among the honorary foreign members were Linacre, some of whose

translations Aldus published, and Erasmus, who visited Venice in 1508

and who expressed himself as delighted with the opportunity to take

part in the deliberations of the Academy. How successful the Academy

was in its purpose of encouraging scholarly printing, all the world

knows. Aldus produced no less than 27 _editiones principes_ of Greek

authors and Greek works of reference. At the time of his death in 1515

all the {511} principal Greek classics had been printed. The Academy

had been a large factor in helping him in this magnificent

achievement, which meant more for scholarship throughout the whole of

Europe than perhaps any other single movement occupying so short a

time.

There are many of the scholars of the Renaissance whose names are

scarcely known outside of the narrow circle of modern specialists in

their departments, though their influence was felt for many

generations and their work is worthy of the highest praise. A typical

example of these is Ambrogio Calepino, the Augustinian monk, to whom

we owe the first great modern Latin dictionary. Under the title of

"Cornucopia" it appeared first at Reggio in 1502 and was reprinted

many times during the sixteenth century. The Alduses at Venice printed

no less than eighteen editions of it. This lexicon came to be the

groundwork on which subsequent lexicographers, recognizing its merit,

built up their larger works. There was an edition of it in seven

languages by Facciolati, printed at Pavia in 1718, which was reprinted

many times. The name of Calepinus became a synonym for the word

dictionary or lexicon and is frequently used, without capitalization

as a common noun, in Italy during the subsequent generations. His

magnificent work well deserved this recognition, for it is a monument

of the classical scholarship of the first half of Columbus' Century.

One of the greatest of the Italian scholars of the first half of,

Columbus' Century was that distinguished member of the Florentine

Academy whose books were the special favorites of Sir Thomas More,

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who died at the early age of thirty-one

after dreaming the dream of the unity of all knowledge and becoming

absorbed in planning a vast work which was to form a complete system

of knowledge. He had devoted himself to Greek and to Christian

theology and philosophy and even rendered himself liable to suspicion

by his delvings into Cabalistic lore and had deeply impressed the

generation among whom he lived. His reputation as a marvellous

precocious scholar, who died all untimely, still endures, and Sir

Thomas More's study and discussion of his works gave him a reputation

in England which added greatly {512} to his fame throughout the whole

West of Europe. He was happy in his end, for he passed away on the

very day in which the invader of Italy, Charles VIII of France,

marched into Florence.

Scholarship continued to hold the highest place in Italy until

political troubles, and above all the sack of Rome in 1527, drew men's

minds from peaceful pursuits, scattered libraries and made patronage

of scholarship most difficult for rulers and ecclesiastics.

{513}

CHAPTER VII

THE SCHOLARSHIP OF THE TEUTONIC COUNTRIES

Germany and the closely-related Teutonic countries are the only part

of Europe which did not create a distinct national literature during

this Renaissance period. It is true that Hans Sachs' popular poetry

comes from this time, and this has always been popular in Germany and

has often been reprinted, but it has never had any influence on world

literature and represents an almost solitary phenomenon in the history

of German literature. The reformers wrote vigorous German prose, and

in the controversial articles which were so frequent at the time, and

above all in the translations of the Scriptures into the vernacular,

laid the foundation of modern High German which must be traced to this

period, but even Germans scarcely claim the existence of a German

literature of the Renaissance.

On the other hand, the scholarship of Germany at this time was as

remarkable in its own way as Germany has ever been in subjects in

which it was interested. Probably nowhere in Europe did scholarship

penetrate more deeply among the people, and nowhere were freer

opportunities for mastery in the classical languages afforded than

along the Rhine, at Nueremberg and the neighboring cities and even in

districts to the north of these. The German thought of the time was

written in Latin and much of it was merely academic and passing in

character. Some of it, however, as a Kempis' works, above all the

"Imitation of Christ," were destined to an immortality of enduring

influence. Not a little of the educational writings of Erasmus and

those particularly of other students of the Brethren of the Common

Life were to witness many revivals of interest down to our own day,

when they are again attracting wide attention. Scholarship diverted

the intellectual {514} energy that would have been devoted to the

production of a national literature for the Germans, and must be

studied deeply to appreciate the Germany of the time.

For any proper understanding of scholarship outside of Italy during

the Renaissance period, which corresponds with Columbus' Century, the

most important preliminary is a knowledge of the institution and

spirit and the work and pupils of the Brethren of the Common Life. The

significance of their history has not been generally recognized,

especially in English-speaking countries, until recent years, and even

now many fail to appreciate its high import. Prejudice against

religious orders, acquired through sympathy with the Reformation,

obscured the value of this great factor in the education and

scholarship of the Teutonic countries which can indeed scarcely be

exaggerated. The order of the Common Life was, especially in the first

half of what we have called Columbus' Century, the great foster mother

of scholars whose reputations have deservedly lasted till our time and

have now become imperishable landmarks in the history of scholarship.

The mention of the names of such pupils of theirs as Agricola, Thomas

a Kempis, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, Alexander Hegius and Wimpheling

would be quite enough to afford ample proof of this.

The members of this religious order took no vows, nor did they ask or

receive alms. According to their constitution, they worked for their

daily bread, though their first aim was to cultivate the life of the

spirit, and they were required by their rules to devote themselves in

connection with this purpose to their intellectual development, to

education, the copying of classics and the writing of books. Their

founder, Geert de Groote (1340-1384), belonged to a rather wealthy

merchant family, and when he took orders he obtained ecclesiastical

preferment as a canon at Utrecht and at Aachen. Somewhat like St.

Francis of Assisi, in the midst of what might well seem a

conventionally successful life, he fell ill and had the experience

that Dean Stanley described when he said "things look different when

viewed from the horizontal position." On his recovery, Geert de Groote

resigned his canonries, gave his goods to the Carthusians and spent

seven years in solitude. {515} thinking over the significance of life

and what was man's true purpose in it. At the end of that time he came

out to preach, and his preaching met with wonderful success. Thousands

flocked to listen to him, and soon many young men wished to join with

him in his simple mode of life, to be directed by him and to help him

in his work.

Almost without his wishing it, a religious community grew up around

him, and when Geert de Groote died, near the end of the fourteenth

century, his successor, Florence Radewyns, founded the famous

monastery of Windesheim, the mother-house of the new religious life.

These new religious taught especially the middle and lower classes,

copied books and themselves wrote commentaries in language as simple

as possible on all manner of spiritual subjects. Their schools became

centres of the spiritual and intellectual life of the Low Countries

and the Rhineland, and during the course of the fifteenth century they

grew in numbers and in the attendance of scholars. Deventer, one of

their most famous schools, counted over 2,000 students about the time

of the discovery of America, and some of the greatest men of this

first part of Columbus' Century had been students of the Brethren of

the Common Life.

Mr. Hamilton Mabie, in his collection of essays, "My Study Fire," has

paid a worthy tribute to these dear old scholars and teachers which

sums up succinctly and sympathetically their work and its

significance. He said (page 92):

"I confess that I can never read quite unmoved the story of the

Brethren of the Common Life, those humble-minded, patient teachers

and thinkers whose devotion and fire of soul for a century and a

half made the choice treasures of Italian palaces and convents and

universities a common possession along the low-lying shores of the

Netherlands. The asceticism of this noble brotherhood was no morbid

and divisive fanaticism; it was a denial of themselves that they

might have the more to give. The visions which touched at times the

bare walls of their cells with supernal beauty only made them the

more eager to share their heaven of privilege with the

sorely-burdened world without. Surely Virgil and Horace and the

other masters of classic form were never more honored than {516}

when these noble-minded lovers of learning and of their kind made

their sounding lines familiar in peasant homes."

Many people seem inclined to think that the education of the poor

became possible only in our time. The guild schools of the Middle Ages

are a contradiction of this, but the story of the Brethren of the

Common Life shows how much organized effort was given to the

educational care for poor students. In his "Life of Thomas a Kempis,"

Kettelwell has told what they did for the poor and also how broad and

wide were the foundations of the education that they laid (p. 165):

"But there was another safeguard which was of great service in

preserving them (the Brethren) from being led away by fanaticism or

wild enthusiasm, because it gave them a useful object and purpose in

life to look after, and that was the encouragement they gave to

intellectual pursuits and the interest they took in education. Much

of the instruction given in schools at that time was often only

within the reach of those who could pay for it, whilst there was no

little defect in imparting it. . . . The Brothers of the Common

Life, on the contrary, not only promoted the giving of instruction

gratuitously, or assisted those unable to pay for it, and thus

brought the arts of reading and writing within the reach of many

that could not otherwise attain them; but, what was of more

consequence, they infused into education quite a new life, and

imparted to it a purer and nobler aim.