Our ancient classics had a very narrow escape from total annihilation.
Many have perished: many are but fragments; and chance, blind arbiter of
the works of genius, has left us some, not of the highest value; which,
however, have proved very useful, as a test to show the pedantry of
those who adore antiquity not from true feeling, but from traditional
prejudice.
We lost a great number of ancient authors by the conquest of Egypt by
the Saracens, which deprived Europe of the use of the _papyrus_. They
could find no substitute, and knew no other expedient but writing on
parchment, which became every day more scarce and costly. Ignorance and
barbarism unfortunately seized on Roman manuscripts, and industriously
defaced pages once imagined to have been immortal! The most elegant
compositions of classic Rome were converted into the psalms of a
breviary, or the prayers of a missal. Livy and Tacitus "hide their
diminished heads" to preserve the legend of a saint, and immortal truths
were converted into clumsy fictions. It happened that the most
voluminous authors were the greatest sufferers; these were preferred,
because their volume being the greatest, most profitably repaid their
destroying industry, and furnished ampler scope for future
transcription. A Livy or a Diodorus was preferred to the smaller works
of Cicero or Horace; and it is to this circumstance that Juvenal,
Persius, and Martial have come down to us entire, rather probably than
to these pious personages preferring their obscenities, as some have
accused them. At Rome, a part of a book of Livy was found, between the
lines of a parchment but half effaced, on which they had substituted a
book of the Bible; and a recent discovery of Cicero _De Republicâ_,
which lay concealed under some monkish writing, shows the fate of
ancient manuscripts.[13]
That the Monks had not in high veneration the _profane_ authors, appears
by a facetious anecdote. To read the classics was considered as a very
idle recreation, and some held them in great horror. To distinguish them
from other books, they invented a disgraceful sign: when a monk asked
for a pagan author, after making the general sign they used in their
manual and silent language when they wanted a book, he added a
particular one, which consisted in scratching under his ear, as a dog,
which feels an itching, scratches himself in that place with his
paw--because, said they, an unbeliever is compared to a dog! In this
manner they expressed an _itching_ for those _dogs_ Virgil or
Horace![14]
There have been ages when, for the possession of a manuscript, some
would transfer an estate, or leave in pawn for its loan hundreds of
golden crowns; and when even the sale or loan of a manuscript was
considered of such importance as to have been solemnly registered by
public acts. Absolute as was Louis XI. he could not obtain the MS. of
Rasis, an Arabian writer, from the library of the Faculty of Paris, to
have a copy made, without pledging a hundred golden crowns; and the
president of his treasury, charged with this commission, sold part of
his plate to make the deposit. For the loan of a volume of Avicenna, a
Baron offered a pledge of ten marks of silver, which was refused:
because it was not considered equal to the risk incurred of losing a
volume of Avicenna! These events occurred in 1471. One cannot but smile,
at an anterior period, when a Countess of Anjou bought a favourite book
of homilies for two hundred sheep, some skins of martins, and bushels of
wheat and rye.
In those times, manuscripts were important articles of commerce; they
were excessively scarce, and preserved with the utmost care. Usurers
themselves considered them as precious objects for pawn. A student of
Pavia, who was reduced, raised a new fortune by leaving in pawn a
manuscript of a body of law; and a grammarian, who was ruined by a fire,
rebuilt his house with two small volumes of Cicero.
At the restoration of letters, the researches of literary men were
chiefly directed to this point; every part of Europe and Greece was
ransacked; and, the glorious end considered, there was something sublime
in this humble industry, which often recovered a lost author of
antiquity, and gave one more classic to the world. This occupation was
carried on with enthusiasm, and a kind of mania possessed many, who
exhausted their fortunes in distant voyages and profuse prices. In
reading the correspondence of the learned Italians of these times, their
adventures of manuscript-hunting are very amusing; and their raptures,
their congratulations, or at times their condolence, and even their
censures, are all immoderate. The acquisition of a province would not
have given so much satisfaction as the discovery or an author little
known, or not known at all. "Oh, great gain! Oh, unexpected felicity! I
intreat you, my Poggio, send me the manuscript as soon as possible, that
I may see it before I die!" exclaims Aretino, in a letter overflowing
with enthusiasm, on Poggio's discovery of a copy of Quintilian. Some of
the half-witted, who joined in this great hunt, were often thrown out,
and some paid high for manuscripts not authentic; the knave played on
the bungling amateur of manuscripts, whose credulity exceeded his purse.
But even among the learned, much ill-blood was inflamed; he who had
been most successful in acquiring manuscripts was envied by the less
fortunate, and the glory of possessing a manuscript of Cicero seemed to
approximate to that of being its author. It is curious to observe that
in these vast importations into Italy of manuscripts from Asia, John
Aurispa, who brought many hundreds of Greek manuscripts, laments that he
had chosen more profane than sacred writers; which circumstance he tells
us was owing to the Greeks, who would not so easily part with
theological works, but did not highly value profane writers!
These manuscripts were discovered in the obscurest recesses of
monasteries; they were not always imprisoned in libraries, but rotting
in dark unfrequented corners with rubbish. It required not less
ingenuity to find out places where to grope in, than to understand the
value of the acquisition. An universal ignorance then prevailed in the
knowledge of ancient writers. A scholar of those times gave the first
rank among the Latin writers to one Valerius, whether he meant Martial
or Maximus is uncertain; he placed Plato and Tully among the poets, and
imagined that Ennius and Statius were contemporaries. A library of six
hundred volumes was then considered as an extraordinary collection.
Among those whose lives were devoted to this purpose, Poggio the
Florentine stands distinguished; but he complains that his zeal was not
assisted by the great. He found under a heap of rubbish in a decayed
coffer, in a tower belonging to the monastery of St. Gallo, the work of
Quintilian. He is indignant at its forlorn situation; at least, he
cries, it should have been preserved in the library of the monks; but I
found it _in teterrimo quodam et obscuro carcere_--and to his great joy
drew it out of its grave! The monks have been complimented as the
preservers of literature, but by facts, like the present, their real
affection may be doubted.
The most valuable copy of Tacitus, of whom so much is wanting, was
likewise discovered in a monastery of Westphalia. It is a curious
circumstance in literary history, that we should owe Tacitus to this
single copy; for the Roman emperor of that name had copies of the works
of his illustrious ancestor placed in all the libraries of the empire,
and every year had ten copies transcribed; but the Roman libraries seem
to have been all destroyed, and the imperial protection availed nothing
against the teeth of time.
The original manuscript of Justinian's Pandects was discovered by the
Pisans, when they took a city in Calabria; that vast code of laws had
been in a manner unknown from the time of that emperor. This curious
book was brought to Pisa; and when Pisa was taken by the Florentines,
was transferred to Florence, where it is still preserved.
It sometimes happened that manuscripts were discovered in the last
agonies of existence. Papirius Masson found, in the house of a
bookbinder of Lyons, the works of Agobard; the mechanic was on the point
of using the manuscripts to line the covers of his books.[15] A page of
the second decade of Livy, it is said, was found by a man of letters in
the parchment of his battledore, while he was amusing himself in the
country. He hastened to the maker of the battledore--but arrived too
late! The man had finished the last page of Livy--about a week before.
Many works have undoubtedly perished in this manuscript state. By a
petition of Dr. Dee to Queen Mary, in the Cotton library, it appears
that Cicero's treatise _De Republicâ_ was once extant in this country.
Huet observes that Petronius was probably entire in the days of John of
Salisbury, who quotes fragments, not now to be found in the remains of
the Roman bard. Raimond Soranzo, a lawyer in the papal court, possessed
two books of Cicero "on Glory," which he presented to Petrarch, who lent
them to a poor aged man of letters, formerly his preceptor. Urged by
extreme want, the old man pawned them, and returning home died suddenly
without having revealed where he had left them. They have never been
recovered. Petrarch speaks of them with ecstasy, and tells us that he
had studied them perpetually. Two centuries afterwards, this treatise on
Glory by Cicero was mentioned in a catalogue of books bequeathed to a
monastery of nuns, but when inquired after was missing. It was supposed
that Petrus Alcyonius, physician to that household, purloined it, and
after transcribing as much of it as he could into his own writings, had
destroyed the original. Alcyonius, in his book _De Exilio_, the critics
observed, had many splendid passages which stood isolated in his work,
and were quite above his genius. The beggar, or in this case the thief,
was detected by mending his rags with patches of purple and gold.
In this age of manuscript, there is reason to believe, that when a man
of letters accidentally obtained an unknown work, he did not make the
fairest use of it, but cautiously concealed it from his contemporaries.
Leonard Aretino, a distinguished scholar at the dawn of modern
literature, having found a Greek manuscript of Procopius _De Bello
Gothico_, translated it into Latin, and published the work; but
concealing the author's name, it passed as his own, till another
manuscript of the same work being dug out of its grave, the fraud of
Aretino was apparent. Barbosa, a bishop of Ugento, in 1649, has printed
among his works a treatise, obtained by one of his domestics bringing in
a fish rolled in a leaf of written paper, which his curiosity led him to
examine. He was sufficiently interested to run out and search the fish
market, till he found the manuscript out of which it had been torn. He
published it, under the title _De Officio Episcopi_. Machiavelli acted
more adroitly in a similar case; a manuscript of the Apophthegms of the
Ancients by Plutarch having fallen into his hands, he selected those
which pleased him, and put them into the mouth of his hero Castrucio
Castricani.
In more recent times, we might collect many curious anecdotes concerning
manuscripts. Sir Robert Cotton one day at his tailor's discovered that
the man was holding in his hand, ready to cut up for measures--an
original Magna Charta, with all its appendages of seals and signatures.
This anecdote is told by Colomiés, who long resided in this country; and
an original Magna Charta is preserved in the Cottonian library
exhibiting marks of dilapidation.
Cardinal Granvelle[16] left behind him several chests filled with a
prodigious quantity of letters written in different languages,
commented, noted, and underlined by his own hand. These curious
manuscripts, after his death, were left in a garret to the mercy of the
rain and the rats. Five or six of these chests the steward sold to the
grocers. It was then that a discovery was made of this treasure. Several
learned men occupied themselves in collecting sufficient of these
literary relics to form eighty thick folios, consisting of original
letters by all the crowned heads in Europe, with instructions for
ambassadors, and other state-papers.
A valuable secret history by Sir George Mackenzie, the king's advocate
in Scotland, was rescued from a mass of waste paper sold to a grocer,
who had the good sense to discriminate it, and communicated this curious
memorial to Dr. M'Crie. The original, in the handwriting of its author,
has been deposited in the Advocate's Library. There is an hiatus, which
contained the history of six years. This work excited inquiry after the
rest of the MSS., which were found to be nothing more than the sweepings
of an attorney's office.
Montaigne's Journal of his Travels into Italy has been but recently
published. A prebendary of Perigord, travelling through this province to
make researches relative to its history, arrived at the ancient
_château_ of Montaigne, in possession of a descendant of this great man.
He inquired for the archives, if there had been any. He was shown an old
worm-eaten coffer, which had long held papers untouched by the incurious
generations of Montaigne. Stifled in clouds of dust, he drew out the
original manuscript of the travels of Montaigne. Two-thirds of the work
are in the handwriting of Montaigne, and the rest is written by a
servant, who always speaks of his master in the third person. But he
must have written what Montaigne dictated, as the expressions and the
egotisms are all Montaigne's. The bad writing and orthography made it
almost unintelligible. They confirmed Montaigne's own observation, that
he was very negligent in the correction of his works.
Our ancestors were great hiders of manuscripts: Dr. Dee's singular MSS.
were found in the secret drawer of a chest, which had passed through
many hands undiscovered; and that vast collection of state-papers of
Thurloe's, the secretary of Cromwell, which formed about seventy volumes
in the original manuscripts, accidentally fell out of the false ceiling
of some chambers in Lincoln's-Inn.
A considerable portion of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters I
discovered in the hands of an attorney: family-papers are often
consigned to offices of lawyers, where many valuable manuscripts are
buried. Posthumous publications of this kind are too frequently made
from sordid motives: discernment and taste would only be detrimental to
the views of bulky publishers.[17]