CHAPTER I

[Transcriber's Note: This e-book was prepared from a 1960 G.P.

Putnam's Sons reprint of the 1900 edition of _The Revival of

Learning_, originally published by Smith, Elder, & Co., London, as

Volume II of John Addington Symonds's _Renaissance in Italy_ series.

Obvious printer errors have been corrected without note; other errors

are indicated by a [Transcriber's Note]. Older spellings of Italian

names (e.g. "Lionardo" for "Leonardo") have been retained as they

appear in the original.]

_JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS_

_The Revival of Learning_

At tibi fortassis, si, quod mens sperat et optat,

Es post me victura diu, meliora supersunt

Secula; non omnes veniet lethaeus in annos

Iste sopor; poterunt, discussis forte tenebris,

Ad purum priscumque jubar remeare nepotes.

Tunc Helicona novâ revirentem stirpe videbis,

Tunc lauros frondere sacras; tunc alta resurgent

Ingenia atque animi dociles, quibus ardor honesti

Pieridum studii veterem geminabit amorem.

PETRARCHÆ _Africa_, _lib. ix_

PREFACE[1]

[Footnote 1: To the original edition of this volume.]

This volume on the 'Revival of Learning' follows that on the 'Age of

the Despots,' published in 1875, and precedes that on the 'Fine Arts,'

which is now also offered to the public. In dealing with the 'Revival

of Learning' and the 'Fine Arts,' I have tried to remember that I had

not so much to write again the history of these subjects, as to treat

their relation to the 'Renaissance in Italy.' In other words, I have

regarded each section of my theme as subordinate to the general

culture of a great historical period. The volume on 'Italian

Literature,' still in contemplation, is intended to complete the work.

While handling the theme of the Italian Renaissance, I have selected

such points, and emphasised such details, as I felt to be important

for the biography of a nation at the most brilliant epoch of its

intellectual activity. The historian of culture sacrifices much that

the historian of politics will judge essential, and calls attention to

matters that the general reader may sometimes find superfluous. He

must submit to bear the reproach of having done at once too little and

too much. He must be content to traverse at one time well-worn ground,

and at another to engage in dry or abstruse inquiries. He must not

shrink from seeming to affect the fame of a compiler; nor, unless his

powers be of the highest, can he hope altogether to avoid repetitions

wearisome alike to reader and to writer. His main object is to paint

the portrait of national genius identical through all varieties of

manifestation; and in proportion as he has preserved this point of

view with firmness, he may hope to have succeeded.

For the History of the Revival of Learning I have had continual

recourse to Tiraboschi's 'Storia della Letteratura Italiana.' That

work is still the basis of all researches bearing on the subject. I

owe besides particular obligations to Vespasiano's 'Vite di Uomini

Illustri,' to Comparetti's 'Virgilio nel Medio Evo,' to Rosmini's

'Vita di Filelfo,' 'Vita di Vittorino da Feltre,' and 'Vita di Guarino

da Verona,' to Shepherd's 'Life of Poggio Bracciolini,' to

Dennistoun's 'Dukes of Urbino,' to Schultze's 'Gemistos Plethon,' to

Didot's 'Alde Manuce,' to Von Reumont's 'Lorenzo de' Medici,' to

Burckhardt's 'Cultur der Renaissance in Italien,' to Voigt's

'Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums,' and to Gregorovius's

'Geschichte der Stadt Rom.' To Voigt and Burckhardt, having perforce

traversed the same ground that they have done, I feel that I have been

in a special sense indebted. At the same time I have made it my

invariable practice, as the notes to this volume will show, to found

my own opinions on the study of original sources. To mention in

detail all the editions of the works of humanists and scholars I have

consulted, would be superfluous.

To me it has been a labour of love to record even the bare names of

those Italian worthies who recovered for us in the fourteenth and

fifteenth centuries 'the everlasting consolations' of the Greek and

Latin classics. The thought that I was tracing the history of an

achievement fruitful of the weightiest results for modern civilisation

has sustained me in a task that has been sometimes tedious. The

collective greatness of the Revival has reconciled my mind to many

trivialities of detail. The prosaic minutiæ of obscure biographies and

long-forgotten literary labours have been glorified by what appears to

me the poetry and the romance of the whole theme. It lies not in my

province or my power to offer my readers any adequate apology for such

defects as my own want of skill in exposition, or the difficulty of

transfiguring with vital light and heat a subject so remote from

present interests, may have occasioned. I must leave this volume in

their hands, hoping that some at least may be animated by the same

feeling of gratitude toward those past workers in the field of

learning which has supported me.

CLIFTON: _March 1877_.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

THE MEN OF THE RENAISSANCE

PAGE

Formation of Conscious Personality in Italy -- Aristocracy of

Intellect -- Self-culture as an Aim -- Want of National Architecture

-- Want of National Drama -- Eminence of Sculpture and Painting --

Peculiar Capacity for Literature -- Scholarship -- Men of Many-sided

Genius -- Their Relation to the Age -- Conflict between Mediæval

Tradition and Humanism -- Petrarch -- The Meaning of the Revival begun

by him -- Cosmopolitan Philosophy -- Toleration -- An Intellectual

Empire -- Worldliness -- Confusion of Impulses and Inspirations --

Copernicus and Columbus -- Christianity and the Classics -- Italian

Incapacity for Religious Reformation -- Free Thought takes the form of

License -- Harmonies attempted between Christianity and Antique

Philosophy -- Florentine Academy -- Physical Qualities of the Italians

-- Portraits of Two Periods -- Physical Exercises -- Determination of

the Race to Scholarship -- Ancient Memories of Rome -- The Cult of

Antiquity -- Desire of Fame -- Fame to be found in Literature -- The

Cult of Intellect -- The Cult of Character -- Preoccupation with

Personal Details -- Biography -- Ideal Sketches -- Posthumous Glory --

Enthusiasm for Erudition -- Piero de' Pazzi -- Florence and Athens --

Paganism -- Real Value of Italian Humanism -- Pico on the Dignity of

Man 1

CHAPTER II

FIRST PERIOD OF HUMANISM

Importance of the Revival of Learning -- Mediæval Romance -- The

Legend of Faustus -- Its Value for the Renaissance -- The Devotion of

Italy to Study -- Italian Predisposition for this Labour --

Scholarship in the Dark Ages -- Double Attitude assumed by the Church

-- Piety for Virgil -- Meagre Acquaintance with the Latin Classics --

No Greek Learning -- The Spiritual Conditions of the Middle Ages

adverse to Pure Literature -- Italy no Exception to the rest of Europe

-- Dante and Petrarch -- Definition of Humanism -- Petrarch's

Conception of it -- His Æsthetical Temperament -- His Cult for Cicero,

Zeal in Collecting Manuscripts, Sense of the Importance of Greek

Studies -- Warfare against Pedantry and Superstition -- Ideal of

Poetry and Rhetoric -- Critique of Jurists and Schoolmen -- S.

Augustine -- Petrarch's Vanity -- Thirst for Fame -- Discord between

his Life and his Profession -- His Literary Temperament -- Visionary

Patriotism -- His Influence -- His Successors -- Boccaccio and Greek

Studies -- Translation of Homer -- Philosophy of Literature --

Sensuousness of Boccaccio's Inspiration -- Giovanni da Ravenna -- The

Wandering Professor -- His Pupils in Latin Scholarship -- Luigi

Marsigli -- The Convent of S. Spirito -- Humanism in Politics --

Coluccio de' Salutati -- Gasparino da Barzizza -- Improved Style in

Letter-writing -- Revival of Greek Learning -- Manuel Chrysoloras --

His Pupils -- Lionardo Bruni -- Value of Greek for the Renaissance 37

CHAPTER III

FIRST PERIOD OF HUMANISM

Condition of the Universities in Italy -- Bologna -- High Schools

founded from it -- Naples under Frederick II. -- Under the House of

Anjou -- Ferrara -- Piacenza -- Perugia -- Rome -- Pisa -- Florence --

Imperial and Papal Charters -- Foreign Students -- Professorial Staff

-- Subjects taught in the High Schools -- Place assigned to Humanism

-- Pay of the Professors of Eloquence -- Francesco Filelfo -- The

Humanists less powerful at the Universities -- Method of Humanistic

Teaching -- The Book Market before Printing -- Mediæval Libraries --

Cost of Manuscripts -- 'Stationarii' and 'Peciarii' -- Negligence of

Copyists -- Discovery of Classical Codices -- Boccaccio at Monte

Cassino -- Poggio at Constance -- Convent of S. Gallen -- Bruni's

Letter to Poggio -- Manuscripts Discovered by Poggio -- Nicholas of

Treves -- Collection of Greek Manuscripts -- Aurispa, Filelfo, and

Guarino -- The Ruins of Rome -- Their Influence on Humanism -- Dante

and Villani -- Rienzi -- His Idealistic Patriotism -- Vanity --

Political Incompetence -- Petrarch's Relations with Rienzi -- Injury

to Monuments in Rome -- Poggio's Roman Topography -- Sentimental

Feeling for the Ruins of Antiquity -- Ciriac of Ancona 83

CHAPTER IV

SECOND PERIOD OF HUMANISM

Intricacy of the Subject -- Division into Four Periods -- Place of

Florence -- Social Conditions favourable to Culture -- Palla degli

Strozzi -- His Encouragement of Greek Studies -- Plan of a Public

Library -- His Exile -- Cosimo de' Medici -- His Patronage of Learning

-- Political Character -- Love of Building -- Generosity to Students

-- Foundation of Libraries -- Vespasiano and Thomas of Sarzana --

Niccolo de' Niccoli -- His Collection of Codices -- Description of his

Mode of Life -- His Fame as a Latinist -- Lionardo Bruni -- His

Biography -- Translations from the Greek -- Latin Treatises and

Histories -- His Burial in Santa Croce -- Carlo Aretino -- Fame as a

Lecturer -- The Florentine Chancery -- Matteo Palmieri -- Giannozzo

Manetti -- His Hebrew Studies -- His Public Career -- His Eloquence --

Manetti ruined by the Medici -- His Life in Exile at Naples --

Estimate of his Talents -- Ambrogio Traversari -- Study of Greek

Fathers -- General of the Camaldolese Order -- Humanism and

Monasticism -- The Council of Florence -- Florentine Opinion about the

Greeks -- Gemistos Plethon -- His Life -- His Philosophy -- His

Influence at Florence -- Cosimo de' Medici and the Florentine Academy

-- Study of Plato -- Plethon's Writings -- Platonists and

Aristotelians in Italy and Greece -- Bessarion -- His Patronage of

Greek Refugees in Rome -- Humanism in the Smaller Republics -- In

Venice 115

CHAPTER V

SECOND PERIOD OF HUMANISM

Transition from Florence to Rome -- Vicissitudes of Learning at the

Papal Court -- Diplomatic Humanists -- Protonotaries -- Apostolic

Scribes -- Ecclesiastical Sophists -- Immorality and Artificiality of

Scholarship in Rome -- Poggio and Bruni, Secretaries -- Eugenius IV.

-- His Patronage of Scholars -- Flavio Biondo -- Solid Erudition --

Nicholas V. -- His Private History -- Nature of his Talents -- His

unexpected Elevation to the Roman See -- Jubilation of the Humanists

-- His Protection of Learned Men in Rome -- A Workshop of Erudition --

A Factory of Translations -- High Sums paid for Literary Labour --

Poggio Fiorentino -- His Early Life -- His Journeys -- His Eminence as

a Man of Letters -- His attitude towards Ecclesiastics -- His

Invectives -- Humanistic Gladiators -- Poggio and Filelfo -- Poggio

and Guarino -- Poggio and Valla -- Poggio and Perotti -- Poggio and

Georgios Trapezuntios -- Literary Scandals -- Poggio's Collections of

Antiquities -- Chancellor of Florence -- Cardinal Bessarion -- His

Library -- Theological Studies -- Apology for Plato -- The Greeks in

Italy -- Humanism at Naples -- Want of Culture in Southern Italy --

Learning an Exotic -- Alfonso the Magnificent -- Scholars in the Camp

-- Literary Dialogues at Naples -- Antonio Beccadelli -- The

'Hermaphroditus' -- Lorenzo Valla -- The Epicurean -- The Critic --

The Opponent of the Church -- Bartolommeo Fazio -- Giannantonio

Porcello -- Court of Milan -- Filippo Maria Visconti -- Decembrio's

Description of his Master -- Francesco Filelfo -- His Early Life --

Visit to Constantinople -- Place at Court -- Marriage -- Return to

Italy -- Venice -- Bologna -- His Pretensions as a Professor --

Florence -- Feuds with the Florentines -- Immersion in Politics --

Siena -- Settles at Milan -- His Fame -- Private Life and Public

Interests -- Overtures to Rome -- Filelfo under the Sforza Tyranny --

Literary Brigandage -- Death at Florence -- Filelfo as the

Representative of a Class -- Vittorino da Feltre -- Early Education --

Scheme of Training Youths as Scholars -- Residence at Padua --

Residence at Mantua -- His School of Princes -- Liberality to Poor

Students -- Details of his Life and System -- Court of Ferrara --

Guarino da Verona -- House Tutor of Lionello d'Este -- Giovanni

Aurispa -- Smaller Courts -- Carpi -- Mirandola -- Rimini and the

Malatesta Tyrants -- Cesena -- Pesaro -- Urbino and Duke Frederick --

Vespasiano da Bisticci 155

CHAPTER VI

THIRD PERIOD OF HUMANISM

Improvement in Taste and Criticism -- Coteries and Academies --

Revival of Italian Literature -- Printing -- Florence, the Capital of

Learning -- Lorenzo de' Medici and his Circle -- Public Policy of

Lorenzo -- Literary Patronage -- Variety of his Gifts -- Meetings of

the Platonic Society -- Marsilio Ficino -- His Education for Platonic

Studies -- Translations of Plato and the Neoplatonists -- Harmony

between Plato and Christianity -- Giovanni Pico -- His First

Appearance in Florence -- His Theses proposed at Rome -- Censure of

the Church -- His Study of the Cabbala -- Large Conception of Learning

-- Occult Science -- Cristoforo Landino -- Professor of Fine

Literature -- Virgilian Studies -- Camaldolese Disputations -- Leo

Battista Alberti -- His Versatility -- Bartolommeo Scala -- Obscure

Origin -- Chancellor of Florence -- Angelo Poliziano -- Early Life --

Translation of Homer -- The 'Homericus Juvenis' -- True Genius in

Poliziano -- Command of Latin and Greek -- Resuscitation of Antiquity

in his own Person -- His Professorial Work -- The 'Miscellanea' --

Relation to Medici -- Roman Scholarship in this Period -- Pius II. --

Pomponius Lætus -- His Academy and Mode of Life -- Persecution under

Paul II. -- Humanism at Naples -- Pontanus -- His Academy -- His

Writings -- Academies established in all Towns of Italy --

Introduction of Printing -- Sweynheim and Pannartz -- The Early

Venetian Press -- Florence -- Cennini -- Alopa's Homer -- Change in

Scholarship effected by Printing -- The Life of Aldo Manuzio -- The

Princely House of Pio at Carpi -- Greek Books before Aldo -- The

Aldine Press at Venice -- History of its Activity -- Aldo and Erasmus

-- Aldo and the Greek Refugees -- Aldo's Death -- His Family and

Successors -- The Neacademia -- The Salvation of Greek Literature 224

CHAPTER VII

FOURTH PERIOD OF HUMANISM

Fall of the Humanists -- Scholarship permeates Society -- A New Ideal

of Life and Manners -- Latinisation of Names -- Classical Periphrases

-- Latin Epics on Christian Themes -- Paganism -- The Court of Leo X.

-- Honours of the Church given to Scholars -- Ecclesiastical Men of

the World -- Mæcenases at Rome -- Papal and Imperial Rome -- Moral

Corruption -- Social Refinement -- The Roman Academy -- Pietro Bembo

-- His Life at Ferrara -- At Urbino -- Comes to Rome -- Employed by

Leo -- Retirement to Padua -- His Dictatorship of Letters -- Jacopo

Sadoleto -- A Graver Genius than Bembo -- Paulus Jovius -- Latin

Stylist -- His Histories -- Baldassare Castiglione -- Life at Urbino

and Rome -- The Courtly Scholar -- His Diplomatic Missions -- Alberto

Pio -- Gian Francesco Pico della Mirandola -- The Vicissitudes of his

Life -- Jerome Aleander -- Oriental Studies -- The Library of the

Vatican -- His Mission to Germany -- Inghirami, Beroaldo, and

Acciaiuoli -- The Roman University -- John Lascaris -- Study of

Antiquities -- Origin of the 'Corpus Inscriptionum' -- Topographical

Studies -- Formation of the Vatican Sculpture Gallery -- Discovery of

the Laocoon -- Feeling for Statues in Renaissance Italy -- Venetian

Envoys in the Belvedere -- Raphael's Plan for Excavating Ancient Rome

-- His Letter to Leo -- Effect of Antiquarian Researches on the Arts

-- Intellectual Supremacy of Rome in this Period -- The Fall -- Adrian

VI. -- The Sack of Rome -- Valeriano's Description of the Sufferings

of Scholars 284

CHAPTER VIII

LATIN POETRY

Special Causes for the Practice of Latin Versification in Italy -- The

Want of an Italian Language -- Multitudes of Poetasters -- Beccadelli

-- Alberti's 'Philodoxus' -- Poliziano -- The 'Sylvæ' -- 'Nutricia,'

'Rusticus,' 'Manto,' 'Ambra' -- Minor Poems -- Pontano -- Sannazzaro

-- Elegies and Epigrams -- Christian Epics -- Vida's 'Christiad' --

Vida's 'Poetica' -- Fracastoro -- The 'Syphilis' -- _Barocco_

Flatteries -- Bembo -- Immoral Elegies -- Imitations of Ovid and

Tibullus -- The 'Benacus' -- Epitaphs -- Navagero -- Epigrams and

Eclogues -- Molsa -- Poem on his own Death -- Castiglione -- 'Alcon'

and 'Lycidas' -- Verses of Society -- The Apotheosis of the Popes --

Poem on the Ariadne of the Vatican -- Sadoleto's Verses on the Laocoon

-- Flaminio -- His Life -- Love of the Country -- Learned Friends --

Scholar-Poets of Lombardy -- Extinction of Learning in Florence --

Decay of Italian Erudition 324

CHAPTER IX

CONCLUSION

General Survey -- The Part played in the Revival by the Chief Cities

-- Preoccupation with Scholarship in spite of War and Conquest --

Place of the Humanists in Society -- Distributors of Praise and Blame

-- Flattery and Libels -- Comparison with the Sophists -- The Form

preferred to the Matter of Literature -- Ideal of Culture as an end in

itself -- Suspicion of Zealous Churchmen -- Intrusion of Humanism into

the Church -- Irreligion of the Humanists -- Gyraldi's 'Progymnasma'

-- Ariosto -- Bohemian Life -- Personal Immorality -- Want of Fixed

Principles -- Professional Vanity -- Literary Pride -- Estimate of

Humanistic Literature -- Study of Style -- Influence of Cicero --

Valla's 'Elegantiæ' -- Stylistic Puerilities -- Value attached to

Rhetoric -- 'Oratore' -- Moral Essays -- Epistolography -- Histories

-- Critical and Antiquarian Studies -- Large Appreciation of Antiquity

-- Liberal Spirit -- Poggio and Jerome of Prague -- Humanistic Type of

Education -- Its Diffusion through Europe -- Future Prospects -- Decay

of Learning in Italy 372

RENAISSANCE IN ITALY

CHAPTER I

THE MEN OF THE RENAISSANCE

Formation of Conscious Personality in Italy -- Aristocracy

of Intellect -- Self-culture as an Aim -- Want of National

Architecture -- Want of National Drama -- Eminence of

Sculpture and Painting -- Peculiar Capacity for Literature

-- Scholarship -- Men of Many-sided Genius -- Their Relation

to the Age -- Conflict between Mediæval Tradition and

Humanism -- Petrarch -- The Meaning of the Revival begun by

him -- Cosmopolitan Philosophy -- Toleration -- An

Intellectual Empire -- Worldliness -- Confusion of Impulses

and Inspirations -- Copernicus and Columbus -- Christianity

and the Classics -- Italian Incapacity for Religious

Reformation -- Free Thought takes the form of License --

Harmonies attempted between Christianity and Antique

Philosophy -- Florentine Academy -- Physical Qualities of

the Italians -- Portraits of Two Periods -- Physical

Exercises -- Determination of the Race to Scholarship --

Ancient Memories of Rome -- The Cult of Antiquity -- Desire

of Fame -- Fame to be found in Literature -- The Cult of

Intellect -- The Cult of Character -- Preoccupation with

Personal Details -- Biography -- Ideal Sketches --

Posthumous Glory -- Enthusiasm for Erudition -- Piero de'

Pazzi -- Florence and Athens -- Paganism -- Real Value of

Italian Humanism -- Pico on the Dignity of Man.

The conditions, political, social, moral, and religious, described in

the first volume of this work, produced among the Italians a type of

character nowhere else observable in Europe. This character, highly

self-conscious and mentally mature, was needed for the intellectual

movement of the Renaissance. Italy had proved herself incapable of

forming an united nation, or of securing the principle of federal

coherence; of maintaining a powerful military system, or of holding

her own against the French and Spaniards. For these defects her

Communes and her Despots, the Papacy and the kingdom of Naples, the

theories of the mediæval doctrinaires and the enthusiasm of the

humanists, were alike responsible; though the larger share belongs to

Rome, resolutely hostile to the monarchical principle, and zealous, by

espousing the Guelf faction, to maintain the discord of the nation. At

the same time the very causes of political disunion were favourable to

the intellectual growth of the Italians. Each State, whether

republican or despotic, had, during the last years of the Middle Ages,

formed a mixed society of nobles, merchants, and artisans, enclosed

within the circuit of the city walls, and strongly marked by the

peculiar complexion of their native place. Every town was a centre of

activity and industry, eagerly competing with its neighbours, proud of

its local characteristics, anxious to confer distinction on citizens

who rose to eminence by genius or practical ability. Party strife in

the republics, while it disturbed their internal repose, sharpened the

intellect and strengthened the personality of the burghers. Exile and

proscription, the common climax of civic warfare, made them still more

self-determined and self-reliant by driving each man back upon his own

resources. The despots, again, through the illegal tenure of their

authority, were forced to the utmost possible development of

individual character: since all their fortunes depended on their

qualities as men. The plots and counter-plots of subjects eager for a

change of government, and of neighbours anxious to encroach upon their

territory, kept the atmosphere of their Courts in a continual state of

agitation. One type of ability was fostered by the diplomatic

relations of the several cities, yielding employment to a multitude of

secretaries and ambassadors; another by the system of Condottiere

warfare, offering a brilliant career to ambitious adventurers. In all

departments open to a man of talent birth was of less importance than

natural gifts; for the social barriers and grades of feudalism had

either never existed in Italy, or had been shaken and confounded

during the struggles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The

ranks of the tyrants were filled with sons of Popes and captains risen

from the proletariat. The ruling class in the republics consisted of

men self-made by commerce; and here the name at least of Popolo was

sovereign. It followed that men were universally rated at what they

proved themselves to be; and thus an aristocracy of genius and

character grew up in Italy at a period when the rest of Europe

presented but rare specimens of individuals emergent from the common

herd. As in ancient Greece, the nation was of less importance than the

city, and within the city personal ability carried overwhelming

weight. The Italian history of the Renaissance resumes itself in the

biography of men greater than their race, of mental despots, who

absorbed its forces in themselves.

The intellectual and moral milieu created by multitudes of

self-centred, cultivated personalities was necessary for the evolution

of that spirit of intelligence, subtle, penetrative, and elastic, that

formed the motive force of the Renaissance. The work achieved by Italy

for the world in that age was less the work of a nation than that of

men of power, less the collective and spontaneous triumph of a

puissant people than the aggregate of individual efforts animated by

one soul of free activity, a common striving after fame. This is

noticeable at the very outset. The Italians had no national Epic:

their Divine Comedy is the poem of the individual man. Petrarch erects

self-culture to the rank of an ideal, and proposes to move the world

from the standpoint of his study, darting his spirit's light through

all the void circumference, and making thought a power.

The success and the failure of the Italians are alike referable to

their political subdivisions, and to this strong development of their

personality. We have already seen how they fell short of national

unity and of military greatness. Even in the realm of art and

literature the same conditions were potent. Some of the chief

productions of humanity seem to require the co-operation of whole

peoples working sympathetically to a common end. Foremost among these

are architecture and the drama. The most splendid triumphs of modern

architecture in the French and English Gothic were achieved by the

half-unconscious striving of the national genius through several

centuries. The names of the builders of the cathedrals are unknown:

the cathedrals themselves bear less the stamp of individual thought

than of popular instinct; their fame belongs to the race that made

them, to the spirit of the times that gave them birth. It is not in

architecture, therefore, that we expect the Italians, divided into

small and rival States, and distinguished by salient subjectivity, to

show their strength. Men like Niccola Pisano, Arnolfo del Cambio,

Alberti, Brunelleschi, and Bramante were gifted with an individuality

too paramount for the creation of more than mighty experiments in

architecture. They bowed to no tradition, but followed the dictates of

their own inventive impulse, selecting the types that suited them, and

dealing freely with the forms they found around them. Instead of

seeking to carry on toward its accomplishment a style, not made, but

felt and comprehended by their genius, they were eager to produce new

and characteristic masterpieces--signs and symbols of their own

peculiar quality of mind. Italy is full of splendid but imperfect

monuments of personal ability, works of beauty displaying no unbroken

genealogy of unknown craftsmen, but attesting the skill of famous

artists. For the practical architect her palaces and churches may,

for this reason, be less instructive and less attractive than the

public buildings of France. Yet for the student of national and

personal characteristics, who loves to trace the physiognomy of a

people in its edifices, to discover the mind of the artist in his

work, their interest is unrivalled. In each city the specific _genius

loci_ meets us face to face: from each town-hall or cathedral the soul

of a great man leans forth to greet our own. These advantages

compensate for frequent extravagances, for audacities savouring of

ignorance, and for awkwardness in the adoption and modification of

incongruous styles. Moreover, it must always be remembered that in

Italy the architect could not forget the monuments of Roman and

Byzantine art around him. Classic models had to be suited to the

requirements of modern life and Christian ritual; and when the Germans

brought their Gothic from beyond the Alps, it suffered from its

adaptation to a southern climate. The result was that Italy arrived at

no great national tradition in architecture, and that free scope was

offered to the whims and freaks of individual designers. When at

length, at the end of the sixteenth century, the Italians attained to

uniformity of taste, it was by the sacrifice of their originality. The

pedantry of the classical revival did more harm to architecture than

to letters, and pseudo-Roman purism superseded the genial caprices of

the previous centuries.

If architecture may be said to have suffered in Italy from the

supremacy of local characteristics and personal genius, overruling

tradition and thwarting the evolution of a national style, the case

was quite different with the other arts. Painting and sculpture demand

the highest independence in the artist, and are susceptible of a far

more many-sided treatment than architecture. They cannot be the common

product of a people, but require the conscious application of a

special ability to the task of translating thought and feeling into

form. As painters, the Italians hold the first rank among civilised

nations of the modern and the ancient world; and their inferiority as

sculptors to the Greeks is mainly due to their mastery over painting,

the essentially romantic art. The sensibilities of the new age craved

a more emotional and agitated expression than is proper to sculpture.

As early as the days of Ghiberti and Donatello it became clear that

the Italian sculptors were following the methods of the sister art in

their designs, while Michael Angelo alone had force enough to make

marble the vehicle of thoughts that properly belong to painting or to

music. The converse probably held good with the Greeks. What remains

of their work in fresco and mosaic seems to show that they were

satisfied with groups and figures modelled upon bas-reliefs and

statues; just as the Florentines carved pictures, with architecture

and landscape, in stone. More need not here be said upon this topic,

since the achievements of the Italians in painting and in sculpture

will form a main part of my history.

As regards literature, the subdivision of Italy into numerous small

States and the energetic self-assertion of the individual were

distinctly favourable. Though the want of a great public, such as can

alone be found in the capital of a free, united nation, may be

reckoned among the many reasons which prevented the Italians from

developing the drama, yet the rivalry of town with town and of burgher

with burgher, Court life with its varied opportunities for the display

of talent, and municipal life with its restless competition in

commerce and public affairs, encouraged the activity of students,

historians, statisticians, critics, and poets. Culture, in the highest

and widest sense of the word, was what Renaissance Italy obtained and

gave to Europe; and this culture implies a full-formed personality in

the men who seek it. It was the highly perfected individuality of the

Italians that made them first emerge from mediæval bondage and become

the apostles of humanism for the modern world. It may be regretted

that their force was expended upon the diffusion of learning and the

purification of style, instead of being concentrated on the creation

of national masterpieces. We seek in vain for Dante's equal among the

poets of the Renaissance. The 'Orlando Furioso' is but a poor second

to the 'Divina Commedia;' and all those works of scholarship, which

seemed to our ancestors the _ne plus ultra_ of refinement, are now

relegated to the lumber-room of erudition that has been superseded, or

of literary ingenuity that has lost its point. Now that the boon of

culture, so hardly won by the students of the fifteenth and sixteenth

centuries, has become the common heritage of Europe, it is not always

easy to explain the mental grandeur of the Italians in that age. Yet

we should fail to recognise their merit, if we did not comprehend

that, precisely by this absorption of their genius in the task of the

Revival, they conferred the most enduring benefits upon humanity. What

the modern world would have been, if the Italian nation had not

devoted its energies to the restoration of liberal learning, cannot

even be imagined. The history of that devotion will form the principal

subject of my present volume.

The comprehensive and many-sided natures, frequent in Renaissance

Italy, were specially adapted for the dissemination of the new spirit.

The appearance of such men as Leo Battista Alberti, Lionardo da Vinci,

Lorenzo de' Medici, Brunelleschi and Buonarroti, Poliziano and Pico

della Mirandola, upon the stage of the Renaissance is not the least

fascinating of its phenomena. We can only find their parallels by

returning to the age of Pericles. But the problem for the Florentines

differed from that which the Athenians had before them. In Greece, the

morning-land of civilisation, men of genius, each perfect in his own

capacity, were needed. Standards had to be created for the future

guidance of the world in all the realms of art and thought. We are

therefore less struck with the versatility than with the concentration

of Pheidias, Pindar, Sophocles, Socrates. Italy, on the other hand,

had for her task the reabsorption of a bygone culture. It was her

vocation to resuscitate antiquity, to gather up afresh the products of

the classic past, and so to blend them with the mediæval spirit as to

generate what is specifically modern. It was indispensable that the

men by whom this work was accomplished should be no less distinguished

for largeness of intelligence, variety of acquirements, quickness of

sympathy, and sensitive susceptibility, than for the complete

development of some one faculty. The great characters of the Greek age

were what Hegel calls plastic, penetrated through and through with a

specific quality. Those of the Italian age were comprehensive and

encyclopædic; the intensity of their force in any one sphere is less

remarkable than its suitableness to all. They were of a nature to

synthesise, interpret, reproduce, and mould afresh--like Mr.

Browning's Cleon, with the addition of the consciousness of young and

potent energy within them. It consequently happens that, except in the

sphere of the Fine Arts, we are tempted to underrate the heroes of the

Renaissance. The impression they leave upon our minds at any one point

is slight in comparison with the estimate we form of them when we

consider each man as a whole. Nor can we point to monumental and

colossal works in proof of their creative faculty.

The biographies of universal geniuses like Leo Battista Alberti or

Lionardi [Transcriber's Note: Lionardo] da Vinci, so multiform in

their capacity and so creative in their intuitions, prompt us to ask

what is the connection between the spirit of an age and the men in

whom it is incorporated. Not without reason are we forced to personify

the Renaissance as something external to its greatest characters.

There is an intellectual strength outside them in the century, a

heritage of power prepared for them at birth. The atmosphere in which

they breathe is so charged with mental vitality that the least

stirring of their special energy brings them into relation with forces

mightier than are the property of single natures. In feebler periods

of retrospect and criticism we can but wonder at the combination of

faculties so varied, and at miracles so easily accomplished. These

times of clairvoyance and of intellectual magnetism, when individuals

of genius appear to move like vibrios in a life-sustaining fluid

specially adapted to their needs, are rare in the history of the

world; nor has our science yet arrived at analysing their causes. They

are not on that account the less real. To explain them by the

hypothesis of a _Weltgeist_, the collective spirit of humanity

proceeding in its evolution through successive phases, and making its

advance from stage to stage by alternations of energy and repose, is

simply to restore, in other terms, a mystery that finds its final and

efficient cause in God.[2]

[Footnote 2: The analogy of the individual might be quoted. We are

aware within ourselves of times when thought is fertile and insight

clear, times of conception and projection, followed by seasons of slow

digestion, assimilation, and formation, when the creative faculty

stagnates, and the whole force of the intellect is absorbed in

mastering through years what it took minutes to divine.]

Gifted with the powerful individuality I am attempting to describe,

the men of the Renaissance received their earliest education in the

religion of the Middle Ages, their second in the schools of Greece and

Rome. It was the many-sided struggle of personal character with

time-honoured tradition on the one hand, and with new ideals on the

other, that lent so much of inconsistency and contradiction to their

aims. Dante remained within the pale of mediæval thoughts, and gave

them full poetical expression. To him, in a truer sense than to any

other poet, belongs the double glory of immortalising in verse the

centuries behind him, while he inaugurated the new age. The 'Vita

Nuova' and the 'Divina Commedia' are modern, in so far as the one is

the first complete analysis of personal emotion, and the other is the

epic of the soul conceived as concrete personality. But the form and

colour, the material and structure, the warp of thought and the woof

of fancy, are not modern. Petrarch opens a new era. He is not

satisfied with the body of mediæval beliefs and intellectual

conceptions. Antiquity presents a more fascinating ideal to his

spirit, and he feels the subjectivity within him strong enough to

assimilate what suits it in the present and the past. The Revival of

Learning, begun by Petrarch, was no mere renewal of interest in

classic literature. It was the emancipation of the reason in a race of

men, intolerant of control, ready to criticise accepted canons of

conduct, enthusiastic in admiration of antique liberty, freshly

awakened to the sense of beauty, and anxious above all things to

secure for themselves free scope in spheres outside the region of

authority. Men so vigorous and independent felt the joy of

exploration. There was no problem they feared to face, no formula they

were not eager to recast according to their new convictions. This

liberty of judgment did not of necessity lead to lawlessness; nor in

any case did it produce that insurgence against Catholic orthodoxy

which marked the German Reformation. Yet it lent a characteristic

quality to thought and action. Men were, and dared to be, themselves

for good or evil without too much regard for what their neighbours

thought of them. At the same time they were tolerant. The culture of

the Renaissance implied a philosophical acceptance of variety in

fashion, faith, and conduct; and this toleration was no doubt one

reason why Italian scepticism took the form of cynicism, not of

religious revolution. Contact with Islam in the south and east,

diplomatic relations with the Turks, familiarity with the mixed races

of Spain, and commerce with the nations of the north, had widened the

sympathies of the Italians, and taught them to regard humanity as one

large family. The liberal spirits of the Renaissance might have quoted

Marcus Aurelius with slight alteration: 'I will not say, dear City of

St. Peter, but, dear City of Man!' And just as their moral and

religious sensibilities were blunted, so patriotism with them ceased

to be an instinct. Instead of patriotism, the Italians were inflamed

with the zeal of cosmopolitan culture.

In proportion as Italy lost year by year the hope of becoming an

united nation, in proportion as the military instincts died in her,

and the political instincts were extinguished by despotism, in

precisely the same ratio did she evermore acquire a deeper sense of

her intellectual vocation. What was world-embracing in the spirit of

the mediæval Church passed by transmutation into the humanism of the

fifteenth century. As though aware of the hopelessness of being

Italians in the same sense as the natives of Spain were Spaniards, or

the natives of France were Frenchmen, the giants of the Renaissance

did their utmost to efface their nationality in order that they might

the more effectually restore the cosmopolitan ideal of the human

family. To this end both artists and scholars, the depositaries of the

real Italian greatness at this epoch, laboured; the artists by

creating an ideal of beauty with a message and a meaning for all

Europe, the scholars by recovering for Europe the burghership of Greek

and Roman civilisation. In spite of the invasions and convulsions that

ruined Italy between the years 1494 and 1527, the painters and the

humanists proceeded with their task, as though the fate of Italy

concerned them not, as though the destinies of the modern world

depended on their activity. After Venice had been desolated by the

armies of the League of Cambray, Aldus Manutius presented the

peace-gift of Plato to the foes of his adopted city; and when the

Lutherans broke into Parmegiano's workshop at Rome, even they were

awed by the tranquil majesty of the Virgin on his easel. Stories like

these remind us that Renaissance Italy met her doom of servitude and

degradation in the spirit of ancient Hellas, repeating as they do the

tales told of Archimedes in his study, and of Paulus Æmilius face to

face with the Zeus of Pheidias.

As patriotism gave way to cosmopolitan enthusiasm, and toleration took

the place of earnestness, in like manner the conflict of mediæval

tradition with revived Paganism in the minds of these self-reliant

men, trained to indulgence by their large commerce with the world, and

familiarised with impiety by the ever-present pageant of an

anti-Christian Church, led, as I have hinted, to recklessness and

worldly vices, rather than to reformed religion. Contented with

themselves and their surroundings, they felt none of the unsatisfied

cravings after the infinite, none of the mysterious intuitions and

ascetic raptures, the self-abasements and transfigurations, stigmata

and beatific visions, of the Middle Ages. The plenitude of life within

them seemed to justify their instincts and their impulses, however

varied and discordant these might be. The sonorous current of the

world around them drowned the voice of conscience, the suggestion of

religious scruples. It is only thus we can explain to ourselves the

attitude of such men as Sixtus and Alexander, serenely vicious in

extreme old age. The gratification of their egotism was so complete as

to exclude self-judgment by the rules and standards they

professionally applied; their personality was too exacting to admit of

hesitation when their instincts were concerned; in common with their

age they had lost sight of all but mundane aims and interests. Three

aphorisms, severally attributed to three representative Italians, may

be quoted in illustration of these remarks. 'You follow infinite

objects; I follow the finite;' said Cosimo de' Medici; 'you place your

ladders in the heavens; I on earth, that I may not seek so high or

fall so low.' 'If we are not ourselves pious,' said Julius II., 'why

should we prevent other people from being so?' 'Let us enjoy the

Papacy,' said Leo X., 'now that God has given it to us.'

It was only under the influence of some external terror--a plague, a

desolating war, an imminent peril to the nation--that the religious

sense, deadened by worldliness and selfish philosophy, made itself

felt. At such seasons whole cities rushed headlong into fierce

revivalism, while men of violent or profligate lives saw visions, and

betook themselves to penance. Cellini's Memoirs are, on this point, a

valuable mirror of the age in which he lived. It is clear that his

ecstasies of devotion in the dungeons of S. Angelo were as sincere as

the fiery impulses he obeyed with so much complacency. Passionate and

worldly as men of Cellini's stamp might be, they could not shake off

the associations that bound them to the past. The energy of their

intense individuality took turn by turn the form and colour of ascetic

piety and Pagan sensuality; and at times these strong contrasts of

emotion seemed bordering upon insanity. Ungovernable natures, swayed

by no fixed principle, and bent on moulding the world of thought

afresh to suit their own desires, became the puppets of astrological

superstition, the playthings of mad lust. Much that appears

unaccountable and contradictory in the Renaissance may be referred to

this imperfect blending of ecclesiastical tradition and idealised

Paganism in natures potent enough to be original and wilful, but not

yet tamed from semi-savagery into acquiescence by experience.

Experience came to the Italians in servitude beneath the heel of

Spain.

The confusion of influences, classical and mediæval, Christian and

Pagan, in that age is not the least extraordinary of its phenomena.

Even the new thoughts that illuminated the minds of great discoverers,

seemed to them like reflections from antiquity; and while they were

opening fresh worlds, their hearts were turned toward the Holy Land

of the Crusades. Columbus and Copernicus, the two men who did more

than any others to revolutionise the mental attitude of humanity,

appealed to their contemporaries on the strength of texts from

Aristotle and Philolaus. Conscious that the guesses of the Greek

cosmographers had stimulated in themselves that curiosity whereby they

made the motion of the earth a certainty, and found a way across the

waves to a new continent, these mighty spirits forgot how slight in

reality was their debt to the inert speculators of the classic age.

The truth was that in them throbbed a force of enterprise and

conquering discovery, a spirit of exploration resolute and hardy,

denied to the ancients.

How far this new and fruitful temper of the modern mind was due to

Christianity, is a problem for the deepest speculation. The conception

of a God who had made no part of His world in vain, of a Christ who

had bought with His blood the whole seed of Adam, and who imposed the

preaching of the faith upon His followers as a duty, wrought

powerfully on Columbus. The Crusades, again, had familiarised the

nations with distant objects and ideal quests; while chivalry was

essentially antagonistic to positive and selfish aims. The spirit of

mankind had marched a long stage during the Middle Ages. It was not

possible now to conceive of God as a tranquil thinking upon thought,

with Aristotle. There was no Augustus to set arbitrary limits to the

empire of the world in the interest of a conquering nation, or to make

the two words _orbs_ and _urbs_ synonymous. When Strabo hazarded the

opinion that there might be populous islands in the other hemisphere,

he added, with the sublime indifference of a Roman, 'But these

speculations have nothing in common with practical geography; and if

such islands exist, they cannot support peoples of like origin with

us.' Such language was impossible for a man educated in the Christian

faith, and imbued with the instincts of romanticism. Therefore, though

the study of Strabo and Ptolemy at Pavia impressed Columbus with the

certainty of the new route across the ocean, he owed the courage that

sustained him to the conviction that God was leading him to a great

end. 'When I first undertook to start for the discovery of the

Indies,' he says in his will, 'I intended to beg the King and Queen to

devote the whole of the money that might be drawn from these realms to

Jerusalem.' The religious yearning of the mediæval pilgrim added

fervour to the conviction of the student, who, by reasoning on antique

texts, guessed the greatest secret of which the world has record. At

the same time there was something more in Columbus than either

antiquity or mediævalism could provide. The modern spirit is distinct

from both; and though, in the Renaissance, creation wore the garb of

imitation, and the new forces used the organs they were destined to

outlive and destroy, yet we must allow to native personality the

lion's share in such achievement as that of Columbus. It is the

variety of spiritual elements in combination and solution, which he

illustrates, that makes the psychology of the Renaissance at once so

fascinating and so difficult to analyse.

While so much liberty of thought prevailed in Italy, it may be

wondered why the Renaissance, eminently fertile in the domains of art

and culture, bore but meagre fruit in those of religion and

philosophy. The German Reformation was the Renaissance of

Christianity; and in this the Italians had no share, though it should

be remembered that, without their previous labours in the field of

scholarship, the band who led the Reformation could hardly have given

that high intellectual character to the movement which made it a new

starting-point in the history of the reason. To expect from Italy the

ethical regeneration of the modern world would be to misapprehend her

true vocation; art and erudition were sufficient to engage her

spiritual energies. The Church again, though by no means adverse to

laxity in morals, was jealous of heterodoxy. So long as freethinkers

confined their audacity to such matters as form the topic of Poggio's

'Facetiæ,' Beccadelli's 'Hermaphroditus,' or La Casa's 'Capitolo del

Forno,' the Roman Curia looked on and smiled approvingly. The most

obscene books to be found in any literature escaped the Papal censure,

and Aretino, notorious for ribaldry, aspired not wholly without reason

to the scarlet of a cardinal. But even in the fifteenth century the

taint of heresy was dangerous, and this peril was magnified when the

Lutheran schism had roused the Papacy to a sense of its position.

Under the patronage, therefore, of ecclesiastics, in the depraved

atmosphere of Rome, the free thought of the Italians turned to

licentiousness; this suited the temper of the people, fascinated by

Paganism and little inclined to raise debate upon matters of no

practical utility. Those who reflected on religious topics kept their

own counsel. How purely political were the views of profound thinkers

in Italy upon all Church questions may be gathered from the

observations of Guicciardini and Machiavelli; how little the most

earnest antagonist of ungodly ecclesiastics dreamed of disturbing the

Catholic Church system is clear in the biography of Savonarola.[3] The

first satire of Ariosto may be indicated as an epitome of the opinions

entertained by sound and liberal intellects in Italy upon the relation

of Papal Rome to the nation. There is not a trace in it of Teutonic

revolt against authority, of pious yearning for a purer faith. The

standpoint of the critic, though solid and sincere, is worldly.

[Footnote 3: See Vol. I., _Age of Despots_, pp. 239, 350-356, 415-420,

where I have endeavoured to treat these topics more at length.]

True to culture as their main preoccupation, the Italian thinkers

sought to philosophise faith by bringing Christianity into harmony

with antique speculation, and forming for themselves a theism that

should embrace the systems of the Platonists and Stoics, the Hebrew

Cabbala and the Sermon on the Mount. There is much that strikes us as

both crude and pedantic, at the same time infantine and pompous, in

the systems elaborated by those pioneers of modern eclecticism. They

lack the vigorous simplicity that gave its force to Luther's

intuition, the sublime unity of Spinoza's deductions. The dross of

erudition mingles with the pure gold of personal conviction; while

Pagan phrases, ill suited to express Christian notions, lend an air of

unreality to the sincerest efforts after rational theology. The

Platonic Academy of Florence was the centre of this search after the

faith of culture, whereof the real merit was originality, and the true

force lay in the conviction that humanity is one and indivisible. Its

apostles were Pico della Mirandola and Ficino. It found lyrical

expression in verses like the following, translated by me from the

Greek hexameters of Poliziano:--

O Father, Lord enthroned on gold, that dwellest in high heaven,

O King of all things, deathless God, Thou Pan supreme, celestial!

That seest all, and movest all, and all with might sustainest,

Older than oldest time, of all first, last, and without ending!

The firmament of blessed souls, of stars the heavenly splendour,

The giant sun himself, the moon that in her circle shineth,

And streams and fountains, earth and sea, are things of Thy creating,

Thou givest life to all; all these Thou with Thy Spirit fillest.

The powers of earth, and powers of heaven, and they in pain infernal

Who pine below the roots of earth, all these obey Thy bidding.

Behold, I call upon Thee now, Thy creature on earth dwelling,

Poor, short of life, O God, of clay a mean unworthy mortal,

Repenting sorely of my sins, and tears of sorrow shedding.

O God, immortal Father, hear! I cry to Thee; be gracious,

And from my breast of this vain world the soul-enslaving passion,

The demon's wiles, the wilful lust, that damns the impious, banish!

Wash throughly all my heart with Thy pure Spirit's rain abundant,

That I may love Thee, Lord, alone, Thee, King of kings, for ever.

This is but a poor substitute for the Lord's Prayer. Hell and

purgatory are out of place in its theism. [Greek: Chrysothronos] and

[Greek: aitheri naiôn] are tawdry epithets for 'Our Father which art

in heaven.' Yet it is precisely in these contradictions and confusions

that we trace the sincerity of the Renaissance spirit, seeking to fuse

together the vitality of the old faith and the forms of novel culture,

worshipping a Deity created in the image of its own mind, composite

and incoherent.

Physically, the Italians of the Renaissance were equal to any task

they chose to set themselves. No mistake is greater than to suppose

that, because the summer climate of Italy is hotter than our own,

therefore her children must be languid, pleasure-loving, and relaxed.

Twelve months spent in Tuscany would suffice to dissipate illusions

about the enervating Italian air, even if the history of ancient Rome

were not a proof that the hardiest race of combatants and conquerors

the world has ever seen were nurtured between Soracte and the sea.

After the downfall of the Empire, what remained of native vigour in

the Latin cities found a refuge in the lagoons of Venice and other

natural strongholds. Walled towns in general retained a Roman

population. The primitive Italic races still existed in the valleys of

the Apennines, while the Ligurians held the Genoese Riviera; nor were

the Etruscans extinct in Tuscany. It is true that Rome had fused these

races into a people using the same language. Yet the ethnologist will

hardly allow that the differences noticeable between the several

districts of Italy were not connected with original varieties of

stock. To the people, as Rome had made it, fresh blood was added by

the Goths, Lombards, and Germans descending from the North. Greeks,

Arabs, Normans, and, in course of time, Franks influenced the South.

During the Middle Ages a new and mighty breed of men sprang into being

by the combination of these diverse elements, each district deriving

specific quality from the varying proportions in which the chief

constituents were mingled. It is noticeable that where the

Roman-Etruscan blood was purest probably from mixture, in the valley

of the Arno, the modern Italian genius found its home. Florence and

her sister cities formed the language and the arts of Italy. To this

race, in conjunction with the natives of Lombardy and Central Italy,

was committed the civilisation of Europe in the fifteenth century. It

was only south of Rome, where the brutalising traditions of the Roman

_latifundia_ had never yielded to the burgh-creating impulse of the

Middle Ages, that the Italians were unfit for their great duty. On

these southern states the Empire of the East, Saracen marauders and

Norman conquerors, the French and the Spanish dynasties, had

successively exercised a pernicious influence; nor did the imperial

policy of Frederick II. remain long enough in operation to effect a

radical improvement in the people. Even at Naples culture was always

an exotic. Elsewhere throughout the peninsula the Italians of the new

age were a noble nation, gifted with physical, emotional, and mental

faculties in splendid harmony. In some districts, notably in Florence,

circumstance and climate had been singularly favourable to the

production of such glorious human beings as the world has rarely seen.

Beauty of person, strength of body, and civility of manners were

combined in the men of that favoured region with intellectual

endowments of the highest order: nor were these gifts of nature

confined to a caste apart; the whole population formed an aristocracy

of genius.

In order to comprehend the greatness of this Italian type in the

Renaissance, it is only needful to study the picture galleries of

Florence or of Venice with special attention to the portraits they

contain. When we compare those senators and sages with the subjects of

Dürer's and of Cranach's art, we feel the physical superiority of the

Italians. In like manner a comparison of the men of the fifteenth

century with those of the sixteenth shows how much of that physical

grandeur had been lost. It is easy to wander astray while weaving

subtle theories on this path of criticism. Yet it cannot be a mere

accident that Vandyck's portrait of the Cardinal de' Bentivogli in the

Pitti Palace differs as it does from that of the Cardinal Ippolito de'

Medici by Pontormo or by Titian. The Medici is an Italian of the

Renaissance, with his imperious originality and defiance of

convention. He has refused to be portrayed as an ecclesiastic. Titian

has painted him in Hungarian costume of dark red velvet, moustached,

and sworded like a soldier; in Pontormo's picture he wears a suit of

mail, and rests his left hand on a large white hound. The Bentivoglio

is an Italian of the type produced by the Counter-Reformation. His

delicate lace ruffs, the coquetry of his scarlet robes, and the fine

keen cut of his diplomatic features betray a new spirit.[4] Surely the

physical qualities of a race change with the changes in their thought

and feeling. The beauty of Tasso is more feminine and melancholy than

that of Ariosto, in whom the liberal genius of the Renaissance was yet

alive. Among the scowling swordsmen of the seventeenth century you

cannot find a face like Giorgione's Gattamelata;[5] the nobles who

bear themselves so proudly on the canvases of Vandyck at Genoa lack

the urbanity of Raphael's Castiglione; Moroni's black-robed students

are more pinched and withered than the Pico of the Uffizzi. It will

not do to strain such points. It is enough to suggest them. What

remains, however, for certain is that the Italians of the fifteenth

century--and among these must be included those who lived through the

first half of the sixteenth--had physical force and character

corresponding to their robust individuality. Until quite late in the

Renaissance so much survived of feudal customs even in Italy that

riding, the handling of the lance and sword, and all athletic

exercises formed a part of education no less indispensable than mental

training. Great cities had open places set apart for tournaments and

games; in Tuscan burghs the _palio_ was run on feast days, and May

mornings saw the prentice lads of Florence tilting beneath the smiles

of girls who danced at nightfall on the square of Santa Trinità.

Bloody battles in the streets were frequent. The least provocation

caused a man to draw his dagger. Combats _a steccato chiuso_ were

among the pastimes to which a Pope might lend his countenance. Skill

in swordsmanship was therefore a necessity. For the rest, we learn

from Castiglione that the perfect gentleman was bound to be an

accomplished dancer, a bold rider, a skilled wrestler, a swift runner,

to shoot well at the mark, to hurl the javelin and the quoit with

grace, and to play at tennis and _pallone_. In addition he ought to

affect some one athletic exercise in such perfection as to beat

professors of the same on their own ground. Cesare Borgia took pride

in felling an ox at a single blow, and exhibited his marksman's

cunning by shooting condemned criminals in a courtyard of the Vatican.

[Footnote 4: It would be easy to multiply these contrasts, comprising,

for example, the Cardinals Inghirami and Bibbiena and the Leo of

Raphael with the Farnesi portraits at Modena or the grave faces of

Moroni's patrons at Bergamo.]

[Footnote 5: Portrait in the Uffizzi, ascribed to Giorgione, but more

probably by some pupil of Mantegna.]

That such men should have devoted their energies to intellectual

culture at a time when English nobles could barely read or write, and

when the chivalry of France regarded learning with disdain, was a

proof of their rich natural endowments. Nor was the determination of

the race to scholarship in any sense an accident. Throughout the

length and breadth of Italy, memories of ancient greatness spurred her

children on to emulation. Ghosts of Roman patriots and poets seemed

hovering round their graves, and calling on posterity to give them

life again. If we cannot bring back Greece and Rome, at least let us

make Florence a second Athens, and restore the Muses to Ausonian

vales. That was the cry. It was while gazing on the ruins of Rome that

Villani felt impelled to write his chronicle. Pavia honoured Boethius

like a saint. Mantua struck coins with the head of Virgil, and Naples

pointed out his tomb. Padua boasted of Livy, and Como of the Plinies.

'Sulmona,' cried Boccaccio, 'mourns because she holds not Ovid's dust;

and Parma is glad that Cassius rests within her walls.' Such reverence

for the great men of antiquity endured throughout the Middle Ages,

creating myths that swayed the fancy, and forming in the popular

consciousness a presentiment of the approaching age. There is

something pathetic in the survival of old Roman titles, in the freak

of the legend-making imagination that gave to Orlando the style of

Roman senator, in the outburst of enthusiasm for Rienzi when he called

himself Tribunus Populi Romani. With the Renaissance itself this

affection for the past became a passion. Pius II. amnestied the people

of Arpino because they were fellow-citizens of Cicero. Alfonso of

Naples received as a most precious gift from Venice a bone supposed to

be the leg of Livy. All the patricians of Italy invented classical

pedigrees; and even Paul II., because he was called Barbo, claimed

descent from the Ahenobarbi. Such instances might be multiplied

indefinitely. It is, however, more to the purpose here to notice that

in Italy this adoration of the antique world was common to all

classes; not students alone, but the people at large regarded the dead

grandeur of the classic age as their especial heritage. To resuscitate

that buried glory, and to reunite themselves with the past, was the

earnest aim of the Italians as a nation. A conviction prevailed that

the modern world could never be so radiant as the old. This found its

expression in the saying that Rome's chief ornaments were her ruins;

in the belief that Julia's corpse, discovered in the Appian Way,

surpassed all living maidens; in Matarazzo's observation that Astorre

Baglioni's body was worthy of an ancient Roman. In their admiration

for antiquity, scholars were blind to the specific glories of the

modern genius. Lionardo Bruni, for example, exclaimed that 'the

ancient Greeks by far excelled us Italians in humanity and gentleness

of heart.' Yet what Greek poem can be compared for tenderness with

Dante's 'Vita Nuova,' with the 'Canzoniere' of Petrarch, or with the

tale of Griselda in Boccaccio? _Gentilezza di cuore_ was the most

characteristic product of chivalry, and the fourth Æneid is the only

classic masterpiece of pure romantic pathos. This humility of

discipleship was not, however, strong enough to check emulation. On

the contrary, the yearning towards antiquity acted like a potent

stimulus on personal endeavour, generating an acute desire for fame, a

burning aspiration to be numbered with the mighty men of old. When

Virgil introduced Dante to the company of Homer and his peers, the

rank of _sesto tra cotanto senno_ rewarded him for all his labour in

the rhyme that made him thin through half a lifetime. Petrarch, who

exceeded Dante in the thirst for literary honour, turned from the men

of his generation to converse in long epistles with the buried saints

of Latin culture. For men of less ambition it was enough to feel that

they could raise their souls through study to communion with the

stately spirits of antiquity, passing like Machiavelli from trivial

affairs into their closet, where they donned their reading robes and

shook hands across the centuries with Cicero or Livy. It was the

universal object of the humanists to gain a consciousness of self

distinguished from the vulgar herd, and to achieve this by joining the

great company of bards and sages, whose glory could not perish.

Whoever felt within himself the stirring of the spirit under any

form, sought earnestly for fame; and in this way a new social

atmosphere, unknown to the nations of the Middle Ages, was formed in

Italy. A large and liberal acceptance, recognising ability of all

kinds, irrespective of rank or piety or martial prowess, displaced the

narrower judgments of the Church and feudalism. Giotto, the peasant's

son, ranked higher in esteem than Cimabue, the Florentine citizen,

because his work of art was worthier. Petrarch had his place in no

official capacity, but as an honoured equal, at the marriage feasts of

princes. Poliziano corresponded with kings, promising immortality as a

more than regal favour. Pomponius Lætus could afford to repel the

advances of the Sanseverini, feeling that erudition ranked him higher

than his princely kinsmen. It was not wealth or policy alone that

raised the Medici among the Despots so far above the Baglioni of

Perugia or the Petrucci of Siena. They owed this distinction rather to

their comprehension of the craving of their age for culture. Thus

though birth commanded respect for its own sake, a new standard of

eminence had been established, and personal merit was the passport

which carried the meanest into the most illustrious company. Men of

all conditions and all qualifications met upon the common ground of

intellectual intercourse. The subjects they discussed may be gathered

from the introductions to Firenzuola's novels, from Bembo's 'Asolani'

and Castiglione's 'Cortegiano,' from Guicciardini's 'Dialogue on

Florence,' or from the 'Camaldolese Discourses' of Landino. Society of

this kind existed nowhere else in Europe. To Italy belongs the proud

priority of having invented the art of polite conversation, and

anticipated the French _salon_ after an original and urbane fashion of

her own.

Under these conditions a genuine cultus of intellect sprang up in

Italy. Princes and people shared a common impulse to worship the

mental superiority of men who had no claim to notice but their

genius. It was in the spirit of this hero-worship that the terrible

Gismondo Pandolfo Malatesta transferred to Rimini the bones of Pletho,

and wrote his impassioned epitaph upon the sarcophagus outside

Alberti's church. The biographies of the humanists abound in stories

of singular honours paid to men of parts, not only by princes who

rejoiced in their society, but also by cities receiving them with

public acclamation. And, as it often happens that a parody reveals the

nature of the art it travesties, such light is thrown upon our subject

by the vile Pietro Aretino, who, because he was a man of talent and

unscrupulous in its employment, held kings and potentates beneath his

satyr's hoof. It is not, however, needful to go thus far afield for

instances. Some lines of our own poet Webster exactly describe the

Catholicity of the Renaissance, which first obtained in Italy for men

of marked abilities, and afterwards to some extent prevailed at large

in Europe:--

Virtue is ever sowing of her seeds:

In the trenches for the soldier; in the wakeful study

For the scholar; in the furrows of the sea

For men of our profession: of all which

Arise and spring up honour.

The virtue here described bears the Italian sense of _virtù_, the

Latin _virtus_, the Greek [Greek: aretê], that which makes a man. It

might display itself in a thousand ways; but all alike brought honour,

and honour every man was bound to seek. The standard whereby the

Italians judged this virtue was æsthetical rather than moral. They

were too dazzled by brilliant achievement to test it in the crucible

of ethics. This is the true key to Machiavelli's critique of

Castruccio Castracane, Gianpaolo Baglioni, Cesare Borgia, and Piero

Soderini. In common with his race, he was fascinated by character, and

attached undue importance to the force that made men seek success even

through crime.

The thirst for glory and the worship of ability stimulated the

Italians, earlier than any other nation, to commemorate what seemed to

them noteworthy in their own lives and in those of their

contemporaries. Dante, within the pale of mediævalism, led the way in

both of these directions. His 'Vita Nuova' is a chapter of

autobiography restrained within the limits of consummate art. His

portraits of S. Francis and S. Dominic (not to mention other

medallions and cameos of predecessors or contemporaries--Farinata, for

example, or Boniface VIII.) record the special qualities whereby those

heroes of the faith were distinguished from the herd of men around

them. Boccaccio's 'Life of Dante' is a further step in the direction

of purely modern biography. Then follow the collections of Filippo

Villani, Giovanni Cavalcanti, Vespasiano, Platina, Decembrio,

Beccadelli, Caracciolo, and Paolo Giovio. Vasari's 'Lives of the

Painters' are unique in their attempt to embrace within a single work

whatever struck their author as most characteristic in the career of

one particular class of men. For historical precision the portraits

composed by Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Varchi, Pitti, and many of the

minor annalists leave nothing to be desired. Such autobiographies as

those of Petrarch, Cellini, Cardano, and Cornaro are models in their

kind; whether their object were simply self-glorification, or whether

a scientific and didactic purpose underlay the chronicle of a

lifetime, the result is equally vivid and interesting. Hero-worship

prompted Gian Francesco Pico to compose the 'Life of Savonarola,' and

Condivi to write that of Michael Angelo. Scorn and hatred impelled

Platina to transmit the outline of Paul II. to posterity in a

caricature, the irony of which is so restrained that it might pass for

sincerity. Machiavelli's 'Biography of Castruccio' is a political

romance indited with a philosophical intention. What motive, beyond

admiration, produced the anonymous 'Memoir of Alberti,' so terse in

its portraiture, so tranquil in style, we do not know; but this too,

like Prendilacqua's 'Life of Vittorino da Feltre,' is a masterpiece of

natural delineation. For these biographies the works of Plutarch and

Suetonius served no doubt as models. Yet this does not make the

preoccupation of the Italians with the phenomena of personality the

less remarkable.

Another phase of the same impulse led to special treatises upon ideal

characters. The picture of the perfect householder was drawn by

Alberti, that of the courtier by Castiglione, that of the prince by

Machiavelli. Da Vinci discoursed upon the physical proportions of the

human form. Firenzuola and Luigini analysed the beauty of women;

Piccolomini undertook to describe the manners of a well-bred lady; and

La Casa laid down rules for polite behaviour in society. The names of

treatises of this description might easily be multiplied. Enough,

however, has been said to show the tendency of the Italian intellect

to occupy itself with salient qualities, whether exhibited in

individuals or idealised and abstracted by the reflective fancy. The

whole of this literature implies an intense self-consciousness in the

nation, an ardent interest in men as men, because of the specific

virtue to be found in each. The spirit, therefore, in which these

authors of the Renaissance approached their task was wholly different

from that which induced the mediæval annalist to register the miracles

of saints, to chronicle the princes of some dynasty or the abbots of a

convent. Nor had it much in common with the mythologising enthusiasm

of romantic poets. The desire for edification and the fire of fancy

had yielded to an impulse more strictly scientific, to a curiosity

more positive.

The attention directed in literature and social intercourse upon great

men implied a corresponding thirst for posthumous glory as a

subjective quality of the Renaissance character. To perpetuate a name

and fame was the most fervent passion, shared alike by artists and

princes, by men of letters and by generals. It was not enough for a

man to show forth the vigour that was in him, or to win the applause

of his contemporaries. He must go beyond and wrest something permanent

for himself from the ideal world that will survive our transient

endeavours. When Alfonso the Magnanimous employed Fazio to compose his

chronicle, when Francesco Sforza paid Filelfo for his verses by the

dozen, when Cosimo de' Medici regretted that he had not spent more

wealth on building, when Bartolommeo Colleoni decreed the erection of

his chapel at Bergamo, and his statue on the public square of Venice,

these men, so different in all things else, were striving, each after

his own fashion, to buy an immortality his own achievements in the

field or Senate might not win. Dante, here as elsewhere the first to

utter the word of the modern age, has given expression to this thirst

for lasting recollection in his lines about the planet Mercury:[6]--

Questa picciola stella si correda

De' buoni spirti, che son stati attivi,

Perchè onore e fama gli succeda.

[Footnote 6: _Paradiso_, vi. 112.]

At the same time Dante, imbued with the mystic spirit of the Middle

Ages, felt an antagonism between worldly ambition and the ideal of the

Christian life. There are other passages, where fame is mentioned by

him as a fleeting breath, a flower that blooms and fades.[7] In truth,

the passionate desire for glory was part of the Renaissance

worldliness, caught from communion with the classic past, and

connected with that vivid apprehension of human life which gave its

vigour to an age of reawakened impulses and positive ambitions. This

world was so much with them, so much to them, that these men would not

lose their grasp of it in death, or willingly exchange it for a

paradise of hopes beyond.

[Footnote 7: Notably _Purg._ xi. 100-117.]

The enthusiasm for antiquity coloured this desire for fame by forcing

on the Italians the conviction that in culture was the real title to

eternity. How could they have entered into the spiritual kingdom of

the Greeks and Romans, if it had not been for MSS. and works of art?

It became the fashion therefore, to seek immortality through

literature. The study of the classics was not then confined to men of

a peculiar bent. On all alike, even on women, there weighed the one

belief that to be a scholar was the surest way of saving something

from the wreck that is the doom of human deeds.[8] Only at rare

intervals, and in rare natures of the type of Michael Angelo, did the

Christian ideal resume its sway. Tired with the radiance of art or

learning, they turned to the Cross of Christ, and laid their secular

achievements down as vain and worthless. The time, however, had not

yet come when a disgust of culture and an exhaustion of the intellect

should make asceticism and monastic ecstasy acceptable once more. That

belonged to the age of Spanish tyranny, and what is called the

Counter-Reformation. For the real Renaissance Leo's memorable

_imprimatur_, granted to the editors of Tacitus, struck the true

key-note; while Sappho's solemn lines of warning to a friend careless

of literature might be paraphrased to speak the feeling of

Poliziano:--

Lo, thou shalt die,

And lie

Dumb in the silent tomb;

Nor of thy name

Shall there be any fame

In ages yet to be or years to come:

For of the rose

That on Pieria blows

Thou hast no share;

But in sad Hades' house,

Unknown, inglorious,

Mid the dim shades that wander there,

Shalt thou flit forth and haunt the filmy air.

[Footnote 8: A curious echo of this Italian conviction may be traced

in Fletcher's _Elder Brother_.]

These words found no uncertain echo in Renaissance Italy, where lads

with long dark hair and liquid eyes left their loves to listen to a

pedant's lectures, where Niccolo de' Niccoli wooed Piero de' Pazzi

from a life of pleasure by the promise of a spiritual kingdom in the

world of books. Piero was 'a man born with thy face and throat, Lyric

Apollo!' His only object was to enjoy--_darsi buon tempo_, as the

phrase of Florence hath it. Yet these words of the student: 'Seeing

thou art the son of such a man, and of comely person, it is a shame

thou dost not give thyself to learn Latin, the which would be unto

thee a great ornament; and if thou dost not learn it, thou wilt be

nought esteemed; the flower of youth once passed, thou wilt find

thyself without virtue'--these words carried such weight, and sank so

deeply into the young man's heart, that, smitten with the love of

learning, he forsook his boon companions, engaged Pontano as

house-tutor at a salary of one hundred golden florins, and spent his

leisure time in learning Livy and the 'Æneid' by heart.[9] What he

sought he gained; his name is still recorded, now that not only the

bloom of youth, but life itself has passed away, and he has slept for

nearly four centuries in Florentine earth. Yet we, no less wearied of

erudition than Faust was, when he held the cup of laudanum in his hand

and heard the Easter voices singing, may well ask ourselves what Piero

carried with him to the grave more than Sardanapalus, over whom the

Greeks inscribed their bitter epitaphs. Disenchanted and disillusioned

as we are by those four centuries of learning, the musical lament of

Dido and the stately periods of Latin prose are little better,

considered as spiritual sustenance, to us than the husks that the

swine did eat. How can we picture to ourselves the conditions of an

age when scholarship was an evangel, forcing the Levis of Florence by

the persuasion of its irresistible beauty to forsake the tables of the

money-changers, tempting young men of great possessions to sell all

and give to the Muses, making of Lucrezia Borgia herself the Magdalen

of polite literature? Fortunately for the civilisation of the modern

world, the men of the Renaissance, untroubled by a surfeit of

knowledge, made none of these reflections. It was an age of sincere

faith in the goodness and the glory of the intellect revealed by art

and letters. When we read Vespasiano's account of the grey-haired

Niccolo accosting the young Pazzi on the steps of the Bargello, our

mind turns instinctively to an earlier dayspring of the reason in

ancient Greece; we think of the charm exercised by Socrates over

Critias and Alcibiades: and had an Aristophanes appeared in Italy, we

fancy how he might have criticised this seduction of the youth from

citizenship and arms to tranquil contemplations and the cosmopolitan

interests of culture.

[Footnote 9: Vespasiano, _Vita di Piero de' Pazzi_. Compare the

beautiful letter of Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini to his nephew (_Ep.

Lib._ i. 4). He reminds the young man that fair as youth is, and

delightful as are the pleasures of the May of life, learning is more

fair and knowledge more delightful. 'Non enim Lucifer aut Hesperus tam

pulcher est quam sapientia quæ studiis acquiritur litterarum.']

It is not without real reason that these Hellenic parallels confront

us in the study of Italian Renaissance. Florence borrowed her light

from Athens, as the moon shines with rays reflected from the sun. The

Revival was the silver age of that old golden age of Greece. In a

literal, not a merely metaphorical sense, the fifteenth century

witnessed a new birth of the classic spirit. And what, let us ask

ourselves, since here at last is the burning point of our inquiry,

what was the true note of this spirit, in so far as its recovery

concerned the Italian race? Superficial observers will speak of the

Paganism of the Renaissance, its unblushing license, its worldliness,

its self-satisfied sensuality, as though that were all, as though

these qualities were not inherent in human nature, ready at any

moment to emerge when the strain of nobler enthusiasm is relaxed, or

the self-preservative instincts of society are enfeebled. There is

indeed a truth in this rough and ready answer, which requires to be

stated on the threshold. The contact of the modern with the ancient

world did encourage a profligate and godless mode of living in men who

preferred Petronius to S. Paul, and yearned less after Galilee than

Corinth. The humanists were distinguished even above the Roman clergy

for open disorder in their lives. They developed filthy speaking as a

special branch of rhetoric, and professed the science of recondite and

obsolete obscenity. It was just this fashion of the learned classes

that made Erasmus mistrust the importation of scholarship into the

North. 'One scruple still besets my mind,' he wrote, 'lest under the

cloak of revived literature Paganism should strive to raise its head,

there being among Christians men who, while they recognise the name of

Christ, breathe in their hearts the spirit of the Gentiles.'

Christianity, especially in Italy, where the spectacle of the Holy See

inspired disgust, had been prostituted to the vilest service by the

Church.[10] Faith was associated with folly, superstition, ignorance,

intolerance, and cruelty. The manners of the clergy were in flagrant

discord with the Gospel, and Antichrist found fitter incarnation in

Roderigo Borgia than in Nero. While the essence of religion was thus

sacrificed by its professors, there appeared upon the horizon of the

modern world, like some bright blazing star, the ideal of that Pagan

civilisation against which in its decadence the ascendant force of

Christianity had striven. It was not unnatural that a reaction in

favour of Paganism, now that the Church had been found wanting, should

ensue, or that the passions of humanity should justify their

self-indulgence by appealing to the precedents of Greece and Rome.

Good and bad were mingled in the classical tradition. Vices,

loathsome enough in a Pope who had instituted the censure of the

press, seemed venial when combined with the manliness of Hadrian or

the refined charm of Catullus. Sin itself lost half its evil coming

from the new-found Holy Land of culture. Still this so-called Paganism

of the Renaissance, real as it was, had but a superficial connection

with classical studies. The corruption of the Church and the political

degeneracy of the commonwealths had quite as much to do with it as the

return to heathen standards. Nor could the Renaissance have been the

great world-historical era it truly was, if such demoralisation had

been a part and parcel of its essence. Crimes and vices are not the

hotbed of arts and literature: lustful priests and cruel despots were

not necessary to the painting of Raphael or the poetry of Ariosto. The

faults of the Italians in the age of the Renaissance were neither

productive of their high achievements, nor conversely were they

generated by the motion of the intellect toward antique forms of

culture. The historian notes synchronisms, whereof he is not bound to

prove the interdependence, and between which he may feel there is no

causal link.

[Footnote 10: It is enough to refer to Luther's _Table Talk_ upon the

state of Rome in Leo's reign.]

It does not, moreover, appear that the demoralisation of Italian

society, however this may have been brought about, produced either

physical or intellectual degeneration in the people. Commercial

prosperity, indeed, had rendered them inferior in brute strength to

their semi-barbarous neighbours; while the cosmopolitan interests of

culture had destroyed the energy of national instincts. But it would

be wrong to charge their neopaganism alone with results whereof the

causes were so complex.

Meanwhile, what gave its deep importance to the classical revival, was

the emancipation of the reason, consequent upon the discovery that the

best gifts of the spirit had been enjoyed by the nations of antiquity.

An ideal of existence distinct from that imposed upon the Middle Ages

by the Church, was revealed in all its secular attractiveness. Fresh

value was given to the desires and aims, enjoyments and activities of

man, considered as a noble member of the universal life, and not as a

diseased excrescence on the world he helped to spoil. Instead of the

cloistral service of the 'Imitatio Christi,' that conception of

communion, through knowledge, with God manifested in His works and in

the soul of man, which forms the indestructible religion of science

and the reason, was already generated. The intellect, after lying

spell-bound during a long night, when thoughts were as dreams and

movement as somnambulism, resumed its activity, interrogated nature,

and enjoyed the pleasures of unimpeded energy. Without ceasing to be

Christians (for the moral principles of Christianity are the

inalienable possession of the human race), the men of the Revival

dared once again to exercise their thought as boldly as the Greeks and

Romans had done before them. More than this, they were now able, as it

were, by the resuscitation of a lost faculty, to do so freely and

clear-sightedly. The touch upon them of the classic spirit was like

the finger of a deity giving life to the dead.

That more and nobler use was not made of the new light which dawned

upon the world in the Revival; that the humanists abandoned the high

standpoint of Petrarch for a lower and more literary level; that

society assimilated the Hedonism more readily than the Stoicism of the

ancients; that scholars occupied themselves with the form rather than

the matter of the classics; that all these shortcomings in their

several degrees prevented the Italians from leading the intellectual

movement of the sixteenth century in religion and philosophy, as they

had previously led the mind of Europe in discovery and literature--is

deeply to be lamented by those who are jealous for their honour. For

the rest, no words can be found more worthy to express their high

conception of man, regarded as a free yet responsible personality,

sent into the world to mould his own nature, and by this power of

self-determination severed from both brutes and angels, than the

following passage from Pico della Mirandola's 'Oration on the Dignity

of Man.' It combines antique liberty of thought with Christian faith

in a style distinctive of the Renaissance at its best; nor is its note

of mediæval cosmology uncharacteristic of an age that divined as yet

more than it firmly grasped the realities of modern science. Here, if

anywhere, may be hailed the Epiphany of the modern spirit,

contraposing God and man in a relation inconceivable to the ancients,

unapprehended in its fulness by the Middle Ages. 'Then the Supreme

Maker decreed that unto Man, on whom He could bestow nought singular,

should belong in common whatsoever had been given, to His other

creatures. Therefore He took man, made in His own individual image,

and having placed him in the centre of the world, spake to him thus:

"Neither a fixed abode, nor a form in thine own likeness, nor any gift

peculiar to thyself alone, have we given thee, O Adam, in order that

what abode, what likeness, what gifts thou shalt choose, may be thine

to have and to possess. The nature allotted to all other creatures,

within laws appointed by ourselves, restrains them. Thou, restrained

by no narrow bounds, according to thy own free will, in whose power I

have placed thee, shalt define thy nature for thyself. I have set thee

midmost the world, that thence thou mightest the more conveniently

survey whatsoever is in the world. Nor have we made thee either

heavenly or earthly, mortal or immortal, to the end that thou, being,

as it were, thy own free maker and moulder, shouldst fashion thyself

in what form may like thee best. Thou shalt have power to decline unto

the lower or brute creatures. Thou shalt have power to be reborn unto

the higher, or divine, according to the sentence of thy intellect."

Thus to Man, at his birth, the Father gave seeds of all variety and

germs of every form of life.'

Out of thoughts like these, if Italy could only have been free, if her

society could have been uncorrupted, if her Church could have returned

to the essential truths of Christianity, might have sprung, as from a

seed, the noblest growth of human science. But _dis aliter visum est_.

The prologue to this history of culture--the long account taken of

selfish tyrants, vicious clergy, and incapable republics, in my 'Age

of the Despots'--is intended to make it clear why the conditions under

which the Revival began in Italy rendered its accomplishment

imperfect.