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.
In the four preceding chapters I have sketched the rise and progress
of Italian humanism with more minuteness than need be now employed
upon the history of its further development. By the scholars of the
first and second period the whole domain of ancient literature was
reconquered; the classics were restored in their integrity to the
modern world. Petrarch first inflamed the enthusiasm without which so
great a work could not have been accomplished, his immediate
successors mastered the Greek language, and explored every province of
antiquity. Much still remained, however, to be achieved by a new
generation of students: for as yet criticism was but in its cradle;
the graces of style were but little understood; indiscriminate
erudition passed for scholarship, and crude verbiage for eloquence.
The humanists of the third age, still burning with the zeal that
animated Petrarch, and profiting by the labours of their predecessors,
ascended to a higher level of culture. It is their glory to have
purified the coarse and tumid style of mediæval Latinists, to have
introduced the methods of comparative and æsthetic criticism, and to
have distinguished the characteristics of the authors and the periods
they studied.
The salient features of this third age of humanism may be briefly
stated. Having done their work by sowing the seeds of culture
broadcast, the vagrant professors of the second period begin to
disappear, and the republic of letters tends to crystallise round men
of eminence in coteries and learned circles. This, therefore, is the
age of the academies. Secondly, it is noticeable that Italian
literature, almost totally abandoned in the first fervour of
enthusiasm for antiquity, now receives nearly as much attention as the
classics. Since the revival of Italian in the golden age of the
Renaissance will form the subject of my final volume, the names of
Lorenzo de' Medici and Poliziano at Florence, of Boiardo at Ferrara,
and of Sannazzaro at Naples may here suffice to indicate the points of
contact between scholarship and the national literature. A century had
been employed in the acquisition of humanistic culture; when acquired,
it bore fruit, not only in more elegant scholarship, but also in new
forms of poetry and prose for the people. A third marked feature of
the period is the establishment of the printing press. The energy
wherewith in little more than fifty years the texts of the classic
authors were rendered indestructible by accident or time, and placed
within the reach of students throughout Europe, demands particular
attention in this chapter.
Florence is still the capital of learning. The most brilliant
humanists, gathered round the person of Lorenzo de' Medici, give laws
to the rest of Italy, determining by their tastes and studies the tone
of intellectual society. Lorenzo is himself in so deep and true a
sense the master spirit of this circle, that to describe his position
in the republic will hardly be considered a digression.
Before his death in 1464 Cosimo de' Medici had succeeded in rendering
his family necessary to the State of Florence. Though thwarted by
ambitious rivals and hampered by the intrigues of the party he had
formed to rule the commonwealth, Cosimo contrived so to complicate the
public finances with his own banking business, and so to bind the
leading burghers to himself by various obligations, that, while he in
no way affected the style of a despot, Florence belonged to his house
more surely than Bologna to the Bentivogli. For the continuation of
this authority, based on intrigue and cemented by corruption, it was
absolutely needful that the spirit of Cosimo should survive in his
successors. A single false move, by unmasking the tyranny so carefully
veiled, by offending the republican vanities of the Florentines, or by
employing force where everything had hitherto been gained by craft,
would at this epoch have destroyed the prospects of the Medicean
family. So true it is that the history of this age in Italy is not the
history of commonwealths so much as the history of individualities, of
men. The principles reduced to rule by Machiavelli in his essay on the
Prince may be studied in the lives of fifteenth-century adventurers,
who, like Cesare Borgia, discerned the necessity of using violence for
special ends, or, like the Medici, perceived that sovereignty could
be better grasped by a hand gloved with velvet than mailed in steel.
The Medici of both branches displayed through eight successive
generations, in their general line of policy, in the disasters that
attended their divergence from it, and in the means they used to
rehabilitate their influence, the action of what Balzac calls _l'homme
politique_, with striking clearness to the philosophic student.
Both the son and grandson of Cosimo well understood the part they had
to play, and played it so ably that even the errors of the younger
Piero, the genius of Savonarola, and the failure of the elder Medicean
line were insufficient to check the gradual subjugation of the
commonwealth he had initiated. Lorenzo's father, Piero, called by the
Florentines _Il Gottoso_, suffered much from ill-health, and was
unable to take the lead in politics.[310] Yet the powers entrusted to
his father were confirmed for him. The elections remained in the hands
of the Medicean party, and the _balia_ appointed in their favour
continued to control the State. The dangerous conspiracy against
Piero's life, engaged in by Luca Pitti and Diotisalvi Neroni, proved
that his enemies regarded the chief of the Medici as the leader of the
republic. It was due to the prudent action of the young Lorenzo that
this conspiracy failed; and the Medici were even strengthened by the
downfall of their foes. From the tone of the congratulations addressed
on this occasion by the ruling powers of Italy to Piero and Lorenzo,
we may conclude that they were already reckoned as princes outside
Florence, though they still maintained a burgherlike simplicity of
life within the city walls.
[Footnote 310: It may be useful to add a skeleton pedigree of the
Medici in this place:--
Cosimo, Pater Patriæ
|
Piero, Il Gottoso
|
+-------------------+
| |
Lorenzo Giuliano
| |
+------------+ Giulio, Clement VII.
| |
Piero, Giovanni,
the exile Leo X.]
In the marriage of his son Lorenzo to Clarice degli Orsini, of the
princely Roman house, Piero gave signs of a departure from the
cautious policy of Cosimo. Foreign alliances were regarded with
suspicion by the Florentines, and Pandolfini's advice to his sons,
that they should avoid familiarity with territorial magnates, exactly
represented the spirit of the republic.[311] In like manner, the
education of both Lorenzo and Giuliano, their intercourse with royal
guests, and the prominent places assigned them on occasions of
ceremony, indicated an advance toward despotism. It was concordant
with the manners of the age that one family should play the part of
host for the republic. The discharge of this duty by the Medici
aroused no jealousy among the burghers; yet it enabled the ambitious
house to place themselves in an unique position, and, while seeming to
remain mere citizens, to take a step in the direction of sovereignty.
[Footnote 311: See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 190.]
On the death of Piero, in 1469, the chief men of the Medicean party
waited upon Lorenzo, and, after offering their condolences, besought
him to succeed his father in the presidency of the State. The feeling
prevailed among the leaders of the city that it was impossible, under
the existing conditions of Italian politics, to carry on the
commonwealth without a titular head. Lorenzo, then in his
twenty-second year, entered thus upon the political career in the
course of which he not only maintained a balance of power in Italy,
but also remodelled the internal government of Florence in the
interests of his family, and further strengthened their position by
establishing connections with the Papal See. While bending all the
faculties of his powerful and subtle intellect to the one end of
consolidating a tyranny, Lorenzo was far too wise to assume the
bearing of a despot. He conversed familiarly with the citizens,
encouraged artists and scholars to address him on terms of equality,
and was careful to adopt no titles. His personal temperament made the
task of being in effect a sovereign, while he acted like a citizen,
comparatively easy, his chief difficulties arose from the necessity
under which he laboured, like his grandfather Cosimo, of governing
through a party composed of men distinguished by birth and ability,
and powerful by wealth and connections. To keep this party in good
temper, to flatter its members with the show of influence, and to gain
their concurrence for the alterations he introduced into the State
machinery of Florence, was the problem of his life. By creating a body
of clients, bound to himself by diverse interests and obligations, he
succeeded in bridling the Medicean party and excluding from offices of
trust all dangerous and disaffected persons. The goodwill of the city
at large was secured by the prosperity at home and peace abroad which
marked the last fourteen years of his administration, while the
splendour of his foreign alliances contributed in no small measure to
his popularity. The Florentines were proud of a citizen who brought
them into the first rank of Italian Powers, and who refrained from
assuming the style of sovereign. Thus Lorenzo solved the most
difficult of political problems--that of using a close oligarchy for
the maintenance of despotism in a free and jealous commonwealth. None
of his rivals retained power enough to withhold the sceptre from his
sons when they should seek to grasp it.
The roots of the Medici clung to no one part of Florence in
particular. They seemed superficial; yet they crept beneath the ground
in all directions. Intertwined as they were with every interest both
public and private in the city, to cut them out implied the excision
of some vital member. This was the secret of their power in the next
generation, when, banished and reduced to bastards, the Medici
returned from two exiles, survived the perils of the siege and
Alessandro's murder, and finally assumed the Ducal crown in the person
of the last scion of their younger branch. The policy, so persistently
pursued for generations, so powerfully applied by Lorenzo, might be
compared to the attack of an octopus, which fastens on its victim by a
multitude of tiny tentacles, and waits till he is drained of strength
before it shoots its beak into a vital spot.
In one point Lorenzo was inferior to his grandfather. He had no
commercial talent. After suffering the banking business of the Medici
to fall into disorder, he became virtually bankrupt, while his
personal expenditure kept continually increasing. In order to retrieve
his fortunes it was necessary for him to gain complete disposal of the
public purse. This was the real object of the constitutional
revolution of 1480, whereby his Privy Council assumed the active
functions of the State. Had Lorenzo been as great in finance as in the
management of men, the way might have been smoothed for his son Piero
in the disastrous year of 1494.
If Lorenzo neglected the pursuit of wealth, whereby Cosimo had raised
himself from insignificance to the dictatorship of Florence, he
surpassed his grandfather in the use he made of literary patronage. It
is not paradoxical to affirm that in his policy we can trace the
subordination of a genuine love of arts and letters to statecraft. The
new culture was one of the instruments that helped to build his
despotism. Through his thorough and enthusiastic participation in the
intellectual interests of his age, he put himself into close sympathy
with the Florentines, who were glad to acknowledge for their leader by
far the ablest of the men of parts in Italy. According as we choose
our point of view, we may regard him either as a tyrant, involving his
country in debt and dangerous wars, corrupting the morals and
enfeebling the spirit of the people, and systematically enslaving the
Athens of the modern world for the sake of founding a petty
principality; or else as the most liberal-minded noble of his epoch,
born to play the first part in the Florentine republic, and careful to
use his wealth and influence for the advancement of his
fellow-citizens in culture, learning, arts, amenities of life.
Savonarola and the Florentine historians adopt the former of these two
opinions. Sismondi, in his passion for liberty, arrays against Lorenzo
the political assassinations he permitted, the enervation of Florence,
the national debt incurred by the republic, the exhausting wars with
Sixtus carried on in his defence. His panegyrists, on the contrary,
love to paint him as the pacificator of Italy, the restorer of
Florentine poetry, the profound critic, and the generous patron. The
truth lies in the combination of these two apparently contradictory
judgments. Lorenzo was the representative man of his nation at a
moment when political institutions were everywhere inclining to
despotism, and when the spiritual life of the Italians found its
noblest expression in art and literature. The principality of Florence
was thrust upon him by the policy of Cosimo, by the vote of the chief
citizens, and by the example of the sister republics, all of whom,
with the exception of Venice, submitted to the sway of rulers. Had he
wished, he might have found it difficult to preserve the commonwealth
in its integrity. Few but doctrinaires believed in a _governo misto_;
only aristocrats desired a _governo stretto_; all but democrats
dreaded a _governo largo_. And yet a new constitution must have been
framed after one of these types, and the Florentines must have been
educated to use it with discretion, before Lorenzo could have resigned
his office of dictator with any prospect of freedom for the city in
his charge. Such unselfish patriotism, in the face of such
overwhelming difficulties, and in antagonism to the whole tendency of
the age, was not to be expected from an oligarch of the Renaissance,
born in the purple, and used from infancy to intrigue.
Lorenzo was a man of marvellous variety and range of mental power. He
possessed one of those rare natures, fitted to comprehend all
knowledge and to sympathise with the most diverse forms of life. While
he never for one moment relaxed his grasp on politics, among
philosophers he passed for a sage, among men of letters for an
original and graceful poet, among scholars for a Grecian sensitive to
every nicety of Attic idiom, among artists for an amateur gifted with
refined discernment and consummate taste. Pleasure-seekers knew in him
the libertine, who jousted with the boldest, danced and masqueraded
with the merriest, sought adventures in the streets at night, and
joined the people in their May-day games and Carnival festivities. The
pious extolled him as an author of devotional lauds and mystery plays,
a profound theologian, a critic of sermons. He was no less famous for
his jokes and repartees than for his pithy apophthegms and maxims, as
good a judge of cattle as of statues, as much at home in the bosom of
his family as in the riot of an orgy, as ready to discourse on Plato
as to plan a campaign or to plot the death of a dangerous citizen. An
apologist may always plead that Lorenzo was the epitome of his
nation's most distinguished qualities, that the versatility of the
Renaissance found in him its fullest incarnation. It was the duty of
Italy in the fifteenth century not to establish religious or
constitutional liberty, but to resuscitate culture. Before the
disastrous wars of invasion had begun, it might well have seemed even
to patriots as though Florence needed a Mæcenas more than a Camillus.
Therefore the prince who in his own person combined all
accomplishments, who knew by sympathy and counsel how to stimulate the
genius of men superior to himself in special arts and sciences, who
spent his fortune lavishly on works of public usefulness, whose
palace formed the rallying-point of wit and learning, whose council
chamber was the school of statesmen, who expressed his age in every
word and every act, in his vices and his virtues, his crimes and
generous deeds, cannot be fairly judged by an abstract standard of
republican morality. It is nevertheless true that Lorenzo enfeebled
and enslaved Florence. At his death he left her socially more
dissolute, politically weaker, intellectually more like himself, than
he had found her. He had not the greatness to rise above the spirit of
his century, or to make himself the Pericles instead of the
Pisistratus of his republic. In other words, he was adequate, not
superior, to Renaissance Italy.
This, then, was the man round whom the greatest scholars of the third
period assembled, at whose table sat Angelo Poliziano, Cristoforo
Landino, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Leo Battista
Alberti, Michael Angelo Buonarroti, Luigi Pulci. The mere enumeration
of these names suffices to awake a crowd of memories in the mind of
those to whom Italian art and poetry are dear. Lorenzo's villas, where
this brilliant circle met for grave discourse or social converse,
heightening the sober pleasures of Italian country life with all that
wit and learning could produce of delicate and rare, have been so
often sung by poets and celebrated by historians that Careggi,
Caffagiolo, and Poggio a Cajano are no less familiar to us than the
studious shades of Academe. 'In a villa overhanging the towers of
Florence,' writes the austere Hallam, moved to more than usual
eloquence by the spirit-stirring beauty of his theme, 'on the steep
slope of that lofty hill crowned by the mother city, the ancient
Fiesole, in gardens which Tully might have envied, with Ficino,
Landino, and Politian at his side, he delighted his hours of leisure
with the beautiful visions of Platonic philosophy, for which the
summer stillness of an Italian sky appears the most congenial
accompaniment.' As we climb the steep slope of Fiesole, or linger
beneath the rose-trees that shed their petals from Careggi's garden
walls, once more in our imagination 'the world's great age begins
anew;' once more the blossoms of that marvellous spring unclose. While
the sun goes down beneath the mountains of Carrara, and the Apennines
grow purple-golden, and Florence sleeps beside the silvery Arno, and
the large Italian stars come forth above, we remember how those mighty
master spirits watched the sphering of new planets in the spiritual
skies. Savonarola in his cell below once more sits brooding over the
servility of Florence, the corruption of a godless Church. Michael
Angelo, seated between Ficino and Poliziano, with the voices of the
prophets vibrating in his memory, and with the music of Plato sounding
in his ears, rests chin on hand and elbow upon knee, like his own
Jeremiah, lost in contemplation, whereof the after-fruit shall be the
Sistine Chapel and the Medicean tombs. Then, when the strain of
thought, 'unsphering Plato from his skies,' begins to weary, Pulci
breaks the silence with a brand-new canto of Morgante, or a singing
boy is bidden to tune his mandoline to Messer Angelo's last-made
_ballata_.
There is no difficulty in explaining Plato's power upon the thinkers
of the fifteenth century. Among philosophers Plato shines like a
morning star--[Greek: outh' hesperos oute eôos ontô thaumastos]--an
auroral luminary, charming and compelling the attention of the world
when man is on the verge of new discoveries. That he should have
enslaved the finest intellects at a time when the sense of beauty was
so keenly stimulated, and when the stirrings of fresh life were so
intense, is nothing more than natural. To philosophise and humanise
the religious sentiments that had become the property of monks and
pardon-mongers; to establish a concordat between the Paganism that
entranced the world, and the Catholic faith whereof the world was not
yet weary; to satisfy the new-born sense of a divine and hitherto
unapprehended mystery in heaven and earth; to dignify with a semblance
of truth the dreams of magic and astrology that passed for
science--all this the men of the Renaissance passionately craved. Who
could render better help than Plato and the Neoplatonists, whose charm
of style and high-flown mysticism suited the ambitious immaturity of
undeveloped thought? For the interpretation of Platonic doctrine a
hierophant was needed. Marsilio Ficino had been set apart from
earliest youth for this purpose--selected in the wisdom of Cosimo de'
Medici, prepared by special processes of study, and consecrated to the
service of the one philosopher.[312]
[Footnote 312: Marsilio Ficino, the son of Cosimo's physician, was
born at Figline in 1433.]
When Marsilio was a youth of eighteen, he entered the Medicean
household, and began to learn Greek, in order that he might qualify
himself for translating Plato into Latin. His health was delicate, his
sensibilities acute; the temper of his intellect, inclined to
mysticism and theology, fitted him for the arduous task of unifying
religion with philosophy. It would be unfair to class him with the
paganising humanists, who sought to justify their unbelief or want of
morals by the authority of the classics. Ficino remained throughout
his life an earnest Christian. At the age of forty, not without
serious reflection and mature resolve, he took orders, and faithfully
performed the duties of his cure. Antiquity he judged by the standard
of the Christian creed. If he asserted that Socrates and Plato
witnessed, together with the evangelists, to the truth of revelation,
or that the same spirit inspired the laws of Moses and the Greek
philosopher--this, as he conceived it, was in effect little else than
extending the catena of authority backward from the Christian fathers
to the sages of the ancient world. The Church, by admitting the
sibyls into the company of the prophets, virtually sanctioned the
canonisation of Plato; while the comprehensive survey of history as an
uninterrupted whole, which since the days of Petrarch had
distinguished the nobler type of humanism, rendered Ficino's
philosophical religion not unacceptable even to the orthodox. The
speculative mystics of the fifteenth century failed, however, to
perceive that by recognising inspiration in the classic authors, they
were silently denying the unique value of revelation; and that by
seeking the religious tradition far and wide, they called in question
the peculiar divinity of Christ. Savonarola saw this clearly;
therefore he denounced the Platonists as heretics, who vainly babbled
about things they did not understand. The permanent value of their
speculations, crude and uncritical as they may now appear, consists in
the large claim made for human reason as against bibliolatry and
Church authority.
Ficino was forty-four years of age when he finished the translation of
Plato's works into Latin. Five more years elapsed before the first
edition was printed in 1482 at Filippo Valori's expense. It may here
be mentioned incidentally that, by this help, the aristocracy of
Florence materially contributed to the diffusion of culture. A genuine
philosopher in his lack of ambition and his freedom from avarice,
Ficino was too poor to publish his own works; and what is true of him,
applies to many most distinguished authors of the age. Great literary
undertakings involved in that century the substantial assistance of
wealthy men, whose liberality was rewarded by a notice in the colophon
or on the title-page.[313] When, for instance, the first edition of
Homer was issued from the press by Lorenzo Alopa in 1488, two brothers
of the Nerli family, Bernardo and Neri, defrayed the expense.[314]
The Plato was soon followed by a Life of the philosopher, and a
treatise on the 'Platonic Doctrine of Immortality.' The latter work is
interesting as a repertory of the theories discussed by the Medicean
circle at their festivals in honour of Plato's birthday. It has,
however, no intrinsic value for the critic or philosopher, being in
effect nothing better than a jumble of citations culled from antique
mystics and combined with cruder modern guesses. In 1486 the
translation of Plotinus was accomplished, and in 1491 a voluminous
commentary had been added; both were published one month after
Lorenzo's death in 1492. A version of Dionysius the Areopagite, whose
treatise on the 'Hierarchies,' though rejected by Lorenzo Valla, was
accepted as genuine by Ficino, closed the long list of his
translations from the Greek. The importance of Ficino's contributions
to philosophy consists in the impulse he communicated to Platonic
studies. That he did not comprehend Plato, or distinguish his
philosophy from that of the Alexandrian mystics, is clear in every
sentence of his writings. The age was uncritical, nor had scholars
learned the necessity of understanding an author's relation to the
history of thought in general before they attempted to explain him.
Thus they were satisfied to read Plato by the reflected light of
Plotinus and Gemistos Plethon, and to assimilate such portions only of
his teaching as accorded with their own theology. The doctrine of
planetary influences, and the myths invented to express the nature of
the soul--in other words, the consciously poetic thoughts of
Plato--seemed of more value to Ficino than the theory of ideas,
wherein the deepest problems are presented in a logical shape to the
understanding. The Middle Ages had plied dialectic to satiety; the
Renaissance dwelt with passion upon vague and misty thoughts that
gave a scope to its imagination. No dreams of poet or of mystic could
surpass reality in the age of Lionardo da Vinci and Christopher
Columbus.
[Footnote 313: Thus Ficino's edition of Plotinus, printed at Lorenzo
de' Medici's expense, and published one month after his death, bears
this notice:--'Magnifici sumptu Laurentii patriæ servatoris.']
[Footnote 314: See, however, Didot's _Alde Manuce_, p. 4, where
Giovanni Acciaiuoli is credited with this generosity.]
If Plato has been studied more exactly of late years, he has never
been loved better or more devotedly worshipped than by the Florentine
Academy. Who builds a shrine and burns a lamp before his statue now?
Who crowns his bust with laurels, or celebrates his birthday and his
deathday with solemn festivals and pompous panegyrics? Who meet at
stated intervals to read his words, and probe his hidden meaning,
feeding his altar-flame with frankincense of their most precious
thoughts? It was by outward signs like these, then full of fair
significance, now puerile and void of import, that the pageant-loving
men of the Renaissance testified their debt of gratitude to Plato. Of
one of these birthday feasts Ficino has given a lively picture in his
letter to Jacopo Bracciolini ('Prolegomena ad Platonis Symposium').
After partaking of a banquet, the text of the 'Symposium' was
delivered over to discussion. Giovanni Cavalcanti interpreted the
speeches of Phædrus and Pausanias, Landino that of Aristophanes; Carlo
Marsuppini undertook the part of Agathon, while Tommaso Benci
explained the esoteric meaning of Diotima. Was there anyone, we
wonder, to act Alcibiades; or did Lorenzo, perhaps, sit drinking till
day flooded the meadows of Valdarno, passing round a two-handled
goblet, and raising subtle questions about comedy and tragedy?
Among the academicians who frequented Lorenzo's palace at Florence
there appeared, in 1484, a young man of princely birth and fascinating
beauty. 'Nature,' wrote Poliziano, 'seemed to have showered on this
man, or hero, all her gifts. He was tall and finely moulded; from his
face a something of divinity shone forth. Acute, and gifted with
prodigious memory, in his studies he was indefatigable, in his style
perspicuous and eloquent. You could not say whether his talents or his
moral qualities conferred on him the greater lustre. Familiar with all
branches of philosophy, and the master of many languages, he stood on
high above the reach of praise.' This was Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola, whose portrait in the Uffizzi Gallery, with its long brown
hair and penetrating grey eyes, compels attention even from those who
know not whom it is supposed to figure. He was little more than twenty
when he came to Florence. His personal attractions, noble manners,
splendid style of life, and varied accomplishments made him the idol
of Florentine society; and for a time he gave himself, in part at
least, to love and the amusements of his age.[315] But Pico was not
born for pleasure. By no man was the sublime ideal of humanity,
superior to physical enjoyments and dignified by intellectual energy,
that triumph of the thought of the Renaissance, more completely
realised.[316] There is even reason to regret that, together with the
follies of youth, he put aside the collection of his Latin poems,
which Poliziano praised, and took no pains to preserve those Italian
verses, the loss whereof we deplore no less than that of Lionardo's.
While Pico continued to live as became a Count of Mirandola, he
personally inclined each year to graver and more abstruse studies and
to greater austerity, until at last the prince was merged in the
philosopher, the man of letters in the mystic.
[Footnote 315: See Von Reumont, vol. ii. p. 108.]
[Footnote 316: Fine expression was given to this conception of life by
Aldus in the dedication to Alberto Pio of vols. ii., iii., iv. of
Aristotle:--'Es nam tu mihi optimus testis an potiores Herculis
ærumnas credam, sævosque labores, et Venere, et coenis et plumis
Sardanapali. Natus nam homo est ad laborem et ad agendum semper
aliquid viro dignum, non ad voluptatem quæ belluarum est et pecudum.'
The last sentence is a translation of Ulysses' speech in the
_Inferno_--
'Considerate la vostra semenza,
Fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
Ma per seguir virtude e conoscenza.'
Cf. Aldus's preface to Lascaris' Grammar; Renouard, vol. i. p. 7; and
again _Alde Manuce_, p. 143, for similar passages.]
Pico's abilities displayed themselves in earliest boyhood. His mother,
a niece of the great Boiardo, noticed his rare aptitude for study, and
sent him at the age of fourteen to Bologna. There he mastered not only
the humanities, but also what was taught of mathematics, logic,
philosophy, and Oriental languages. He afterwards continued his
education at Paris, the headquarters of scholastic theology. Pico's
powerful memory must have served him in good stead: it is recorded
that a single reading fixed the language and the matter of the texts
he studied, on his mind for ever. Nor was this faculty for retaining
knowledge accompanied by any sluggishness of mental power. To what
extent he relied upon his powers of debate as well as on his vast
stores of erudition, was proved by the publication of the famous nine
hundred theses at Rome in 1486. These questions seem to have been
constructed in defence of the Platonic mysticism, which already had
begun to absorb his attention. The philosophers and theologians who
were challenged to contend with him in argument had the whole list
offered to their choice. Pico was prepared to maintain each and all of
his positions without further preparation. Ecclesiastical prudence,
however, prevented the champions of orthodoxy from descending into the
arena. They found it safer to prefer a charge of heresy against Pico,
whose theses were condemned in a brief of Innocent VIII., dated August
5, 1486. It was not until June 18, 1493, that he was finally purged
from the ban of heterodoxy by a brief of Alexander VI. During that
long interval he suffered much uneasiness of mind, for even his robust
intelligence quailed before the thought of dying under Papal
interdiction. That a man so pure in his life and so earnest in his
piety should have been stigmatised as a heretic, and then pardoned,
by two such Popes, is one of the curious anomalies of that age.
To harmonise the Christian and classical tradition was a problem which
Manetti had crudely attempted. Pico approached it in a more
philosophical spirit, and resolved to devote his whole life to the
task. The antagonism between sacred and profane literature appeared
more glaring to Renaissance scholars than to us, inasmuch as they
attached more serious value to the teaching of the latter as a rule of
life. Yet Pico was not intent so much on merely reconciling hostile
systems of thought, or on confuting the errors of the Jews and
Gentiles. He had conceived the great idea of the unity of knowledge;
and having acquired the _omne scibile_ of his century, he sought to
seize the soul of truth that animates all systems. Not the classics
nor the Scriptures alone, but the writings of the schoolmen, the
glosses of Arabic philosophers, and the more obscure products of
Hebrew erudition had for him their solid value. Estimating authors at
the worth of their matter, and despising the trivial questions raised
by shallow wits among style-mongering students, he freed himself from
the worst fault of humanism, and conceived of learning in a liberal
spirit. The best proof of this wide acceptance of all literature
conducive to sound thinking, is given in a letter to Ermolao
Barbaro.[317] After courteously adverting to the Ciceronian elegance
of his correspondent's style he continues, 'And that I meantime should
have lost in the studies of Thomas Aquinas, John Scotus, Albertus
Magnus, and Averrhoes the best years of my life--those long, laborious
vigils wherein I might perchance have made myself of some avail in
polite scholarship! The thought occurred to me, by way of consolation,
if some of them could come to life again, whether men so powerful in
argument might not find sound pleas for their own cause; whether one
among them, more eloquent than Paul, might not defend, in terms as
free as possible from barbarism, their barbarous style, speaking
perchance after this fashion: We have lived illustrious, friend
Ermolao, and to posterity shall live, not in the schools of the
grammarians and teaching-places of young minds, but in the company of
the philosophers, conclaves of sages, where the questions for debate
are not concerning the mother of Andromache or the sons of Niobe and
such light trifles, but of things human and divine; in the
contemplation, investigation, and analysis whereof we have been so
subtle, searching, and eager that we may sometimes have seemed to be
too scrupulous and captious, if indeed it be possible to be too
curious or fastidious in seeking after truth. Let him who accuses us
of dulness, prove by experience whether we barbarians have not the god
of eloquence in our hearts rather than on our lips; whether, if the
faculty of ornamented speech be lacking, we have wanted wisdom: and to
trick out wisdom with ornaments may be more a crime than to show it in
uncultured rudeness.'
[Footnote 317: Dated Florence, 1485; in the Aldine edition of
Poliziano's Letters, book ix.]
During the period of his Platonic studies at Florence chance brought
Pico into contact with a Jew who had a copy of the Cabbala for sale.
Into this jungle of abstruse learning Pico plunged with all the ardour
of his powerful intellect. Asiatic fancies, Alexandrian myths,
Christian doctrines, Hebrew traditions, are so wonderfully blended in
that labyrinthine commentary that Pico believed he had discovered the
key to his great problem, the quintessence of all truth. It seemed to
him that the science of the Greek and the faith of the Christian could
only be understood in the light of the Cabbala. He purchased the MS.,
devoted his whole attention to its study, and projected a mighty work
to prove the harmony of philosophies in Christianity, and to explain
the Christian doctrine by the esoteric teaching of the Jews.[318]
Pico's view of the connection between philosophy, theology, and
religion is plainly stated in the following sentence from a letter to
Aldus Manutius (February 11, 1491):--'Philosophia veritatem quærit,
theologia invenit, religio possidet' ('Philosophy seeks truth,
theology discovers it, religion hath it'). Death overtook him before
the book intended to demonstrate these positions, and by so doing to
establish the concord of all earnest and truth-seeking systems, could
be written. He died at the age of thirty-one, on the very day when
Charles VIII. made his entry into Florence.
[Footnote 318: In the introduction to Pico's _Apologia_ may be read
the account he gives of the codex of the pseudo-Esdras purchased by
him.]
While accepting the Cabbala it was impossible for Pico to reject
magic. He showed his good sense, however, by an energetic attack upon
the so-called science of judicial astrology. Strictly speaking, the
spirit of humanism was opposed to this folly. Petrarch had long ago
condemned it, together with the charlatans who used its jargon to
impose upon the world; yet, in spite of humanism, the folly not only
persisted, but seemed to increase with the spread of rational
knowledge. The universities founded Chairs of Astrology, Popes
consulted the stars on occasions of importance, nor did the Despots
dare to act without the advice of their soothsayers. These men not
unfrequently accompanied the greatest generals on their campaigns.
Their services were bought by the republics; citizens employed them
for the casting of horoscopes, the building of houses, the position of
shops, the fit moment for journeys, the reception of guests into their
families, and the date of weddings. To take a serious step in life
without the approval of an astrologer had come to be regarded as
perilous. Even Ficino believed in horoscopes and planetary influences;
so did Cardan at a later date. It may be remembered that Catherine de'
Medici allowed the Florentine Ruggieri to share her secret counsels
during the reigns of three kings, and that Paul III. always obtained
the sanction of his star-gazer before he held a consistory. In
proportion as religion grew less real, and the complex dangers of a
corrupt society increased, astrology gained in importance. It was not,
therefore, a waste of eloquence, as Poliziano complained, when Pico
directed his attack against this delusion, accusing it of debasing the
intellect and opening the way for immorality of all kinds.[319]
[Footnote 319: Poliziano's Greek epigram addressed to Pico on this
matter may be quoted from the _Carmina Quinque Poetarum_, p. 412:--
[Greek: kai tout' astrologois epimemphomai êeroleschais,
hotti sophous Pikou moi phthoneous' oarous.
kai gar ho endykeôs toutôn ton lêron elenchôn
mounaxei en agrô dêron hekas poleôs.
Pike ti soi kai toutois? ou s' epeoiken agyrtais
antarai tên sên eutychea graphida].]
Since Pico's keen intellect discerned the shallowness of astrological
pretensions, it is the more to be deplored that he fell a victim to
the hybrid mysticism and magical nonsense of the Cabbala. We have here
another proof that criticism was as yet in its infancy. It was easier
for men of genius in the Renaissance to win lofty vantage-ground for
contemplation, to divine the unity of human achievements, and to
comprehend the greatness of the destiny of man, than to accept the
learning of the past at a simple historical valuation. What fascinated
their imagination passed with them too easily for true and proved. Yet
all they needed was time for the digestion and assimilation of the
stores of knowledge they had gained. If the Counter-Reformation had
not checked the further growth of Italian science, the spirit that
lived in Pico would certainly have produced a school of philosophy
second to none that Europe has brought forth. Of this Pico's own short
treatise on the 'Dignity of Man,' as I have said already, is
sufficient warrant.
As Pico was the youngest so was Cristoforo Landino the oldest member
of the Medicean circle. He was born at Florence in 1424, nine years
before Ficino, with whom he shared the duties of instructing Lorenzo
in his boyhood. Landino obtained the Chair of Rhetoric and Poetry in
1457, and continued till his death in 1504 to profess Latin literature
at Florence. While Ficino and Pico represented the study of
philosophy, he devoted himself exclusively to scholarship, annotating
Horace and Virgil, and translating Pliny's 'Natural Histories.' A
marked feature in Landino's professorial labours was the attention he
paid to the Italian poets. In 1460 he began to lecture on Petrarch,
and in 1481 he published an edition of Dante with voluminous
commentaries. The copy of this work, printed upon parchment,
splendidly bound, and fastened with niello clasps, which Landino
presented with a set oration to the Signory of Florence, may still be
seen in the Magliabecchian library. The author was rewarded with a
house in Borgo alla Collina, the ancient residence of his family.
Though the name of Cristoforo Landino is now best known in connection
with his Dantesque studies, one of his Latin works, the 'Camaldolese
Discussions,'[320] will always retain peculiar interest for the
student of Florentine humanism. This treatise is composed in imitation
of the Ciceronian rather than the Platonic dialogues; the 'Tusculans'
may be said to have furnished Landino with his model. He begins by
telling how he left his villa in the Casentino, accompanied by his
brother, to pay a visit to the hill-set sanctuary of S. Romualdo.[321]
There he met with Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici, attended by noble
youths of Florence--Piero and Donato Acciaiuoli, Alamanno Rinuccini,
Marco Parenti, and Antonio Canigiani--all of whom had quitted Florence
to enjoy the rest of summer coolness among the firs and chestnuts of
the Apennines. The party thus formed was completed by the arrival of
Leo Battista Alberti and Marsilio Ficino. The conversation maintained
from day to day by these close friends and ardent scholars forms the
substance of the dialogue. Seated on the turf beside a fountain, near
the spot where Romualdo was bidden in his trance to exchange the black
robes of the Benedictine Order for the snow-white livery of angels,
they not unnaturally began to compare the active life that they had
left at Florence with the contemplative life of philosophers and
saints. Alberti led the conversation by a panegyric of the [Greek:
bios theôrêtikos], maintaining the Platonic thesis with a wealth of
illustration and a charm of eloquence peculiar to himself. Lorenzo
took up the argument in favour of the [Greek: bios praktikos]. If
Alberti proved that solitude and meditation are the nurses of great
spirits, that man by communing with nature enters into full possession
of his mental kingdom, Lorenzo pointed out that this completion of
self-culture only finds its use and value in the commerce of the
world. The philosopher must descend from his altitude and mix with
men, in order to exercise the faculties matured by contemplation. Thus
far the artist and the statesman are supposed to hold debate on
Goethe's celebrated distich--
Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,
Sich ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt.
[Footnote 320: _Disputationum Camaldulensium_ lib. iv., dedicated to
Frederick of Urbino.]
[Footnote 321: The legend of the foundation of this Order is well
known through Sacchi's picture in the Vatican.]
The audience decided, in the spirit of the German poet, that a
fully-formed man, the possessor of both character and talent, must
submit himself to each method of training. Thus ended the first day's
discussion. During the three following days Alberti led the
conversation to Virgil's poetry, demonstrating its allegorical
significance, and connecting its hidden philosophy with that of
Plato. It is clear that in this part of his work Landino was
presenting the substance of his own Virgilian studies. The whole book,
like Castiglione's 'Courtier,' supplies a fair sample of the topics on
which social conversation turned among refined and cultivated men. The
tincture of Platonism is specially characteristic of the Medicean
circle.
The distinguished place allotted in this dialogue to Leo Battista
Alberti proves the singular regard in which this most remarkable man
was held at Florence, where, however, he but seldom resided. His name
will always be coupled with that of Lionardo da Vinci; for though
Lionardo, arriving at a happier moment, has eclipsed Alberti's fame,
yet both of them were cast in the same mould. Alberti, indeed, might
serve as the very type of those many-sided, precocious, and
comprehensive men of genius who only existed in the age of the
Renaissance. Physical strength and dexterity were given to him at
birth in measure equal to his mental faculties. It is recorded that he
could jump standing over an upright man, pierce the strongest armour
with his arrows, and so deftly fling a coin that it touched the
highest point of a church or palace roof. The wildest horses are said
to have trembled under him, as though brutes felt, like men, the
magnetism of his personality. His insight into every branch of
knowledge seemed intuitive, and his command of the arts was innate. At
the age of twenty he composed the comedy of 'Philodoxius,' which
passed for an antique, and was published by the Aldi as the work of
Lepidus Comicus in 1588. Of music, though he had not made it a special
study, he was a thorough master, composing melodies that gave delight
to scientific judges. He painted pictures, and wrote three books on
painting; practised architecture and compiled ten books on building.
Of his books, chiefly portraits, nothing remains; but the Church of S.
Andrea at Mantua, the Palazzo Rucellai at Florence, and the
remodelled Church of S. Francesco at Rimini attest his greatness as an
architect. The façade of the latter building is more thoroughly
classical than any other monument of the earlier Renaissance. As a
transcript from Roman antiquity it ranks with the Palazzo della
Ragione of Palladio at Vincenza. While still a young man, Alberti,
overtaxed, in all probability, by the prodigious activity of his
mental and bodily forces, suffered from an illness that resulted in a
partial loss of memory. The humanistic and legal studies on which he
was engaged had to be abandoned; yet, nothing daunted, he now turned
his plastic genius to philosophy and mathematics, rightly judging that
they make less demand upon the passive than the active vigour of the
mind. It is believed that he anticipated some modern discoveries in
optics, and he certainly advanced the science of perspective. Like his
compeer Lionardo, he devoted attention to mechanics, and devised
machinery for raising sunken ships. Like Lionardo, again, he was never
tired of interrogating nature, conducting curious experiments, and
watching her more secret operations. As a physiognomist and diviner,
he acquired a reputation bordering on wizardry. It was as though his
exquisite sensibilities and keenness of attention had gifted him with
second sight. The depth of his sympathy with the outer world is proved
by an assertion of his anonymous biographer that, when he saw the
cornfields and vineyards of autumn, tears gathered to his eyes. All
living creatures that had beauty won his love, and even in old persons
he discovered a charm appropriate to old age. Foreigners, travellers,
and workmen skilled in various crafts formed his favourite company,
for in the acquisition of varied knowledge he was indefatigable. In
general society his wisdom and his wit, the eloquence of his discourse
and the brilliance of his improvisation, rendered him most
fascinating. Collections of maxims culled from his table talk were
made, whereof the anonymous biography contains a fair selection. At
the same time we are told that, in the midst of sparkling sallies or
close arguments, he would suddenly subside into reverie, and sit at
table lost in silent contemplation. Alberti was one of the earliest
writers of pure Italian prose at the period of its revival; but this
part of his intellectual activity belongs to the history of Italian
literature, and need not be touched on here. It is enough to have
glanced thus briefly at one of the most attractive, sympathy-compelling
figures of the fifteenth century.
In order to complete the picture of the Florentine circle, we have in
the last place to notice two men raised by the Medici from the ranks
of the people. 'I came to the republic, bare of all things, a mere
beggar, of the lowest birth, without money, rank, connections, or
kindred. Cosimo, the father of his country, raised me up, by receiving
me into his family.' So wrote Bartolommeo Scala,[322] the miller's
son, who lived to be the Chancellor of Florence. The splendour of that
office had been considerably diminished since the days when Bruni,
Marsuppini, and Poggio held it; nor could Scala, as a student, bear
comparison with those men. His Latin history of the first crusade was
rather a large than a great work, of which no notice would be taken if
Tasso had not used it in the composition of his epic. Honours and
riches, however, were accumulated on the Chancellor in such profusion
that he grew arrogant, and taunted the great Poliziano with
inferiority. The feud between these men was not confined to
literature. Scala's daughter, a far better scholar than himself,
attracted Poliziano's notice, and Greek epigrams were exchanged
between them. The dictator of Italian letters now sought the hand of
the fair Alessandra, who was rich not only in learning but in world's
gear also. When she gave herself to Michael Marullus Tarcagnota, a
Greek, his anger knew no bounds; instead of penning amatory he now
composed satiric epigrams, abusing Marullus in Latin no less than he
had praised Alessandra in Greek.[323]
[Footnote 322: Born at Colle in 1430.]
[Footnote 323: The following verses on Alessandra are so curious a
specimen of Poliziano's Greek style that I transcribe them here
(_Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum_, p. 304):--
[Greek: heurêch' heurêch' hên thelon, hên ezêteon aiei,
hên êtoun ton erôth', hên kai oneiropoloun;
parthenikên hês kallos akêraton, hês hoge kosmos
ouk eiê technês all' aphelous physeôs;
parthenikên glôttêsin ep' amphoterêsi komôsan,
exochon ente chorois exochon ente lyra;
hês peri sôphrosynê t' eiê charitessi th' hamilla,
tê kai tê tautên antimethelkomenais.
heurêk' oud' ophelos, kai gar molis eis eniauton
oistrounti phlogerôs estin hapax ideein].
The satires on Mabilius (so he called Marullus) are too filthy to be
quoted. They may be read in the collection cited above, pp. 275-280.]
Angelo Poliziano was born in 1454. His name, so famous in Italian
literature, is a Latinised version of his birthplace, Montepulciano.
His father, Benedetto Ambrogini, was a man of some consequence, but of
small means, who fell a victim to the enmity of private foes among his
fellow-citizens, leaving his widow and five young children almost
wholly unprovided for.[324] This accounts for the obscurity that long
enveloped the history of Poliziano's childhood, and also for the
doubts expressed about the surname of his family. At the age of ten he
came to study in the University of Florence, where he profited by the
teaching of Landino, Argyropoulos, Andronicos Kallistos, and Ficino.
The precocity of his genius displayed itself in Latin poems and Greek
epigrams composed while he was yet a boy. At thirteen years of age he
published Latin letters; at seventeen he distributed Greek poems among
the learned men of Florence; at eighteen he edited Catullus, with the
boast that he had shown more zeal than any other student in the
correction and illustration of the ancients. As early as the year
1470 he had not only conceived the ambitious determination to
translate Homer into Latin verse, but had already begun upon the
second Iliad. The first book was known to scholars in Marsuppini's
Latin version. Poliziano carried his own translation as far as the end
of the fifth book, gaining for himself the proud title of _Homericus
juvenis_; further than this, for reasons unexplained, he never
advanced, so that the last wish of Nicholas V., the chief desire of
fifteenth-century scholarship--a Latin Iliad in hexameters--remained
still unaccomplished.
[Footnote 324: See Carducci, preface to _Le Stanze_, Florence, 1863,
and Isidoro del Lungo in _Arch. Stor._ series iii. vol. ii.]
The fame of this great undertaking attracted universal attention to
Poliziano. It is probable that Ficino first introduced him to Lorenzo
de' Medici, who received the young student into his own household, and
made himself responsible for his future fortunes. 'The liberality of
Lorenzo de' Medici, that great and wise man,' wrote Poliziano in after
years, 'raised me from the obscure and humble station where my birth
had placed me, to that degree of dignity and distinction I now enjoy,
with no other recommendation than my literary abilities.' Before he
had reached the age of thirty, Poliziano professed the Greek and Latin
literatures in the University of Florence, and received the care of
Lorenzo's children. If Lorenzo represents the statecraft of his age,
Poliziano is no less emphatically the representative of its highest
achievements in scholarship. He was the first Italian to combine
perfect mastery over Latin and a correct sense of Greek with a
splendid genius for his native literature. Filelfo boasted that he
could write both classic languages with equal ease, and exercised his
prosy muse in _terza rima_. But Filelfo had no fire of poetry, no
sense of style. Poliziano, on the contrary, was a born poet, a _sacer
vates_ in the truest sense of the word. I shall have to speak
elsewhere of his Italian verses: those who have studied them know that
the 'Orfeo,' the 'Stanze,' and the 'Rime' justify Poliziano's claim to
the middle place of honour between Petrarch and Ariosto. Italian
poetry took a new direction from his genius, and everything he penned
was fruitful of results for the succeeding generation. Of his Latin
poetry, in like manner, I propose to treat at greater length in the
following chapter.
The spirit of Roman literature lived again in Poliziano. If he cannot
be compared with the Augustan authors, he will pass muster at least
with the poets of the silver age. Neither Statius nor Ausonius
produced more musical hexameters, or expressed their feeling for
natural beauty in phrases marked with more spontaneous grace. Of his
Greek elegiacs only a few specimens survive. These, in spite of
certain licenses not justified by pure Greek prosody, might claim a
place in the 'Anthology,' among the epigrams of Agathias and Paulus
Silentiarius.[325] The Doric couplets on two beautiful boys, and the
love sonnet to the youth Chrysocomus, read like extracts from the
[Greek: Mousa paidikê].[326] What is remarkable about the Greek and
Latin poetry of Poliziano is that the flavour of the author's Italian
style transpires in them. They are no mere imitations of the classics.
The 'roseate fluency' of the 'Rime' reappears in these _prolusiones_,
making it manifest that the three languages were used with equal
facility, and that on each of them the poet set the seal of his own
genius.
[Footnote 325: Julius Cæsar Scaliger wrote thus about them in the
_Hypercriticus_:--'Græcis vero, quæ puerum se conscripsisse dicit,
ætatem minus prudenter apposuit suam; tam enim bona sunt ut ne virum
quidem Latina æque bene scripsisse putem.']
[Footnote 326: _Quinque Illustrium Poetarum Carmina_, pp. 299, 301.
These epigrams, as well as two on pp. 303, 307, are significant in
their illustration of the poet's morality. Giovio's account of
Poliziano's death was certainly accepted by contemporaries:--'_Ferunt
eum ingenui adolescentis insano amore percitum facile in letalem
morbum incidisse._' The whole _Elogium_, however, is a covert libel,
like many of Giovio's sketches.]
What has been said about his verse, applies with no less force to his
prose composition. Poliziano wrote Latin, as though it were a living
language, not culling phrases from Cicero or reproducing the periods
of Livy, but trusting to his instinct and his ear, with the facility
of conscious power. The humanism of the first and second periods
attained to the freedom of fine art in Poliziano. Through him, as
through a lens, the rays of previous culture were transmitted in a
column of pure light. He realised what the Italians had been striving
after--the new birth of antiquity in a living man of the modern world.
By way of modifying this high panegyric, it may be conceded that
Poliziano had the defects of his qualities. Using Latin with the
freedom of a master, he was not careful to purge his style of obsolete
words and far-fetched phrases, or to maintain the diction of one
period in each composition. His fluency betrayed him into verbiage,
and his descriptions are often more diffuse than vigorous. Nor will he
bear comparison with some more modern scholars on the point of
accuracy. The merit, however, remains to him of having been the most
copious and least slavish interpreter of the ancient to the modern
world. His very imperfections, when judged by the standard of Bembo,
place him above the purists, inasmuch as he possessed the power and
courage to express himself in his own idiom, instead of treading
cautiously in none but Ciceronian or Virgilian footprints.