successes than Poliziano. Among his pupils could be numbered the chief
students of Europe. Not to mention Italians, it will suffice to record
the names of Reuchlin, Grocin, Linacre, and the Portuguese Tessiras,
who carried each to his own country the culture they had gained in
Florence. The first appearance of Poliziano in the lecture-room was
not calculated to win admiration. Ill-formed, with eyes that had
something of a squint in them, and a nose of disproportionate size, he
seemed more fit to be a solitary scholar than the Orpheus of the
classic literature.[327] Yet no sooner had he opened his lips and
begun to speak, with the exquisite and varied intonations of a
singularly beautiful voice, than his listeners were chained to their
seats. The ungainliness of the teacher was forgotten; charmed through
their ears and their intellect, they eagerly drank in his eloquence,
applauding the improvisations wherewith he illustrated the spirit and
intention of his authors, and silently absorbing the vast and
well-ordered stores of knowledge he so prodigally scattered. It would
not be profitable to narrate here at any length what is known about
the topics of these lectures. Poliziano not only covered the whole
ground of classic literature during the years of his professorship,
but also published the notes of courses upon Ovid, Suetonius, Statius,
the younger Pliny, the writers of Augustan histories, and Quintilian.
Some of his best Latin poems were written by way of preface to the
authors he explained in public. Virgil was celebrated in the 'Manto,'
and Homer in the 'Ambra;' the 'Rusticus' served as prelude to the
'Georgics,' while the 'Nutricia' formed an introduction to the study
of ancient and modern poetry. Nor did he confine his attention to fine
literature. The curious prælection in prose called 'Lamia' was
intended as a prelude to the prior 'Analytics' of Aristotle. Among his
translations must be mentioned Epictetus, Herodian, Hippocrates,
Galen, Plutarch's 'Eroticus,' and the 'Charmides' of Plato. His
greatest achievement, however, was the edition of the 'Pandects' of
Justinian from the famous MS. of which Florence had robbed Pisa, as
the Pisans had previously taken it from Amalfi. It must not be
forgotten that all these undertakings involved severe labours of
correction and criticism. MSS. had to be compared and texts settled,
when as yet the apparatus for this higher form of scholarship was
miserably scanty. Though students before Poliziano had understood the
necessity of collating codices, determining their relative ages, and
tracing them, if possible, to their authoritative sources, he was the
first to do this systematically and with judgment. To emendation he
only had recourse when the text seemed hopeless. His work upon the
'Pandects' alone implies the expenditure of enormous toil.
[Footnote 327: 'Erat distortis sæpe moribus, uti facie nequaquam
ingenuâ et liberali ab enormi præsertim naso, subluscoque oculo
perabsurdâ.' Giovio, _Elogia_. Cf. Poliziano's own verses to Mabilius,
beginning:--
Quod nasum mihi, quod reflexa colla
Demens objicis.
_Carmina Quinque Poetarum_, p. 277.]
The results of Poliziano's more fugitive studies, and some notes of
conversations on literary topics with Lorenzo, were published in 1489
under the title of 'Miscellanea.'[328] The form was borrowed from the
'Noctes Atticæ' of Aulus Gellius; in matter this collection
anticipated the genial criticisms of Erasmus. The excitement caused by
its appearance is vividly depicted in the following letter of Jacopus
Antiquarius, secretary to the Duke of Milan:[329]--'Going lately,
according to my custom, into one of the public offices, I found a
number of the young clerks neglecting their prince's business, and
lost in the study of a book which had been distributed in sheets among
them. When I asked what new book had appeared, they answered,
Politian's "Miscellanies." I mounted their desk, sat down among them,
and began to read with equal eagerness. But, as I could not spend much
time there, I sent at once to the bookseller's stall for a copy of the
work.' By this time Poliziano's fame had eclipsed that of all his
contemporaries. He corresponded familiarly with native and foreign
princes, and held a kind of court at Florence among men of learning
who came from all parts of Italy to converse with him. This
popularity grew even burdensome, or at any rate he affected to find it
so. 'Does a man want a motto for his sword's hilt or a posy for a
ring,' he writes,[330] 'an inscription for his bedroom or a device for
his plate, or even for his pots and pans, he runs like all the world
to Politian. There is hardly a wall I have not besmeared, like a
snail, with the effusions of my brain. One teazes me for catches and
drinking-songs, another for a grave discourse, a third for a serenade,
a fourth for a Carnival ballad.' In executing these commissions he is
said to have shown great courtesy; nor did they probably cost him much
trouble, for in all his work he was no less rapid than elegant. He
boasted that he had dictated the translation of Herodian while walking
up and down his room, within the space of a day or two; and the chief
fault of his verses is their fluency.
[Footnote 328: The first words of the dedication run as follows:--'Cum
tibi superioribus diebus Laurenti Medices, nostra hæc Miscellanea
_inter equitandum_ recitaremus.']
[Footnote 329: _Angeli Politiani Epistolæ_, lib. iii. ed. Ald. 1498.
The letter is dated Nov. 1488.]
[Footnote 330: In a letter to Hieronymus Donatus, dated Florence, May
1480, _Angeli Politiani Epistolæ_, lib. ii.]
It still remains to speak of Poliziano's personal relations to the
Medicean family. When he first entered the household of Lorenzo, he
undertook the tuition of his patron's sons, and continued to
superintend their education until their mother Clarice saw reason to
mistrust his personal influence. There were, no doubt, many points in
the great scholar's character that justified her thinking him unfit to
be the constant companion of young men. Whatever may be the truth
about the cause of his last illness, enough remains of his Greek and
Italian verses to prove that his morality was lax, and his conception
of life rather Pagan than Christian.[331] Clarice contrived that he
should not remain under the same roof with her children; and though
his friendly intercourse with the Medicean family continued
uninterrupted, it would seem that after 1480 he only gave lessons in
the classics to his former pupils.
[Footnote 331: The well-known scandal about Poliziano's death is
traceable to the _Elogia_ of Paulus Jovius--very suspicious authority.
See above, p. 252, note 2.]
Poliziano, proud as he was of his attainments, lacked the nobler
quality of self-respect. He condescended to flatter Lorenzo, and to
beg for presents, in phrases that remind us of Filelfo's prosiest
epigrams.[332] That a scholar should vaunt his own achievements[333]
and extol his patron to the skies, that he should ask for money and
set off his panegyrics against payment, seemed not derogatory to a man
of genius in the fifteenth century. Yet these habits of literary
mendicancy and toad-eating proved a most pernicious influence. Italian
literature never lost the superlatives and exaggerations imported by
the humanists, and Pietro Aretino may be called the lineal descendant
of Filelfo and Poliziano.
[Footnote 332: The most curious of these elegiac poems are given in
_Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum_, p. 234. It is possible that
their language ought not to be taken literally, and that they
concealed a joke now lost.]
[Footnote 333: Poliziano's letter to Matthias Corvinus is a good
example of his self-laudation.]
It must be allowed that to overpraise Lorenzo from a scholar's point
of view would have been difficult, while the affection that bound the
student to his patron was genuine. Poliziano, who watched Lorenzo in
his last moments, described the scene of his death in a letter marked
by touching sorrow which he addressed to Antiquari, and proved by the
Latin monody which he composed and left unfinished, that grief for his
dead master could inspire his muse with loftier strains than any
expectation of future favours while he lived had done.
Two years after Lorenzo's death Poliziano died himself, dishonoured
and suspected by the Piagnoni. Savonarola had swept the Carnival
chariots and masks and gimcracks of Lorenzo's holiday reign into the
dust-heap. Instead of _rispetti_ and _ballate_, the refrain of
Misereres filled the city, and the Dominican's prophecy of blood and
ruin drowned with its thundrous reverberations the scholarlike
disquisitions of Greek professors. Poliziano's lament for Lorenzo was
therefore, as it were, a prophecy of his own fate:
Quis dabit capiti meo
Aquam? quis oculis meis
Fontem lachrymarum dabit?
Ut nocte fleam,
Ut luce fleam.
Sic turtur viduus solet,
Sic cygnus moriens solet,
Sic luscinia conqueri.
'Oh that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I
might weep day and night! So mourns the widowed turtle dove; so mourns
the dying swan; so mourns the nightingale.' Into these passionate
words of wailing, unique in the literature of humanism by their form
alike and feeling, breaks the threnody of the abandoned scholar. 'Ah,
woe! Ah, woe is me! O grief! O grief! Lightning hath struck our laurel
tree, our laurel dear to all the Muses and the dances of the Nymphs,
beneath whose spreading boughs the God of Song himself more sweetly
harped and sang. Now all around is dumb; now all is mute, and there is
none to hear. Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of
tears!'
This at least of grace the gods allowed Poliziano, that he should die
in the same year as his friend Pico della Mirandola, a few weeks
before the deluge prophesied by Savonarola burst over Italy. Upon his
tomb in S. Marco a burlesque epitaph was inscribed--
Politianus
in hoc tumulo jacet
Angelus unum
qui caput et linguas
res nova tres habuit.
Obiit an. MCCCCLXXXXIV
Sep. XXIV. Ætatis
XL.[334]
[Footnote 334: 'Poliziano lies in this grave, the angel who had one
head and, what is new, three tongues. He died September 24, 1494, aged
40.']
Bembo, who succeeded him in the dictatorship of Italian letters,
composed a not unworthy elegy upon the man whom he justly
apostrophised as 'Poliziano, master of the Ausonian lyre.'
The fortunes of Roman scholarship kept varying with the personal
tastes of each successive Pope. Calixtus III. differed wholly from his
predecessor, Nicholas V. Learned in theology and mediæval science, he
was dead to the interests of humanistic literature. Vespasiano assures
us that, when he entered the Vatican library and saw its Greek and
Latin authors in their red and silver bindings, instead of praising
the munificence of Nicholas, he exclaimed, 'Vedi in che egli ha
consumato la robba della Chiesa di Dio!'[335] Æneas Sylvius
Piccolomini ranked high among the humanists. As an orator, courtier,
state secretary, and man of letters, he shared the general qualities
of the class to which he belonged. While a fellow-student of
Beccadelli at Siena, he freely enjoyed the pleasures of youth, and
thought it no harm to compose novels in the style of Longus and
Achilles Tatius. These stories, together with his familiar letters,
histories, cosmographical treatises, rhetorical disquisitions,
apophthegms, and commentaries, written in a fluent and picturesque
Latin style, distinguished him for wit and talent from the merely
laborious students of his age.[336] A change, however, came over him
when he assumed the title of Pius II. with the tiara.[337] Learning in
Italy owed but little to his patronage, and though he strengthened
the position of the humanists at Rome by founding the College of
Abbreviators, he was more eager to defend Christendom against the Turk
than to make his See the capital of culture. For this it would be
narrow-minded to blame Pius. The experience of European politics had
extended his view beyond the narrower circle of Italian interests; and
there is something noble as well as piteous in his attempt to lead the
forlorn hope of a cosmopolitan cause. Paul II. was chiefly famous for
his persecution of the Roman Platonists;[338] and Sixtus IV., though
he deserves to be remembered as the Pontiff who opened the Vatican
library to the public, plays no prominent part in the history of
scholarship. Tiraboschi may be consulted for his refusal to pay the
professors of the Roman Sapienza. Of Innocent VIII. nothing need be
said; nor will any student of history expect to find it recorded that
Alexander VI. wasted money on the patronage of learning. To the
Borgia, indeed, the world owes that curse of Catholicism, that
continued crime of high treason against truth and liberal culture, the
subjection of the press to ecclesiastical control.
[Footnote 335: 'Behold whereon he spent the substance of the Church of
God!' Vespasiano adds that he gave away several hundred volumes to one
of the cardinals, whose servants sold them for an old song. Vesp. p.
216. Assemani, the historian of the Vatican Library, on the contrary,
asserts that Calixtus spent 40,000 ducats on books. It is not likely,
however, that Vespasiano was wholly in error about a matter he
understood so well, and had so much at heart.]
[Footnote 336: See the Basle edition of his collected works, 1571.]
[Footnote 337: See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 299.]
[Footnote 338: Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, pp. 302-303.]
Under these Popes humanism had to flourish, as it best could, in the
society of private individuals. Accordingly, we find the Roman
scholars forming among themselves academies and learned circles. Of
these the most eminent took its name from its founder, Julius
Pomponius Lætus. He was a bastard of the princely House of the
Sanseverini, to whom, when he became famous and they were anxious for
his friendship, he penned the celebrated epistle: '_Pomponius Lætus
cognatis et propinquis suis salutem. Quod petitis fieri non potest.
Valete._'[339] Pomponius derived his scholarship from Valla, and
devoted all his energies to Latin literature, refusing, it is even
said, to learn Greek, lest it should distract him from his favourite
studies. He made it the object of his most serious endeavours not only
to restore a knowledge of the ancients, but also to assimilate his
life and manners to their standard. Men praised in him a second Cato
for sobriety of conduct, frugal diet, and rural industry. He tilled
his own ground after the methods of Varro and Columella, went
a-fishing and a-fowling on holidays, and ate his sparing meal like a
Roman Stoic beneath the spreading branches of an oak on the Campagna.
The grand mansions of the prelates had no attractions for him. He
preferred his own modest house upon the Esquiline, his garden on the
Quirinal. It was here that his favourite scholars conversed with him
at leisure; and to these retreats of the philosopher came strangers of
importance, eager to behold a Roman living in all points like an
antique sage. The high school of Rome owed much to his indefatigable
industry. Through a long series of years he lectured upon the chief
Latin authors, examining their text with critical accuracy, and
preparing new editions of their works. Before daybreak he would light
his lantern, take his staff, and wend his way from the Esquiline to
the lecture-room, where, however early the hour and however inclement
the season, he was sure to find an overflowing audience. Yet it was
not as a professor that Pomponius Lætus acquired his great celebrity,
and left a lasting impress on the society of Rome. This he did by
forming an academy for the avowed purpose of prosecuting the study of
Latin antiquities and promoting the adoption of antique customs into
modern life. The members assumed classical names, exchanging their
Italian patronymics for fancy titles like Callimachus Experiens,
Asclepiades, Glaucus, Volscus, and Petrejus. They yearly kept the
birthday feast of Rome, celebrating the Palilia with Pagan
solemnities, playing comedies of Plautus, and striving to revive the
humours of the old Atellan farces. Of this circle Pontanus and
Sannazzaro, Platina, Sabellicus and Molza, Janus Parrhasius, and the
future Paul III. were proud to call themselves the members. It is only
from the language in which such men refer to Lætus that we gain a due
notion of his influence; for he left but little behind him as an
author, and used himself to boast that, like Socrates and Christ, he
hoped to be remembered through his pupils. In the year 1468 this Roman
academy acquired fresh celebrity by the persecution of Paul II., who
partly suspected a political object in its meetings, and partly
resented the open heathenism of its leaders. I need not here repeat
the tale of his crusade against the scholars. It is enough to mention
that Lætus was imprisoned for a short while, and that in prison he
wrote an apology for his life, defending himself against a charge of
misplaced passion for a young Venetian pupil, and professing the
sincerity of his belief in Christianity. After his release from the
Castle of S. Angelo he was obliged to discontinue the meetings of his
academy, which were not resumed until the reign of Sixtus. Pomponius
Lætus lived on into the Papacy of Alexander, and died in 1498 at the
age of seventy. His corpse was crowned with a laurel wreath in the
Church of Araceli. Forty bishops, together with the foreign
ambassadors in Rome and the representatives of the Borgia, who were
specially deputed for that purpose, witnessed the ceremony and
listened to the funeral oration. Lætus had desired that his body
should be placed in a sarcophagus upon the Appian Way. This wish was
not complied with. He was conveyed from Araceli to S. Salvatore in
Lauro, and there buried like a Christian.
[Footnote 339: 'P.L. to his kinsmen and relatives, greeting. What you
ask cannot be. Farewell.']
While the academy of Pomponius Lætus flourished at Rome, that of
Naples was no less active under the presidency of Jovianus Pontanus.
It appears to have originated in social gatherings assembled by
Beccadelli, and to have held its meetings in a building called after
its founder the _Porticus Antonianus_. When death had broken up the
brilliant circle surrounding Alfonso the Magnanimous, Pontanus assumed
the leadership of learned men in Naples, and gave the formality of a
club to what had previously been a mere reunion of cultivated
scholars. The members Latinised their names; many of them became
better known by their assumed titles than by their Italian cognomens.
Sannazzaro, for instance, acquired a wide celebrity as Accius
Syncerus. Pontanus was himself a native of Cereto in the Spoletano.
Born in 1426, he settled in his early manhood at Naples, where
Beccadelli introduced him to his royal patrons. During the reigns of
Ferdinand I., Alfonso II., and Ferdinand II. Pontanus held the post of
secretary, tutor, and ambassador, accompanying his masters on their
military expeditions and negotiating their affairs at the Papal Court.
When Charles VIII. entered Naples as a conqueror, Pontanus greeted him
with a panegyrical oration, proving himself more courtly and
self-seeking than loyal to the princes he had served so long.
Guicciardini observes that this act of ingratitude stained the fair
fame of Pontanus. Yet it may be pleaded in his defence that no
moralist of the period had more boldly denounced the crimes and vices
of Italian princes; and it is possible that Pontanus really hoped
Charles might inaugurate a better age for Naples.
He was distinguished among the scholars of his time for the purity of
his Latin style; to him belongs the merit of having written verse that
might compete with good models of antiquity. His hexameters on stars
and meteors, called 'Urania,' won the enthusiastic praise of his own
generation, and subsequently served as model to Fracastoro for his own
didactic poem. His amatory elegiacs have an exuberance of colouring
and sensuous force of phrase that seem peculiarly appropriate to the
Bay of Naples, where they were inspired. As a prose-writer it is
particularly by his moral treatises that Pontanus deserves to be
remembered. Unlike the mass of contemporary dialogues on ethical
subjects, they abound in illustrations drawn from recent history, so
that even now they may be advantageously consulted by students anxious
to gather characteristic details and to form a just opinion of
Renaissance morality. Throughout his writings Pontanus shows himself
to have been an original and vigorous thinker, a complete master of
Latin scholarship, unwilling to abide contented with bare imitation,
and bent upon expressing the facts of modern life, the actualities of
personal emotion, in a style of accurate Latinity. When he died in
1503, he left at Naples one of the most flourishing schools of
neopagan poets to be found in Italy; Lilius Gyraldus employs the old
metaphor of the Trojan horse to describe the number and the vigour of
the scholars who issued from it.
In the Church of Monte Oliveto at Naples there may be seen a group in
terra cotta painted to imitate life. Alfonso II., Pontanus, and
Sannazzaro are kneeling in adoration before the body of the dead
Christ. Pontanus, who represents Nicodemus, is a stern, hard-featured,
long-faced man, of powerful bone and fibrous sinews, built for serious
labour in the study or the field. Sannazzaro, who stands for Joseph of
Arimathea, is bald, fat-faced, with bushy eyebrows and a heavy cast of
countenance. The physical characteristics of these men and their act
of faith are in curious contradiction with the conception we form of
them after reading the 'Elegies' and the 'Arcadia.'
The Roman Academy of Pomponius Læetus and the Neapolitan Academy of
Pontanus continued to exist after the death of their founders, while
similar institutions sprang up in every town of Italy. To speak of
these in detail would be quite impossible. With the commencement of
the sixteenth century they lost their classical character, and assumed
fantastic Italian titles. Thus the Roman coterie of wits and scholars
called itself _I Vignaiuoli_. The members, among whom were Berni, La
Casa, Firenzuola, Mauro, Molza, assumed titles like _L'Agreste_, _Il
Mosto_, _Il Cotogno_, and so forth. The Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici
founded a club in Rome for the study of Vitruvius. It met twice in the
week, and was known as _Le Virtù_. At Bologna the _Viridario_ devoted
its energies to the correction of printed texts; the _Sitibondi_
studied law, the _Desti_ cultivated extinct chivalry. Besides these,
the one town of Bologna produced _Sonnacchiosi_, _Oziosi_, _Desiosi_,
_Storditi_, _Confusi_, _Politici_, _Instabili_, _Gelati_, _Umorosi_.
As the century advanced, academies multiplied in Italy, and their
titles became more absurd. Ravenna had its _Informi_, Faenza its
_Smarriti_, Macerata its _Catenati_, Fabriano its _Disuniti_, Perugia
its _Insensati_, Urbino its _Assorditi_, Naples its _Sereni_,
_Ardenti_, and _Incogniti_--and so on _ad infinitum_. At Florence the
Platonic Academy continued to flourish under the auspices of the
Rucellai family, in whose gardens assembled the company described by
Filippo de' Nerli,[340] until the year 1522, when it was suppressed on
the occasion of the conspiracy against Giulio de' Medici. Duke Cosimo
revived it under the name of the Florentine Academy in 1540, when its
labours were wholly devoted to Petrarch and the Italian language. In
1572 appeared the famous academy called _Della Crusca_, the only one
among these later societies which acquired an European reputation.
[Footnote 340: See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 220, note.]
Those who are curious to follow the history of the academies, may be
referred to the comprehensive notices of Tiraboschi. From the date of
their Italianisation they cease to belong to the history of humanism;
what justifies the mention of them here is the fact that they owed
their first existence to the scholars of the third period. The worst
faults of Italian erudition--pedantry and stylistic affectations--were
perpetuated by coteries worshipping Petrarch and peddling with the
idlest of all literary problems, where so great a writer as Annibale
Caro thought it in good taste to write a dissertation on the nose of a
president, and where the industry of sensible men was absorbed in the
concoction of sonnets by the myriad and childish puns on their own
titles. During the following age of political stagnation and
ecclesiastical oppression the academies were the playthings of a
nation fast degenerating into intellectual hebetude. Not without
amazement do we read the eulogies pronounced by Milton on the 'learned
and affable meeting of frequent academies, and the procurement of wise
and artful recitations, sweetened with eloquent and graceful
incitements to the love and practice of justice, temperance, and
fortitude.' What he had observed with admiration in Italy, he would
fain have seen imitated in England, undeterred apparently by the
impotence and sterility of academic dissertations.[341]
[Footnote 341: See the _Reason of Church Government urged against
Prelaty_, and the _Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free
Commonwealth_.]
It remains to speak of the establishment of printing in Italy, an
event no less important for the preservation and diffusion of
classical learning than the previous discovery of MSS. had been
indispensable for its revival. What has to be said about the erudite
society of Venice may appropriately be introduced in this connection;
while the final honours of the third period will be seen to belong of
right to one of Italy's most noble-minded scholars, Aldus Manutius.
In 1462 Adolph of Nassau pillaged Maintz and dispersed its printers
over Europe. Three years later two Germans, by name Sweynheim and
Pannartz, who had worked under Fust, set up a press in Subbiaco, a
little village of the Sabine mountains. Here, in October 1465, the
first edition of Lactantius saw the light. The German printers soon
afterwards removed from Subbiaco, and settled, under the protection of
the Massimi, in Rome, where they continued to issue Latin authors
from their press.[342] In 1646 John of Spires established himself at
Venice. He was soon afterwards joined by his brother Vindelino (so the
Italians write the name) and by Nicholas Jenson, the Frenchman.
Florence had no press till 1471, when Bernardo Cennini printed the
commentary of Servius on Virgil's 'Bucolics.' The 'Georgics' and
'Æneid' appeared in the following year. To Cennini, however, belongs
the honour of having been the first Italian to cast his own type. Like
many other illustrious artificers, he was by trade a goldsmith; in his
address to the reader he styles himself _aurifex omnium judicio
præstantissimus_, adding, with reference to the typography, _expressis
ante calide caracteribus ac deinde fusis literis volumen hoc primum
impresserunt_. The last sentence of the address should also be quoted:
_Florentinis ingeniis nil ardui est_. Other printers opened workshops
in Florence within the course of a few years--John of Maintz in 1472,
Nicholas of Breslau in 1477, Antonio Miscomini in 1481, and Lorenzo
Alopa of Venice, who gave Homer with Greek type to the world in 1488.
Still, Florence had been anticipated by many other cities; for when
once the new art took root in Italy, it spread like wild fire.
Omitting smaller places from the calculation, it has been reckoned
that, before the year 1500, 4,987 books were printed in Italy, of
which 298 are claimed by Bologna, 300 by Florence, 629 by Milan, 929
by Rome, and 2,835 by Venice. The disproportion between the activity
of Florence and of Venice in the book trade deserves to be noticed,
though how it should be explained I hardly know. Fifty towns and
numbers of insignificant burghs--Pinerolo, Savona, Pieve di Sacco,
Cividale, Soncino, Chivasso, Scandiano, for example--could boast of
local presses. Ambulant printers established their machinery for half
a year or so in a remote village, printed what came to hand there, and
moved on.
[Footnote 342: From a memorial presented by these printers to Sixtus
IV. in 1472 we ascertain some facts about their industry. They had at
that date printed in all 12,495 volumes. It was their custom to issue
265 copies each edition; the double of that number for Virgil,
Cicero's separate works, and theological books in request. Cantù,
_Lett. It._ p. 112. See Cantù, p. 110, for details of the earliest
Latin books.]
While scholars rejoiced in the art that, to quote the word of one of
them, 'had saved the labour of their aching joints,' the copyists
complained that their occupation would be taken from them. The whistle
of the locomotive at the beginning of this century was not more
afflicting to stage-coachmen than the creaking of the wooden printing
press to those poor scribes. Yet, however quickly a labour-saving
invention may spread, there is generally time for the superseded
industry to die an easy death, and for artisans to find employment in
the new trade. Vespasiano, who during twenty-six years survived the
first book printed in Florence, could even afford to despise the
press.[343] The great nobles, on whose patronage he depended, did not
suddenly transfer their custom from the scribe to the compositor; nor
was it to be expected that so essentially a democratic art as printing
should find immediate favour with the aristocracy. A prince with a
library of MSS. worth 40,000 ducats hated the machine that put an
equal number of more readable volumes within the reach of moderate
competency. Moreover, a certain suspicion of subversiveness and
license clung about the press. This was to some extent justified by
fact, since the press was destined to be the most formidable engine of
the modern reason. Ecclesiastics, again, questioned whether the
promiscuous multiplication of books were pious; and Alexander VI.
stretched his hand out to coerce the printer's devil. To check the
spread of printing would, however, have overtaxed the powers of any
human tyranny. All that the Church could do was to place its
productions under episcopal control.
[Footnote 343: See above, p. 220.]
Though the copyists of MSS. were thrown out of work by the printing
press, it gave important stimulus to other industries in Italy. The
paper mills of Fabriano and of Colle in the Val d'Elsa became valuable
properties;[344] compositors and readers began to form a separate
class of artisans, while needy scholars found a market for their
talents in the houses of the publishers. When we consider the amount
of literary work that had to be performed before Greek, Latin, and
Hebrew texts could be prepared for the press, the difficulty of
procuring correct copies of authoritative codices, and the scrupulous
attention expended upon proof sheets, we are able to understand that
men who lived by learning found the new art profitable.
[Footnote 344: It is supposed that the earliest paper factory
established in Italy was at Fabriano. Colle, a little town near
Volterra, made paper from a remote period; by a deed, dated March 6,
1377, now preserved in the Florentine Archivio Diplomatico, one Colo
da Colle rented a fall of water there _et gualcheriam ad faciendas
cartas_ for twenty years. Both places are still celebrated for their
paper mills.]
Instead of having previous editions to work upon, the publishers were
obliged, in the first instance, to collect MSS. For this purpose they
either travelled themselves from city to city, or employed competent
amanuenses. Next, it was necessary to study the philosophers, poets,
historians, mathematicians, and mystics, whose works they intended to
print, in order that no mistake in the sense of the words should be
made. Orthography and punctuation had to be fixed; and between many
readings only one could be adopted. Giving a first edition to the
world involved far more anxiety on these points than the reproduction
of a book already often printed. No one man could accomplish such
tasks alone. Therefore we find that scores of learned men were
associated together for the purpose, living under the same roof,
revising the copy for the compositor, overlooking the men at work,
reading the text aloud, and correcting the proofs with a vigilance
that is but little needed nowadays. All this labour, moreover, was
accomplished without the aid of grammars, lexicons, and other aids.
Truly we may say without exaggeration that the Aldi of Venice and the
Stephani of Paris are more worthy of commemoration for services
rendered through scholarship to humanity than those modern castigators
of ancient texts, the Porsons and the Lachmanns, whose names are on
every lip. The enthusiasm of discovery, and the rich field for
original industry offered to those early editors, may be reckoned as
compensation for their otherwise overwhelming toil.
Teobaldo Mannucci, better known as Aldo Manuzio, was born in 1450 at
Sermoneta, near Velletri. After residing as a client in the princely
house of Carpi, he added the name Pio to his patronymic, and signed
his publications with the full description, _Aldus Pius Manutius
Romanus et Philhellen_, [Greek: Aldos ho Manoutios Rômaios kai
Philellên]. He studied Latin at Rome under Gasparino da Verona, and
Greek at Ferrara under Guarino da Verona, to whom he dedicated his
Theocritus in 1495. Having qualified himself for undertaking the work
of tutor or professor, according to the custom of the century, and
having made friends with many of the principal Italian scholars, he
went in 1482 to reside at Mirandola with his old friend and fellow
student, Giovanni Pico. There he stayed two years, enjoying the
society of the Phoenix of his age, and continuing his Greek studies
in concert with Emmanuel Adramyttenos, a learned Cretan. Before Pico
removed to Florence he procured for Aldo the post of tutor to his
nephews Alberto and Lionello Pio. Carpi had owned the family of Pio
for its masters since the thirteenth century, when they rose to power,
like many of the Lombard nobles, by adroit use of Imperial
privileges.[345] This little city, placed midway between Correggio,
Mirandola, and Modena, is so insignificant that its name has been
omitted from the index to Murray's handbook; nor is there indeed much
but the memory of Aldo and Alberto Pio, and a church built by
Baldassare Peruzzi, to recommend it to the notice of a traveller.
Under the tuition of Aldo the two young princes became excellent
scholars. Alberto in particular proved, by his aptitude for
philosophical studies, that he had inherited from his mother, the
sister of Giovanni Pico, something of the spirit of Mirandola. When
Aldus published his great edition of Aristotle, he inscribed it to his
former pupil with a Greek dedication, in which he styled him [Greek:
tô tôn ontôn erastê]. There can be no doubt that Alberto's knowledge
of Greek language and philosophy was far more thorough than that of
many more belauded princes of the age. Yet he had but little
opportunity for the quiet prosecution of classical studies, or for the
patronage of learned men at Carpi. Driven from his patrimony by the
Imperialists, he died at Paris in 1530, after a life spent in foreign
service and diplomatic offices of trust. The bronze monument for his
tomb may still be seen[346] in the Gallery of the Louvre. The princely
scholar, clad in rich Renaissance armour, is reclining with his head
supported by his right hand; the left holds an open book. The attitude
of melancholy meditation, the ornamental but useless cuirass, and the
volume open while the scabbard of the sword is shut, add to the
portrait of this prince in exile the value of an allegory. Such
symbols suited the genius of Italy during the age of foreign invaders.
[Footnote 345: Sansovino, in his _Famiglie Illustri_, after giving a
fabulous pedigree of the Pio family, dates their signorial importance
from the reign of Frederick II.]
[Footnote 346: Executed for the Church of the Cordeliers by Paulus
Pontius.]
To Alberto Pio the world owes a debt of gratitude, inasmuch as he
supplied Aldo with the funds necessary for starting his printing
press, and gave him lands at Carpi, where his family were educated.
When Aldo conceived the ambitious project of printing the whole
literature of Greece, four Italian towns could already claim the
honours of Greek publications. Milan takes the lead. In 1476 the
Grammar of Lascaris was printed there by Dionysius Paravisini, with
the aid of Demetrius of Crete.[347] In 1480 Esop and Theocritus
appeared, with no publisher's name. In 1486 two Cretans, Alexander and
Laonicenus, edited a Greek psalter. In 1493 Isocrates, prepared by
Demetrius Chalcondylas, was issued by Henry the German and Sebastian
of Pontremolo. Next comes Venice, where, as early as 1484, the
'Erotemata' of Chrysoloras had been produced by a certain Peregrinus
Bononiensis. Vicenza followed in 1488 with a reprint of Lascaris's
Grammar due to Leonard Achates of Basle, and in 1490 with a reprint of
the 'Erotemata.' Florence, as we have already seen, gave Homer to the
world in 1488. Demetrius Chalcondylas revised the text; Demetrius the
Cretan supplied the models for the types; Alopa of Venice was the
publisher. It will be remarked that, with the exception of Homer and
Theocritus, no true classic of the first magnitude had appeared before
the foundation of the Aldine Press. I may also add that the Milanese
Isocrates was really contemporaneous with the Musæus, Galeomyomachia,
and Psalter issued by Aldo as precursors of his Greek library--[Greek:
Prodromoi tês Hellênikês bibliothêkês]. This fact makes his
thirty-three first editions of all the greatest and most voluminous
Greek authors between 1494 and 1515 all the more remarkable.
[Footnote 347: Poliziano's epigram addressed to these earliest Greek
printers may be quoted here:
Qui colis Aonidas, Grajos quoque volve libellos;
Namque illas genuit Græcia, non Latium.
En Paravisinus quantâ hos Dionysius arte
Imprimit, en quanto cernitis ingenio!
Te quoque, Demetri, ponto circumsona Crete
Tanti operis nobis edidit artificem.
Turce, quid insultas? tu Græca volumina perdis;
Hi pariunt: hydræ nunc age colla seca!]
It was at Carpi in 1490 that Aldo finally matured his project of
establishing a Greek press. His patrons desired him to found it in
their castle of Novi; but Aldo judged rightly that at Venice he would
be more secure from the disturbances of warfare, as well as more
conveniently situated for engaging the assistance of Greek scholars
and compositors. Accordingly, he took a house, and settled near S.
Agostino. This house speedily became a Greek colony. It may be
inferred from Aldo's directions to the printers that his trade was
carried on almost entirely by Greeks, and that Greek was the language
of his household. The instructions to the binders as to the order of
the sheets and mode of stitching were given in Greek; and many curious
Greek phrases appear to have sprung up to meet the exigencies of the
new industry. Thus we find [Greek: hina hellênisti syndethêsetai] for
'Greek stitching,' and [Greek: kattiterinê cheiri] for 'the type;'
while Aldo himself is described as [Greek: epheuretê toutôn grammatôn
charaktêros hôs eirêtai]. The prefaces, almost always composed in
Greek, prove that this language was read currently in Italy, since
Aldo relied on numerous purchasers of his large and costly issues. The
Greek type, for the casting of which he provided machinery in his own
house, was formed upon the model supplied by Marcus Musurus, a Cretan,
who had taken Latin orders and settled at Carpi, and from whom Aldo
received important assistance in the preparation of editions for the
press. The compositors, in like manner, were mostly Cretans. We hear
of one of them, by name Aristoboulos Apostolios, while John
Gregoropoulos, another Cretan, the brother-in-law of Musurus,
performed the part of reader. The ink used by Aldo was made in his own
house, where he had, besides, a subordinate establishment for binding.
The paper, excelled by none that has been since produced, came from
the mills of Fabriano. It may easily be imagined that this beehive of
Greek industry often numbered over thirty persons, not including the
craftsmen employed in lesser offices by the day.
The superintendence of this large establishment, added to the
anxieties attending the production of so many books as yet not edited,
sorely taxed the health and powers of Aldo. For years together he
seems to have had no minute he could call his own. Continual demands
were made by visitors and strangers upon his hours of leisure; and in
order to secure time for the conduct of his business, he was forced to
placard his door with a prohibitory notice.[348] Besides the more
ordinary interruptions, to which every man of eminence is subjected,
he had to struggle with peculiar difficulties due to the novelty of
his undertaking. The prefaces to many of his publications contain
allusions to strikes among his workmen,[349] to the piracies of rival
booksellers,[350] to the difficulty of procuring authentic MSS.,[351]
and to the interruptions caused by war. Twice was the work of printing
suspended, first in 1506, and then again in 1510. For two whole years
at the latter period the industries of Venice were paralysed by the
allied forces of the League of Cambray. The dedication of the first
edition of Plato, 1513, to Leo X. concludes with a prayer, splendid in
the earnestness and simplicity of its eloquence, wherein Aldo compares
the miseries of warfare and the woes of Italy with the sublime and
peaceful objects of the student. All the terrible experiences of that
wasteful campaign, from the effects of which the Republic of Venice
never wholly recovered, seem to find expression in the passionate but
reverent, address of the great printer to the scholar Pope. For two
years previously the press of Aldo had been idle, while the French
were deluging Brescia with blood, and the plains of Ravenna were
heaped with dead Italians, Spaniards, Gauls, and Germans, met in
passionate but fruitless conflict by the Ronco. Now, from the midst of
her desolated palaces and silenced lagoons, Venice stretched forth to
Europe the peace-gift of Plato. The student who had toiled to make it
perfect, appealed before Christ and His vicar, from the arms that
brutalise to the arts that humanise the nations.
[Footnote 348: See Didot's _Alde Manuce_, p. 417, the passage
beginning 'Vix credas.' In the Latin preface to the _Thesaurus
Cornucopiæ et Horti Adonidis_, 1495, Aldo complains that he has not
been able to rest for one hour during seven years.]
[Footnote 349: 'Tot illico oborta sunt impedimenta malorumque invidiâ
et domesticorum [Greek: kai tais tôn kataratôn kai drapeteuontôn
doulôn epiboulais].' Preface to the _Poetæ Christiani Veteres_, 1501.
Again in the 'monitum' of the same, 'quater jam in ædibus nostris ab
operariis et stipendiariis in me conspiratum et duce malorum omnium
matre avaritiâ quos Deo adjuvante sic fregi ut valde omnes poeniteat
suæ perfidiæ.']
[Footnote 350: The French publishers of Lyons, the Giunti of Rome, and
Soncino of Fano, were particularly troublesome. Didot has extracted
some curious information about their tricks as well as Aldo's exposure
of them. Pp. 167, 482-486.]
[Footnote 351: See especially the preface to Aristotle, vol. i. 1495;
vol. v. 1498.]
In the midst of these occupations, disappointments, and distractions,
Aldo, sustained by the enthusiasm of his great undertaking, never
flagged. Some of his prefaces, after setting forth the impediments he
had to combat, burst into a cry of triumph. What joy, he exclaims, it
is to see these volumes of the ancients rescued from book-buriers
([Greek: bibliotaphoi]) and given freely to the world![352] No man
could have been more generously anxious than he was to serve the cause
of scholarship by the widest possible diffusion of books at a moderate
price. No artist was ever more scrupulously bent on giving the best
possible form, the utmost accuracy, to every detail of his work. When
we consider the beauty of the Aldine volumes, and the critical
excellence of their texts, we may fairly be astonished at their
prices. The Musæus was sold for something under one shilling of our
money, the Theocritus for something under two shillings. The five
volumes which contained the whole of Aristotle, might be purchased for
a sum not certainly exceeding 8_l._ Each volume of the pocket series,
headed in 1501 by the 8vo. Virgil, and comprising Greek, Latin, and
Italian authors, fetched about two shillings. For this library the
celebrated Italic type, known as Aldine, was adapted from the
handwriting of Petrarch, and cut by Francesco da Bologna.[353] It
appears that, as his trade increased, Aldo formed a company, who
shared the risks and profits of the business.[354] Yet the expenses of
publishing were so heavy, the insecurity of the book market so great,
and the privileges of copyright granted by the Pope or the Venetian
Senate so imperfect,[355] that Aldo, after giving his life to this
work, and bequeathing to the world Greek literature, died
comparatively poor. Erasmus, always somewhat snarling, accused him of
avarice; yet it was his liberality to his collaborators, his
openhandedness in buying the expensive apparatus for critical
editions, that forced him to be economical.
[Footnote 352: See Preface to _Thesaurus Cornucopiæ_, quoted by Didot,
p. 80; and cf. pp. 210, 221, 521, for further hints about selfish
bibliomaniacs, who tried to hoard their treasures from the public and
refused them to the press. Aldo, as a genuine lover of free learning,
and also as a publisher, detests this class of men.]
[Footnote 353: See Pannizzi's tract on 'Francesco da Bologna,'
published by Pickering, 1873. He was probably Francia the painter.]
[Footnote 354: In a letter to Marcello Virgilio Adriani, the teacher
of Machiavelli, he mentions some books 'Cum aliis quibusdam communes,'
as distinguished from others which were his private property. Didot,
p. 233.]
[Footnote 355: On the subject of patents, privileges, and monopolies
see Didot, pp. 79, 166, 189, 371, 479-481.]
The first editions of Greek books published by Aldo deserve to be
separately noticed. In 1493, or earlier, appeared the 'Hero and
Leander' of Musæus, a poem that passed, in that uncritical age, for
the work of Homer's mythical predecessor.[356] In 1495 the first
volume of Aristotle saw the light, accompanied by numerous Greek
epigrams and a Greek letter of Scipione Fortiguerra, who deplores in
it the deaths of Pico, Poliziano, and Ermolao Barbaro. The remaining
four volumes followed in 1497 and 1498. In the latter of these years
Aldo, aided by his friend Musurus, produced nine comedies of
Aristophanes; the MSS. of the 'Lysistrata' and 'Thesmophoriazusæ' were
afterwards discovered at Urbino, and published by Giunta in 1515. In
1502, Thucydides, Sophocles, and Herodotus appeared, followed in 1503
by Xenophon's 'Hellenics' and Euripides,[357] and in 1504 by
Demosthenes. After this occurs a lull, occasioned in part by the
disturbances ensuing on the League of Blois. In 1508 the list is
recontinued with the Greek orators; while 1509 has to show the minor
works of Plutarch. Then follows another stoppage due to war. In 1513
Plato was published, and in 1514 Pindar, Hesychius, and Athenæus.
[Footnote 356: [Greek: Mousaion ton palaiotaton poiêtên êthelêsa
prooimiazein tô te Aristotelei kai tôn sophôn tois heterois autika di'
emou entypêsomenois]. This [Greek: prodromos], or precursor, appeared
without a date; but it must have come out earlier than 1494.]
[Footnote 357: John Lascaris had edited four plays of Euripides for
Alopa in 1496. This Aldine edition contained eighteen, one of which,
the _Hercules Furens_, turned up while vol. ii. was in the press. The
_Electra_, not discovered till later on, was printed at Rome, 1545.]
From the preceding account I have omitted the notice of minor editions
as well as reprints. In order to complete the history of the Aldine
issue of Greek books, it should be mentioned that Aldo's successors
continued his work by giving Pausanias, Strabo, Æschylus, Galen,
Hippocrates, and Longinus to the world; so that when the Estiennes of
Paris came to glean in the field of the Italian publishers, they only
found Anacreon, Maximus Tyrius, and Diodorus Siculus as yet unedited.
We must not forget that, while the Greek authors were being printed
thus assiduously by Aldo, he continued to send forth Latin and Italian
publications from his press. Thus we find that the 'Etna' and the
'Asolani' of Bembo, the collected writings of Poliziano, the
'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,' the 'Divine Comedy,' the 'Cose Volgari'
of Petrarch, the 'Poetæ Christiani Veteres,' including Prudentius,
the poems of Pontanus, the letters of the younger Pliny, the 'Arcadia'
of Sannazzaro, Quintilian, Valerius Maximus, and the 'Adagia' of
Erasmus were printed, either in first editions or with a beauty of
type and paper never reached before, between the years 1495 and 1514.
The great Dutch scholar who made an epoch in the history of learning,
and transferred the sovereignty of letters to the north of Europe,
paid a visit in 1508 to the house of Aldo, where he personally
superintended the re-impression of his 'Proverbs.'[358] We have a
lively picture of the printing of this celebrated book in Aldo's
workshop. 'Together we attacked the work,' says Erasmus, 'I writing,
while Aldo gave my copy to the press.' In one corner of the room sat
the scholar at his desk, with the thin keen face so well portrayed by
Holbein, improvising new paragraphs, and making additions to his
previous collections in the brilliant Latin style that no one else
could write. Aldo took the MS. from his hand, and passed it on to the
compositors, revising the proofs as they came fresh from the press, or
conferring with his reader Seraphinus.[359] Erasmus had already gained
the reputation of a dangerous freethinker and opponent to the Church.
As years advanced, and the Reformation spread in Northern Europe, he
became more and more odious to ecclesiastical authority. The spirit of
revolt was incarnate in this Voltaire of the sixteenth century, nor
could the clergy raise other arms than those of persecution against so
radiant a champion of pure reason. All reprints of the 'Adagia' were
therefore forbidden by the bishops. Paulus Manutius had to quote it on
his catalogues as the work of _Batavus quidam homo_. To such an
extent were liberal studies now gagged and downtrodden by the tyrants
of the Counter-Reformation in that Italy which for two previous
centuries had been the champion of free culture for Europe.
[Footnote 358: The _Adagia_ were first printed in 1500 at Paris by
John Philippi. After the Aldine edition eleven were issued between
1509 and 1520 by Matthew Schürer, ten by Froben between 1513 and 1539,
while seven or eight others appeared in various parts of Germany.]
[Footnote 359: See the passage quoted by Didot, pp. 297-299.]
Before concluding the biography of Aldo Manuzio it may be well to give
some account of the more illustrious assistants and collaborators whom
he gathered around him in his academy at Venice.[360] The New Academy,
or Aldine Academy of Hellenists, was founded in 1500 for the special
purpose of promoting Greek studies and furthering the publication of
Greek authors. Its rules were written in Greek; the members were
obliged to speak Greek; their official titles were Greek; and their
names were Grecised. Thus Scipione Fortiguerra, of Pistoja, who
prepared the text of Demosthenes for Aldo, styled himself
Carteromachos: and Alessandro Bondini, the Venetian physician who
worked upon the edition of Aristotle, bore the name of Agathemeros.[361]
The most distinguished Greeks at that time resident in Italy could be
counted among the Neacademicians. John Lascaris, of Imperial blood,
the teacher of Hellenism in France under three kings, was an honorary
member. To this great scholar Aldo dedicated his first edition of
Sophocles. Marcus Musurus occupied a post of more practical
importance.[362] We have seen that his handwriting formed the model of
Aldo's Greek type. To his scholarship the editions of Aristophanes,
Plato, Pindar, Hesychius, Athenæus, and Pausanias owed their critical
accuracy; while, in concert with Nicolaos Blastos and Zacharias
Calliergi, two Cretan printers settled in Venice, he published the
first Latin and Greek lexicon.[363] It will be observed that the
Cretans play a prominent part in this Venetian revival of Greek
learning. Aristoboulos Apostolios, Joannes Gregoropoulos, Joannes
Rhosos, and Demetrius Doucas, all of them natives of Crete, were
members of the Neacademy. The first as a compositor, the second as a
reader, the third as a scribe, the fourth as editor of the Greek
Orators, rendered Aldo effective assistance. Among Italians, Pietro
Bembo, Aleander, and Alberto Pio occupied positions of honorary
distinction rather than of active industry. Those who worked in
earnest for the Aldine press were chiefly Venetians. Girolamo Avanzi,
professor of philosophy at Padua, revised the texts of Catullus,
Seneca, and Ausonius. Andrea Navagero, the noble Venetian poet,
corrected Lucretius, Ovid, Terence, Quintilian, Horace, and Virgil.
Giambattista Egnazio performed the same service for Valerius Maximus,
the Letters of Pliny, Lactantius, Tertullian, Aulus Gellius, and other
Latin authors. To mention all the eminent Venetians who played their
part in this Academy would be tedious; yet the two names of Marino
Sanudo, the famous diarist, and of Marco Antonio Coccio, called
Sabellicus, the historian of the Republic, cannot be omitted. Of
northern foreigners the most illustrious was Erasmus; to Englishmen
the most interesting is Thomas Linacre. Born in 1460 at Canterbury, he
travelled into Italy, and studied at Florence under Poliziano and
Chalcondylas. On his return to England he founded the Greek Chair at
Oxford, and died in London in the year 1524. His translation into
Latin of the 'Sphere' of Proclus was published by Aldus in 1499. To
him and to Grocin belongs the credit of having sought to plant the
culture of Italy in the universities of England.
[Footnote 360: Didot, pp. 147-151, 436-470, gives ample details
concerning the foundation, constitution, and members of the Aldine
Academy.]
[Footnote 361: We may compare the name of Melanchthon.]
[Footnote 362: A native of Rotino, in Crete (b. 1470, d. at Rome
1517). He acquired Latin so thoroughly that Erasmus wrote of him:
'Latinæ linguæ usque ad miraculum doctus, quod vix ulli Græco contigit
præter Theodorum Gazam et Joannem Lascarem.' John Lascaris was his
master.]
[Footnote 363: _Etymologicon Magnum_, 1499. Didot, pp. 544-578, may be
consulted for information about this Greek press. Musurus boasts in
his encomiastic verses that the work was accomplished entirely by
Cretans. [Greek: analômasi Blastou ponô kai dexiotêti Kalliergou] in
the colophon.]
During a severe illness in the year 1498 Aldo vowed to take holy
orders if he should recover. From this obligation he subsequently
obtained release by a brief of Alexander VI., and in the following
year he married Maria, daughter of Andrea Torresano, of Asola. Andrea,
some years earlier, had bought the press established by Nicholas
Jenson in Venice, so that Aldo's marriage to his daughter combined the
interests of two important firms. Henceforth the names of Aldus and of
Asolanus were associated on the title-pages of the Aldine
publications. When Aldo died in 1514 (1515 new style), he left three
sons--Manutio, in orders at Asola; Antonio, a bookseller at
Bologna;[364] and Paolo Manuzio. The last of these sons, born at
Venice in 1512, was educated by his grandfather Andrea till the year
of the old man's death (1529). He carried on the press at Venice and
at Rome, separating in the year 1540 from his uncles the Asolani, and
bequeathing his business to his son named Aldo. This grandson of Aldo
Manuzio, called by Scaliger a 'wretched and slow wit, the mimic of his
father,' began his career by printing, at the age of eleven, a
treatise on the 'Eleganze della Lingua Toscana e Latina.' He married
Francesca Lucrezia Giunta, of the famous house of printers, and died,
without surviving issue, at Rome in 1597. Thus the industry of Aldo
was continued through two generations till the close of the sixteenth
century. The device of the dolphin and the anchor, intended to
symbolise quickness of execution combined with firmness of
deliberation, and the motto _Festina lente_, which Sir Thomas Browne
has rendered by 'Celerity contempered with cunctation,' though changed
to suit varieties of taste from time to time, were never altogether
abandoned by the Aldines.[365] As years went on, however, their
publications became of less importance, and the beauty of their books
degenerated.
[Footnote 364: There is some discrepancy about this Antonio between
Renouard and Didot.]
[Footnote 365: 'Sum ipse mihi optimus testis me semper habere comites,
ut oportere aiunt, delphinum et anchoram; nam et dedimus multa
cunctando, et damus assidue.' Preface to the _Astronomici_, dedicated
to Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino, 1499. The observations of Erasmus on the
motto deserve to be read with attention. See Didot, p. 299.]
In tracing the history of Aldo's enterprise, I have been carried
beyond the limits of the period included in this chapter. Yet I knew
not how to describe the activity of the press in Italy better than by
concentrating attention upon the greatest publisher who ever lived.
Aldo Manuzio was no mere bookseller or printer. His learning won the
hearty praises of ripe scholars, nor did any student of the age
express more nobly and with fuller conviction his deep sense of the
dignity conferred by learning on the soul of man.[366] That he was
amiable in private life is proved by the intimate relations he
maintained with humanists, than whom even poets are not a more
irritable race of men.[367] To his fellow-workers he was uniformly
generous in pecuniary matters, free from jealousy, and prodigal of
praise. Seeking even less than his due share of credit, he desired
that the great work of his life should pass for the common achievement
of himself and his learned associates. Therefore he called his Greek
library the fruits of the Neacademia, though no man could have known
better than he did that his own genius was the life and spirit of the
undertaking. His stores of MSS. were as open to the instruction of
scholars as his printed books were given liberally to the public.[368]
'Aldo,' writes Erasmus, 'had nothing in his treasury but what he
readily communicated.' Those who read the estimate of his services to
learning made by eminent contemporaries, will find the language of
Nicholas Leonicenus, Erasmus, and Anton Francesco Doni not
exaggerated.[369] But, in order to comprehend their true value, we
must bear in mind that until the year 1516, when Froben printed the
Greek Testament at Basle, none but insignificant Greek reprints had
appeared in Northern Europe.[370] Finally, what makes the place of
Aldus in the history of Italian humanism all-important is the fact
that, after about 1520, Greek studies began to decline in Italy all
together. As though exhausted by the enormous energy wherewith
Florence had acquired and Venice had disseminated Greek culture, the
Italians relapsed into apathy. Posterity may be thankful that their
pupils, Grocin and Linacre, Reuchlin and Erasmus, the Stephani and
Budæus, had by this time transplanted erudition beyond the Alps, while
Aldo had secured the literature of ancient Greece against the
possibility of destruction.
[Footnote 366: See the passages from his letters and prefaces quoted
and referred to on p. 239, above, note 2.]
[Footnote 367: The prospect of his visit to Milan in 1509 called forth
these pretty April verses from Antiquari:--
Aldus venit en, Aldus ecce venit!
Nunc, O nunc, juvenes, ubique in urbe
Flores spargite. Vere namque primo
Aldus venit en, Aldus ecce venit.]
[Footnote 368: See above, p. 275, for his hatred of the [Greek:
bibliotaphoi]. He was the very opposite of Henri Estienne the younger,
who closed his library against his son-in-law Casaubon.]
[Footnote 369: Didot, pp. 89, 299, 423.]
[Footnote 370: _Priscian_, at Erfurt, 1501; _Alphabet_,
_Batrachomyomachia_, Musæus, Theocritus, Grammar of Chrysoloras,
Hesiod's _Works and Days_, Paris, 1507; Aristotle on _Divination by
Dreams_, Cracow, 1529; Lucian, [Greek: peri dipsadôn], Oxford, 1521,
are among the earliest Greek books printed out of Italy. The grammars
of the Greek humanists were frequently reprinted in the first quarter
of the sixteenth century in Germany.]