a large portion of what was written in the northern dialect, though
occasionally picturesque, graceful, or animated, are seldom free from
tedious or prosaic details. The earliest of these extant seems to be
that of Havelok the Dane, of which an abridgment was made by Geoffrey
Gaimar, before the middle of the twelfth century. The story is certainly
a popular legend from the Danish part of England, which the French
versifier has called, according to the fashion of romances, “a Breton
lay.” If this word meant anything more than relating to Britain, it is a
plain falsehood; and upon either hypothesis, it may lead us to doubt, as
many other reasons may also, what has been so much asserted of late
years, as to the Armorican origin of romantic fictions; since the word
Breton, which some critics refer to Armorica, is here applied to a story
of mere English birth.[71] It cannot, however, be doubted, from
the absurd introduction of Arthur’s name in this romance of Havelok,
that it was written after the publication of the splendid fables of
Geoffrey.[72]
[70] It has been denied that there are any metrical romances in
Provençal. But one called the Philomena, on the fabulous history of
Charlemagne, is written after 1173, but not much later than 1200.
Journal des Savans, 1824.
[71] The Recherches sur les Bardes d’Armorique, by that respectable
veteran, M. de la Rue, are very unsatisfactory. It does not appear
that the Bretons have so much as a national tradition of any
romantic poetry; nor any writings in their language older than
1450. The authority of Warton, Leyden, Ellis, Turner, and Price
have rendered this hypothesis of early Armorican romance popular;
but I cannot believe that so baseless a fabric will endure much
longer. Is it credible that tales of aristocratic splendour and
courtesy sprung up in so poor and uncivilised a country as
Bretagne? Traditional stories they might, no doubt, possess, and
some of these may be found in the lais de Marie, and other early
poems; but not romances of chivalry. I do not recollect, though
speaking without confidence, that any proof has been given of
Armorican traditions about Arthur, earlier than the history of
Geoffrey: for it seems too much to interpret the word _Britones_ of
them rather than of the Welsh. Mr. Turner, I observe, without
absolutely recanting, has much receded from his opinion of the
Armorican prototype of Geoffrey of Monmouth.
[72] The romance of Havelok was printed by Sir Frederick Madden in
1829; but not for sale. His Introduction is of considerable value.
The story of Havelok is that of Curan and Argentile, in Warner’s
Albion’s England, upon which Mason founded a drama. Sir F. Madden
refers the English translation to some time between 1270 and 1290.
The manuscript is in the Bodleian Library. The French original has
since been reprinted in France, as I learn from Brunet’s Supplement
au Manuel du Libraire. Both this and its abridgment, by Geoffrey
Gaimar, are in the British Museum.
|Diffusion of French language.|
40. Two more celebrated poems are by Wace, a native of Jersey; one, a
free version of the history lately published by Geoffrey of Monmouth;
the other, a narrative of the Battle of Hastings and Conquest of
England. Many other romances followed. Much has been disputed for some
years concerning them, and the lays and fabliaux of the northern
trouveurs; it is sufficient here to observe, that they afforded a
copious source of amusement and interest to those who read or listened,
as far as the French language was diffused; and this was far beyond the
boundaries of France. Not only was it the common spoken tongue of what
is called the court, or generally of the superior ranks, in England, but
in Italy and in Germany, at least throughout the thirteenth century.
Brunetto Latini wrote his philosophical compilation, called Le Tresor,
in French, “because,” as he says, “the language was more agreeable and
usual than any other.” Italian, in fact, was hardly employed in prose at
that time. But for those whose education had not gone so far, the
romances and tales of France began to be rendered into German, as early
as the latter part of the twelfth century, as they were long afterwards
into English, becoming the basis of those popular songs, which
illustrate the period of the Swabian emperors, the great house of
Hohenstauffen, Frederic Barbarossa, Henry VI., and Frederic II.
|German poetry of Swabian period.|
41. The poets of Germany, during this period of extraordinary fertility
in versification, were not less numerous than those of France and
Provence.[73] From Henry of Veldek to the last of the lyric poets, soon
after the beginning of the fourteenth century, not less than two hundred
are known by name. A collection made in that age by Rudiger von Manasse
of Zurich contains the productions of one hundred and forty; and modern
editors have much enlarged the list.[74] Henry of Veldek is placed by
Eichhorn about 1170, and by Bouterwek twenty years later; so that at the
utmost we cannot reckon the period of their duration more than a century
and a half. But the great difference perceptible between the poetry of
Henry and that of the old German songs proves him not to have been the
earliest of the Swabian school: he is as polished in language and
versification as any of his successors; and though a northern, he wrote
in the dialect of the house of Hohenstauffen. Wolfram von Eschenbach, in
the first years of the next century, is, perhaps, the most eminent name
of the Minne-singers, as the lyric poets were denominated, and is also
the translator of several romances. The golden age of German poetry was
before the fall of the Swabian dynasty, at the death of Conrad IV., in
1254. Love, as the word denotes, was the peculiar theme of the
Minne-singers; but it was chiefly from the northern or southern dialects
of France, especially the latter, that they borrowed their amorous
strains.[75] In the latter part of the thirteenth century, we
find less of feeling and invention, but a more didactic and moral tone,
sometimes veiled in Æsopic fables, sometimes openly satirical. Conrad of
Wurtzburg is the chief of the latter school; but he had to lament the
decline of taste and manners in his own age.
[73] Bouterwek, p. 95.
[74] Id. p. 98. This collection was published in 1758, by Bodmer.
[75] Herder, Zerstreute Blätter, vol. v. p. 206. Eichhorn, Allg.
Geschichte der Cultur. vol. i. p. 226. Heinsius, Teut, oder
Lehrbuch der Deutschen. Sprachwissenschaft, vol. iv. pp. 32-80.
Weber’s Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, 1814. This work
contains the earliest analysis, I believe, of the Nibelungen Lied.
But above all, I have been indebted to the excellent account of
German poetry by Bouterwek, in the ninth volume of his great work,
the History of Poetry and Eloquence since the thirteenth century.
In this volume the mediæval poetry of Germany occupies nearly four
hundred closely printed pages. I have since met with a pleasing
little volume, on the Lays of the Minne-singers, by Mr. Edgar
Taylor. It contains an account of the chief of those poets, with
translations, perhaps in too modern a style, though it may be true
that no other would suit our modern taste.
A species of love song, peculiar, according to Weber (p. 9), to the
Minne-singers, are called Watchmen’s Songs. These consist in a
dialogue between a lover and the sentinel who guards his mistress.
The latter is persuaded to imitate “Sir Pandarus of Troy;” and when
morning breaks, summons the lover to quit his lady; who, in her
turn, maintains that “it is the nightingale, and not the lark,”
with almost the pertinacity of Juliet.
Mr. Taylor remarks, that the German poets do not go so far in their
idolatry of the fair as the Provençals, p. 127. I do not concur
altogether in his reasons; but as the Minne-singers imitated the
Provençals, this deviation is remarkable. I should rather ascribe
it to the hyperbolical tone which the Troubadours had borrowed from
the Arabians, or to the susceptibility of their temperament.
42. No poetry, however, of the Swabian period is so national as the epic
romances, which drew their subjects from the highest antiquity, if they
did not even adopt the language of primæval bards, which, perhaps,
though it has been surmised, is not compatible with their style. In the
two most celebrated productions of this kind, the Helden Buch, or Book
of Heroes, and the Nibelungen Lied, the Lay of the Nibelungen, a
fabulous people, we find the recollections of an heroic age, wherein the
names of Attila and Theodoric stand out as witnesses of traditional
history, clouded by error and coloured by fancy. The Nibelungen Lied, in
its present form, is by an uncertain author, perhaps, about the year
1200;[76] but it comes, and as far as we can judge, with little or no
interpolation of circumstances, from an age anterior to Christianity, to
civilisation, and to the more refined forms of chivalry. We cannot well
think the stories later than the sixth or seventh centuries. The German
critics admire the rude grandeur of this old epic: and its fables,
marked with a character of barbarous simplicity wholly unlike that of
later romance, are become, in some degree, familiar to ourselves.
[76] Weber says,--“I have no doubt whatever that the romance itself
is of very high antiquity, at least of the eleventh century,
though, certainly, the present copy has been considerably
modernised.” Illustrations of Northern Romances, p. 26. But
Bouterwek does not seem to think it of so ancient a date; and I
believe it is commonly referred to about the year 1200. Schlegel
ascribes it to Henry von Offerdingen. Heinsius, iv. 52.
It is highly probable that the “babara et antiquissima carmina,”
which, according to Eginhard, Charlemagne caused to be reduced to
writing, were no other than the legends of the Nibelungen Lied, and
similar traditions of the Gothic and Burgundian time. Weber, p. 6.
I will here mention, as I believe it is little known in England, a
curious Latin epic poem on the wars of Attila, published by Fischer
in 1780. He conceives it to be of the sixth century; but others
have referred it to the eighth. The heroes are Franks; but the
whole is fabulous, except the name of Attila and his Huns. I do not
know whether this has any connection with a French poem on Attila,
by a writer named Casola, existing in manuscript at Modena. A
translation into Italian was published by Rossi at Ferrara in 1568:
it is one of the scarcest books in the world. Weber’s
Illustrations, p. 23. Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch. ii. 178. Galvani,
Osservazioni sulla poesia de’ trovatori, p. 16.
The Nibelungen Lied seems to have been less popular in the middle
ages than other romances; evidently because it relates to a
different state of manners. Bouterwek, p. 141. Heinsius observes
that we must consider this poem as the most valuable record of
German antiquity, but that to overrate its merit, as some have been
inclined to do, can be of no advantage.
|Decline of German poetry.|
43. The loss of some accomplished princes, and of a near intercourse
with the south of France and with Italy, the augmented independence of
the German nobility, to be maintained by unceasing warfare, rendered
their manners, from the latter part of the thirteenth century, more rude
than before. They ceased to cultivate poetry, or to think it honourable
in their rank. Meantime a new race of poets, chiefly burghers of towns,
sprung up about the reign of Rodolph of Hapsburgh, before the lays of
the Minne-singers had yet ceased to resound. These prudent, though not
inspired, votaries of the muse, chose the didactic and moral style as
more salutary than the love songs, and more reasonable than the
romances. They became known in the fourteenth century, by the name of
meister-singers, but are traced to the institutions of the twelfth
century, called Singing-schools, for the promotion of popular music, the
favourite recreation of Germany. What they may have done for music I am
unable to say: it was in an evil hour for the art of poetry that
they extended their jurisdiction over her. They regulated verse by the
most pedantic and minute laws, such as a society with no idea of
excellence but conformity to rule would be sure to adopt; though nobler
institutions have often done the same, and the Master-burghers were but
prototypes of the Italian academicians. The poetry was always moral and
serious, but flat. These meister-singers are said to have originated at
Mentz, from which they spread to Augsburg, Strasburg, and other cities,
and in none were more renowned than Nuremberg. Charles IV., in 1378,
incorporated them by the name of Meistergenoss-schaft, with armorial
bearings and peculiar privileges. They became, however, more conspicuous
in the sixteenth century; scarce any names of meister-singers before
that age are recorded; nor does it seem that much of their earlier
poetry is extant.[77]
[77] Bouterwek, ix. 271-291. Heinsius, iv. 85-98. See also the
Biographie Universelle, art. Folez; and a good article in the
Retrospective Review, vol. x. p. 113.
|Poetry of France and Spain.|
44. The French versifiers had by this time, perhaps, become less
numerous, though several names in the same style of amatory song do some
credit to their age. But the romances of chivalry began now to be
written in prose; while a very celebrated poem, the Roman de la Rose,
had introduced an unfortunate taste for allegory into verse, from which
France did not extricate herself for several generations. Meanwhile, the
Provençal poets, who, down to the close of the thirteenth century, had
flourished in the south, and whose language many Lombards adopted, came
to an end; after the reunion of the fief of Toulouse to the crown, and
the possession of Provence by a northern line of princes, their ancient
and renowned tongue passed for a dialect, a patois of the people. It had
never been much employed in prose, save in the kingdom of Aragon, where,
under the name of Valencian, it continued for two centuries to be a
legitimate language, till political circumstances of the same kind
reduced it, as in southern France, to a provincial dialect. The
Castilian language, which, though it has been traced higher in written
fragments, may be considered to have begun, in a literary sense, with
the poem of the Cid, not later than the middle of the twelfth century,
was employed by a few extant poets in the next two ages, and in the
fourteenth was as much the established vehicle of many kinds of
literature in Spain as the French was on the other side of the
mountains.[78] The names of Portuguese poets not less early than any in
Castile are recorded; fragments are mentioned by Bouterwek as old as the
twelfth century, and there exists a collection of lyric poetry in the
style of the Troubadours, which is referred to no late part of the next
age.[79] Nothing has been published in the Castilian language of
this amatory style older than 1400.
[78] Sanchez, Collection de poesias Castellanas anteriores al siglo
15mo. Velasquez, Historia della poesia Español; which I only know
by the German translation of Dieze, (Göttingen, 1769,) who has
added many notes. Andrès, Origine d’ogni litteratura, ii. 158.
Bouterwek’s History of Spanish and Portuguese Literature. I shall
quote the English translation of this work, which, I am sorry to
say, is sold by the booksellers at scarce a third of its original
price. It is a strange thing, that while we multiply encyclopædias
and indifferent compilations of our own, there is no demand for
translations from the most learned productions of Germany that will
indemnify a publisher.
[79] This very curious fact in literary history has been brought to
light by Lord Stuart of Rothsay, who printed at Paris, in 1823,
twenty-five copies of a collection of ancient Portuguese songs,
from a manuscript in the library of the College of Nobles at
Lisbon. An account of this book by M. Raynouard, will be found in
the Journal des Savans for August, 1825; and I have been favoured
by my noble friend the editor with the loan of a copy; though my
ignorance of the language prevented me from forming an exact
judgment of its contents. In the preface the following
circumstances are stated. It consists of seventy-five folios, the
first part having been torn off, and the manuscript attached to a
work of a wholly different nature. The writing appears to be of the
fourteenth century, and in some places older. The idiom seems older
than the writing; it may be called, if I understand the meaning of
the preface, as old as the beginning of the thirteenth century, and
certainly older than the reign of Denis, pode appellidarse coevo do
seculo xiii., e de certo he anterior ao reynado de D. Deniz. Denis
king of Portugal reigned from 1279 to 1325. It is regular in
grammar, and for the most part in orthography; but contains some
gallicisms, which show either a connection between France and
Portugal in that age, or a common origin in the southern tongues of
Europe; since certain idioms found in this manuscript are preserved
in Spanish, Italian, and Provençal, yet are omitted in Portuguese
dictionaries. A few poems are translated from Provençal, but the
greater part are strictly Portuguese, as the mention of places,
names, and manners shows. M. Raynouard, however, observes, that the
thoughts and forms of versification are similar to those of the
Troubadours. The metres employed are usually of seven, eight, and
ten syllables, the accent falling on the last; but some lines occur
of seven, eight, or eleven syllables accented on the penultimate,
and these are sometimes interwoven, at regular intervals, with the
others.
The songs, as far as I was able to judge, are chiefly, if not
wholly, amatory: they generally consist of stanzas, the first of
which is written (and printed) with intervals for musical notes,
and in the form of prose, though really in metre. Each stanza has
frequently a burden of two lines. The plan appeared to be something
like that of the Castilian glosas of the fifteenth century, the
subject of the first stanza being repeated, and sometimes expanded,
in the rest. I do not know that this is found in any Provençal
poetry. The language, according to Raynouard, resembles Provençal
more than the modern Portuguese does. It is a very remarkable
circumstance, that we have no evidence, at least from the letter of
the Marquis of Santillana early in the fifteenth century, that the
Castilians had any of these love songs till long after the date of
this Cancioneiro; and that we may rather collect from it, that the
Spanish amatory poets chose the Galician or Portuguese dialect in
preference to their own. Though the very ancient collection to
which this note refers seems to have been unknown, I find mention
of one by Don Pedro, Count of Barcelos, natural son of King Denis,
in Dieze’s notes on Velasquez. Gesch. der Span. Dichtkunst, p. 70.
This must have been in the first part of the fourteenth century.
|Early Italian language.|
45. Italy came last of those countries where Latin had been spoken to
the possession of an independent language and literature. No industry
has hitherto retrieved so much as a few lines of real Italian till near
the end of the twelfth century;[80] and there is not much before the
middle of the next. Several poets, however, whose versification is not
wholly rude, appeared soon afterwards. The Divine Comedy of Dante seems
to have been commenced before his exile from Florence in 1304. The
Italian language was much used in prose, during the times of Dante and
Petrarch, though very little before.
[80] Tiraboschi, iii. 323, doubts the authenticity of some inscriptions
referred to the twelfth century. The earliest genuine Italian seems
to be a few lines by Ciullo d’Alcamo, a Sicilian, between 1187 and
1193, vol. iv. p. 340.
|Dante and Petrarch.|
46. Dante and Petrarch are, as it were, the morning stars of our modern
literature. I shall say nothing more of the former in this place: he
does not stand in such close connection as Petrarch with the fifteenth
century; nor had he such influence over the taste of his age. In this
respect Petrarch has as much the advantage over Dante, as he was his
inferior in depth of thought and creative power. He formed a school of
poetry, which, though no disciple comparable to himself came out of it,
gave a character to the taste of his country. He did not invent the
sonnet; but he, perhaps, was the cause that it has continued in fashion
for so many ages.[81] He gave purity, elegance, and even stability to
the Italian language, which has been incomparably less changed during
near five centuries since his time, than it was in one between the age
of Guido Guinizzeli and his own. And none have denied him the honour of
having restored a true feeling of classical antiquity in Italy, and
consequently in Europe.
[81] Crescimbeni (Storia della vulgar poesia, vol. ii. p. 269) asserts
the claim of Guiton d’Arezzo to the invention of the regular
sonnet, or at least the perfection of that in use among the
Provençals.
|Change of Anglo-Saxon to English.|
47. Nothing can be more difficult, except by an arbitrary line, than to
determine the commencement of the English language; not so much, as in
those of the continent, because we are in want of materials, but rather
from an opposite reason, the possibility of tracing a very gradual
succession of verbal changes that ended in a change of denomination. We
should probably experience a similar difficulty, if we knew equally well
the current idiom of France or Italy in the seventh and eighth
centuries. For when we compare the earliest English of the thirteenth
century with the Anglo-Saxon of the twelfth, it seems hard to pronounce,
why it should pass for a separate language, rather than a modification
or simplification of the former. We must conform, however, to usage, and
say that the Anglo-Saxon was converted into English: 1. by contracting
or otherwise modifying the pronunciation and orthography of words; 2. by
omitting many inflections, especially of the noun, and consequently
making more use of articles and auxiliaries; 3. by the introduction of
French derivatives; 4. by using less inversion and ellipsis, especially
in poetry. Of these the second alone, I think, can be considered as
sufficient to describe a new form of language; and this was brought
about so gradually, that we are not relieved from much of our
difficulty, whether some compositions shall pass for the latest
offspring of the mother, or the earliest fruits of the daughter’s
fertility.[82]
[82] It is a proof of this difficulty that the best masters of our
ancient language have lately introduced the word semi-Saxon, which
is to cover everything from 1150 to 1250. See Thorpe’s preface to
Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, and many other recent books.
48. The Anglo-Norman language is a phrase not quite so unobjectionable
as the Anglo-Norman constitution; and as it is sure to deceive, we might
better lay it aside altogether.[83] In the one instance, there was a
real fusion of laws and government, to which we can find but a remote
analogy, or rather none at all, in the other. It is probable, indeed,
that the converse of foreigners might have something to do with those
simplifications of the Anglo-Saxon grammar, which appear about the reign
of Henry II., more than a century after the Conquest; though it is also
true, that languages of a very artificial structure, like that of
England before that revolution, often became less complex in their
forms, without any such violent process as an amalgamation of two
different races.[84] What is commonly called the Saxon Chronicle is
continued to the death of Stephen, in 1154, and in the same language,
though with some loss of its purity. Besides the neglect of several
grammatical rules, French words now and then obtrude themselves, but not
very frequently, in the latter pages of this Chronicle. Peterborough,
however, was quite an English monastery; its endowments, its abbots,
were Saxon; and the political spirit the Chronicle breathes, in some
passages, is that of the indignant subjects, _servi ancor
frementi_, of the Norman usurpers. If its last compilers, therefore,
gave way to some innovations of language, we may presume that these
prevailed more extensively in places less secluded, and especially in
London.
[83] A popular and pleasing writer has drawn a little upon his
imagination in the following account of the language of our
forefathers after the Conquest:--“The language of the church was
Latin; that of the king and nobles, Norman; that of the people,
Anglo-Saxon; _the Anglo-Norman jargon was only employed in the
commercial intercourse between the conquerors and the
conquered_.” Ellis’s Specimens of Early English Poets, vol. i.
p. 17. What was this jargon? and where do we find a proof of its
existence? and what was the commercial intercourse hinted at? I
suspect Ellis only meant, what has often been remarked, that the
animals which bear a Saxon name in the fields acquire a French one
in the shambles. But even this is more ingenious than just; for
muttons, beeves, and porkers are good old words for the living
quadrupeds.
[84] “Every branch of the low German stock from whence the Anglo-Saxon
sprung, displays the same simplification of its grammar.” Price’s
Preface to Warton, p. 110. He therefore ascribes little influence
to the Norman conquest or to French connections.
|Layamon.|
49. We find evidence of a greater change in Layamon, a translator of
Wace’s romance of Brut from the French. Layamon’s age is uncertain; it
must have been after 1155, when the original poem was completed, and can
hardly be placed below 1200. His language is accounted rather
Anglo-Saxon than English; it retains most of the distinguishing
inflections of the mother-tongue, yet evidently differs considerably
from that older than the Conquest by the introduction, or at least more
frequent employment, of some new auxiliary forms, and displays very
little of the characteristics of the ancient poetry, its periphrases,
its ellipses, or its inversions. But though translation was the means by
which words of French origin were afterwards most copiously introduced,
very few occur in the extracts from Layamon hitherto published; for we
have not yet the expected edition of the entire work. He is not a mere
translator, but improves much on Wace. The adoption of the plain and
almost creeping style of the metrical French romance, instead of the
impetuous dithyrambics of Saxon song, gives Layamon at first sight a
greater affinity to the new English language than in mere grammatical
structure he appears to bear.[85]
[85] See a long extract from Layamon in Ellis’s Specimens. This writer
observes, that, “it contains no word which we are under the
necessity of referring to a French root.” _Duke_ and _Castle_ seem
exceptions: but the latter word occurs in the Saxon Chronicle
before the Conquest, A.D. 1052.
|Progress of English language.|
50. Layamon wrote in a monastery on the Severn; and it is agreeable to
experience, that an obsolete structure of language should be retained in
a distant province, while it has undergone some change among the less
rugged inhabitants of a capital. The disuse of Saxon forms crept on by
degrees; some metrical lives of saints, apparently written not far from
the year 1250,[86] may be deemed English; but the first specimen
of it that bears a precise date is a proclamation of Henry III.,
addressed to the people of Huntingdonshire in 1258, but doubtless
circular throughout England.[87] A triumphant song, composed probably in
London, on the victory obtained at Lewes by the confederate barons in
1264, and the capture of Richard Earl of Cornwall, is rather less
obsolete in its style than this proclamation, as might naturally be
expected. It could not have been written later than that year, because
in the next the tables were turned on those who now exulted, by the
complete discomfiture of their party in the battle of Evesham. Several
pieces of poetry, uncertain as to their precise date, must be referred
to the latter part of this century. Robert of Gloucester, after the year
1297, since he alludes to the canonisation of St. Louis,[88] turned the
chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth into English verse; and on comparing
him with Layamon, a native of the same county, and a writer on the same
subject, it will appear that a great quantity of French had flowed into
the language since the loss of Normandy. The Anglo-Saxon inflections,
terminations, and orthography, had also undergone a very considerable
change. That the intermixture of French words was very slightly owing to
the Norman conquest will appear probable, by observing at least as
frequent an use of them in the earliest specimens of the Scottish
dialect, especially a song on the death of Alexander III. in 1285. There
is a good deal of French in this, not borrowed, probably, from England,
but directly from the original sources of imitation.
[86] Ritson’s Dissertat. on Romance. Madden’s Introduction to Havelok.
Notes of Price, in his edition of Warton. Warton himself is of no
authority in this matter. Price inclines to put most of the poems
quoted by Warton near the close of the thirteenth century.
It should here be observed, that the language underwent its
metamorphosis into English by much less rapid gradations in some
parts of the kingdom than in others. Not only the popular dialect
of many counties, especially in the north, retained long, and still
retains, a larger proportion of the Anglo-Saxon peculiarities, but
we have evidence that they were not everywhere disused in writing.
A manuscript in the Kentish dialect, if that phrase is correct,
bearing the date of 1340, is more Anglo-Saxon than any of the poems
ascribed to the thirteenth century, which we read in Warton, such
as the legends of saints or the Ormulum. This very curious fact was
first made known to the public by Mr. Thorpe, in his translation of
Cædmon, preface, p. xii.; and an account of the manuscript itself,
rather fuller than that of Mr. T., has since been given in the
catalogue of the Arundel MSS. in the British Museum.
[87] Henry’s Hist. of Britain, vol. viii., appendix. “Between 1244 and
1258,” says Sir F. Madden, “we know, was written the versification
of part of a meditation of St. Augustine, as proved by the age of
the prior, who gave the manuscript to the Durham library,” p. 49.
This, therefore, will be strictly the oldest piece of English, to
the date of which we can approach by more than conjecture.
[88] Madden’s Havelock, p. 52.
|English of the fourteenth century. Chaucer. Gower.|
51. The fourteenth century was not unproductive of men, both English and
Scots, gifted with the powers of poetry. Laurence Minot, an author
unknown to Warton, but whose poems on the wars of Edward III. are
referred by their publisher Ritson to 1352, is perhaps the first
original poet in our language that has survived; since such of his
predecessors as are now known appear to have been merely translators, or
at best amplifiers of a French or Latin original. The earliest
historical or epic narrative is due to John Barbour, archdeacon of
Aberdeen, whose long poem in the Scots dialect, The Bruce, commemorating
the deliverance of his country, seems to have been completed in 1373.
But our greatest poet of the middle ages, beyond comparison, was
Geoffrey Chaucer; and I do not know that any other country, except
Italy, produced one of equal variety in invention, acuteness in
observation, or felicity of expression. A vast interval must be made
between Chaucer and any other English poet; yet Gower, his contemporary,
though not, like him, a poet of nature’s growth, had some effect in
rendering the language less rude, and exciting a taste for verse; if he
never rises, he never sinks low; he is always sensible, polished,
perspicuous, and not prosaic in the worst sense of the word. Longlands,
the supposed author of Piers Plowman’s Vision, with far more imaginative
vigour, has a more obsolete and unrefined diction.
|General disuse of French in England.|
52. The French language was spoken by the superior classes of society in
England from the conquest to the reign of Edward III.; though it seems
probable that they were generally acquainted with English, at least in
the latter part of that period. But all letters, even of a private
nature, were written in Latin till the beginning of the reign of Edward
I., soon after 1270, when a sudden change brought in the use of
French.[89] In grammar schools boys were made to construe their Latin
into French; and in the statutes of Oriel College, Oxford, we find, in a
regulation so late as 1328, that the students shall converse together,
if not in Latin, at least in French.[90] The minutes of the corporation
of London, recorded in the Town Clerk’s office, were in French, as well
as the proceedings in parliament, and in the courts of justice;
and oral discussions were perhaps carried on in the same language,
though this is not a necessary consequence. Hence the English was seldom
written, and hardly employed in prose till after the middle of the
fourteenth century. Sir John Mandeville’s travels were written in 1356.
This is our earliest English book. Wicliffe’s translation of the Bible,
a great work that enriched the language, is referred to 1383, Trevisa’s
version of the Polychronicon of Higden was in 1385, and the Astrolabe of
Chaucer in 1392. A few public instruments were drawn up in English under
Richard II.; and about the same time, probably, it began to be employed
in epistolary correspondence of a private nature. Trevisa informs us,
that, when he wrote (1385), even gentlemen had much left off to have
their children taught French, and names the schoolmaster (John Cornwall)
who soon after 1350 brought in so great an innovation as the making his
boys read Latin into English.[91] This change from the common use of
French in the upper ranks seems to have taken place as rapidly as a
similar revolution has lately done in Germany. By a statute of 1362, (36
E. 3, c. 15,) all pleas in courts of justice are directed to be pleaded
and judged in English, on account of French being so much unknown. But
the laws, and, generally speaking, the records of parliament, continued
to be in the latter language for many years; and we learn from Sir John
Fortescue, a hundred years afterwards, that this statute itself was but
partially enforced.[92] The French language, if we take his words
literally, even in the reign of Edward IV., was spoken in affairs of
mercantile account, and in many games, the vocabulary of both being
chiefly derived from it.[93]
[89] I am indebted for this fact, which I have ventured to generalise,
to the communication of Mr. Stevenson, sub-commissioner of public
records.
[90] Si qua inter se proferant, colloquio Latino vel saltem Gallico
perfruantur. Warton, i. 6. In Merton College statutes, given in
1271, Latin alone is prescribed.
[91] The passage may be found quoted in Warton, ubi suprà, or in many
other books.
[92] “In the courts of justice they formerly used to plead in French,
till, in pursuance of a law to that purpose, that custom was
_somewhat restrained_, but not hitherto quite disused, de Laudibus
Legum Angliæ, c. xlviii.” I quote from Waterhouse’s translation;
but the Latin runs _quam plurimum_ restrictus est.
[93] Ibid.
|State of European languages about 1400.|
53. Thus by the year 1400, we find a national literature subsisting in
seven European languages, three spoken in the Spanish peninsula, the
French, the Italian, the German, and the English; from which last, the
Scots dialect need not be distinguished. Of these the Italian was the
most polished, and had to boast of the greatest writers; the French
excelled in their number and variety. Our own tongue, though it had
latterly acquired much copiousness in the hands of Chaucer and Wicliffe,
both of whom lavishly supplied it with words of French and Latin
derivation, was but just growing into a literary existence. The German,
as well as that of Valencia, seemed to decline. The former became more
precise, more abstract, more intellectual, (_geistig_), and less
sensible (_sinnlich_), (to use the words of Eichhorn), and of
consequence less fit for poetry; it fell into the hands of lawyers and
mystical theologians. The earliest German prose, a few very ancient
fragments excepted, is the collection of Saxon laws (Sachsenspiegel),
about the middle of the thirteenth century; the next the Swabian
collection (Schwabenspiegel), about 1282.[94] But these forming hardly a
part of literature, though Bouterwek praises passages of the latter for
religious eloquence, we may deem John Tauler, a Dominican friar of
Strasburg, whose influence in propagating what was called the mystical
theology, gave a new tone to his country, to be the first German writer
in prose. “Tauler,” says a modern historian of literature, “in his
German sermons, mingled many expressions invented by himself, which were
the first attempt at a philosophical language, and displayed surprising
eloquence for the age wherein he lived. It may be justly said of him,
that he first gave to prose that direction in which Luther afterwards
advanced so far.”[95] Tauler died in 1361. Meantime, as has been said
before, the nobility abandoned their love of verse, which the burghers
took up diligently, but with little spirit or genius; the common
language became barbarous and neglected, of which the strange fashion of
writing half Latin, half German, verses, is a proof.[96] This had been
common in the darker ages: we have several instances of it in
Anglo-Saxon; but it was late to adopt it in the fourteenth century.
[94] Bouterwek, p. 163. There are some novels at the end of the
thirteenth, or beginning of the fourteenth century. Ibid.
[95] Heinsius, iv. 76.
[96] Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch., i. 240.
|Ignorance of reading and writing in darker ages.|
54. The Latin writers of the middle ages were chiefly ecclesiastics. But
of these in the living tongues a large proportion were laymen. They
knew, therefore, how to commit their thoughts to writing; and hence the
ignorance characteristic of the darker ages must seem to be
passing away. This, however, is a very difficult, though interesting
question, when we come to look nearly at the gradual progress of
rudimentary knowledge. I can offer but an outline, which those who turn
more of their attention towards the subject will be enabled to correct
and supply. Before the end of the eleventh century, and especially after
the ninth, it was rare to find laymen in France who could read and
write.[97] The case was probably not better anywhere else, except in
Italy. I should incline to except Italy, on the authority of a passage
in Wippo, a German writer soon after the year 1000, who exhorts the
Emperor Henry II. to cause the sons of the nobility to be instructed in
letters, using the example of the Italians, with whom, according to him,
it was a universal practice.[98] The word clerks or clergymen became in
this and other countries synonymous with one who could write or even
read; we all know the original meaning of benefit of clergy, and the
test by which it was claimed. Yet from about the end of the eleventh, or
at least of the twelfth century, many circumstances may lead us to
believe that it was less and less a conclusive test, and that the laity
came more and more into possession of the simple elements of literature.
[97] Hist. Litt. de la France, vii. 2. Some nobles sent their children
to be educated in the schools of Charlemagne, especially those of
Germany, under Raban, Notker, Bruno, and other distinguished
abbots. But they were generally destined for the church. Meiners,
ii. 377. The signatures of laymen are often found to deeds of the
eighth century, and sometimes of the ninth. Nouv. Traité de la
Diplomatique, ii. 422. The ignorance of the laity, according to
this authority, was not strictly parallel to that of the church.
[98]
Tunc fac edictum per terram Teutonicorum
Quilibet ut dives sibi natos instruat omnes
Litterulis, legemque suam persuadeat illis,
Ut cum principibus placitandi venerit usus,
Quisque suis libris exemplum proferat illis.
Moribus his dudum vivebat Roma decenter,
His studiis tantos potuit vincere tyrannos.
Hoc servant Itali post prima crepundia cuncti.
I am indebted for this quotation to Meiners, ii. 344.
|Reasons for supposing this to have diminished after 1100.|
55. I. It will of course be admitted that all who administered or
belonged to the Roman law were masters of reading and writing, though we
do not find that they were generally ecclesiastics, even in the lowest
sense of the word, by receiving the tonsure. Some indeed were such. In
countries where the feudal law had passed from unwritten custom to
record and precedent, and had grown into as much subtlety by diffuseness
as the Roman, which was the case of England from the time of Henry II.,
the lawyers, though laymen, were unquestionably clerks or learned. II.
The convenience of such elementary knowledge to merchants, who, both in
the Mediterranean and in these parts of Europe, carried on a good deal
of foreign commerce, and indeed to all traders, may render it probable
that they were not destitute of it; though it must be confessed that the
word clerk rather seems to denote that their deficiency was supplied by
those employed under them. I do not, however, conceive that the clerks
of citizens were ecclesiastics.[99] III. If we could rely on a passage
in Ingulfus, the practice in grammar schools of construing Latin into
French was as old as the reign of the Conqueror;[100] and it seems
unlikely that this should have been confined to children educated for
the English church. IV. The poets of the north and south of France were
often men of princely or noble birth, sometimes ladies; their
versification is far too artificial to be deemed the rude product of an
illiterate mind; and to these, whose capacity of holding the pen few
will dispute, we must surely add a numerous class of readers, for whom
their poetry was designed. It may be surmised, that the itinerant
minstrels answered this end, and supplied the ignorance of the nobility.
But many ditties of the troubadours were not so well adapted to the
minstrels, who seem to have dealt more with metrical romances. Nor do I
doubt that these also were read in many a castle of France and Germany.
I will not dwell on the story of Francesca of Rimini, because no one,
perhaps, is likely to dispute that a Romagnol lady in the age of Dante
would be able to read the tale of Lancelot. But that romance had long
been written; and other ladies doubtless had read it, and possibly had
left off reading it in similar circumstances, and as little to their
advantage. The fourteenth century abounded with books in French prose;
the extant copies of some are not very few; but no argument against
their circulation could be urged from their scarcity in the
present day. It is not of course pretended that they were diffused as
extensively as printed books have been. V. The fashion of writing
private letters in French instead of Latin, which, as has been
mentioned, came in among us soon after 1270, affords perhaps a
presumption that they were written in a language intelligible to the
correspondent, because he had no longer occasion for assistance in
reading them; though they were still generally from the hand of a
secretary. But at what time this disuse of Latin began on the Continent
I cannot exactly determine. The French and Castilians, I believe, made
general use of their own languages in the latter half of the thirteenth
century.
[99] The earliest recorded bills of exchange, according to Beckmann,
Hist. of Inventions, iii. 430, are in a passage of the jurist
Baldus, and bear date 1328. But they were by no means in common use
till the next century. I do not mention this as bearing much on the
subject of the text.
[100] Et pueris etiam in scholis principia literarum Gallicè et non
Anglicè traderentur.
|Increased knowledge of writing in fourteenth century.|
56. The art of reading does not imply that of writing; it seems likely
that the one prevailed before the other. The latter was difficult to
acquire, in consequence of the regularity of characters preserved by the
clerks, and their complex system of abbreviations, which rendered the
cursive handwriting, introduced about the end of the eleventh century,
almost as operose to those who had not much experience of it as the more
stiff characters of older manuscripts. It certainly appears that even
autograph signatures are not found till a late period. Philip the Bold,
who ascended the French throne in 1272, could not write, though this is
not the case with any of his successors. I do not know that equal
ignorance is recorded of any English sovereign, though we have I think
only a series of autographs beginning with Richard II. It is said by the
authors of Nouveau Traité de la Diplomatique, Benedictines of laborious
and exact erudition, that the art of writing had become rather common
among the laity of France before the end of the thirteenth century: out
of eight witnesses to a testament in 1277 five could write their names;
at the beginning of that age, it is probable, they think, that not one
could have done so.[101] Signatures to deeds of private persons,
however, do not begin to appear till the fourteenth, and were not in
established use in France till about the middle of the fifteenth
century.[102] Indorsements upon English deeds, as well as mere
signatures, by laymen of rank, bearing date in the reign of Edward II.,
are in existence; and there is an English letter from the lady of Sir
John Pelham to her husband in 1399, which is probably one of the
earliest instances of female penmanship. By the badness of the grammar
we may presume it to be her own.[103]
[101] Vol. ii. p. 423.
[102] Ibid. p. 434, et post.
[103] I am indebted for a knowledge of this letter to the Rev. Joseph
Hunter, who recollected to have seen it in an old edition of
Collins’s Peerage. Later editions have omitted it as an unimportant
redundancy though interesting even for its contents, independently
of the value it acquires from the language. On account of its
scarcity, being only found in old editions now not in request, I
shall insert it here; and till anything else shall prefer a claim,
it may pass for the oldest private letter in the English language.
I have not kept the orthography, but have left several incoherent
and ungrammatical phrases as they stand. It was copied by Collins
from the archives of the Newcastle family.
My dear Lord,
I recommend me to your high lordship with heart and body and
all my poor might, and with all this I thank you as my dear
lord dearest and best beloved of all earthly lords I say for
me, and thank you my dear lord with all this that I say before
of your comfortable letter that ye sent me from Pontefract
that come to me on Mary Magdalene day; for by my troth I was
never so glad as when I heard by your letter that ye were
strong enough with the grace of God for to keep you from the
malice of your enemies. And dear lord if it like to your high
lordship that as soon as ye might that I might hear of your
gracious speed; which as God Almighty continue and increase.
And my dear lord if it like you for to know of my fare, I am
here by laid in manner of a siege with the county of Sussex,
Surrey, and a great parcel of Kent, so that I may nought out
no none victuals get me but with much hard. Wherefore my dear
if it like you by the advice of your wise counsel for to get
remedy of the salvation of your castle and withstand the
malice of the shires aforesaid. And also that ye be fully
informed of their great malice workers in these shires which
that haves so despitefully wrought to you, and to your castle,
to your men, and to your tenants for this country have yai
[sic] wasted for a great while. Farewell my dear lord, the
Holy Trinity you keep from your enemies, and ever send me good
tidings of you. Written at Pevensey in the castle on St. Jacob
day last past,
By your own poor
J. PELHAM.
_To my true Lord._
|Average state of knowledge in England.|
57. Laymen, among whom Chaucer and Gower are illustrious examples,
received occasionally a learned education; and indeed the great number
of gentlemen who studied in the inns of court is a conclusive proof that
they were not generally illiterate. The common law required some
knowledge of two languages. Upon the whole we may be inclined to think,
that in the year 1400, or at the accession of Henry IV., the
average instruction of an English gentleman of the first class would
comprehend common reading and writing, a tolerable familiarity with
French, and a slight tincture of Latin; the latter retained or not,
according to his circumstances and character, as school learning is at
present. This may be rather a favourable statement; but after another
generation it might be assumed, as we shall see, with more confidence as
a fair one.[104]
[104] It might be inferred from a passage in Richard of Bury, about
1343, that none but ecclesiastics could read at all. He deprecates
the putting of books into the hands of _laici_, who do not know one
side from another. And in several places it seems that he thought
they were meant for “the tonsured” alone. But a great change took
place in the ensuing half century; and I do not believe he can be
construed strictly even as to his own time.
|Invention of paper.|
58. A demand for instruction in the art of writing would increase with
the frequency of epistolary correspondence, which, where of a private or
secret nature, no one would gladly conduct by the intervention of a
secretary. Better education, more refined manners, a closer intercourse
of social life, were the primary causes of this increase in private
correspondence. But it was greatly facilitated by the invention, or,
rather, extended use, of paper as the vehicle of writing instead of
parchment; a revolution, as it may be called, of high importance,
without which both the art of writing would have been much less
practised, and the invention of printing less serviceable to mankind.
After the subjugation of Egypt by the Saracens, the importation of the
papyrus, previously in general use, came in no long time to an end; so
that, though down to the end of the seventh century all instruments in
France were written upon it, we find its place afterwards supplied by
parchment; and under the house of Charlemagne, there is hardly an
instrument upon any other material.[105] Parchment, however, a much more
durable and useful vehicle than papyrus,[106] was expensive, and its
cost not only excluded the necessary waste which a free use of writing
requires, but gave rise to the unfortunate practice of erasing
manuscripts in order to replace them with some new matter. This was
carried to a great extent, and has occasioned the loss of precious
monuments of antiquity, as is now demonstrated by instances of their
restoration.
[105] Montfaucon, in Acad. des Inscript., vol. vi. But Muratori says
that the papyrus was little used in the seventh century, though
writings on it may be found as late as the tenth, Dissert. xliii.
This dissertation relates to the condition of letters in Italy as
far as the year 1100; as the xlivth does to their subsequent
history.
[106] Heeren justly remarks (I do not know that others have done the
same), of how great importance the introduction of parchment, to
which, and afterwards to paper, the old perishable papyraceous
manuscripts were transferred, has been to the preservation of
literature. P. 74.
|Linen paper when first used.|
|Cotton paper.|
59. The date of the invention of our present paper, manufactured from
linen rags, or of its introduction into Europe, has long been the
subject of controversy. That paper made from cotton was in use sooner,
is admitted on all sides. Some charters written upon that kind not later
than the tenth century were seen by Montfaucon; and it is even said to
be found in papal bulls of the ninth.[107] The Greeks, however, from
whom the west of Europe is conceived to have borrowed this sort of
paper, did not much employ it in manuscript books, according to
Montfaucon, till the twelfth century, from which time it came into
frequent use among them. Muratori had seen no writing upon this material
older than 1100, though, in deference to Montfaucon, he admits its
employment earlier.[108] It certainly was not greatly used in Italy
before the thirteenth century. Among the Saracens of Spain, on the other
hand, as well as those of the East, it was of much greater antiquity.
The Greeks called it _charta Damascena_, having been manufactured
or sold in the city of Damascus. And Casiri, in his catalogue of the
Arabic manuscripts in the Escurial, desires us to understand that they
are written on paper of cotton or linen, but generally the latter,
unless the contrary be expressed.[109] Many in this catalogue were
written before the thirteenth, or even the twelfth century.
[107] Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscriptions, vi. 604. Nouveau Traité de
Diplomatique, i. 517. Savigny, Gesch. des Römischen Rechts, iii.
534.
[108] Dissert. xliii.
[109] Materiæ, nisi membraneus sit codex, nulla mentio: cæteros
bombycinos, ac, maximam partem, chartaceos esse colligas.
Præfatio, p. 7.
|Linen paper as old as 1100.|
60. This will lead us to the more disputed question as to the antiquity
of linen paper. The earliest distinct instance I have found, and which I
believe has hitherto been overlooked, is an Arabic version of the
aphorisms of Hippocrates, the manuscript bearing the date of 1100. This
Casiri observes to be on linen paper, not as in itself remarkable, but
as accounting for its injury by wet. It does not appear whether
it were written in Spain, or, like many in that catalogue, brought from
Egypt or the East.[110]
[110] Casiri, N. 787. Codex anno Christi 1100, chartaceus, &c.
|Known to Peter of Clugni.|
61. The authority of Casiri must confirm beyond doubt a passage in Peter
Abbot of Clugni, which has perplexed those who place the invention of
linen paper very low. In a treatise against the Jews, he speaks of
books, ex pellibus arietum, hircorum, vel vitulorum, sive ex biblis vel
juncis Orientalium paludum, aut ex _rasuris veterum pannorum_, seu
ex aliâ qualibet, forte viliore materia compactos. A late English writer
contends that nothing can be meant by the last words, “unless that all
sorts of inferior substances capable of being so applied, among them,
perhaps, hemp and the remains of cordage, were used at this period in
the manufacture of paper.”[111] It certainly at least seems reasonable
to interpret the words “ex rasuris veterum pannorum,” of linen rags; and
when I add that Peter Cluniacensis passed a considerable time in Spain
about 1141, there can remain, it seems, no rational doubt that the
Saracens of the peninsula were acquainted with that species of paper,
though perhaps it was as yet unknown in every other country.
[111] See a memoir on an ancient manuscript of Aratus, by Mr. Ottley,
in Archæeologia, vol. xxvi.
|And in 12th and 13th centuries.|
62. Andrès asserts, on the authority of the Memoirs of the Academy of
Barcelona, that a treaty between the kings of Arragon and Castile,
bearing the date of 1178, and written upon linen paper, is extant in the
archives of that city.[112] He alleges several other instances in the
next age; when Mabillon, who denies that paper of linen was then used in
charters, which, indeed, no one is likely to maintain, mentions, as the
earliest specimen he had seen in France, a letter of Joinville to St.
Louis, which must be older than 1270. Andrès refers the invention to the
Saracens of Spain, using the fine flax of Valencia and Murcia; and
conjectures that it was brought into use among the Spaniards themselves
by Alfonso of Castile.[113]
[112] Vol. ii. p. 73. Andrès has gone much at length into this subject,
and has collected several important passages which do not appear in
my text. The letter of Joinville has been supposed to be addressed
to Louis Hutin in 1314, but this seems inconsistent with the
writer’s age.
[113] Id. p. 84. He cannot mean that it was never employed before
Alfonso’s time, of which he has already given instances.
|Paper of mixed materials.|
63. In the opinion of the English writer to whom we have above referred,
paper, from a very early period, was manufactured of mixed materials,
which have sometimes been erroneously taken for pure cotton. We have in
the Tower of London a letter addressed to Henry III. by Raymond, son of
Raymond VI., Count of Toulouse, and consequently between 1216 and 1222,
when the latter died, upon very strong paper, and certainly made, in Mr.
Ottley’s judgment, of mixed materials; while in several of the time of
Edward I., written upon genuine cotton paper of no great thickness, the
fibres of cotton present themselves everywhere at the backs of the
letters so distinctly that they seem as if they might even now be spun
into thread.[114]
[114] Archæologia, ibid. I may however observe, that a gentleman as
experienced as Mr. Ottley himself, inclines to think the letter of
Raymond written on paper wholly made of cotton, though of better
manufacture than usual.
|Invention of paper placed by some too low.|
64. Notwithstanding this last statement, which I must confirm by my own
observation, and of which no one can doubt who has looked at the letters
themselves, several writers of high authority, such as Tiraboschi and
Savigny, persist not only in fixing the invention of linen paper very
low, even after the middle of the fourteenth century, but in maintaining
that it is undistinguishable from that made of cotton, except by the eye
of a manufacturer.[115] Were this indeed true, it would be sufficient
for the purpose we have here in view, which is not to trace the origin
of a particular discovery, but the employment of a useful vehicle of
writing. If it be true that cotton paper was fabricated in Italy of so
good a texture that it cannot be discerned from linen, it must be
considered as of equal utility. It is not the case with the
letters on cotton paper in our English repositories; most, if not all,
of which were written in France or Spain. But I have seen in the Chapter
House at Westminster a letter written from Gascony about 1315, to Hugh
Despencer, upon thin paper, to all appearance made like that now in use,
and with a water mark. Several others of a similar appearance, in the
same repository, are of rather later time. There is also one in the
King’s Remembrancer’s Office of the 11th of Edward III. (1337 or 1338),
containing the accounts of the King’s ambassadors to the court of
Holland and probably written in that country. This paper has a water
mark, and if it is not of linen, is at least not easily distinguishable.
Bullet declares that he saw at Besançon a deed of 1302 on linen paper:
several are alleged to exist in Germany before the middle of the
century; and Lambinet mentions, though but on the authority of a
periodical publication, a register of expenses from 1323 to 1354, found
in a church at Caen, written on two hundred and eight sheets of that
substance.[116] One of the Cottonian manuscripts (Galba, B. I.) is
called Codex Chartaceus in the catalogue. It contains a long series of
public letters, chiefly written in the Netherlands, from an early part
of the reign of Edward III. to that of Henry IV. But upon examination I
find the title not quite accurate; several letters, and especially the
earliest, are written on parchment, and paper does not appear at soonest
till near the end of Edward’s reign.[117] Sir Henry Ellis has said that
“very few instances indeed occur before the fifteenth century of letters
written upon paper.”[118] The use of cotton paper was by no means
general, or even, I believe, frequent, except in Spain and Italy,
perhaps also in the south of France. Nor was it much employed even in
Italy for books. Savigny tells us there are few manuscripts of law books
among the multitude that exist which are not written on parchment.
[115] Tiraboschi, v. 85. Savigny, Gesch. des Römischen Rechts, iii.
534. He relies on a book I have not seen, Wehrs vom Papier. Hall,
1789. This writer, it is said, contends that the words of Peter of
Clugni, ex rasuris veterum pannorum, mean cotton paper. Heeren, p.
208. Lambinet, on the other hand, translates them, without
hesitation, “chiffons de linge,” Hist. de l’Origine de
l’Imprimerie, i. 93.
Andrès has pointed out, p. 70, that Maffei merely says he has seen
no paper of linen earlier than 1300, and no instrument on that
material older than one of 1367, which he found among his own
family deeds. Tiraboschi, overlooking this distinction, quotes
Maffei for his own opinion as to the lateness of the invention.
[116] Lambinet, ubi suprà.
[117] Andrès, p. 68, mentions a note written in 1342, in the Cotton
library, as the earliest English specimen of linen paper. I do not
know to what this refers; in the above-mentioned Codex Chartaceus
is a letter of 1341, but it is on parchment.
[118] Ellis’s Original Letters, i. 1.
|Not at first very important.|
65. It will be manifest from what has been said how greatly Robertson
has been mistaken in his position, that “in the eleventh century the art
of making paper, in the manner now become universal, was invented, by
means of which not only the number of manuscripts increased but the
study of the sciences was wonderfully facilitated.”[119] Even Ginguéné,
better informed on such subjects than Robertson, has intimated something
of the same kind. But paper, whenever, or wherever invented, was very
sparingly used, and especially in manuscript books, among the French,
Germans, or English, or linen paper, even among the Italians, till near
the close of the period which this chapter comprehends. Upon the “study
of the sciences” it could as yet have had very little effect. The vast
importance of the invention was just beginning to be discovered. It is
to be added, as a remarkable circumstance, that the earliest linen paper
was of very good manufacture, strong and handsome, though perhaps too
much like card for general convenience; and every one is aware that the
first printed books are frequently beautiful in the quality of their
paper.
[119] Hist. of Charles V. vol. i. note 10. Heeren inclines to the same
opinion, p. 200.
|Importance of legal studies.|
66. III. The application of general principles of justice to the
infinitely various circumstances which may arise in the disputes of men
with each other is in itself an admirable discipline of the moral and
intellectual faculties. Even where the primary rules of right and policy
have been obscured in some measure by a technical and arbitrary system,
which is apt to grow up, perhaps inevitably, in the course of
civilisation, the mind gains in precision and acuteness, though at the
expense of some important qualities; and a people wherein an artificial
jurisprudence is cultivated, requiring both a regard to written
authority, and the constant exercise of a discriminating judgment upon
words, must be deemed to be emerging from ignorance. Such was the
condition of Europe in the twelfth century. The feudal customs, long
unwritten, though latterly become more steady by tradition, were in some
countries reduced into treatises: we have our own Glanvil in the reign
of Henry II., and in the next century much was written upon the national
laws in various parts of Europe. Upon these it is not my intention to
dwell; but the importance of the civil law in its connection with
ancient learning, as well as with moral and political science, renders
it deserving of a place in any general account either of mediæval or
modern literature.
|Roman laws never wholly unknown.|
67. That the Roman laws, such as they subsisted in the western empire at
the time of its dismemberment in the fifth century, were received
in the new kingdoms of the Gothic, Lombard, and Carlovingian dynasties,
as the rule of those who by birth and choice submitted to them, was
shown by Muratori and other writers of the last century. This subject
has received additional illustration from the acute and laborious
Savigny, who has succeeded in tracing sufficient evidence of what had
been, in fact, stated by Muratori, that not only an abridgment of the
Theodosian code, but that of Justinian, and even the Pandects, were
known in different parts of Europe long before the epoch formerly
assigned for the restoration of that jurisprudence.[120] The popular
story, already much discredited, that the famous copy of the Pandects,
now in the Laurentian library at Florence, was brought to Pisa from
Amalfi, after the capture of that city by Roger king of Sicily with the
aid of a Pisan fleet in 1135, and became the means of diffusing an
acquaintance with that portion of the law through Italy, is shown by him
not only to rest on very slight evidence, but to be unquestionably, in
the latter and more important circumstance, destitute of all
foundation.[121] It is still indeed an undetermined question whether
other existing manuscripts of the Pandects are not derived from this
illustrious copy, which alone contains the entire fifty books, and which
has been preserved with a traditional veneration indicating some
superiority; but Savigny has shown, that Peter of Valence, a jurist of
the eleventh century, made use of an independent manuscript; and it is
certain that the Pandects were the subject of legal studies before the
siege of Amalfi.
[120] It can be no disparagement to Savigny, who does not claim
perfect originality, to say that Muratori, in his 44th
dissertation, gives several instances of quotations from the
Pandects in writers older than the capture of Amalfi.
[121] Savigny, Geschichte des Römischen Rechts in mittel alter, iii. 83.
|Irnerius, his first successors.|
68. Irnerius, by universal testimony, was the founder of all learned
investigation into the laws of Justinian. He gave lectures upon them at
Bologna his native city, not long, in Savigny’s opinion, after the
commencement of the century.[122] And besides this oral instruction, he
began the practice of making glosses, or short marginal explanations, on
the law books, with the whole of which he was acquainted. We owe also to
him, according to ancient opinion, though much controverted in later
times, an epitome, called the Authentica, of what Gravina calls the
prolix and difficult (salebrosis atque garrulis) Novels of Justinian,
arranged according to the titles of the Code. The most eminent
successors of this restorer of the Roman law during the same century
were Martinus Gosias, Bulgarus, and Placentinus. They were, however, but
a few among many interpreters, whose glosses have been partly, though
very imperfectly preserved. The love of equal liberty and just laws in
the Italian cities rendered the profession of jurisprudence exceedingly
honourable; the doctors of Bologna and other universities were
frequently called to the office of podestà, or criminal judge, in these
small republics; in Bologna itself they were officially members of the
smaller or secret council; and their opinions, which they did not render
gratuitously, were sought with the respect that had been shown at Rome
to their ancient masters of the age of Severus.
[122] Vol. iv. p. 16. Some have erroneously thought Irnerius a German.
|Their glosses.|
69. A gloss, γλωσσα [glôssa], properly meant a word from a foreign
language, or an obsolete or poetical word, or whatever requires
interpretation. It was afterwards used for the interpretation itself;
and this sense, which is not strictly classical, maybe found in Isidore,
though some have imagined Irnerius himself to have first employed
it.[123] In the twelfth century, it was extended from a single word to
an entire expository sentence. The first glosses were interlinear; they
were afterwards placed in the margin, and extended finally in some
instances to a sort of running commentary on an entire book. These were
called an Apparatus.[124]
[123] Alcuim defines glossa, “unius verbi vel nominis interpretatio.”
Ducange, præfat. in Glossar., p. 38.
[124] Savigny, iii. 519.
|Abridgments of laws. Accursius’s Corpus Glossatum.|
70. Besides these glosses on obscure passages, some lawyers attempted to
abridge the body of the law. Placentinus wrote a summary of the Code and
Institutes. But this was held inferior to that of Azo, which appeared
before 1220. Hugolinus gave a similar abridgment of the Pandects. About
the same time, or a little after, a scholar of Azo, Accursius of
Florence, undertook his celebrated work, a collection of the glosses,
which, in the century that had elapsed since the time of Irnerius, had
grown to an enormous extent, and were of course not always consistent.
He has inserted little, probably, of his own, but exercised a
judgment, not perhaps a very enlightened one, in the selection of his
authorities. Thus was compiled his Corpus Juris Glossatum, commonly
called Glossa, or Glossa Ordinaria: a work, says Eichhorn, as remarkable
for its barbarous style and gross mistakes in history as for the
solidity of its judgments and practical distinctions. Gravina, after
extolling the conciseness, acuteness, skill, and diligence in comparing
remote passages, and in reconciling apparent inconsistencies, which
distinguished Accursius, remarks the injustice of some moderns, who
reproach his work with the ignorance inevitable in his age, and seem to
think the chance of birth which has thrown them into more enlightened
times, a part of their personal merit.[125]
[125] Origines Juris, p. 184.
|Character of early jurists.|
71. Savigny has taken still higher ground in his admiration, as we may
call it, of the early jurists, those from the appearance of Irnerius to
the publication of the Accursian body of glosses. For the execution of
this work indeed he testifies no very high respect; Accursius did not
sufficient justice to his predecessors; and many of the most valuable
glosses are still buried in the dust of unpublished manuscripts.[126]
But the men themselves deserve our highest praise. The school of
Irnerius rose suddenly; for in earlier writers we find no intelligent
use, or critical interpretation, of the passages they cite. To reflect
upon every text, to compare it with every clause or word that might
illustrate its meaning in the somewhat chaotic mass of the Pandects and
Code, was reserved for these acute and diligent investigators.
“Interpretation,” says Savigny, “was considered the first and most
important object of glossers, as it was of oral instructors. By an
unintermitting use of the original law-books, they obtained that full
and lively acquaintance with their contents, which enabled them to
compare different passages with the utmost acuteness, and with much
success. It may be reckoned a characteristic merit of many glossers,
that they keep the attention always fixed on the immediate subject of
explanation, and, in the richest display of comparisons with other
passages of the law, never deviate from their point into anything too
indefinite and general; superior often in this to the most learned
interpreters of the French and Dutch schools, and capable of giving a
lesson even to ourselves. Nor did the glossers by any means slight the
importance of laying a sound critical basis for interpretation, but on
the contrary, laboured earnestly in the recension and correction of the
text.”[127]
[126] Vol. v. pp. 258-267.
[127] Vol. v. pp. 199-211.
72. These warm eulogies afford us an instance, to which there are many
parallels, of such vicissitudes in literary reputation, that the wheel
of fame, like that of fortune, seems never to be at rest. For a long
time, it had been the fashion to speak in slighting terms of these early
jurists; and the passage above quoted from Gravina is in a much more
candid tone than was usual in his age. Their trifling verbal
explanations of _etsi_ by _quamvis_, or _admodum_ by _valde_; their
strange ignorance in deriving the name of the Tiber from the Emperor
Tiberius, in supposing that Ulpian and Justinian lived before Christ, in
asserting that Papinian was put to death by Mark Antony, and even in
interpreting _pontifex_ by _papa_ or _episcopus_, were the topics of
ridicule to those whom Gravina has so well reproved.[128] Savigny, who
makes a similar remark, that we learn, without perceiving it, and
without any personal merit, a multitude of things which it was
impossible to know in the twelfth century, defends his favourite
glossers in the best manner he can, by laying part of the blame on the
bad selection of Accursius, and by extolling the mental vigour which
struggled through so many difficulties.[129] Yet he has the candour to
own, that this rather enhances the respect due to the men, than the
value of their writings; and, without much acquaintance with the ancient
glossers, one may presume to think, that in explaining the Pandects, a
book requiring, beyond any other that has descended to us, an extensive
knowledge of the language and antiquities of Rome, their deficiencies,
if to be measured by the instances we have given, or by the general
character of their age, must require a perpetual exercise of our lenity
and patience.
[128] Gennari, author of Respublica Jurisconsultorum, a work of the
last century, who under colour of a fiction, gives rather an
entertaining account of the principal jurists, exhibits some
curious specimens of the ignorance of the Accursian interpreters,
such as those in the text. See too the article Accursius in Bayle.
[129] v. 213.
|Decline of jurists after Accursius.|
73. This great compilation of Accursius made an epoch in the annals of
jurisprudence. It put an end in great measure to the oral explanations
of lecturers which had prevailed before. It restrained at the same time
the ingenuity of interpretation. The glossers became the sole
authorities so that it grew into a maxim,--No one can go wrong who
follows a gloss: and some said, a gloss was worth a hundred texts.[130]
In fact, the original was continually unintelligible to a student. But
this was accompanied, according to the distinguished historian of
mediæval jurisprudence, by a decline of the science. The jurists in the
latter part of the thirteenth century are far inferior to the school of
Irnerius. It might be possible to seek a general cause, as men are now
always prone to do, in the loss of self-government in many of the
Italian republics. But Savigny, superior to this affectation of
philosophy, admits that this is neither a cause adequate in itself, nor
chronologically parallel to the decline of jurisprudence. We must
therefore look upon it as one of those revolutions, so ordinary and so
unaccountable, in the history of literature, where, after a period
fertile in men of great talents, there ensues, perhaps with no
unfavourable change in the diffusion of knowledge, a pause in that
natural fecundity, without which all our endeavours to check a
retrograde movement of the human mind will be of no avail. The
successors of Accursius in the thirteenth century contented themselves
with an implicit deference to the glosses; but this is rather a proof of
their inferiority than its cause.[131]
[130] Bayle, ubi suprà. Eichhorn, Gesch. der Litteratur, ii. 461.
Savigny, v. 268.
[131] Savigny, v. 320.
|Respect paid to him at Bologna.|
74. It has been the peculiar fortune of Accursius, that his name has
always stood in a representative capacity, to engross the praise, or
sustain the blame, of the great body of glossers from whom he compiled.
One of those proofs of national gratitude and veneration was paid to his
memory, which it is the more pleasing to recount, that, from the
fickleness and insensibility of mankind, they do not very frequently
occur. The city of Bologna was divided into the factions of Lambertazzi
and Gieremei. The former, who were Ghibelins, having been wholly
overthrown, and excluded, according to the practice of Italian
republics, from all civil power, a law was made in 1306, that the family
of Accursius, who had been on the vanquished side, should enjoy all the
privileges of the victorious Guelf party, in regard to the memory of one
“by whose means the city had been frequented by students, and its fame
had been spread through the whole world.”[132]
[132] Ib. v. 268.
|Scholastic jurists. Bartolus.|
75. In the next century a new race of lawyers arose, who, by a different
species of talent, almost eclipsed the greatest of their predecessors.
These have been called the scholastic jurists, the glory of the
schoolmen having excited an emulous desire to apply their dialectic
methods in jurisprudence.[133] Of these the most conspicuous were
Bartolus and Baldus, especially the former, whose authority became still
higher than that of the Accursian glossers. Yet Bartolus, if we may
believe Eichhorn, content with the glosses, did not trouble himself
about the text, which he was too ignorant of Roman antiquity, and even
of the Latin language, unless he is much belied, to expound.[134] “He is
so fond of distinctions,” says Gravina, “that he does not divide his
subject, but breaks it to pieces, so that the fragments are, as it were,
dispersed by the wind. But, whatever harm he might do to the just
interpretation of the Roman law as a positive code, he was highly useful
to the practical lawyer by the number of cases his fertile mind
anticipated; for though many of these were unlikely to occur, yet his
copiousness and subtlety of distinction is such that he seldom leaves
those who consult him quite at a loss.”[135] Savigny, who rates Bartolus
much below the older lawyers, gives him credit for original thoughts, to
which his acquaintance with the practical exercise of justice gave rise.
The older jurists were chiefly professors of legal science, rather than
conversant with forensic causes; and this has produced an opposition
between theory and practice in the Roman law, to which we have not much
analogous in our own, but the remains of which are said to be still
discernible in the continental jurisprudence.[136]
[133] The employment of logical forms in law is not new; instances of
it may be found in the earlier jurists. Savigny, v. 330; vi. 6.
[134] Gesch. der Litteratur, ii. 449. Bartolus even said, de _verbibus_
non curat jurisconsultus. Eichhorn gives no authority for this, but
Meiners, from whom perhaps he took it, quotes Comnenus, Historia
Archigymnasii Patavini. Vergleichung der Sitten, ii. 646. It seems,
however, incredible.
[135] Origines Juris, p. 191.
[136] Savigny, vi. 138; v. 201. Of Bartolus and his school it is said
by Grotius, Temporum suorum infelicitas impedimento sæpe fuit, quo
minus recte leges illas intelligerent; satis solertes alioqui ad
indagandam æqui bonique naturam; quo factum ut sæpe optimi sint
condendi juris auctores, etiam tunc cum conditi juris mali sunt
interpretes. Prolegomena in Jus Belli et Pacis.
|Inferiority of jurists in fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.|
76. The later expositors of law, those after the age of Accursius, are
reproached with a tedious prolixity, which the scholastic refinements of
disputation were apt to produce. They were little more conversant with
philological and historical literature than their predecessors, and had
less diligence in that comparison of texts, by which an acute
understanding might compensate the want of subsidiary learning. In the
use of language, the jurists, with hardly any exceptions, are uncouth
and barbarous. The great school of Bologna sent out all the earlier
glossers. In the fourteenth century this famous university fell rather
into decline; the jealousy of neighbouring states subjected its
graduates to some disadvantage; and while the study of jurisprudence was
less efficacious, it was more diffused. Italy alone had produced great
masters of the science; the professors in France and Germany during the
middle ages have left no great reputation.[137]
[137] In this slight sketch of the early lawyers, I have been chiefly
guided, as the reader will have perceived, by Gravina and Savigny,
and also by a very neat and succinct sketch in Eichhorn, Gesch. der
Litteratur, ii. 448-464. The Origines Juris of the first have
enjoyed a considerable reputation. But Savigny says with severity,
that Gravina has thought so much more of his style than his
subject, that all he says of the old jurists is perfectly worthless
through its emptiness and want of criticism. iii. 72. Of
Terrasson’s Histoire de la Jurisprudence Romaine he speaks in still
lower terms.
|Classical literature and taste in dark ages.|
77. IV. The universities however, with their metaphysics derived from
Aristotle through the medium of Arabian interpreters who did not
understand him, and with the commentaries of Arabian philosophers who
perverted him,[138] the development of the modern languages with their
native poetry, much more the glosses of the civil lawyers, are not what
is commonly meant by the revival of learning. In this we principally
consider the increased study of the Latin and Greek languages, and in
general of what we call classical antiquity. In the earliest of the dark
ages, as far back as the sixth century, the course of liberal
instruction was divided into the trivium and the quadrivium; the former
comprising grammar, logic, and rhetoric; the latter music, arithmetic,
geometry, and astronomy. But these sciences, which seem tolerably
comprehensive, were in reality taught most superficially, or not at all.
The Latin grammar, in its merest rudiments, from a little treatise
ascribed to Donatus and extracts of Priscian,[139] formed the only
necessary part of the trivium in ecclesiastical schools. Even this seems
to have been introduced afresh by Bede and the writers of the eighth
century, who much excel their immediate predecessors in avoiding gross
solecisms of grammar.[140] It was natural that in England, where Latin
had never been a living tongue, it should be taught better than in
countries which still affected to speak it. From the time of Charlemagne
it was lost on the continent in common use, and preserved only through
glossaries, of which there were many. The style of Latin in the dark
period, independently of its want of verbal purity, is in very bad
taste; and none seem to have been more inflated and empty than the
English.[141] The distinction between the ornaments adapted to poetry
and to prose had long been lost, and still more the just sense of
moderation in their use. It cannot be wondered at that a vicious
rhetoric should have overspread the writings of the seventh and eighth
centuries, when there is so much of it in the third and fourth.
[138] It has been a subject of controversy, whether the physical and
metaphysical writings of Aristotle were made known to Europe at the
beginning of the thirteenth century, through Constantinople, or
through Arabic translations. The former supposition rests certainly
on what seems good authority, that of Rigord, a contemporary
historian. But the latter is now more generally received, and is
said to be proved in a dissertation which I have not seen, by M.
Jourdain. Tennemann, Manuel de l’Hist. de la Philos., i. 355. These
Arabic translations were themselves not made directly from the
Greek, but from the Syriac. It is thought by Buhle that the logic
of Aristotle was known in Europe sooner.
[139] Fleury, xvii. 18. Andrès, ix. 284.
[140] Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch. ii. 73. The reader is requested to
distinguish, at least if he cares about references, Eichhorn’s
Allgemeine Geschichte der Cultur, from his Geschichte der
Litteratur, with which, in future, we shall have more concern.
[141] Fleury, xvii. 23. Ducange, preface to Glossary, p. 10. The
Anglo-Saxon charters are distinguished for their pompous absurdity;
and it is the general character of our early historians. One
Ethelwerd is the worst; but William of Malmsbury himself, perhaps
in some measure by transcribing passages from others, sins greatly
in this respect.
|Improvement in tenth and eleventh centuries.|
78. Eichhorn fixes upon the latter part of the tenth century, as an
epoch from which we are to deduce, in its beginnings, the restoration of
classical taste; it was then that the scholars left the meagre
introductions to rhetoric formerly used for the works of Cicero
and Quintilian.[142] In the school of Paderborn, not long after 1000,
Sallust and Statius, as well as Virgil and Horace, appear to have been
read.[143] Several writers, chiefly historical, about this period, such
as Lambert of Aschaffenburg, Ditmar, Wittikind, are tolerably exempt
from the false taste of preceding times, and, if they want a truly
classical tone, express themselves with some spirit.[144] Gerbert, who
by an uncommon quickness of parts shone in very different provinces of
learning, and was beyond question the most accomplished man of the dark
ages, displays in his epistles a thorough acquaintance with the best
Latin authors and a taste for their excellencies.[145] He writes with
the feelings of Petrarch, but in a less auspicious period. Even in
England, if we may quote again the famous passage of Ingulfus, the
rhetorical works of Cicero, as well as some book which he calls
Aristotle, were read at Oxford under Edward the Confessor. But we have
no indisputable name in the eleventh century, not even that of John de
Garlandia, whose Floretus long continued to be a text-book in schools.
This is a poor collection of extracts from Latin authors. It is
uncertain whether or not the compiler were an Englishman.[146]
[142] Allg. Gesch., ii. 79.
[143] Viguit Horatius magnus atque Virgilius, Crispus et Sallustius,
et Urbanus Statius, ludusque fuit omnibus insudare versibus et
dictaminibus jucundisque cantibus. Vita Meinwerci in Leibnitz
Script. Brunsvic. apud Eichhorn, ii. 399.
[144] Eichhorn, Gesch. der Litteratur, i. 807. Heeren, p. 157.
[145] Heeren, p. 165. It appears that Cicero de republicâ was extant
in his time.
[146] Hist. Litt. de la France, viii. 84. They give very inconclusive
reasons for robbing England of this writer, who certainly taught
here under William the Conqueror, if not before, but it is possible
enough that he came over from France. They say there is no such
sirname in England as Garland, which happens to be a mistake; but
the native English did not often bear sirnames in that age.
The Anglo-Saxon clergy were inconceivably ignorant, ut cæteris
esset stupori qui grammaticam didicisset. Will. Malmsbury, p. 101.
This leads us to doubt the Aristotle and Cicero of Ingulfus.
|Lanfranc, and his schools.|
79. It is admitted on all hands, that a remarkable improvement both in
style and in the knowledge of Latin antiquity was perceptible towards
the close of the eleventh century. The testimony of contemporaries
attributes an extensively beneficial influence to Lanfranc. This
distinguished person, born at Pavia in 1005, and early known as a
scholar in Italy, passed into France about 1042 to preside over a school
at Bec in Normandy. It became conspicuous under his care for the studies
of the age, dialectics and theology. It is hardly necessary to add, that
Lanfranc was raised by the Conqueror to the primacy of England, and thus
belongs to our own history. Anselm, his successor both in the monastery
of Bec and the see of Canterbury, far more renowned than Lanfranc for
metaphysical acuteness, has shared with him the honour of having
diffused a better taste for philological literature over the schools of
France. It has, however, been denied by a writer of high authority, that
either any knowledge, or any love of classical literature, can be traced
in the works of the two archbishops. They are in this respect, he says,
much inferior to those of Lupus, Gerbert, and others of the preceding
ages.[147] His contemporaries, who extol the learning of Lanfranc in
hyperbolical terms, do so in very indifferent Latin of their own; but it
appears indeed more than doubtful whether the earliest of them meant to
praise him for this peculiar species of literature.[148] The
Benedictines of St. Maur cannot find much to say for him in this
respect. They allege that he and Anselm wrote better than was then
usual; a very moderate compliment. Yet they ascribe a great influence to
their public lectures, and to the schools which were formed on the model
of Bec.[149] And perhaps we could not without injustice deprive Lanfranc
of the credit he has obtained for the promotion of polite letters. There
is at least sufficient evidence that they had begun to revive in France
not long after his time.
[147] Heeren, p. 185. There seems certainly nothing above the common in
Lanfranc’s epistles.
[148] Milo Crispinus, Abbot of Westminster, in his life of Lanfranc
says of him, “Fuit quidam vir magnus Italia oriundus, quem
Latinitas in antiquum scientiæ statum ab eo restituta tota supremum
debito cum amore et honore agnoscit magistrum, nomine Lanfrancus.”
This passage, which is frequently quoted, surely refers to his
eminence in dialectics. The words of William of Malmsbury go
farther. “Is literatura perinsignis liberales artes quæ jamdudum
sorduerant, a Latio in Gallias vocans acumine suo expolivit.”
[149] Hist. Litt. de la France, vii. 17, 107; viii. 304. The seventh
volume of this long and laborious work begins with an excellent
account of the literary condition of France in the eleventh
century. At the beginning of the ninth volume we have a similar
view of the twelfth. The continuation, of which four volumes have
already been published at Paris, I have not seen. It has but begun
to break ground, if I may so say, in the thirteenth century, as I
find from the Journal des Savans. The laboriousness of the French,
as well as the encouragement they receive from their government,
are above all praise, and should be our own shame; but their
prolixity now and then defeats the object. The magnificent work,
the Ordonnances des Rois de France, is a proof of this; time gains
a march on the successive volumes, and the laws of four years are
published at the end of five.
|Italy--Vocabulary of Papias.|
80. The signs of gradual improvement in Italy during the eleventh
century are very perceptible; several schools, among which those of
Milan and the convent of Monte Cassino are most eminent, were
established; and some writers such as Peter Damiani and Humbert, have
obtained praise for rather more elegance and polish of style than had
belonged to their predecessors.[150] The Latin vocabulary of Papias was
finished in 1053. This is a compilation from the grammars and glossaries
of the sixth and seventh centuries; but though many of his words are of
very low Latinity, and his etymologies, which are those of his masters,
absurd, he both shows a competent degree of learning, and a regard to
profane literature, unusual in the darker ages, and symptomatic of a
more liberal taste.[151]
[150] Bettinelli, Risorgimento d’Italia dopo il mille. Tiraboschi,
iii. 248.
[151] The date of the vocabulary of Papias had been placed by Scaliger,
who says he has as many errors as words, in the thirteenth century.
But Gaspar Barthius, in his Adversaria, c. i., after calling him,
“veterum Glossographorum compactor non semper futilis,” observes,
that Papias mentions an Emperor, Henry II., as then living, and
thence fixes the æra of his book in the early part of the eleventh
century, in which he is followed by Bayle, art. Balbi. It is rather
singular that neither of those writers recollected the usage of the
Italians to reckon as Henry II. the prince whom the Germans call
Henry III., Henry the Fowler not being included by them in the
imperial list: and Bayle himself quotes a writer, unpublished in
the age of Barthius, who places Papias in the year 1053. This date
I believe is given by Papias himself. Tiraboschi, iii. 300. A
pretty full account of the Latin glossaries before and after Papias
will be found in the preface to Ducange, p. 38.
|Influence of Italy upon Europe.|
81. It may be said with some truth, that Italy supplied the fire, from
which other nations in this first, as afterwards in the second æra of
the revival of letters, lighted their own torches. Lanfranc, Anselm,
Peter Lombard, the founder of systematic theology in the twelfth
century, Irnerius, the restorer of jurisprudence, Gratian, the author of
the first compilation of canon law, the school of Salerno, that guided
medical art in all countries, the first dictionaries of the Latin
tongue, the first treatise of algebra, the first great work that makes
an epoch in anatomy, are as truly and exclusively the boast of Italy, as
the restoration of Greek literature and of classical taste in the
fifteenth century.[152] But if she were the first to propagate an
impulse towards intellectual excellence in the rest of Europe, it must
be owned, that France and England, in this dawn of literature and
science, went in many points of view far beyond her.
[152] Bettinelli, Risorgimento d’Italia, p. 71.
|Increased copying of manuscripts.|
82. Three religious orders, all scions from the great Benedictine stock,
that of Clugni, which dates from the first part of the tenth century,
the Carthusians, founded in 1084, and the Cistercians, in 1098,
contributed to propagate classical learning.[153] The monks of these
foundations exercised themselves in copying manuscripts; the arts of
calligraphy, and, not long afterwards, of illumination, became their
pride; a more cursive handwriting and a more convenient system of
abbreviations were introduced; and thus from the twelfth century we find
a great increase of manuscripts, though transcribed mechanically, as a
monastic duty, and often with much incorrectness. The abbey of Clugni
had a rich library of Greek and Latin authors. But few monasteries of
the Benedictine rule were destitute of one; it was their pride to
collect, and their business to transcribe, books.[154] These were, in a
vast proportion, such as we do not highly value at the present day; yet
almost all we do possess of Latin classical literature, with the
exception of a small number of more ancient manuscripts, is owing to the
industry of these monks. In that age, there was perhaps less zeal for
literature in Italy, and less practice in copying, than in France.[155]
This shifting of intellectual exertion from one country to another is
not peculiar to the middle ages; but, in regard to them, it has not
always been heeded by those who, using the trivial metaphor of light and
darkness, which it is not easy to avoid, have too much considered Europe
as a single point under a receding or advancing illumination.
[153] Fleury. Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 113.
[154] Ibid. ix. 139.
[155] Heeren, p. 197.
|John of Salisbury.|
83. France and England were the only countries where any revival of
classical taste was perceived. In Germany no sensible improvement in
philological literature can be traced, according to Eichhorn and
Heeren, before the invention of printing, though I think this must be
understood with exceptions; and that Otho of Frisingen, Saxo
Grammaticus, and Gunther, author of the poem entitled Ligurinus (who
belongs to the first years of the thirteenth century), might stand on
equal terms with any of their contemporaries. But, in the schools which
are supposed to have borrowed light from Lanfranc and Anselm, a more
keen perception of the beauties of the Latin language, as well as an
exacter knowledge of its idiom, was imparted. John of Salisbury, himself
one of their most conspicuous ornaments, praises the method of
instruction pursued by Bernard of Chartres about the end of the eleventh
century, who seems indeed to have exercised his pupils vigorously in the
rules of grammar and rhetoric. After the first grammatical instruction
out of Donatus and Priscian, they were led forward to the poets,
orators, and historians of Rome; the precepts of Cicero and Quintilian
were studied, and sometimes observed with affectation.[156] An
admiration of the great classical writers, an excessive love of
philology, and disdain of the studies that drew men from it, shine out
in the two curious treatises of John of Salisbury. He is perpetually
citing the poets, especially Horace, and had read most of Cicero. Such
at least is the opinion of Heeren, who bestows also a good deal of
praise upon his Latinity.[157] Eichhorn places him at the head of all
his contemporaries. But no one has admired his style so much as Meiners,
who declares that he has no equal in the writers of the third, fourth,
or fifth centuries, except Lactantius and Jerome.[158] In this I cannot
but think there is some exaggeration; the style of John of Salisbury,
far from being equal to that of Augustin, Eutropius, and a few more of
those early ages, does not appear to me by any means elegant; sometimes
he falls upon a good expression, but the general tone is not very
classical. The reader may judge from the passage in the note.[159]
[156] Hist. Litt. de la France, vii. 16.
[157] P. 203. Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 47. Peter of Blois
also possessed a very respectable stock of classical literature.
[158] Vergleichung der Sitten, ii. 586. He says nearly as much of Saxo
Grammaticus and William of Malmsbury. If my recollection of the
former does not deceive me, he is a better writer than our monk of
Malmsbury.
[159] One of the most interesting passages in John of Salisbury is that
above cited, in which he gives an account of the method of
instruction pursued by Bernard of Chartres, whom he calls
exundantissimus modernis temporibus fons literarum in Gallia. John
himself was taught by some who trod in the steps of this eminent
preceptor. Ad hujus magistri formam præceptores mei in grammatica,
Gulielmus de Conchis, et Richardus cognomento Episcopus, officio
nunc archidiaconus Constantiensis, vita et conversatione vir bonus,
suos discipulos aliquando informaverunt. Sed postmodum ex quo
opinio veritati præjudicium fecit, et homines videri quam esse
philosophi maluerunt, professoresque artium se totam philosophiam
brevius quam triennio aut quadriennio transfusuros auditoribus
pollicebantur, impetu multitudinis imperitæ victi cesserunt. Exinde
autem minus temporis et diligentiæ in grammaticæ studio impensum
est. Ex quo contigit ut qui omnes artes, tam liberales quam
mechanicas profitentur, nec primam noverint, sine qua frustra quis
progredietur ad reliquas. Licet autem et aliæ disciplinæ ad
literaturam proficiant, hæc tamen privilegio singulari facere
dicitur literatum. Metalog., lib. i. c. 24.
|Improvement of classical taste in twelfth century.|
84. It is generally acknowledged that in the twelfth century we find
several writers, Abelard, Eloisa, Bernard of Clairvaux, Saxo
Grammaticus, William of Malmsbury, Peter of Blois, whose style, though
never correct, which, in the absence of all better dictionaries than
that of Papias, was impossible, and sometimes affected, sometimes too
florid and diffuse, is not wholly destitute of spirit, and even of
elegance;[160] the Latin poetry, instead of Leonine rhymes, or attempts
at regular hexameters almost equally bad, becomes, in the hands of
Gunther, Gualterus de Insulis, Gulielmus Brito, and Joseph Iscanus, to
whom a considerable number of names might be added, always tolerable,
sometimes truly spirited;[161] and amidst all that still demands the
most liberal indulgence, we cannot but perceive the real progress of
classical knowledge, and the development of a finer taste in
Europe.[162]
[160] Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 146. The Benedictines are scarcely
fair towards Abelard (xii. 147), whose style, as far as I have
seen, which is not much, seems equal to that of his contemporaries.
[161] Warton has done some justice to the Anglo Latin poets of this
century, who have lately been published at Paris. The Trojan War
and Antiocheis of Joseph Iscanus, he calls “a miracle in this age
of classical composition.” The style, he says, is a mixture of
Ovid, Statius, and Claudian. Vol. i. p. 163. The extracts Warton
gives seem to me a close imitation of the second. The Philippis of
William Brito must be of the thirteenth century, and Warton refers
the Ligurinus of Gunther to 1206.
[162] Hist. Litt. de la France, vol. ix. Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch. der
Cultur, ii. 30, 62. Heeren. Meiners.
|Influence of increased number of clergy.|
85. The vast increase of religious houses in the twelfth century
rendered necessary more attention to the rudiments of literature.[163]
Every monk, as well as every secular priest, required a certain portion
of Latin. In the ruder and darker ages many illiterate persons had been
ordained; there were even kingdoms, as, for example, England, where this
is said to have been almost general. But the canons of the church
demanded of course such a degree of instruction as the continual use of
a dead language made indispensable; and in this first dawn of learning
there can be, I presume, no doubt that none received the higher orders,
or became professed in a monastery, for which the order of priesthood
was necessary, without some degree of grammatical knowledge. Hence this
kind of education in the rudiments of the Latin was imparted to a
greater number of individuals than at present.
[163] Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 11.
|Decline of classical literature in thirteenth century.|
86. The German writers to whom we principally refer, have expatiated
upon the decline of literature after the middle of the twelfth century,
unexpectedly disappointing the bright promise of that age, so that for
almost two hundred years we find Europe fallen back in learning where we
might have expected her progress.[164] This, however, is hardly true, in
the most limited sense, of the latter part of the twelfth century, when
that purity of classical taste, which Eichhorn and others seem chiefly
to have had in their minds, was displayed in better Latin poetry than
had been written before. In a general view, the thirteenth century was
an age of activity and ardour, though not in every respect the best
directed. The fertility of the modern languages in versification, the
creation, we may almost say, of Italian and English in this period, the
great concourse of students to the universities, the acute, and
sometimes profound, reasonings of the scholastic philosophy, which was
now in its most palmy state, the accumulation of knowledge, whether
derived from original research, or from Arabian sources of information,
which we find in the geometers, the physicians, the natural philosophers
of Europe, are sufficient to repel the charge of having fallen back, or
even remained altogether stationary, in comparison with the preceding
century. But in politeness of Latin style, it is admitted that we find
an astonishing and permanent decline both in France and England. Such
complaints are usual in the most progressive times; and we might not
rely on John of Salisbury when he laments the decline of taste in his
own age.[165] But in fact it would have been rather singular, if a
classical purity had kept its ground. A stronger party, and one hostile
to polite letters, as well as ignorant of them,--that of the theologians
and dialecticians,--carried with it the popular voice in the church and
the universities. The time allotted by these to philological literature
was curtailed, that the professors of logic and philosophy might detain
their pupils longer. Grammar continued to be taught in the university of
Paris; but rhetoric, another part of the trivium, was given up; by which
it is to be understood, as I conceive, that no classical authors were
read, or, if at all, for the sole purpose of verbal explanation.[166]
The thirteenth century, says Heeren, was one of the most unfruitful for
the study of ancient literature.[167] He does not seem to except Italy,
though there, as we shall soon see, the remark is hardly just. But in
Germany the tenth century, Leibnitz declares, was a golden age of
learning, compared with the thirteenth;[168] and France itself is but a
barren waste in this period. The relaxation of manners among the
monastic orders, which, generally speaking, is the increasing theme of
complaint from the eleventh century, and the swarms of worse vermin, the
Mendicant Friars, who filled Europe with stupid superstition, are
assigned by Meiners and Heeren as the leading causes of the return of
ignorance.[169]
[164] Meiners, ii. 605. Heeren, p. 228. Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch. der
Litteratur, ii. 63-118.
The running title of Eichhorn’s section, Die Wissenschaften
verfallen in Barbarey, seems much too generally expressed.
[165] Metalogicus, l. i. c. 24. This passage has been frequently
quoted. He was very inimical to the dialecticians, as philologers
generally are.
[166] Crevier, ii. 376.
[167] P. 237.
[168] Introductio in Script. Brunwic., § lxiii., apud Heeren, et
Meiners, ii. 631. No one has dwelt more fully than this last writer
on the decline of literature in the thirteenth century, out of his
cordial antipathy to the schoolmen. P. 589, et post.
Wood, who has no prejudices against popery, ascribes the low state
of learning in England under Edward III. and Richard II. to the
misconduct of the mendicant friars, and to the papal provisions
that impoverished the church.
[169] Meiners, ii. 615. Heeren, 235.
|Relapse into barbarism.|
87. The writers of the thirteenth century display an incredible
ignorance, not only of pure idiom, but of the common grammatical
rules. Those who attempted to write verse have lost all prosody, and
relapse into Leonine rhymes and barbarous acrostics. The historians use
a hybrid jargon intermixed with modern words. The scholastic
philosophers wholly neglected their style, and thought it no wrong to
enrich the Latin, as in some degree a living language, with terms that
seemed to express their meaning. In the writings of Albertus Magnus, of
whom Fleury says that he can see nothing great in him but his volumes,
the grossest errors of syntax frequently occur, and vie with his
ignorance of history and science. Through the sinister example of this
man, according to Meiners, the notion that Latin should be written with
regard to ancient models, was lost in the universities for three hundred
years; an evil, however, slight in comparison with what he inflicted on
Europe by the credit he gave to astrology, alchemy, and magic.[170] Duns
Scotus and his disciples, in the next century, carried this much
farther, and introduced a most barbarous and unintelligible terminology,
by which the school metaphysics were rendered ridiculous in the revival
of literature.[171] Even the jurists, who more required an accurate
knowledge of the language, were hardly less barbarous. Roger Bacon, who
is not a good writer, stands at the head in this century.[172]
Fortunately, as has been said, the transcribing ancient authors had
become a mechanical habit in some monasteries. But it was done in an
ignorant and slovenly manner. The manuscripts of these latter ages,
before the invention of printing, are by far the most numerous, but they
are also the most incorrect, and generally of little value in the eyes
of critics.[173]
[170] Meiners, ii. 692. Fleury, 5me discours, in Hist. Eccles., xvii.
44. Buhle, i. 702.
[171] Meiners, ii. 721.
[172] Heeren, p. 245.
[173] Id. p. 304.
|No improvement in fourteenth century. Richard of Bury.|
88. The fourteenth century was not in the slightest degree superior to
the preceding age. France, England, and Germany were wholly destitute of
good Latin scholars in this period. The age of Petrarch and Boccaccio,
the age before the close of which classical learning truly revived in
Italy, gave no sign whatever of animation throughout the rest of Europe;
the genius it produced, and in this it was not wholly deficient,
displayed itself in other walks of literature.[174] We may justly praise
Richard of Bury for his zeal in collecting books, and still more for his
munificence in giving his library to the university of Oxford, with
special injunctions that they should be lent to scholars. But his
erudition appears crude and uncritical, his style indifferent, and his
thoughts superficial.[175] Yet I am not aware that he had any equal in
England during this century.
[174] Heeren, p. 300. Andrès, iii. 10.
[175] The Philobiblon of Richard Aungerville, often called Richard of
Bury, Chancellor of Edward III., is worthy of being read, as
containing some curious illustrations of the state of literature.
He quotes a wretched poem de Vetula as Ovid’s, and shows little
learning, though he had a great esteem for it. See a note of
Warton, History of English Poetry, i. 146, on Aungerville.
|Library formed by Charles V. at Paris.|
89. The patronage of letters, or collection of books, are not reckoned
among the glories of Edward III.; though, if any respect had been
attached to learning in his age and country, they might well have suited
his magnificent disposition. His adversaries, John, and especially
Charles V., of France, have more claims upon the remembrance of a
literary historian. Several Latin authors were translated into French by
their directions;[176] and Charles, who himself was not ignorant of
Latin, began to form the Royal Library of the Louvre. We may judge from
this of the condition of literature in his time. The number of volumes
was about 900. Many of these, especially the missals and psalters, were
richly bound and illuminated. Books of devotion formed the larger
portion of the library. The profane authors, except some relating to
French history, were in general of little value in our sight. Very few
classical works are in the list, and no poets except Ovid and
Lucan.[177] This library came, during the subsequent English wars, into
the possession of the duke of Bedford; and Charles VII. laid the
foundations of that which still exists.[178]
[176] Crevier, ii. 424. Warton has amassed a great deal of information,
not always very accurate, upon the subject of early French
translations. These form a considerable portion of the literature
of that country in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Hist. of
English Poetry, ii. 414-430. See also de Sade, Vie de Pétrarque,
iii. 548; and Crevier, Hist. de l’Univ. de Paris, ii. 424.
[177] Warton adds Cicero to the classical list; and I am sorry to say
that, in my History of the Middle Ages, I have been led wrong by
him. Bouvin, his only authority, expressly says, pas un seuil
manuscrit de Ciceron. Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscrip., ii. 693.
[178] Id. 701.
|Some improvement in Italy during thirteenth century.|
|Catholicon of Balbi.|
90. This retrograde condition, however, of classical literature, was
only perceptible in Cisalpine Europe. By one of those shiftings
of literary illumination to which we have alluded, Italy, far lower in
classical taste than France in the twelfth century, deserved a higher
place in the next. Tiraboschi says that the progress in polite letters
was slow, but still that some was made; more good books were
transcribed, there were more readers, and of these some took on them to
imitate what they read; so that gradually the darkness which overspread
the land began to be dispersed. Thus we find that those who wrote at the
end of the thirteenth century were less rude in style than their
predecessors at its commencement.[179] A more elaborate account of the
state of learning in the thirteenth century will be found in the life of
Ambrogio Traversari, by Mehus; and several names are there mentioned,
among whom that of Brunetto Latini is the most celebrated. Latini
translated some of the rhetorical treatises of Cicero.[180] And we may
perhaps consider as a witness to some degree of progressive learning in
Italy at this time, the Catholicon of John Balbi, a Genoese monk, more
frequently styled Januensis. This book is chiefly now heard of, because
the first edition, printed by Gutenberg in 1460, is a book of uncommon
rarity and price. It is, however, deserving of some notice in the annals
of literature. It consists of a Latin grammar, followed by a dictionary,
both perhaps superior to what we should expect from the general
character of the times. They are at least copious; the Catholicon is a
volume of great bulk. Balbi quotes abundantly from the Latin classics,
and appears not wholly unacquainted with Greek; though I must own that
Tiraboschi and Eichhorn have thought otherwise. The Catholicon, as far
as I can judge from a slight inspection of it, deserves rather more
credit than it has in modern times obtained. In the grammar, besides a
familiarity with the terminology of the old grammarians, he will be
found to have stated some questions as to the proper use of words, with
_dubitari solet_, _multum quæritur_; which, though they are
superficial enough, indicate that a certain attention was beginning to
be paid to correctness in writing. From the great size of the
Catholicon, its circulation must have been very limited.[181]
[179] iv. 420. The Latin versifiers of the thirteenth century were
numerous, but generally very indifferent. Id. 378.
[180] Mehus, p. 157. Tiraboschi, p. 418.
[181] Libellum hunc (says Balbi at the conclusion) ad honorem Dei et
gloriosæ Virginis Mariæ, et beati Domini patris nostri et omnium
sanctorum electorum, necnon ad utilitatem meam et ecclesiæ sanctæ
Dei, ex diversis majorum meorum dictis multo labore et diligenti
studio compilavi. Operis quippe ac studii mei est et fuit multos
libros legere et ex plurimis diversos carpere flores.
Eichhorn speaks severely, and, I am disposed to think, unjustly, of
the Catholicon, as without order and plan, or any knowledge of
Greek, as the author himself confesses (Gesch. der Litteratur, ii.
238). The order and plan are alphabetical, as usual in a
dictionary; and though Balbi does not lay claim to much Greek, I do
not think he professes entire ignorance of it. Hoc difficile est
scire et minimè mihi non bene scienti linguam Græcam:--apud
Gradenigo, Litteratura Greco-Italianna, p. 104. I have observed
that Balbi calls himself _philocalus_, which indeed is no
evidence of much Greek erudition.
|Imperfection of early dictionaries.|
91. In the dictionary however of John of Genoa, as in those of Papias
and the other glossarists, we find little distinction made between the
different gradations of Latinity. The Latin tongue was to them, except
so far as the ancient grammarians whom they copied might indicate some
to be obsolete, a single body of words; and, ecclesiastics as they were,
they could not understand that Ambrose and Hilary were to be proscribed
in the vocabulary of a language which was chiefly learned for the sake
of reading their works. Nor had they the means of pronouncing, what it
has cost the labour of succeeding centuries to do, that there is no
adequate classical authority for innumerable words and idioms in common
use. Their knowledge of syntax also was very limited. The prejudice of
the church against profane authors had by no means wholly worn away:
much less had they an exclusive possession of the grammar-schools, most
of the books taught in which were modern. Papias, Uguccio, and other
indifferent lexicographers, were of much authority.[182] The general
ignorance in Italy was still very great. In the middle of the fourteenth
century we read of a man, supposed to be learned, who took Plato and
Cicero for poets, and thought Ennius a contemporary of Statius.[183]
[182] Mehus. Muratori, Dissert. 44.
[183] Mehus, p. 211. Tiraboschi, v. 82.
|Restoration of letters due to Petrarch.|
|Character of his style.|
92. The first real restorer of polite letters was Petrarch. His fine
taste taught him to relish the beauties of Virgil and Cicero, and his
ardent praises of them inspired his compatriots with a desire for
classical knowledge. A generous disposition to encourage letters began
to show itself among the Italian princes. Robert, king of Naples, in the
early part of this century, one of the first patrons of Petrarch,
and several of the great families of Lombardy, gave this proof of the
humanising effects of peace and prosperity.[184] It has been thought by
some, that but for his appearance and influence at that period, the
manuscripts themselves would have perished, as several had done in no
long time before; so forgotten and abandoned to dust and vermin were
those precious records in the dungeons of monasteries.[185] He was the
first who brought in that almost deification of the great ancient
writers, which, though carried in following ages to an absurd extent,
was the animating sentiment of solitary study; that through which its
fatigues were patiently endured, and its obstacles surmounted. Petrarch
tells us himself, that while his comrades at school were reading Æsop’s
Fables, or a book of one Prosper, a writer of the fifth century, his
time was given to the study of Cicero, which delighted his ear long
before he could understand the sense.[186] It was much at his heart to
acquire a good style in Latin. And, relatively to his predecessors of
the mediæval period, we may say that he was successful. Passages full of
elegance and feeling, in which we are at least not much offended by
incorrectness of style, are frequent in his writings. But the fastidious
scholars of later times contemned these imperfect endeavours at purity.
“He wants,” says Erasmus, “full acquaintance with the language, and his
whole diction shows the rudeness of the preceding age.”[187] An Italian
writer, somewhat earlier, speaks still more unfavourably. “His style is
harsh, and scarcely bears the character of Latinity. His writings are
indeed full of thought, but defective in expression, and display the
marks of labour without the polish of elegance.”[188] I incline to agree
with Meiners in rating the style of Petrarch somewhat more highly.[189]
Of Boccace the writer above quoted gives even a worse character.
“Licentious and inaccurate in his diction, he has no idea of selection.
All his Latin writings are hasty, crude, and unformed. He labours with
thought, and struggles to give it utterance; but his sentiments find no
adequate vehicle, and the lustre of his native talents is obscured by
the depraved taste of the times.” Yet his own mother tongue owes its
earliest model of grace and refinement to his pen.
[184] Tiraboschi, v. 20, et post. Ten universities were founded in
Italy during the fourteenth century, some of which did not last
long. Rome and Fermo in 1303; Perugia in 1307; Treviso about 1320;
Pisa in 1339; Pavia not long after; Florence in 1348; Siena in
1357; Lucca in 1369, and Ferrara in 1391.
[185] Heeren, 270.
[186] Et illa quidem ætate nihil intelligere poteram, sola me verborum
dulcedo quædam et sonoritas detinebat ut quicquid aliud vel legerem
vel audirem, raucum mihi dissonumque videretur. Epist. Seniles,
lib. xv., apud de Sade, i. 36.
[187] Ciceronianus.
[188] Paulus Cortesius de hominibus doctis. I take the translations
from Roscoe’s Lorenzo de’ Medici, c. vii.
[189] Vergleichung der Sitten, iii. 126. Meiners has expatiated for
fifty pages, pp. 94-147, on the merits of Petrarch in the
restoration of classical literature; he seems unable to leave the
subject. Heeren, though less diffuse, is not less panegyrical. De
Sade’s three quartos are certainly a little tedious.
|His Latin poetry.|
93. Petrarch was more proud of his Latin poem called Africa, the subject
of which is the termination of the second Punic war, than of the sonnets
and odes, which have made his name immortal, though they were not the
chief sources of his immediate renown. It is indeed written with
elaborate elegance, and perhaps superior to any preceding specimen of
Latin versification in the middle ages, unless we should think Joseph
Iscanus his equal. But it is more to be praised for taste than
correctness; and though in the Basle edition of 1554, which I have used,
the printer has been excessively negligent, there can be no doubt that
the Latin poetry of Petrarch abounds with faults of metre. His eclogues,
many of which are covert satires on the court of Avignon, appear to me
more poetical than the Africa, and are sometimes very beautifully
expressed. The eclogues of Boccaccio, though by no means indifferent, do
not equal those of Petrarch.
|John of Ravenna.|
|Gasparin of Barziza.|
94. Mehus, whom Tiraboschi avowedly copies, has diligently collected the
names, though little more than the names, of Latin teachers at Florence
in the fourteenth century.[190] But among the earlier of these there was
no good method of instruction, no elegance of language. The first who
revealed the mysteries of a pure and graceful style, was John
Malpaghino, commonly called John of Ravenna, one whom in his youth
Petrarch had loved as a son, and who not very long before the end of the
century taught Latin at Padua and Florence.[191] The best scholars of
the ensuing age were his disciples, and among them was Gasparin of
Barziza, or, as generally called of Bergamo, justly characterised by
Eichhorn as the father of a pure and elegant Latinity.[192] The
distinction between the genuine Latin language and that of the lower
empire was from this generally recognised; and the writers who had been
regarded as standards were thrown away with contempt. This is the proper
æra of the revival of letters, and nearly coincides with the beginning
of the fifteenth century.
[190] Vita Traversari, p. 348.