61. The Platonic academy, which Cosmo had planned, came to maturity

under Lorenzo. The academicians were divided into three classes:--the

patrons (mecenati), including the Medici; the hearers (ascoltatori,

probably from the Greek word ἀκρόαται [akroatai]); and the novices, or

disciples, formed of young aspirants to philosophy. Ficino presided over

the whole. Their great festival was the 13th of November, being the

anniversary of the birth and death of Plato. Much of absurd mysticism,

much of frivolous and mischievous superstition, was mingled with their

speculations.[379]

[379] Roscoe. Corniani.

|Disputationes Camaldulenses of Landino.|

62. The Disputationes Camaldulenses of Landino were published during

this period, though, perhaps, written a little sooner. They belong to a

class prominent in the literature of Italy in this and the succeeding

century; disquisitions on philosophy in the form of dialogue, with more

solicitude to present a graceful delineation of virtue, and to kindle a

generous sympathy for moral beauty, than to explore the labyrinths of

theory, or even to lay down clear and distinct principles of ethics. The

writings of Plato and Cicero, in this manner, had shown a track, in

which their idolators, with distant and hesitating steps, and more of

reverence than emulation, delighted to tread. These Disputations of

Landino, in which, according to the beautiful patterns of ancient

dialogue, the most honoured names of the age appear--Lorenzo and his

brother Julian; Alberti, whose almost universal genius is now best known

by his architecture; Ficino, and Landino himself--turn upon a comparison

between the active and contemplative life of man, to the latter of which

it seems designed to give the advantage, and are saturated with the

thoughtful spirit of Platonism.[380]

[380] Corniani and Roscoe have given this account of the

Disputationes Camaldulenses. I have no direct acquaintance with the

book.

|Philosophical dialogues.|

63. Landino was not, by any means, the first who had tried the theories

of ancient philosophy through the feigned warfare of dialogue. Valla,

intrepid and fond of paradox, had vindicated the Epicurean ethics from

the calumnious or exaggerated censure frequently thrown upon them,

contrasting the true methods by which pleasure should be sought with the

gross notions of the vulgar. Several other writings of the same

description, either in dialogue or regular dissertation, belong to the

fifteenth century, though not always published so early, such as

Franciscus Barbarus, De Re Uxoria,[381] Platina, De Falso et Vero Bono,

the Vita Civile of Palmieri, the moral treatises of Poggio, Alberti,

Pontano, and Matteo Bosso, concerning some of which little more than the

names are to be learned from literary history, and which it would not,

perhaps, be worth while to mention, except as collectively indicating a

predilection for this style, which the Italians long continued to

display.[382]

[381] This, which has been already mentioned, may be considered as much

the earliest, having been published about 1417. Shepherd’s Poggio,

c. 3. Barbaro was a noble Venetian, who had learned Latin under

Gasparin of Barziza. He was afterwards chiefly employed in public

life. This treatise De Re Uxoria, of which some account may be

found in Corniani (ii. 137) made a considerable impression at that

early time. Corniani thinks it the only work of moral philosophy in

the fifteenth century, which is not a servile copy of some ancient

system. The more celebrated Hermolaus was grandson of this Francis

Barbarus.

[382] Corniani is much fuller than Tiraboschi on these treatises.

Roscoe seems to have read the ethical writing of Matteo Bosso (Life

of Leo X., c. xx.), but hardly adverts to any of the rest I have

named. Some of them are very scarce.

|Paulus Cortesius.|

64. Some of these related to general criticism, or to that of single

authors. My knowledge of them is chiefly limited to the dialogue of

Paulus Cortesius, De Hominibus Doctis, written, I conceive, about 1490;

no unsuccessful imitation of Cicero, De Claris Oratoribus, from which

indeed modern Latin writers have always been accustomed to collect the

discriminating phrases of criticism. Cortesius, who was young at the

time of writing this dialogue, uses an elegant, if not always a correct

Latinity; characterising agreeably, and with apparent taste, the authors

of the fifteenth century. It may be read in conjunction with the

Ciceronianus of Erasmus, who, with no knowledge, perhaps, of Cortesius

has gone over the same ground in rather inferior language.

|Schools in Germany.|

65. It was about the beginning of this decade that a few Germans and

Netherlanders, trained in the college of Deventer, or that of Zwoll, or

of St. Edward’s near Groningen, were roused to acquire that extensive

knowledge of the ancient languages which Italy as yet exclusively

possessed. Their names should never be omitted in any remembrance of the

revival of letters; for great was their influence upon the subsequent

times. Wessel of Groningen, one of those who contributed most steadily

towards the purification of religion, and to whom the Greek and Hebrew

languages are said, but probably on no solid grounds, to have been

known, may be reckoned in this class. But others were more directly

engaged in the advancement of literature. Three schools, from which

issued the most conspicuous ornaments of the next generation, rose under

masters, learned for that time, and zealous in the good cause of

instruction. Alexander Hegius became, about 1475, rector of that at

Deventer, where Erasmus received his early education.[383] Hegius was

not wholly ignorant of Greek, and imparted the rudiments of it to

his illustrious pupil. I am inclined to ascribe the publication of a

very rare and curious book, the first endeavour to print Greek on this

side of the Alps, to no other person than Hegius.[384] Louis Dringeberg

founded, not perhaps before 1480, a still more distinguished seminary at

Schelstadt in Alsace. Here the luminaries of Germany in a more advanced

stage of learning, Conrad Celtes, Bebel, Rhenanus, Wimpheling

Pirckheimer, Simler, are said to have imbibed their knowledge.[385] The

third school was at Munster; and over this Rodolph Langius presided, a

man not any way inferior to the other two, and of more reputation as a

Latin writer, especially as a poet. The school of Munster did not come

under the care of Langius till 1483, or perhaps rather later; and his

strenuous exertions in the cause of useful and polite literature against

monkish barbarians extended into the next century. But his life was

long: the first, or nearly such, to awaken his countrymen, he was

permitted to behold the full establisment of learning, and to exult in

the dawn of the Reformation. In company with a young man of rank, and

equal zeal, Maurice, count of Spiegelberg, who himself became the

provost of a school at Emmerich, Langius visited Italy, and, as Meiners

supposes, though, I think, upon uncertain grounds, before 1460. But not

long afterwards, a more distinguished person than any we have mentioned,

Rodolph Agricola of Groningen, sought in that more genial land the taste

and correctness which no cisalpine nation could supply. Agricola passed

several years of this decade in Italy. We shall find the effects of his

example in the next.[386]

[383] Heeren, p. 149, says that Hegius began to preside over the school

of Deventer in 1480; but I think the date in the text is more

probable, as Erasmus left it at the age of fourteen, and was

certainly born in 1465. Though Hegius is said to have known but

little Greek, I find in Panzer the title of a book by him, printed

at Deventer in 1501, De Utilitate Lingua Græcæ. The life of Hegius

in Melchior Adam is interesting. Primus hic in Belgio literas

excitavit, says Revius, in Daventria Illustrata, p. 130. Mihi, says

Erasmus, admodum adhuc puero contigit uti præceptore hujus

discipulo Alexandro Hegio Westphalo, qui ludum aliquando celebrem

oppidi Daventriensis moderabatur, in quo nos olim admodum pueri

utriusque linguæ prima didicimus elementa. Adag. Chil. 1, cent. iv.

39. In another place he says of Hegius, ne hic quidem Græcarum

literarum omnino ignarus est. Epist. 411, in Appendice. Erasmus

left Deventer at the age of fourteen; consequently in 1479 or 1480,

as he tells us in an epistle, dated 17th Apr. 1519.

[384] This very rare book, unnoticed by most bibliographers, is of some

importance in the history of literature. It is a small quarto

tract, entitled, Conjugations verborum Græcæ, Daventriæ noviter

extremo labore et impressæ. No date or printer’s name appears. A

copy is in the British Museum, and another in Lord Spencer’s

library. It contains nothing but the word τυπτω [typtô] in all its

voices and tenses, with Latin explanations in Gothic letters. The

Greek types are very rude, and the characters sometimes misplaced.

It must, I should presume, seem probable to every one who considers

this book, that it is of the fifteenth century, and consequently

older than any known Greek on this side of the Alps; which of

itself should render it interesting in the eyes of bibliographers

and of every one else. But fully disclaiming all such acquaintance

with the technical science of typographical antiquity, as to

venture any judgment founded on the appearance of a particular

book, or on a comparison of it with others, I would, on other

grounds, suggest the probability that this little attempt at Greek

Grammar issued from the Deventer press about 1480. It appears clear

that whoever “collected with extreme labour” these forms of the

verb τυπτω [typtô], had never been possessed of a Greek and Latin

grammar. For would it not be absurd to use such expressions about a

simple transcription? Besides which, the word is not only given in

an arrangement different from any I have ever seen, but with a

nonexistent form of participle, τετυψαμενος [tetypsamenos] for

τυψαμενος [typsamenos], which could not surely have been found in

any prior grammar. Now the grammar of Lascaris was published with a

Latin translation by Craston in 1480. It is indeed highly probable

that this book would not reach Deventer immediately after its

impression; but it does seem as if there could not long have been

any extreme difficulty in obtaining a correct synopsis of the verb

τυπτω [typtô].

We have seen that Erasmus, about 1477, acquired a very slight

tincture of Greek under Alexander Hegius at Deventer. And here, as

he tells us, he saw Agricola, returning probably from Italy to

Groningen. Quem mihi puero, ferme duodecim annos nato, Daventriæ

videre contigit, nec aliud contigit. (Jortin, ii. 416.) No one

could be so likely as Hegius to attempt a Greek grammar; nor do we

find that his successors in that college were men as distinguished

for learning as himself. But in fact at a later time it could not

have been so extraordinarily imperfect. We might perhaps conjecture

that he took down these Greek tenses from the mouth of Agricola,

since we must presume oral communication rather than the use of

books. Agricola, repeating from memory, and not thoroughly

conversant with the language, might have given the false tense

τετυψαμενος [tetypsamenos]. The tract was probably printed by

Pafroet, some of whose editions bear as early a date as 1477. It

has long been extremely scarce; for Revius does not include it in

the list of Pafroet’s publications he has given in Deventria

Illustrata, nor will it be found in Panzer. Beloe was the first to

mention it in his Anecdotes of scarce books; and it is referred by

him to the fifteenth century; but apparently without his being

aware there was anything remarkable in that antiquity. Dr. Dibdin,

in Bibliotheca Spenceriana, has given a fuller account; and from

him Brunet has inserted it in the Manuel du Libraire. Neither Beloe

nor Dibdin seems to have known that there is a copy in the Museum;

they speak only of that belonging to Lord Spencer.

If it were true that Reuchlin, during his residence at Orleans, had

published, as well as compiled, a Greek grammar, we should not need

to have recourse to the hypothesis of this note, in order to give

the antiquity of the present decade to Greek typography. Such a

grammar is asserted by Meiners, in his Life of Reuchlin, to have

been printed at Poitiers: and Eichhorn positively says, without

reference to the place of publication, that Reuchlin was the first

German who published a Greek grammar. (Gesch. der Litt. iii. 275.)

Meiners, however, in a subsequent volume (iii. 10), retracts this

assertion, and says it has been proved that the Greek grammar of

Reuchlin was never printed. Yet I find in the Bibliotheca

Universalis of Gesner: Joh. Capnio [Reuchlin] scripsit de

diversitate quatuor idiomatum Græcæ linguæ, lib. i. No such book

appears in the list of Reuchlin’s works in Niceron, vol. xxv., nor

in any of the bibliographies. If it ever existed, we may place it

with more probability at the very close of this century, or at the

beginning of the next.

[385] Eichhorn, iii. 231. Meiners, ii. 369. Eichhorn carelessly follows

a bad authority in counting Reuchlin among these pupils of the

Schelstadt school.

[386] See Meiners, vol. ii., Eichhorn, and Heeren, for the revival of

learning in Germany; or something may be found in Brucker.

|Study of Greek at Paris.|

66. Meantime a slight impulse seems to have been given to the university

of Paris by the lessons of George Tifernas; for from some disciples of

his Reuchlin, a young German of great talents and celebrity, acquired,

probably about the year 1470, the first elements of the Greek language.

This knowledge he improved by the lessons of a native Greek, Andronicus

Cartoblacas, at Basle. In that city he had the good fortune, rare on

this side of the Alps, to find a collection of Greek manuscripts, left

there at the time of the council by a cardinal Nicolas of Ragusa. By the

advice of Cartoblacas, he taught Greek himself at Basle. After the lapse

of some years, Reuchlin went again to Paris, and found a new teacher,

George Hermonymus of Sparta, who had settled there about 1472. From

Paris he removed to Orleans and Poitiers; he is said to have taught,

perhaps not the Greek language, in the former city, and to have written

a Greek grammar in the second. It seems, however, now to be ascertained,

that this grammar was never printed.[387]

[387] Meiners, i. 46. Besides Meiners, Brucker, iv. 358, as well as

Heeren, have given pretty full accounts of Reuchlin; and a good

life of him will be found in the 25th volume of Niceron: but the

Epistolæ ad Reuchlinum throw still more light on the man and his

contemporaries.

|Controversy of Realists and Nominalists.|

|Scotus.|

67. The classical literature which delighted Reuchlin and Agricola was

disregarded as frivolous by the wise of that day in the university of

Paris; but they were much more keenly opposed to innovation and

heterodoxy in their own peculiar line, the scholastic metaphysics. Most

have heard of the long controversies between the Realists and

Nominalists concerning the nature of universals, or the genera and

species of things. The first, with Plato and Aristotle, maintained their

objective or external reality; either, as it was called, _ante

rem_, as eternal archetypes in the Divine Intelligence, or _in

re_, as forms inherent in matter; the second, with Zeno, gave them

only a subjective existence as ideas conceived by the mind, and have

hence in later times acquired the name of Conceptualists.[388] Roscelin,

the first of the modern Nominalists, went farther than this, and denied,

as Hobbes and Berkeley, with many others, have since done, all

universality except to words and propositions. Abelard, who inveighs

against the doctrine of Roscelin as false logic and false theology, and

endeavours to confound it with the denial of any objective reality even

in singular things,[389] may be esteemed the restorer of the

Conceptualist school. We do not know his doctrines, however, by his own

writings, but by the testimony of John of Salisbury, who seems not well

to have understood the subject. The words Realist and Nominalist came

into use about the end of the twelfth century. But in the next, the

latter party by degrees disappeared; and the great schoolmen, Aquinas

and Scotus, in whatever else they might disagree, were united on the

Realist side. In the fourteenth century William Ockham revived the

opposite hypothesis with considerable success. Scotus and his disciples

were the great maintainers of Realism. If there were no substantial

forms, he argued, that is, nothing real, which determines the mode of

being in each individual, men and brutes would be of the same substance;

for they do not differ as to matter, nor can extrinsic accidents make a

substantive difference. There must be a substantial form of a horse,

another of a lion, another of a man. He seems to have held the

immateriality of the soul, that is, the substantial form of man. But no

other form, he maintained, can exist without matter naturally, though it

may, supernaturally, by the power of God. Socrates and Plato agree more

than Socrates and an ass. They have, therefore, something in common,

which an ass has not. But this is not numerically the same; it must,

therefore, be something universal, namely, human nature.[390]

[388] I am chiefly indebted for the facts in the following paragraphs

to a dissertation by Meiners, in the transactions of the Göttingen

Academy, vol. xii.

[389] Hic sicut pseudo-dialecticus, ita pseudo-christianus--ut eo loco

quo dicitur Dominus partem piscis assi comedisse, partem hujus

vocis, quæ est piscis assi, non partem rei intelligere cogatur.

Meiners, p. 27. This may serve to show the cavilling tone of

scholastic disputes; and Meiners may well say: Quicquid Roscelinus

peccavit, non adeo tamen insanisse pronuntiandum est, ut Abelardus

ilium fecisse invidiose fingere sustinuit.

[390] Id. p. 89.

68. These reasonings, which are surely no unfavourable specimen of the

“subtle philosopher,” as Scotus was called, were met by Ockham with

others which sometimes appear more refined and obscure. He confined

reality to objective things, denying it to the host of abstract entities

brought forward by Scotus. He defines a universal to be “a particular

intention (meaning probably idea or conception) of the mind itself,

capable of being predicated of many things, not for what it probably is

itself, but for what those things are; so that, in so far as it has this

capacity, it is called universal, but inasmuch as it is one form really

existing in the mind, it is called singular.”[391] I have not examined

the writings of Ockham, and am unable to determine whether his

Nominalism extends beyond that of Berkeley or Stewart, which is

generally asserted by the modern inquirers into scholastic philosophy;

that is, whether it amounts to Conceptualism; the foregoing definition,

as far as I can judge, might have been given by them.

[391] Unam intentionem sìngularem ipsius animæ, natam prædicari de

pluribus, non prose, sed pro ipsis rebus; ita quod per hoc, quod

ipsa nata est prædicari de pluribus, non pro se sed pro illis

pluribus, illa dicitur universalis; propter hoc autem, quod est una

forma existens realiter in intellectu, dicitur singulare. P. 42.

|Nominalists in university of Paris.|

69. The later Nominalists of the scholastic period, Buridan, Biel, and

several others mentioned by the historians of philosophy, took all their

reasonings from the storehouse of Ockham. His doctrine was prohibited at

Paris by pope John XXII., whose theological opinions, as well as secular

encroachments, he had opposed. All masters of arts were bound by oath

never to teach Ockhamism. But after the pope’s death the university

condemned a tenet of the Realists, that many truths are eternal, which

are not God; and went so far towards the Nominalist theory, as to

determine that our knowledge of things is through the medium of

words.[392] Peter d’Ailly, Gerson, and other principal men of their age

were Nominalists; the sect was very powerful in Germany, and may be

considered, on the whole, as prevalent in this century. The Realists,

however, by some management gained the ear of Louis XI., who, by an

ordinance in 1473, explicitly approves the doctrines of the great

Realist philosophers, condemns that of Ockham and his disciples, and

forbids it to be taught, enjoining the books of the Nominalists to be

locked up from public perusal, and all present as well as future

graduates in the university to swear to the observation of this

ordinance. The prohibition, nevertheless, was repealed in 1481; the

guilty books set free from their chains, and the hypothesis of the

Nominalists virtually permitted to be held, amidst the acclamations of

the university, and especially one of its four nations, that of Germany.

Some of their party had, during this persecution, taken refuge in that

empire and in England, both friendly to their cause; and this

metaphysical contention of the fifteenth century suggests and typifies

the great religious convulsion of the next. The weight of ability,

during this later and less flourishing period of scholastic philosophy,

was on the Nominalist side; and though the political circumstances to

which we have alluded were not immediately connected with their

principle, this metaphysical sect facilitated in some measure the

success of the Reformation.

[392] Id. p. 45, scientiam habemus de rebus, sed mediantibus terminis.

|Low state of learning in England.|

70. We should still look in vain to England for either learning or

native genius. The reign of Edward IV. may be reckoned one of the lowest

points in our literary annals. The universities had fallen in reputation

and in frequency of students; where there had been thousands, according

to Wood, there was not now one; which must be understood as an

hyperbolical way of speaking. But the decline of the universities,

frequented as they had been by indigent vagabonds withdrawn from useful

labour, and wretched as their pretended instruction had been, was so far

from an evil in itself, that it left clear the path for the approaching

introduction of real learning. Several colleges were about this

time founded at Oxford and Cambridge, which, in the design of their

munificent founders, were to become, as they have done, the instruments

of a better discipline than the barbarous schoolmen afforded. We have

already observed, that England was like seed fermenting in the ground

through the fifteenth century. The language was becoming more vigorous,

and more capable of giving utterance to good thoughts, as some

translations from Caxton’s press show, such as the Dicts of

Philosophers, by Lord Rivers. And perhaps the best exercise for a

schoolboy people is that of schoolboys. The poetry of two Scotsmen,

Henryson and Mercer, which is not without merit, may be nearly referred

to the present decade.[393]

[393] Campbell’s Specimens of British Poets, vol. i.

|Mathematics.|

|Regiomontanus.|

71. The progress of mathematical science was regular, though not rapid.

We might have mentioned before the gnomon erected by Toscanelli in the

cathedral at Florence, which is referred to 1468; a work, it has been

said, which, considering the times, has done as much honour to his

genius as that so much renowned to Bologna at Cassini.[394] The greatest

mathematician of the fifteenth century, Muller, or Regiomontanus, a

native of Königsberg, or Königshoven, a small town in Franconia, whence

he derived his latinised appellation, died prematurely, like his master

Purbach, in 1476. He had begun at the age of fifteen to assist the

latter in astronomical observations; and having, after Purbach’s death,

acquired a knowledge of Greek in Italy, and devoted himself to the

ancient geometers, after some years spent with distinction in that

country, and at the court of Mathias Corvinus, he settled finally at

Nuremberg; where a rich citizen, Bernard Walther, both supplied the

means of accurate observations, and became the associate of his

labours.[395] Regiomontanus died at Rome, whither he had been called to

assist in rectifying the calendar. Several of his works were printed in

this decade, and among others his ephemerides, or calculations of the

places of the sun and moon, for the ensuing thirty years; the best,

though not strictly the first, that had been made in Europe.[396] His

more extensive productions did not appear till afterwards; and the

treatise on triangles, the most celebrated, not till 1533. The solution

of the more difficult cases, both in plane and spherical trigonometry,

is found in this work; and with the exception of what the science owes

to Napier, it may be said, that it advanced little for more than two

centuries after the age of Regiomontanus.[397] Purbach had computed a

table of sines to a radius of 600,000 parts. Regiomontanus, ignorant, as

has been thought, which appears very strange, of his master’s labours,

calculated them to 6,000,000 parts. But perceiving the advantages of a

decimal scale, he has given a second table, wherein the ratio of the

sines is computed to a radius of 10,000,000 parts, or, as we should say,

taking the latter as unity, to seven places of decimals. He subjoined

what he calls Canon Fæcundus, or a table of tangents, calculating them,

however, only for entire degrees to a radius of 100,000 parts.[398] It

has been said, that Regiomontanus was inclined to the theory of the

earth’s motion, which indeed Nicolas Cusanus had already espoused.

[394] This gnomon is by much the loftiest in Europe. It would be no

slight addition to the glory of Toscanelli if we should suppose him

to have suggested the discovery of a passage westward to the Indies

in a letter to Columbus, as his article in the Biographie

Universelle seems to imply. But the more accurate expressions of

Tiraboschi, referring to the correspondence between these great

men, leave Columbus in possession of the original idea, at least

concurrently with the Florentine astronomer, though the latter gave

him strong encouragement to persevere in his undertaking.

Toscanelli, however, had, on the authority of Marco Polo, imbibed

an exaggerated notion of the distance eastward to China; and

consequently believed, as Columbus himself did, that the voyage by

the west to that country would be far shorter than, if the

continent of America did not intervene, it could have been.

Tiraboschi, vi. 189, 207. Roscoe’s Leo X., ch. 20.

[395] Walther was more than a patron of science, honourable as that

name was. He made astronomical observations, worthy of esteem

relatively to the age. Montucla, i. 545. It is to be regretted that

Walther should have diminished the credit due to his name by

withholding from the public the manuscripts of Regiomontanus, which

he purchased after the latter’s death; so that some were lost by

the negligence of his own heirs, and the rest remained unpublished

till 1533.

[396] Gassendi, Vita Regiomontani. He speaks of them himself, as quas

vulgo vocant almanach; and Gassendi says, that some were extant in

manuscript at Paris, from 1442 to 1472. Those of Regiomontanus

contained eclipses, and other matters not in former almanacs.

[397] Hutton’s Logarithms, Introduction, p. 3.

[398] Kästner, i. 557.

|Arts of delineation.|

72. Though the arts of delineation do not properly come within the scope

of this volume, yet, so far as they are directly instrumental to

science, they ought not to pass unregarded. Without the tool that

presents figures to the eye, not the press itself could have diffused an

adequate knowledge either of anatomy or of natural history. As figures

cut in wooden blocks gave the first idea of letter-printing, and were

for some time associated with it, an obvious invention, when the latter

art became improved, was to arrange such blocks together with types in

the same page. We find, accordingly, about this time, many books adorned

or illustrated in this manner; generally with representations of saints,

or other ornamental delineations not of much importance; but in a few

instances with figures of plants and animals, or of human anatomy. The

Dyalogus creaturarum moralizatus, of which the first edition was

published at Gouda, 1480, seems to be nearly, if not altogether, the

earliest of these. It contains a series of fables with rude woodcuts, in

little more than outline. A second edition, printed at Antwerp in 1486,

repeats the same cuts, with the addition of one representing a church,

which is really elaborate.[399]

[399] Both these editions are in the British Museum. In the same

library is a copy of the exceedingly scarce work, Ortus Sanitatis.

Mogunt. 1491. The colophon, which may be read in De Bure (Sciences,

No. 1554), takes much credit for the carefulness of the

delineations. The wooden cuts of the plants, especially, are as

good as we usually find in the sixteenth century; the form of the

leaves and character of the plant are generally well preserved. The

animals are also tolerably figured, though with many exceptions,

and, on the whole, fall short of the plants. The work itself is a

compilation from the old naturalists, arranged alphabetically.

|Maps.|

|Geography.|

73. The art of engraving figures on plates of copper was nearly coëval

with that of printing, and is due either to Thomas Finiguerra about

1460, or to some German about the same time. It was not a difficult step

to apply this invention to the representation of geographical maps; and

this we owe to Arnold Buckinck, an associate of the printer Sweynheim.

His edition of Ptolemy’s geography appeared at Rome in 1478. These maps

are traced from those of Agathodæmon in the fifth century; and it has

been thought that Buckinck profited by the hints of Donis, a German

monk, who himself gave two editions of Ptolemy not long afterwards at

Ulm.[400] The fifteenth century had already witnessed an increasing

attention to geographical delineations. The libraries of Italy contain

several unpublished maps, of which that by Fra Mauro, a monk of the

order of Camaldoli, in the convent of Murano, near Venice, is the most

celebrated. It is still preserved there, and is said to attest the

cosmographical science of its delineator, such as he could derive from

Ptolemy, and from the astronomy of his own age.[401] Two causes, besides

the increase of commerce, and the gradual accumulation of knowledge, had

principally turned the thoughts of many towards the figure of the earth

on which they trod. Two translations, one of them by Emanuel

Chrysoloras, had been made early in the century, from the cosmography of

Ptolemy; and from his maps the geographers of Italy had learned the use

of parallels and meridians, which might a little, though inadequately,

restrain their arbitrary admeasurements of different countries.[402] But

the real discoveries of the Portuguese on the coast of Africa, under the

patronage of Don Henry, were of far greater importance in stimulating

and directing enterprise. In the academy founded by that illustrious

prince, nautical charts were first delineated in a method more useful to

the pilot, by projecting the meridians in parallel right lines,[403]

instead of curves on the surface of the sphere. This first step in

hydrographical science entitles Don Henry to the name of its founder.

And though these early maps and charts of the fifteenth century are to

us but a chaos of error and confusion, it was on them that the patient

eye of Columbus had rested through long hours of meditation, while

strenuous hope and unsubdued doubt were struggling in his soul.

[400] Biogr. Univ. Buckinck, Donis.

[401] Andrès, ix. 88. Corniani, iii. 162.

[402] Andrès, 86.

[403] Id. 83.

SECT. V. 1480-1490.

_Great Progress of Learning in Italy--Italian Poetry--Pulci--Metaphysical

Theology--Ficinus--Picus of Mirandola--Learning in Germany--Early

European Drama--Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci._

|Greek printed in Italy.|

74. The press of Italy was less occupied with Greek for several years

than might have been expected. But the number of scholars was still not

sufficient to repay the expenses of impression. The Psalter was

published in Greek twice at Milan in 1481, once at Venice in 1486.

Craston’s Lexicon was also once printed, and the Grammar of Lascaris

several times. The first classical work the printers ventured

upon, was Homer’s Battle of Frogs and Mice, published at Venice in 1486,

or, according to some, at Milan in 1485; the priority of the two

editions being disputed. But in 1488, under the munificent patronage of

Lorenzo, and by the care of Demetrius of Crete, a complete edition of

Homer issued from the press of Florence. This splendid work closes our

catalogue for the present.[404]

[404] See Maittaire’s character of this edition quoted in Roscoe’s

Leo X., ch. 21.

|Hebrew printed.|

75. The first Hebrew book, Jarchi’s commentary on the Pentateuch, had

been printed by some Jews at Reggio in Calabria, as early as 1475. In

this period a press was established at Soncino, where the Pentateuch was

published in 1482, the greater prophets in 1486, and the whole Bible in

1488. But this was intended for themselves alone. What little

instruction in Hebrew had anywhere hitherto been imparted to Christian

scholars, was only oral. The commencement of Hebrew learning, properly

so called, was not till about the end of the century, in the Franciscan

monasteries of Tubingen and Basle. Their first teacher, however, was an

Italian, by name Raimondi.[405]

[405] Eichhorn, ii. 562.

|Miscellanies of Politian.|

76. To enumerate every publication that might scatter a gleam of light

on the progress of letters in Italy, or to mention every scholar who

deserves a place in biographical collections, or in an extended history

of literature, would crowd these pages with too many names. We must

limit ourselves to those best deserving to be had in remembrance. In

1480, according to Meiners, or, as Heeren says, in 1483, Politian was

placed in the chair of Greek and Latin eloquence at Florence; a station

perhaps the most conspicuous and the most honourable which any scholar

could occupy. It is beyond controversy, that he stands at the head of

that class in the fifteenth century. The envy of some of his

contemporaries attested his superiority. In 1489, he published his once

celebrated Miscellanea, consisting of one hundred observations

illustrating passages of Latin authors, in the desultory manner of Aulus

Gellius, which is certainly the easiest, and perhaps the most agreeable

method of conveying information. They are sometimes grammatical; but

more frequently relate to obscure (at that time) customs or mythological

allusions. Greek quotations occur not seldom, and the author’s command

of classical literature seems considerable. Thus he explains, for

instance, the crambe repetita of Juvenal by a proverb mentioned in

Suidas, δὶς χρὰμβη θὰνατος: χρὰμβη [dis chrambê thanatos: chrambê] being

a kind of cabbage, which, when boiled a second time, was of course not

very palatable. This may serve to show the extent of learning which some

Italian scholars had reached through the assistance of the manuscripts

collected by Lorenzo. It is not improbable that no one in England at

that time had heard the name of Suidas. Yet the imperfect knowledge of

Greek which these early writers possessed, is shown when they attempt to

write it. Politian has some verses in his Miscellanea, but very bald,

and full of false quantities. This remark we may have occasion to

repeat; for it is applicable to much greater names in philology than

his.[406]

[406] Meiners has praised Politian’s Greek verses, but with very little

skill in such matters, p. 214. The compliments he quotes from

contemporary Greeks, non esse tam Atticas Athenas ipsas, may not

have been very sincere, unless they meant _esse_ to be taken in the

present tense. These Greeks, besides, knew but little of their

metrical language.

|Their character, by Heeren.|

77. The Miscellanies, Heeren says, were then considered an immortal

work; it was deemed an honour to be mentioned in them, and those who

missed this made it a matter of complaint. If we look at them now, we

are astonished at the different measure of glory in the present age.

This book probably sprung out of Politian’s lectures. He had cleared up

in these some difficult passages, which had led him on to further

inquiries. Some of his explanations might probably have arisen out of

the walks and rides he was accustomed to take with Lorenzo, who had

advised the publication of the Miscellanies. The manner in which these

explanations are given, the light, yet solid mode of handling the

subjects, and their great variety, give in fact a charm to the

Miscellanies of Politian which few antiquarian works possess. Their

success is not wonderful. They were fragments, and chosen fragments,

from the lectures of the most celebrated teacher of that age, whom many

had heard, but still more had wished to hear. Scarcely had a work

appeared in the whole fifteenth century, of which so vast expectations

had been entertained, and which was received with such curiosity.[407]

The very fault of Politian’s style, as it was that of Hermolaus

Barbarus, his affected intermixture of obsolete words, for which it is

necessary in almost every page of his Miscellanies to consult the

dictionary, would, in an age of pedantry, increase the admiration of his

readers.[408]

[407] Heeren, p. 263. Meiners, Lebensbeschreibungen, &c., has written

the life of Politian, ii. 111-220, more copiously than any one I

have read. His character of the Miscellanies is in p. 136.

[408] Meiners, pp. 155, 209. In the latter passage Meiners censures

with apparent justice the affected words of Politian, some of which

he did not scruple to take from such writers as Apuleius and

Tertullian, with an inexcusable display of erudition at the expense

of good taste.

|His version of Herodian.|

78. Politian was the first that wrote the Latin language with much

elegance; and while every other early translator from the Greek has

incurred more or less of censure at the hands of judges whom better

learning had made fastidious, it is agreed by them that his Herodian has

all the spirit of his original, and frequently excels it.[409] Thus we

perceive that the age of Poggio, Filelfo, and Valla was already left far

behind by a new generation: these had been well employed as the pioneers

of ancient literature; but for real erudition and taste we must descend

to Politian, Christopher Landino, and Hermolaus Barbarus.[410]

[409] Huet. apud Blount in Politiano.

[410] Meiners, Roscoe, Corniani, Heeren, and Greswell’s Memoirs of

early Italian scholars, are the best authorities to whom the reader

can have recourse for the character of Politian, besides his own

works. I think, however, that Heeren has hardly done justice to

Politian’s poetry. Tiraboschi is unsatisfactory. Blount, as usual,

collects the suffrages of the sixteenth century.

|Cornucopia of Perotti.|

79. The Cornucopia sive Linguæ Latinæ Commentarii, by Nicolas Perotti,

bishop of Siponto, suggests rather more by its title than the work

itself seems to warrant. It is a copious commentary upon part of

Martial; in which he takes occasion to explain a vast many Latin words,

and has been highly extolled by Morhof, and by writers quoted in Baillet

and Blount. To this commentary is appended an alphabetical index of

words, which rendered it a sort of dictionary for the learned reader.

Perotti lived a little before this time; but the first edition seems to

have been in 1489. He also wrote a small Latin grammar, frequently

reprinted in the fifteenth century, and was an indifferent translator of

Polybius.[411]

[411] Heeren, 272, Morhof, i. 821, who calls Perotti the first compiler

of good Latin, from whom those who followed have principally

borrowed. See also Baillet and Blount for testimonies to Perotti.

|Latin poetry of Politian.|

80. We have not thought it worth while to mention the Latin poets of the

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They are numerous, and somewhat

rude, from Petrarch and Boccace to Maphæus Vegius, the continuator of

the Æneid in a thirteenth book, first printed in 1471, and very

frequently afterwards. This is, probably, the best versification before

Politian. But his Latin poems display considerable powers of

description, and a strong feeling of the beauties of Roman poetry. The

style is imbued with these, not too ambitiously chosen, nor in the

manner called Centonism, but so as to give a general elegance to the

composition, and to call up pleasing associations in the reader of

taste. This, indeed, is the common praise of good versifiers in modern

Latin, and not peculiarly appropriate to Politian, who is inferior to

some who followed, though to none, as I apprehend, that preceded in that

numerous fraternity. His ear is good, and his rhythm, with a few

exceptions, musical and Virgilian. Some defects are nevertheless worthy

of notice. He is often too exuberant, and apt to accumulate details of

description. His words, unauthorised by any legitimate example, are very

numerous; a fault in some measure excusable by the want of tolerable

dictionaries; so that the memory was the only test of classical

precedent. Nor can we deny that Politian’s Latin poetry is sometimes

blemished by affected and effeminate expressions, by a too studious use

of repetitions, and by a love of diminutives, according to the fashion

of his native language, carried beyond all bounds that correct Augustan

latinity could possibly have endured. This last fault, and to a man of

good taste it is an unpleasing one, belongs to a great part of the

lyrical and even elegiac writers in modern Latin. The example of

Catullus would probably have been urged in excuse; but perhaps Catullus

went farther than the best judges approved; and nothing in his poems can

justify the excessive abuse of that effeminate grace, what the stern

Persius would have called, “summa delumbe saliva,” which pervades the

poetry both of Italian and Cisalpine Latinists for a long period. On the

whole, Politian, like many of his followers, is calculated to delight

and mislead a schoolboy, but may be read with pleasure by a man.[412]

[412] The extracts from Politian, and other Latin poets of Italy, by

Pope, in the two little volumes, entitled Poemata Italorum, are

extremely well chosen, and give a just measure of most of them.

|Italian poetry of Lorenzo.|

81. Amidst all the ardour for the restoration of classical literature in

Italy, there might seem reason to apprehend that native originality

would not meet its due reward, and even that the discouraging notion of

a degeneracy in the powers of the human mind might come to prevail.

Those who annex an exaggerated value to correcting an unimportant

passage in an ancient author, or, which is much the same, interpreting

some worthless inscription, can hardly escape the imputation of

pedantry; and doubtless this reproach might justly fall on many of the

learned in that age, as, with less excuse, it has often done upon their

successors. We have already seen that, for a hundred years, it was

thought unworthy a man of letters, even though a poet, to write in

Italian; and Politian, with his great patron Lorenzo, deserves no small

honour for having disdained the false vanity of the philologers. Lorenzo

stands at the head of the Italian poets of the fifteenth century in the

sonnet as well as in the light lyrical composition. His predecessors,

indeed, were not likely to remove the prejudice against vernacular

poetry. Several of his sonnets appear, both for elevation and elegance

of style, worthy of comparison with those of the next age. But perhaps

his most original claim to the title of a poet is founded upon the Canti

Carnascialeschi, or carnival songs, composed for the popular shows on

festivals. Some of these, which are collected in a volume printed in

1558, are by Lorenzo, and display a union of classical grace and

imitation with the native raciness of Florentine gaiety.[413]

[413] Corniani. Roscoe. Crescimbeni (della volgar poesia, ii. 324)

strongly asserts Lorenzo to be the restorer of poetry, which had

never been more barbarous than in his youth. But certainly the

Giostra of Politian was written while Lorenzo was very young.

|Pulci.|

82. But at this time appeared a poet of a truly modern school, in one of

Lorenzo’s intimate society, Luigi Pulci. The first edition of his

Morgante Maggiore, containing twenty-three cantos, to which five were

subsequently added, was published at Venice in 1481. The taste of the

Italians has always been strongly inclined to extravagant combinations

of fancy, caprices rapid and sportive as the animal from which they take

their name. The susceptible and versatile imaginations of that people,

and their habitual cheerfulness, enable them to render the serious and

terrible instrumental to the ridiculous, without becoming, like some

modern fictions, merely hideous and absurd.

|Character of Morgante Maggiore.|

83. The Morgante Maggiore was evidently suggested by some long romances

written within the preceding century in the octave stanza, for which the

fabulous chronicle of Turpin, and other fictions wherein the same real

and imaginary personages had been introduced, furnished the materials.

Under pretence of ridiculing the intermixture of sacred allusions with

the romantic legends, Pulci carried it to an excess; which, combined

with some sceptical insinuations of his own, seems clearly to display an

intention of exposing religion to contempt.[414] As to the heroes of his

romance, there can be, as it seems, no sort of doubt that he designed

them for nothing else than the butts of his fancy; that the reader might

scoff at those whom duller poets had held up to admiration. It has been

a question among Italian critics, whether the poem of Pulci is to be

reckoned burlesque.[415] This may seem to turn on the definition,

though I do not see what definition could be given, consistently with

the use of language, that would exclude it; it is intended as a

caricature of the poetical romances, and might even seem by anticipation

a satirical, though not ill-natured, parody on the Orlando Furioso. That

he meant to excite any other emotion than laughter cannot, as it seems,

be maintained; and a very few stanzas of a more serious character, which

may rarely be found, are not enough to make an exception to his general

design. The Morgante was to the poetical romances of chivalry, what Don

Quixote was to their brethren in prose.

[414] The story of Meridiana, in the eighth canto, is sufficient to

prove Pulci’s irony to have been exercised on religion. It is well

known to the readers of the Morgante. It has been alleged in the

Biographie Universelle, that he meant only to turn into ridicule

“ces muses mendiantes du 14me siècle,” the authors of la Spagna or

Buovo d’Antona, who were in the habit of beginning their songs with

scraps of the liturgy, and even of introducing theological

doctrines in the most absurd and misplaced style. Pulci has given

us much of the latter, wherein some have imagined that he had the

assistance of Ficinus.

[415] This seems to have been an old problem in Italy. Corniani,

ii. 302; and the gravity of Pulci has been maintained of late by

such respectable authorities as Foscolo and Panizzi. Ginguéné, who

does not go this length, thinks the death of Orlando, and his last

prayer, both pathetic and sublime. I can see nothing in it but the

systematic spirit of parody which we find in Pulci. But the lines

on the death of Forisena, in the fourth canto, are really graceful

and serious. The following remarks on Pulci’s style come from a

more competent judge than myself.

“There is something harsh in Pulci’s manner, owing to his abrupt

transition from one idea to another, and to his carelessness of

grammatical rules. He was a poet by nature, and wrote with ease,

but he never cared for sacrificing syntax to meaning; he did not

mind saying anything incorrectly, if he were but sure that his

meaning would be guessed. The rhyme very often compels him to

employ expressions, words, and even lines which frequently render

the sense obscure and the passage crooked, without producing any

other effect than that of destroying a fine stanza. He has no

similes of any particular merit, nor does he stand eminent in

description. His verses almost invariably make sense taken singly,

and convey distinct and separate ideas. Hence he wants that

richness, fulness, and smooth flow of diction, which is

indispensable to an epic poet, and to a noble description or

comparison. Occasionally, when the subject admits of a powerful

sketch which may be presented with vigour and spirit by a few

strokes boldly drawn, Pulci appears to a great advantage.”--Panizzi

on romantic poetry of Italians, in the first volume of his Orlando

Innamorato, p. 298.

84. A foreigner must admire the vivacity of the narrative, the humorous

gaiety of the characters, the adroitness of the satire. But the

Italians, and especially the Tuscans, delight in the raciness of Pulci’s

Florentine idiom, which we cannot equally relish. He has not been

without influence on men of more celebrity than himself. In several

passages of Ariosto, especially the visit of Astolfo to the moon, we

trace a resemblance not wholly fortuitous. Voltaire, in one of his most

popular poems, took the dry archness of Pulci, and exaggerated the

profaneness, superadding the obscenity from his own stores. But Mr.

Frere, with none of these two ingredients in his admirable vein of

humour, has come, in the War of the Giants, much closer to the Morgante

Maggiore than any one else.

|Platonic theology of Ficinus.|

85. The Platonic academy, in which the chief of the Medici took so much

delight, did not fail to reward his care. Marsilius Ficinus, in his

Theologica Platonica (1482), developed a system chiefly borrowed from

the later Platonists of the Alexandrian school, full of delight to the

credulous imagination, though little appealing to the reason, which, as

it seemed remarkably to coincide in some respects with the received

tenets of the church, was connived at in a few reveries, which could not

so well bear the test of an orthodox standard. He supported his

philosophy by a translation of Plato into Latin, executed at the

direction of Lorenzo, and printed before 1490. Of this translation Buhle

has said, that it has been very unjustly reproached with want of

correctness; it is, on the contrary, perfectly conformable to the

original, and has even, in some passages, enabled us to restore the

text; the manuscripts used by Ficinus, I presume, not being in our

hands. It has also the rare merit of being at once literal, perspicuous,

and in good Latin.[416]

[416] Hist. de la Philosophie, vol. ii. The fullest account of the

philosophy of Ficinus has been given by Buhle. Those who seek less

minute information may have recourse to Brucker or Corniani; or, if

they are content with still less, to Tiraboschi, Roscoe, Heeren, or

the Biographie Universelle.

|Doctrine of Averroes on the soul.|

86. But the Platonism of Ficinus was not wholly that of the master. It

was based on the emanation of the human soul from God, and its capacity

of reunion by an ascetic and contemplative life; a theory perpetually

reproduced in various modifications of meaning, and far more of words.

The nature and immortality of the soul, the functions and distinguishing

characters of angels, the being and attributes of God, engaged the

thoughtful mind of Ficinus. In the course of his high speculations he

assailed a doctrine, which, though rejected by Scotus and most of the

schoolmen, had gained much ground among the Aristotelians, as they

deemed themselves, of Italy; a doctrine first held by Averroes; that

there is one common intelligence, active, immortal, indivisible,

unconnected with matter, the soul of human kind, which is not in any one

man, because it has no material form, but which yet assists in the

rational operations of each man’s personal soul, and from those

operations which are all conversant with particulars, derives its own

knowledge of universals. Thus, if I understand what is meant, which is

rather subtle, it might be said, that as in the common theory particular

sensations furnish means to the soul of forming general ideas, so, in

that of Averroes, the ideas and judgments of separate human souls

furnish collectively the means of that knowledge of universals, which

the one great soul of mankind alone can embrace. This was a theory

built, as some have said, on the bad Arabic version of Aristotle which

Averroes used. But, whatever might have first suggested it to the

philosopher of Cordova, it seems little else than an expansion of the

Realist hypothesis, urged to a degree of apparent paradox. For if the

human soul, as an universal, possess an objective reality, it must

surely be intelligent; and, being such, it may seem no extravagant

hypothesis, though one incapable of that demonstration we now require in

philosophy, to suppose that it acts upon the subordinate intelligences

of the same species, and receives impressions from them. By this also

they would reconcile the knowledge we were supposed to possess of the

reality of universals, with the acknowledged impossibility, at least in

many cases, of representing them to the mind.

|Opposed by Ficinus.|

87. Ficinus is the more prompt to refute the Averroists, that they all

maintained the mortality of the particular soul, while it was his

endeavour, by every argument that erudition and ingenuity could supply,

to prove the contrary. The whole of his Platonic Theology appears a

beautiful, but too visionary and hypothetical, system of theism, the

groundworks of which lay deep in the meditations of ancient oriental

sages. His own treatise, of which a very copious account will be found

in Buhle, soon fell into oblivion; but it belongs to a class of

literature, which, in all its extension, has, full as much as any other,

engaged the human mind.

|Desire of man to explore mysteries.|

88. The thirst for hidden knowledge, by which man is distinguished from

brutes, and the superior races of men from savage tribes, burns

generally with more intenseness in proportion as the subject is less

definitely comprehensible, and the means of certainty less attainable.

Even our own interest in things beyond the sensible world does not

appear to be the primary or chief source of the desire we feel to be

acquainted with them; it is the pleasure of belief itself, of

associating the conviction of reality with ideas not presented by sense;

it is sometimes the necessity of satisfying a restless spirit, that

first excites our endeavour to withdraw the veil that conceals the

mystery of their being. The few great truths in religion that reason

discovers, or that an explicit revelation deigns to communicate,

sufficient as they may be for our practical good, have proved to fall

very short of the ambitious curiosity of man. They leave so much

imperfectly known, so much wholly unexplored, that in all ages he has

never been content without trying some method of filling up the void.

These methods have often led him to folly, and weakness, and crime. Yet

as those who want the human passions, in their excess the great

fountains of evil, seem to us maimed in their nature, so an indifference

to this knowledge of invisible things, or a premature despair of

attaining it, may be accounted an indication of some moral or

intellectual deficiency, some scantness of due proportion in the mind.

|Various methods employed.|

|Reason and inspiration.|

89. The means to which recourse has been had to enlarge the boundaries

of human knowledge in matters relating to the Deity, or to such of his

intelligent creatures as do not present themselves in ordinary

objectiveness to our senses, have been various, and may be distributed

into several classes. Reason itself, as the most valuable, though not

the most frequent in use, may be reckoned the first. Whatever deductions

have suggested themselves to the acute, or analogies to the observant

mind, whatever has seemed the probable interpretation of revealed

testimony, is the legitimate province of a sound and rational theology.

But so fallible appears the reason of each man to others, and often so

dubious are its inferences to himself, so limited is the span of our

faculties, so incapable are they of giving more than a vague and

conjectural probability, where we demand most of definiteness and

certainty, that few, comparatively speaking, have been content to

acquiesce even in their own hypothesis upon no other grounds than

argument has supplied. The uneasiness that is apt to attend suspense of

belief has required, in general, a more powerful remedy. Next to those

who have solely employed their rational faculties in theology, we may

place those who have relied on a supernatural illumination. These have

nominally been many; but the imagination, like the reason, bends under

the incomprehensibility of spiritual things; a few excepted, who have

become founders of sects, and lawgivers to the rest, the mystics fell

into a beaten track, and grew mechanical even in their enthusiasm.

|Extended inferences from sacred books.|

90. No solitary and unconnected meditations, however, either of the

philosopher or the mystic, could furnish a sufficiently extensive stock

of theological faith for the multitude, who, by their temper and

capacities, were more prone to take it at the hands of others than

choose any tenets for themselves. They looked, therefore, for some

authority upon which to repose; and instead of builders, became as it

were occupants of mansions prepared for them by more active minds. Among

those who acknowledged a code of revealed truths, the Jews, Christians,

and Mahometans, this authority has been sought in largely expansive

interpretations of their sacred books; either of positive obligation, as

the decisions of general councils were held to be, or at least of such

weight as a private man’s reason, unless he were of great name himself,

was not permitted to contravene. These expositions, in the Christian

Church, as well as among the Jews, were frequently allegorical; a hidden

stream of esoteric truth was supposed to flow beneath all the surface of

Scripture; and every text germinated, in the hands of the preacher, into

meanings far from obvious, but which were presumed to be not undesigned.

This scheme of allegorical interpretation began among the earliest

fathers, and spread with perpetual expansion through the middle

ages.[417] The Reformation swept most of it away; but it has frequently

revived in a more partial manner. We mention it here only as one great

means of enabling men to believe more than they had done, of

communicating to them what was to be received as divine truths, not

additional to Scripture, because they were concealed in it, but such as

the church could only have learned through its teachers.

[417] Fleury (5me discours), xvii. 37. Mosheim, passim.

|Confidence in traditions.|

91. Another large class of religious opinions stood on a somewhat

different footing. They were in a proper sense, according to the notions

of those times, revealed from God; though not in the sacred writings

which were the chief depositories of his word. Such were the received

traditions in each of the three great religions, sometimes, absolutely

infallible, sometimes, as in the former case of interpretations, resting

upon such a basis of authority, that no one was held at liberty to

withhold his assent. The Jewish traditions were of this kind; and the

Mahometans have trod in the same path, we may add to these the legends

of saints: none, perhaps, were positively enforced as of faith; but a

Franciscan was not to doubt the inspiration and miraculous gifts of his

founder. Nor was there any disposition in the people to doubt of them;

they filled up with abundant measure the cravings of the heart and

fancy, till, having absolutely palled both by excess, they brought about

a kind of reaction, which has taken off much of their efficacy.

|Confidence in individuals as inspired.|

92. Francis of Assisi may naturally lead us to the last mode in which

the spirit of theological belief manifested itself; the confidence in a

particular man, as the organ of a special divine illumination. But

though this was fully assented to by the order he instituted, and

probably by most others, it cannot be said that Francis pretended to set

up any new tenets, or enlarge, except by his visions and miracles, the

limits of spiritual knowledge. Nor would this, in general, have been a

safe proceeding in the middle ages. Those who made a claim to such light

from heaven as could irradiate what the church had left dark seldom

failed to provoke her jealousy. It is, therefore, in later times, and

under more tolerant governments, that we shall find the fanatics, or

impostors, whom the multitude has taken for witnesses of divine truth,

or at least as interpreters of the mysteries of the invisible world.

|Jewish Cabbala.|

93. In the class of traditional theology, or what might be called

complemental revelation, we must place the Jewish Cabbala. This

consisted in a very specific and complex system, concerning the nature

of the Supreme being, the emanation of various orders of spirits in

successive links from his essence, their properties and characters. It

is evidently one modification of the oriental philosophy, borrowing

little from the Scriptures, at least through any natural interpretation

of them, and the offspring of the Alexandrian Jews, not far from the

beginning of the Christian æra. They referred it to a tradition from

Esdras, or some other eminent person, on whom they fixed as the

depositary of an esoteric theology communicated by divine authority. The

Cabbala was received by the Jewish doctors in the first centuries after

the fall of their state; and after a period of long duration, as

remarkable for the neglect of learning in that people as in the

Christian world, it revived again in that more genial season, the

eleventh and twelfth centuries, when the brilliancy of many kinds of

literature among the Saracens of Spain excited their Jewish subjects to

emulation. Many conspicuous men illustrate the Hebrew learning of those

and the succeeding ages. It was not till now, about the middle of the

fifteenth century, that they came into contact with the Christians in

theological philosophy. The Platonism of Ficinus, derived, in great

measure, from that of Plotinus and the Alexandrian school, was easily

connected, by means especially of the writings of Philo, with the Jewish

orientalism, sisters as they were of the same family. Several forgeries

in celebrated names, easy to affect and sure to deceive, had been

committed in the first ages of Christianity by the active propagators of

this philosophy. Hermes Trismegistus, and Zoroaster, were counterfeited

in books which most were prone to take for genuine, and which it was not

then easy to refute on critical grounds. These altogether formed a huge

mass of imposture, or, at best, of arbitrary hypothesis, which, for more

than a hundred years after this time, obtained an undue credence, and

consequently retarded the course of real philosophy in Europe.[418]

[418] Brucker, vol. ii. Buhle, ii. 316. Meiners, Vergl. der Sitten,

iii. 277.

|Picus of Mirandola.|

94. They never gained over a more distinguished proselyte, or one whose

credulity was more to be regretted, than a young man who appeared at

Florence in 1485, John Picus of Mirandola. He was then twenty-two years

old, the younger son of an illustrious family, which held that little

principality as an imperial fief. At the age of fourteen he was sent to

Bologna, that he might study the canon law, with a view to the

ecclesiastical profession; but after two years he felt an inexhaustible

desire for more elevated though less profitable sciences. He devoted the

next six years to the philosophy of the schools, in the chief

universities of Italy and France: whatever disputable subtilties the

metaphysics and theology of that age could supply, became familiar to

his mind; but to these he added a knowledge of the Hebrew and other

eastern languages, a power of writing Latin with grace, and of amusing

his leisure with the composition of Italian poetry. The natural genius

of Picus is well shown, though in a partial manner, by a letter which

will be found among those of Politian, in answer to Hermolaus Barbarus.

His correspondent had spoken with the scorn, and almost bitterness,

usual with philologers, of the Transalpine writers, meaning chiefly the

schoolmen, for the badness of their Latin. The young scholastic

answered, that he had been at first disheartened by the reflection that

he had lost six years’ labour; but considered afterwards, that the

barbarians might say something for themselves, and puts a very good

defence in their mouths; a defence which wants nothing but the truth of

what he is forced to assume, that they had been employing their

intellects upon things instead of words. Hermolaus found, however,

nothing better to reply than the compliment, that Picus would be

disavowed by the schoolmen for defending them in so eloquent a

style.[419]

[419] The letter of Hermolaus is dated Apr. 1485. He there says, after

many compliments to Picus himself: Nec enim inter autores Latinæ

linguæ numero Germanos istos et Teutonas qui ne viventes quidem

vivebant, nedum ut extincti vivant, aut si vivunt, vivunt in pœnam

et contumeliam. The answer of Picus is dated in June. A few lines

from his pleading for the schoolmen will exhibit his ingenuity and

elegance. Admirenture nos sagaces in inquirendo, circumspectors in

explorando, subtiles in contemplando, in judicando graves,

implicitos in vinciendo, faciles in enodando. Admirentur in nobis

brevitatem styli, fœtam rerum multarum atque magnarum, sub

expositis verbis remotissimas sententias, plenas quæstionum, plenas

solutionum, quam apti sumus, quam bene instructi ambiguitates

tollere, scrupos diluere, involuta evolvere, flexanimis syllogismis

et infirmare falso et vera confirmare. Viximus celebres, o

Hermolae, et posthac vivemus, non in scholis grammaticorum et

pædagogiis, sed in philosophorum coronis, in conventibus sapientum,

ubi non de matre Andromaches, non de Niobes filiis, atque id genus

levibus nugis, sed de humanarum divinarumque rerum rationibus

agitur et disputatur. In quibus meditandis, inquirendis et

enodandis, ita subtiles acuti acresque fuimus, ut anxii quandoque

nimium et morosi fuisse forte videamur, si modo esse morosus

quispiam aut curiosus nimio plus in indagando veritate potest.

Polit. Epist. lib. 9.

|His credulity in the Cabbala.|

95. He learned Greek very rapidly, probably after his coming to Florence.

And having been led, through Ficinus, to the study of Plato, he seems to

have given up his Aristotelian philosophy for theories more congenial to

his susceptible and credulous temper. These led him onwards to wilder

fancies. Ardent in the desire of knowledge, incapable, in the infancy of

criticism, to discern authentic from spurious writings, and perhaps

disqualified, by his inconceivable rapidity in apprehending the opinions

of others from judging acutely of their reasonableness, Picus of

Mirandola fell an easy victim to his own enthusiasm and the snares of

fraud. An impostor persuaded him to purchase fifty Hebrew manuscripts,

as having been composed by Esdras, and containing the most secret

mysteries of the Cabbala. From this time, says Corniani, he imbibed more

and more such idle fables, and wasted in dreams a genius formed to reach

the most elevated and remote truths. In these spurious books of Esdras,

he was astonished to find, as he says, more of Christianity than

Judaism, and trusted them the more confidently for the very reason that

demonstrates their falsity.[420]

[420] Corniani, iii. 63. Meiners, Lebensbeschreibungen berühmter Männer

ii. 21. Tiraboschi, vii. 325.

|His literary performances.|

96. Picus, about the end of 1486, repaired to Rome, and with permission

of Innocent VIII., propounded his famous nine hundred theses, or

questions, logical, ethical, mathematical, physical, metaphysical,

theological, magical, and cabbalistical; upon every one of which he

offered to dispute with any opponent. Four hundred of these propositions

were from philosophers of Greece or Arabia, from the schoolmen, or from

the Jewish doctors; the rest were announced as his own opinions, which,

saving the authority of the church, he was willing to defend.[421] There

was some need of this reservation; for several of his theses were

ill-sounding, as it was called, in the ears of the orthodox. They raised

a good deal of clamour against him; and the high rank, brilliant

reputation, and obedient demeanour of Picus were all required to save

him from public censure or more serious animadversions. He was

compelled, however, to swear that he would adopt such an exposition of

his theses as the pope should set forth. But as this was not done, he

published an apology, especially vindicating his employment of

cabbalistical and magical learning. This excited fresh attacks, which in

some measure continued to harass him, till, on the accession of

Alexander VI. to the papal chair, he was finally pronounced free from

blameable intention. He had meantime, as we may infer from his later

writings, receded from some of the bolder opinions of his youth. His

mind became more devout, and more fearful of deviating from the church.

On his first appearance at Florence, uniting rare beauty with high birth

and unequalled renown, he had been much sought by women, and returned

their love. But at the age of twenty-five he withdrew himself from all

worldly distraction, destroying, as it is said, his own amatory poems,

to the regret of his friends.[422] He now published several works, of

which the Heptaplus is a cabbalistic exposition of the first chapter of

Genesis. It is remarkable that, with his excessive tendency to belief,

he rejected altogether, and confuted in a distinct treatise, the popular

science of astrology, in which men so much more conspicuous in

philosophy have trusted. But he had projected many other undertakings of

vast extent; an allegorical exposition of the New Testament, a defence

of the Vulgate and Septuagint against the Jews, a vindication of

Christianity against every species of infidelity and heresy; and

finally, a harmony of philosophy, reconciling the apparent

inconsistencies of all writers, ancient and modern, who deserved the

name of wise, as he had already attempted by Plato and Aristotle. In

these arduous labours he was cut off by a fever at the age of

thirty-one, in 1494, on the very day that Charles VIII. made his entry

into Florence. A man, so justly called the phœnix of his age, and so

extraordinarily gifted by nature, ought not to be slightly passed over,

though he may have left nothing which we could read with advantage. If

we talk of the admirable Crichton, who is little better than a shadow,

and lives but in panegyric, so much superior and more wonderful a person

as John Picus of Mirandola should not be forgotten.[423]

[421] Meiners, p. 14.

[422] Meiners, p. 10.

[423] The long biography of Picus in Meiners is in great measure taken

from a life written by his nephew, John Francis Picus, count of

Mirandola, himself a man of great literary and philosophical

reputation in the next century. Meiners has made more use of this

than any one else; but much will be found concerning Picus, from

this source, and from his own works, in Brucker, Buhle, Corniani,

and Tiraboschi. The epitaph on Picus by Hercules Strozza is, I

believe, in the church of St. Mark:--

Joannes jacet hic Mirandola; cætera nôrunt

Et Tagus et Ganges; forsan et Antipodes.

|State of learning in Germany.|

|Agricola.|

97. If, leaving the genial city of Florence, we are to judge of the

state of knowledge in our Cisalpine regions, and look at the books it

was thought worth while to publish, which seems no bad criterion, we

shall rate but lowly their proficiency in the classical literature so

much valued in Italy. Four editions, and those chiefly of short works,

were printed at Deventer, one at Cologne, one at Louvain, five perhaps

at Paris, two at Lyons.[424] But a few undated books might, probably, be

added. Either, therefore, the love of ancient learning had grown colder,

which was certainly not the case, or it had never been strong enough to

reward the labour of the too sanguine printers. Yet it was now striking

root in Germany. The excellent schools of Munster and Schelstadt were

established in some part of this decade; they trained those who were

themselves to become instructors; and the liberal zeal of Langius

extending beyond his immediate disciples, scarce any Latin author was

published in Germany in which he did not correct the text.[425] The

opportunities he had of doing so were not, as has been just

seen, so numerous in this period as they became in the next. He had to

withstand a potent and obstinate faction. The mendicant friars of

Cologne, the head-quarters of barbarous superstition, clamoured against

his rejection of the old school-books, and the entire reform of

education. But Agricola addresses his friend in sanguine language: “I

entertain the greatest hope from your exertions, that we shall one day

wrest from this insolent Italy her vaunted glory of pre-eminent

eloquence; and redeeming ourselves from the opprobrium of ignorance,

barbarism, and incapacity of expression which she is ever casting upon

us, may show our Germany so deeply learned, that Latium itself shall not

be more Latin than she will appear.”[426] About 1482, Agricola was

invited to the court of the elector palatine at Heidelberg. He seems not

to have been engaged in public instruction, but passed the remainder of

his life, unfortunately too short, for he died in 1485, in diffusing and

promoting a taste for literature among his contemporaries. No German

wrote in so pure a style, or possessed so large a portion of classical

learning. Vives places him in dignity and grace of language even above

Politian and Hermolaus.[427] The praises of Erasmus, as well as of the

later critics, if not so marked, are very freely bestowed. His letters

are frequently written in Greek; a fashion of those who could; and as

far as I have attended to them, seem equal in correctness to some from

men of higher name in the next age.

[424] Panzer.

[425] Meiners, Lebensbesch. ii. 328. Eichhorn, iii. 231-239.

[426] Unum hoc tibi affirmo, ingentem de te concipio fiduciam,

summamque in spem adducor, fore aliquando, ut priscam insolenti

Italiæ, et propemodum occupatam bene dicendi gloriam extorqueamus;

vindicemusque nos, et ab ignavia, qua nos barbaros, indoctosque et

elingues, et si quid est his incultius, esse nos jactitant,

exsolvamus, futuramque tam doctam et literatam Germaniam nostram,

ut non Latinius vel ipsum sit Latium. This is quoted by Heeren, p.

154, and Meiners, ii. 329.

[427] Vix et hac nostra et patrum memoria fuit unus atque alter dignior,

qui multum legeretur, multumque in manibus haberetur, quam

Radulphus Agricola Frisius; tantum est in ejus operibus ingenii,

artis, gravitatis, dulcedinis, eloquentiæ, eruditionis; at is

paucissimis noscitur, vir non minus, qui ab hominibus

cognosceretur, dignus quam Politianus, vel Hermolaus Barbarus, quos

mea quidem sententia, et majestate et suavitate dictionis non æquat

modo, sed etiam vincit. Vives, Comment. in Augustin. (apud Blount,

Censura Auctorum, sub nomine Agricola.)

Agnosco virum divini pectoris, eruditionis reconditæ, stylo minime

vulgari, solidum, nervosum elaboratum, compositum. In Italia summus

esse poterat, nisi Germanium prætulisset. Erasmus in Ciceroniano.

He speaks as strongly in many other places. Testimonies to the

merits of Agricola from Huet, Vossius, and others, are collected by

Bayle, Blount, Baillet, and Niceron. Meiners has written his life,

ii. pp. 332-363; and several of his letters will be found among

those addressed to Reuchlin, Epistolæ ad Reuchlinum; a collection

of great importance for this portion of literary history.

|Rhenish academy.|

98. The immediate patron of Agricola, through whom he was invited to

Heidelberg, was John Camerarius, of the house of Dalberg, bishop of

Worms, and chancellor of the Palatinate. He contributed much himself to

the cause of letters in Germany; especially if he is to be deemed the

founder, as probably he should be, of an early academy, the Rhenish

Society, which, we are told, devoted its time to Latin, Greek, and

Hebrew criticism, astronomy, music, and poetry; not scorning to relax

their minds with dances and feasts, nor forgetting the ancient German

attachment to the flowing cup.[428] The chief seat of the Rhenish

Society was at Heidelberg; but it had associate branches in other parts

of Germany, and obtained imperial privileges. No member of this academy

was more conspicuous than Conrad Celtes, who has sometimes been reckoned

its founder, which, from his youth, is hardly probable, and was, at

least, the chief instrument of its subsequent extension. He was

indefatigable in the vineyard of literature, and, travelling to

different parts of Germany, exerted a more general influence than

Agricola himself. Celtes was the first from whom Saxony derived some

taste for learning. His Latin poetry was far superior to any that had

been produced in the empire; and for this, in 1487, he received the

laurel crown from Frederic III.[429]

[428] Studebant eximia hæc ingenia Latinorum, Græcorum, Ebræorumque

scriptorum lectioni, cumprimis criticæ; astronomiam et artem

musicam excolebant. Poesin atque jurisprudentiam sibi habebant

commendatam; imo et interdum gaudia curis interponebant. Nocturno

nimirum tempore, defessi laboribus, ludere solebant, saltare,

jocari cum mulierculis, epulari, ac more Germanorum inveterato

strenue potare. Jugler, Hist. Litteraria, p. 1993 (vol. iii.). The

passage seems to be taken from Ruprecht, Oratio de Societate

Litteraria Rhenana, Jenæ, 1752, which I have not seen.

[429] Jugler, ubi suprà. Eichhorn, ii. 557. Heeren, p. 100. Biogr.

Universelle, art. Celtes, Dalberg, Trithemius.

|Reuchlin.|

99. Reuchlin, in 1482, accompanied the duke of Wirtemberg on a visit to

Rome. He thus became acquainted with the illustrious men of

Italy, and convinced them of his own pretensions to the name of a

scholar. The old Constantinopolitan Argyropulus, on hearing him

translate a passage of Thucydides, exclaimed, “Our banished Greece has

now flown beyond the Alps.” Yet Reuchlin, though from some other

circumstances of his life a more celebrated, was not probably so learned

or so accomplished a man as Agricola; he was withdrawn from public

tuition by the favour of several princes, in whose courts he filled

honourable offices; and after some years more, he fell unfortunately

into the same seducing error as Picus of Mirandola, and sacrificed his

classical pursuits for the Cabbalistic philosophy.

|French language and poetry.|

100. Though France contributed little to the philologer, several books

were now published in French. In the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, 1486, a

slight improvement in polish of language is said to be discernible.[430]

The poems of Villon are rather of more importance. They were first

published in 1489; but many of them had been written thirty years

before. Boileau has given Villon credit for being the first who cleared

his style from the rudeness and redundancy of the old romancers.[431]

But this praise, as some have observed, is more justly due to the duke

of Orleans, a man of full as much talent as Villon, with a finer taste.

The poetry of the latter, as might be expected from a life of

dissoluteness and roguery, is often low and coarse; but he seems by no

means incapable of a moral strain, not destitute of terseness and

spirit. Martial d’Auvergne, in his Vigiles de la Mort de Charles VII.,

which, from its subject, must have been written soon after 1460, though

not printed till 1490, displays, to judge from the extracts in Goujet,

some compass of imagination.[432] The French poetry of this age was

still full of allegorical morality, and had lost a part of its original

raciness. Those who desire an acquaintance with it may have recourse to

the author just mentioned, or to Bouterwek; and extracts, though not so

copious as the title promises, will be found in the Recueil des Anciens

Poètes Français.

[430] Essai du C. François de Neufchâteau sur les meilleurs ouvrages

en prose; prefixed to Œuvres de Pascal (1819), i. p. cxx.

[431] Villon fut le primer dans des siècles grossiers

Debrouiller l’art confus de nos vieux romanciers.

Art Poétique, l. i. v. 117.

[432] Goujet, Bibliothèque Française, vol. x.

|European drama.|

|Latin.|

101. The modern drama of Europe is derived, like its poetry, from two

sources, the one ancient or classical, the other mediæval; the one an

imitation of Plautus and Seneca, the other a gradual refinement of the

rude scenic performances, denominated miracles, mysteries, or

moralities. Latin plays upon the former model, a few of which are

extant, were written in Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth

centuries, and sometimes represented, either in the universities, or

before an audience of ecclesiastics and others who could understand

them.[433] One of these, the Catinia of Secco Polentone, written about

the middle of the fifteenth century, and translated by a son of the

author into the Venetian dialect, was printed in 1482. This piece,

however, was confined to the press.[434] Sabellicus, as quoted by

Tiraboschi, has given to Pomponius Lætus the credit of having

re-established the theatre at Rome, and caused the plays of Plautus

Terence, as well as some more modern, which we may presume to have been

in Latin, to be performed before the pope, probably Sixtus IV. And James

of Volterra, in a diary published by Muratori, expressly mentions a

History of Constantine represented in the papal palace during the

carnival of 1484.[435] In imitation of Italy, but, perhaps, a little

after the present decennial period, Reuchlin brought Latin plays of his

own composition before a German audience. They were represented by

students of Heidelberg. An edition of his Progymnasmata Scenica,

containing some of these comedies, was printed in 1498. It has been said

that one of them is taken from the French farce Maitre Patelin[436];

while another, entitled Sergius, according to Warton, flies a much

higher pitch, and is a satire on bad kings and bad ministers; though,

from the account of Meiners, it seems rather to fall on the fraudulent

arts of the monks.[437] The book is very scarce, and I have never seen

it. Conrad Celtes, not long after Reuchlin, produced his own tragedies

and comedies in the public halls of German cities. It is to be

remembered, that the oral Latin language might at that time be tolerably

familiar to a considerable audience in Germany.

[433] Tiraboschi, vii. 200.

[434] Id. p. 201.

[435] Id. p. 204.

[436] Greswell’s Early Parisian Press, p. 124; quoting la Monnoye. This

seems to be confirmed by Meiners, i. 63.

[437] Warton, iii. 203. Meiners, i. 62. The Sergius was represented at

Heidelberg about 1497.

|Orfeo of Politian.|

102. The Orfeo of Politian has claimed precedence as the earliest

represented drama, not of a religious nature, in a modern language. This

was written by him in two days, and acted before the court of Mantua in

1483. Roscoe has called it the first example of the musical drama, or

Italian opera; but though he speaks of this as agreed by general

consent, it is certain that the Orfeo was not designed for musical

accompaniment, except, probably, in the songs and choruses.[438]

According to the analysis of the fable in Ginguéné, the Orfeo differs

only from a legendary mystery by substituting one set of characters for

another; and it is surely by an arbitrary definition that we pay it the

compliment upon which the modern historians of literature seem to have

agreed. Several absurdities which appear in the first edition are said

not to exist in the original manuscripts from which the Orfeo has been

reprinted.[439] We must give the next place to a translation of the

Menæchmi of Plautus, acted at Ferrara in 1486, by order of Ercole I.,

and, as some have thought, his own production, or to some original plays

said to have been performed at the same brilliant court in the following

years.[440]

[438] Burney (Hist. of Music, iv. 17) seems to countenance this; but

Tiraboschi does not speak of musical accompaniment to the Orfeo;

and Corniani only says, alcuni di essi sembrano dall’autor

destinati ad accoppiarsi colla musica. Tali sono i canzoni e i cori

alla Greca. Probably Roscoe did not mean all that his words imply;

for the origin of recitative, in which the essence of the Italian

opera consists, more than a century afterwards, is matter of

notoriety.

[439] Tiraboschi, vii. 216. Ginguéné, iii. 514. Andrès (v. 125),

discussing the history of the Italian and Spanish theatres,

gives the precedence to the Orfeo as a represented play, though he

conceives the first act of the Celestina to have been written and

well known not later than the middle of the fifteenth century.

[440] Tiraboschi, vii. 203, et post. Roscoe, Leo X., ch. ii. Ginguéné,

vi. 18.

|Origin of dramatic mysteries.|

103. The less regular, though in their day not less interesting, class

of scenical stories, commonly called mysteries, all of which related to

religious subjects, were never in more reputation than at this time. It

is impossible to fix their first appearance at any single æra, and the

inquiry into the origin of dramatic representation must be very limited

in its subject, or perfectly futile in its scope. All nations, probably,

have at all times, to a certain extent, amused themselves both with

pantomimic and oral representation of a feigned story; the sports of

children are seldom without both; and the exclusive employment of the

former, instead of being a first stage of the drama, as has sometimes

been assumed, is rather a variety in the course of its progress.

|Their early stage.|

104. The Christian drama arose on the ruins of the heathen theatre: it

was a natural substitute of real sympathies for those which were effaced

and condemned. Hence we find Greek tragedies on sacred subjects almost

as early as the establishment of the church, and we have testimonies to

their representation at Constantinople. Nothing of this kind being

proved with respect to the west of Europe in the dark ages, it has been

conjectured, not improbably, though without necessity, that the

pilgrims, of whom great numbers repaired to the East in the eleventh

century, might have obtained notions of scenical dialogue, with a

succession of characters, and with an ornamental apparatus, in which

theatrical representation properly consists. The earliest mention of

them, it has been said, is in England. Geoffrey, afterwards abbot of St.

Albans, while teaching a school at Dunstable, caused one of the shows,

vulgarly called miracles, on the story of St. Catherine, to be

represented in that town. Such is the account of Matthew Paris, who

mentions the circumstance incidentally, in consequence of a fire that

ensued. This must have been within the first twenty years of the twelfth

century.[441] It is not to be questioned, that Geoffrey, a native of

France, had some earlier models in his own country. Le Bœuf gives an

account of a mystery written in the middle of the preceding century,

wherein Virgil is introduced among the prophets that come to adore the

Saviour; doubtless in allusion to the fourth eclogue.

[441] Matt. Paris, p. 1007 (edit. 1684). See Warton’s 34th section

(iii. 193-233), for the early drama, and Beauchamps, Hist. du

Théâtre Français, vol. i., or Bouterwek, v. 95-117, for the French

in particular; Tiraboschi, ubi suprà, or Riccoboni, Hist. du

Théâtre Italien, for that of Italy.

|Extant English mysteries.|

105. Fitz-Stephen, in the reign of Henry II., dwells on the sacred plays

acted in London, representing the miracles or passions of martyrs. They

became very common by the names of mysteries or miracles, both in

England and on the Continent, and were not only exhibited within the

walls of convents, but upon public occasions and festivals for the

amusement of the people. It is probable, however, that the performers

for a long time were always ecclesiastics. The earlier of those

religious dramas were in Latin. A Latin farce exists on St. Nicholas,

older than the thirteenth century.[442] It was slowly that the

modern languages were employed; and perhaps it might hence be presumed,

that the greater part of the story was told through pantomime. But as

this was unsatisfactory, and the spectators could not always follow the

fable, there was an obvious inducement to make use of the vernacular

language. The most ancient specimens appear to be those which Le Grand

d’Aussy found among the compositions of the Trouveurs. He has published

extracts from three; two of which are in the nature of legendary

mysteries, while the third, which is far more remarkable, and may

possibly be of the following century, is a pleasing pastoral drama, of

which there seem to be no other instances in the mediæval period.[443]

Bouterwek mentions a fragment of a German mystery, near the end of the

thirteenth century.[444] Next to this it seems that we should place an

English mystery called The Harrowing of Hell. “This,” its editor

observes, “is believed to be the most ancient production in a dramatic

form in our language. The manuscript from which it is now printed is on

vellum, and is certainly as old as the reign of Edward III., if not

older. It probably formed one of a series of performances of the same

kind, founded upon Scripture history.” It consists of a prologue,

epilogue, and intermediate dialogue of nine persons, Dominus, Sathan,

Adam, Eve, &c. Independently of the alleged age of the manuscript

itself, the language will hardly be thought later than 1350.[445] This,

however, seems to stand at no small distance from any extant work of the

kind. Warton having referred the Chester mysteries to 1327, when he

supposes them to have been written by Ranulph Higden, a learned monk of

that city, best known as the author of the Polychronicon, Roscoe

positively contradicts him, and denies that any dramatic composition can

be found in England anterior to the year 1500.[446] Two of these Chester

mysteries have been since printed; but notwithstanding the very

respectable authorities which assign them to the fourteenth century, I

cannot but consider the language in which we now read them not earlier,

to say the least, than the middle of the next. It is possible that they

have in some degree been modernised. Mr. Collier has given an analysis

of our own extant mysteries, or, as he prefers to call them,

Miracle-plays.[447] There does not seem to be much dramatic merit, even

with copious indulgence, in any of them; and some, such as the two

Chester mysteries, are in the lowest style of buffoonery; yet they are

of some importance in the absolute sterility of English literature

during the age in which we presume them to have been written, the reigns

of Henry VI. and Edward IV.

[442] Journal des Savans, 1828, p. 297. These farces, according to

M. Raynouard, were the earliest dramatic representations, and gave

rise to the mysteries.

[443] Fabliaux, ii. 119.

[444] ix. 265. The Tragedy of the Ten Virgins was acted at Eisenach

in 1322. This is evidently nothing but a mystery. Weber’s

Illustrations of Northern Poetry, p. 19.

[445] Mr. Collier has printed twenty-five copies (why veteris tam parcus

aceti?) of this very curious record of the ancient drama. I do not

know that any other in Europe of that early age has yet been given

to the press.

[446] Lorenzo de’ Medici, i. 399. Roscoe thinks the few extracts in

Bouterwek, is rather there is reason to conjecture that the

Miracle-play acted at Dunstable was in dumb show; and assumes the

same of the “grotesque exhibitions” known by the name of The

Harrowing of Hell. In this we have just seen that he was mistaken,

and probably in the former.

[447] Hist. of English Dramatic Poetry, vol. ii. The Chester mysteries

were printed for the Roxburgh Club, by my friend Mr. Markland; and

what are called the Townley mysteries are announced for publication.

|First French theatre.|

106. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were fertile of these

religious dramas in many parts of Europe. They were frequently

represented in Germany, but more in Latin than in the mother-tongue. The

French scriptural theatre, whatever may have been previously exhibited,

seems not to be traced in permanent existence beyond the last years of

the fourteenth century. It was about 1400, according to Beauchamps, or

some years before, as the authorities quoted by Bouterwek imply, that

the Confrairie de la Passion de N. S. was established as a regular body

of actors at Paris.[448] They are said to have taken their name from the

mystery of the passion, which in fact represented the whole life of our

Lord from his baptism, and was divided into several days. In pomp of

show they far excelled our English mysteries, in which few persons

appeared, and the scenery was simple. But in the mystery of the passion,

eighty-seven characters were introduced in the first day; heaven, earth,

and hell combined to people the stage; several scenes were written for

singing, and some for choruses. The dialogue, of which I have only seen

similar to that of our own mysteries, though less rude, and with

more efforts at a tragic tone.[449]

[448] Beauchamps, Recherches sur le Théâtre Français. Bouterwek, v. 96.

[449] Bouterwek, p. 100.

|Theatrical machinery.|

107. The mysteries, not confined to scriptural themes, embraced those

which were hardly less sacred and trustworthy in the eyes of the people,

the legends of saints. These afforded ample scope for the gratification

which great part of mankind seem to take in witnessing the endurance of

pain. Thus, in one of these Parisian mysteries, St. Barbara is hung up

by the heels on the stage, and after uttering her remonstrances in that

unpleasant situation, is torn with pincers and scorched with lamps

before the audience. The decorations of this theatre must have appeared

splendid. A large scaffolding at the back of the stage displayed heaven

above and hell below, between which extended the world, with

representations of the spot where the scene lay. Nor was the machinist’s

art unknown. An immense dragon, with eyes of polished steel, sprung out

from hell, in a mystery exhibited at Metz in the year 1437, and spread

his wings so near to the spectators that they were all in

consternation.[450] Many French mysteries, chiefly without date of the

year, are in print, and probably belong, typographically speaking, to

the present century.[451] One bears, according to Brunet, the date of

1484. These may, however, have been written long before their

publication. Beauchamps has given a list of early mysteries and

moralities in the French language, beginning near the end of the

fourteenth century.

[450] Bouterwek, pp. 103-106.

[451] Brunet, Manuel du Libraire.

|Italian religious dramas.|

108. The religious drama was doubtless full as ancient in Italy as in

any other country; it was very congenial to people whose delight in

sensible objects is so intense. It did not supersede the extemporaneous

performances, the mimi and histriones, who had probably never

intermitted their sportive license since the days of their Oscan

fathers, and of whom we find mention, sometimes with severity, sometimes

with toleration, in ecclesiastical writers;[452] but it came into

competition with them; and thus may be said to have commenced in the

thirteenth century a war of regular comedy against the lawless savages

of the stage, which has only been terminated in Italy within very recent

recollection. We find a society del Gonfalone established at Rome in

1264, the statutes of which declare, that it is designed to represent

the passion of Jesus Christ.[453] Lorenzo de’ Medici condescended to

publish a drama of this kind on the martyrdom of two saints; and a

considerable collection of similar productions during the fifteenth

century was in the possession of Mr. Roscoe.[454]

[452] Thomas Aquinas mentions the histrionatûs ars, as lawful if not

abused. St. Antonin does the same. Riccoboni, i. 23.

[453] Riccoboni. Tiraboschi, however, v. 376, disputes the antiquity

of any scenical representations truly dramatic, in Italy; in which

he seems to be mistaken.

[454] Life of Lorenzo, i. 402.

|Moralities.|

|Farces.|

109. Next to the mysteries came the kindred class, styled moralities.

But as these belong more peculiarly to the next century, both in England

and France, though they began about the present time, we may better

reserve them for that period. There is still another species of dramatic

composition, what may be called the farce, not always very

distinguishable from comedy, but much shorter, admitting more buffoonery

without reproach, and more destitute of any serious or practical end. It

may be reckoned a middle link between the extemporaneous effusions of

the mimes and the legitimate drama. The French have a diverting piece of

this kind, Maitre Patelin, ascribed to Pierre Blanchet, and first

printed in 1490. It was restored to the stage with much alteration,

under the name of l’Avocat Patelin, about the beginning of the last

century; and contains strokes of humour, which Molière would not have

disdained.[455] Of these productions there were not a few in Germany,

called Fastnachts-spiele, or Carnival plays, written in the license

which that season has generally permitted. They are scarce and of little

value. The most remarkable is the Apotheosis of Pope Joan, a tragi-comic

legend, written about 1480.[456]

[455] The proverbial expression for quitting a digression, Revenons à

nos moutons, is taken from this farce; which is at least short, and

as laughable as most farces are. It seems to have been written not

long before its publication. See Pasquier, Recherches de la France,

l. viii. c. 59; Biogr. Univ., Blanchet; and Bouterwek, v. 118.

[456] Bouterwek, Gesch. der deutschen Poesie, ix. 357-367. Heinsius,

Lehrbuch der Sprachtwissenschaft, iv. 125.

|Mathematical works.|

110. Euclid was printed for the first time at Venice in 1482; the

diagrams in this edition are engraved on copper, and remarkably clear

and neat.[457] The translation is that of Campanus from the

Arabic. The cosmography of Ptolemy, which had been already twice

published in Italy, appeared the same year at Ulm, with maps by Donis,

some of them traced after the plans drawn by Agathodæmon, some modern;

and it was reprinted, as well as Euclid, at the same place in 1486. The

tables of Regiomontanus were printed both at Augsburg and Venice in

1490. We may take this occasion of introducing two names, which do not

exclusively belong to the exact sciences, nor to the present period.

[457] A beautiful copy of this edition, presented to Mocenigo, doge

of Venice, is in the British Museum. The diagrams, especially those

which represent solids, are better than in our modern editions of

Euclid. I will take this opportunity of mentioning, that the

earliest book, in which engravings are found, is the edition of

Dante by Landino, published at Florence in 1481. See Brunet, Manuel

du Libraire, Dibdin’s Bibl. Spencer, &c.

|Leo Baptista Alberti.|

111. Leo Baptista Alberti was a man, who, if measured by the

universality of his genius, may claim a place in the temple of glory he

has not filled; the author of a Latin comedy, entitled Philodoxios,

which the younger Aldus Manutius afterwards published as the genuine

work of a certain ancient Lepidus; a moral writer in the various forms

of dialogue, dissertation, fable, and light humour; a poet, extolled by

some, though not free from the rudeness of his age; a philosopher of the

Platonic school of Lorenzo; a mathematician and inventor of optical

instruments; a painter, and the author of the earliest modern treatise

on painting; a sculptor, and the first who wrote about sculpture; a

musician, whose compositions excited the applause of his contemporaries;

an architect of profound skill, not only displayed in many works, of

which the church of Saint Francis at Rimini is the most admired, but in

a theoretical treatise, De Re Ædificatoriâ, published posthumously in

1485. It has been called the only work on architecture which we can

place on a level with that of Vitruvius, and by some has been preferred

to it. Alberti had deeply meditated the remains of Roman antiquity, and

endeavoured to derive from them general theorems of beauty, variously

applicable to each description of buildings.[458]

[458] Corniani, ii. 160. Tiraboschi, vii. 360.

112. This great man seems to have had two impediments to his permanent

glory: one, that he came a few years too soon into the world, before his

own language was become polished, and before the principles of taste in

art had been wholly developed; the other, that, splendid as was his own

genius, there were yet two men a little behind, in the presence of whom

his star has paled; men, not superior to Alberti in universality of

mental powers, but in their transcendency and command over immortal

fame. Many readers will have perceived to whom I allude,--Lionardo da

Vinci, and Michael Angelo.

|Lionardo da Vinci.|

113. None of the writings of Lionardo were published till more than a

century after his death; and, indeed, the most remarkable of them are

still in manuscript. We cannot, therefore, give him a determinate place

under this rather than any other decennium; but as he was born in 1452,

we may presume his mind to have been in full expansion before 1490. His

Treatise on Painting is known as a very early disquisition on the rules

of the art. But his greatest literary distinction is derived from those

short fragments of his unpublished writings that appeared not many years

since; and which, according, at least, to our common estimate of the age

in which he lived, are more like revelations of physical truths

vouchsafed to a single mind, than the superstructure of its reasoning

upon any established basis. The discoveries which made Galileo, and

Kepler, and Mæstlin, and Maurolycus, and Castelli, and other names

illustrious, the system of Copernicus, the very theories of recent

geologers, are anticipated by Da Vinci, within the compass of a few

pages, not perhaps in the most precise language, or on the most

conclusive reasoning, but so as to strike us with something like the awe

of præternatural knowledge. In an age of so much dogmatism, he first

laid down the grand principle of Bacon, that experiment and observation

must be the guides to just theory in the investigation of nature. If any

doubt could be harboured, not as to the right of Lionardo da Vinci to

stand as the first name of the fifteenth century, which is beyond all

doubt, but as to his originality in so many discoveries, which,

probably, no one man, especially in such circumstances, has ever made,

it must be on an hypothesis, not very untenable, that some parts of

physical science had already attained a height which mere books do not

record. The extraordinary works of ecclesiastical architecture in the

middle ages, especially in the fifteenth century, as well as those of

Toscanelli and Fioravanti, which we have mentioned, lend some

countenance to this opinion; and it is said to be confirmed by

the notes of Fra Mauro, a lay brother of a convent near Venice, on a

planisphere constructed by him, and still extant. Lionardo himself

speaks of the earth’s annual motion, in a treatise that appears to have

been written about 1510, as the opinion of many philosophers in his

age.[459]

[459] The manuscripts of Lionardo da Vinci, now at Paris, are the

justification of what has been said in the text. A short account of

them was given by Venturi, who designed to have published a part;

but, having relinquished that intention, the fragments he has made

known are the more important. As they are very remarkable, and not,

I believe, very generally known, I shall extract a few passages

from his Essai sur les Ouvrages Physico-mathématiques de Léonard de

Vinci. Paris, 1797.

En mécanique Vinci connaissait, entr’autres choses: 1. La théorie

des forces appliquées obliquement au bras du levier; 2. La

résistance respective des poutres; 3. Les lois du frottement

données ensuite par Amontons; 4. L’influence du centre de gravité

sur les corps en repos ou en mouvement; 5. L’application du

principe des vitesses virtuelles à plusieurs cas que la sublime

analyse a porté de nos jours a sa plus grande généralité. Dans

l’optique il décrivit la chambre obscure avant Porta, il expliqua

avant Maurolycus la figure de l’image du soleil dans un trou de

forme anguleuse; il nous apprend la perspective aerienne, la nature

des ombres colorées, les mouvemens de l’iris, les effets de la

durée de l’impression visible, et plusieurs autres phénomènes de

l’œil qu’on ne rencontre point dans Vitellion. Enfin non seulement

Vinci avait remarqué tout ce que Castelli a dit un siècle après lui

sur le mouvement des eaux; le premier me parait même dans cette

partie supérieur de beaucoup à l’autre, que l’Italie cependant a

regardé comme le fondateur de l’hydraulique.

Il faut donc placer Léonard à la tête de ceux qui se sont occupés

des sciences physico-mathématiques, et de la vraie méthode

d’étudier parmi les modernes, p. 5.

The first extract Venturi gives is entitled, On the descent of

heavy bodies combined with the rotation of the earth. He here

assumes the latter, and conceives that a body falling to the earth

from the top of a tower would have a compound motion in consequence

of the terrestrial rotation. Venturi thinks that the writings of

Nicolas de Cusa had set men on speculating concerning this before

the time of Copernicus.

Vinci had very extraordinary lights as to mechanical motions. He

says plainly, that the time of descent on inclined planes of equal

height is as their length; that a body descends along the arc of a

circle sooner than down the chord, and that a body descending an

inclined plane will re-ascend with the same velocity as if it had

fallen down the height. He frequently repeats, that every body

weighs in the direction of its movement, and weighs the more in the

ratio of its velocity; by weight evidently meaning what we call

force. He applies this to the centrifugal force of bodies in

rotation: Pendant tout ce temps elle pèse sur la direction de son

mouvement.

Lorsqu’on employe une machine quelconque pour mouvoir un corps

grave, toutes les parties de la machine qui ont un mouvement égal à

celui du corps grave ont une charge égale au poids entier du même

corps. Si la partie qui est le moteur a, dans le même temps, plus

de mouvement que le corps mobile, elle aura plus de puissance que

le mobile; et celà d’Autant plus qu’elle se mouvra plus vite que le

corps même. Si la partie qui est le moteur a moins de vitesse que

le mobile, elle aura d’Autant moins de puissance que ce mobile. If

in this passage there is not the perfect luminousness of expression

we should find in the best modern books, it seems to contain the

philosophical theory of motion as unequivocally as any of them.

Vinci had a better notion of geology than most of his

contemporaries, and saw that the sea had covered the mountains

which contain shells: Ces coquillages ont vécu dans le même endroit

lorsque l’eau de la mer le recouvrait. Les bancs, par la suite des

temps, ont été recouverts par d’Autres couches de limon de

différentes hauteurs; ainsi, les coquilles ont été enclavées sous

le bourbier amoncelé au dessus, jusqu’à sortir de l’eau. He seems

even to have had an idea of the elevation of the continents, though

he gives an unintelligible reason for it.

He explained the obscure light of the unilluminated part of the

moon by the reflection of the earth, as Mœstlin did long after.

He understood the camera obscura, and describes its effect. He

perceived that respirable air must support flame: Lorsque l’air

n’est pas dans un état propre à recevoir la flamme, il n’y peut

vivre ni flamme ni aucun animal terrestre ou aerien. Aucun animal

ne peut vivre dans un endroit ou la flamme ne vit pas.

Vinci’s observations on the conduct of the understanding are also

very much beyond his time. I extract a few of them.

Il est toujours bon pour l’entendement d’Acquérir des connaissances

quelles qu’elles soient; on pourra ensuite choisir les bonnes et

écarter les inutiles.

L’interprète des artifices de la nature, c’est l’expérience. Elle

ne se trompe jamais; c’est notre jugement qui quelquefois se trompe

lui-même, parcequ’il s’attend à des effets auxquels l’expérience se

refuse. Il faut consulter l’expérience, en varier les circonstances

jusqu’à ce que nous en ayons tiré des règles générales; car c’est

elle qui fournit les vraies règles. Mais à quoi bon ces règles, me

direz-vous? Je réponds qu’elles nous dirigent dans les recherches

de la nature et les opérations de l’art. Elles empêchent que nous

ne nous abusions nous-mêmes ou les autres, en nous promettant des

résultats que nous ne saurions obtenir.

Il n’y a point de certitude dans les sciences où on ne peut pas

appliquer quelque partie des mathématiques, ou qui n’en dépendent

pas de quelque manière.

Dans l’étude des sciences qui tiennent aux mathématiques, ceux qui

ne consultent pas la nature, mais les auteurs, ne sont pas les

enfans de la nature; je dirais qu’ils n’en sont que les petits

fils: elle seule, en effet, est le maitre des vrais génies. Mais

voyez la sottise! on se moque d’un homme qui aimera mieux apprendre

de la nature elle-même, que des auteurs, qui n’en sont que les

clercs. Is not this the precise tone of Lord Bacon?

Vinci says, in another place: Mon dessein est de citer d’Abord

l’expérience, et de démontrer ensuite pourquoi les corps sont

contraints d’Agir de telle manière. C’est la méthode qu’on doit

observer dans les recherches des phénomènes de la nature. Il est

bien vrai que la nature commence par le raisonnement, et finit par

l’expérience; mais n’importe, il nous faut prendre la route

opposée: comme j’ai dit, nous devons commencer par l’expérience, et

tâcher par son moyen d’en découvrir la raison.

He ascribes the elevation of the equatorial waters above the polar

to the heat of the sun: Elles entrent en mouvement de tous les

côtés de cette éminence aqueuse pour rétablir leur sphéricité

parfaite. This is not the true cause of their elevation, but by

what means could he know the fact?

Vinci understood fortification well, and wrote upon it. Since in

our time, he says, artillery has four times the power it used to

have, it is necessary that the fortification of towns should be

strengthened in the same proportion. He was employed on several

great works of engineering. So wonderful was the variety of power

in this miracle of nature. For we have not mentioned that his Last

Supper at Milan is the earliest of the great pictures in Italy, and

that some productions of his easel vie with those of Raphael. His

only published work, the Treatise on Painting, does him injustice;

it is an ill-arranged compilation from several of his manuscripts.

That the extraordinary works, of which this note contains an

account, have not been published entire, and in their original

language, is much to be regretted by all who know how to venerate

so great a genius as Lionardo da Vinci.

SECT. VI. 1491-1500.

_State of Learning in Italy--Latin and Italian Poets--Learning in

France and England--Erasmus--Popular Literature and Poetry--Other

kinds of Literature--General Literary Character of Fifteenth

Century--Book-trade, its Privileges and Restraints._

|Aldine Greek editions.|

114. The year 1494 is distinguished by an edition of Musæus, generally

thought the first work from the press established at Venice by Aldus

Manutius, who had settled there in 1489.[460]

In the course of about twenty years, with some interruption, he gave to

the world several of the principal Greek authors; and though, as we have

seen, not absolutely the earliest printer in that language, he so far

excelled all others in the number of his editions, that he may be justly

said to stand at the head of the list. It is right, however, to mention,

that Zarot had printed Hesiod and Theocritus in one volume, and also

Isocrates, at Milan, in 1493; that the Anthologia appeared at Florence

in 1494; Lucian and Apollonius Rhodius in 1496; the lexicon of Suidas,

at Milan, in 1499. About fifteen editions of Greek works, without

reckoning Craston’s lexicon and several grammars, had been published

before the close of the century.[461] The most remarkable of the Aldine

editions are the Aristotle, in five volumes, the first bearing date of

1495, the last of 1498, and nine plays of Aristophanes in the latter

year. In this Aristophanes, and perhaps in other editions of this time,

Aldus had fortunately the assistance of Marcus Musurus, one of the last,

but by no means the least eminent, of the Greeks who transported their

language to Italy. Musurus was now a public teacher at Padua. John

Lascaris, son, perhaps, of Constantine, edited the Anthologia at

Florence. It may be doubted whether Italy had as yet produced any

scholar, unless it were Varino, more often called Phavorinus, singly

equal to the task of superintending a Greek edition. His Thesaurus

Cornucopiæ, a collection of thirty-four grammatical tracts in Greek,

printed 1496, may be an exception. The Etymologicum Magnum, Venice,

1499, being a lexicon with only Greek explanations, is supposed to be

chiefly due to Musurus. Aldus had printed Craston’s lexicon, in 1497,

with the addition of an index; this has often been mistaken for an

original work.[462]

[460] The Erotemata of Constantino Lascaris, printed by Aldus, bears

date Feb. 1494, which Menu to mean 1495. But the Musæus has no

date, nor the Galeomyomachia, a Greek poem by one Theodoras

Prodromus. Renouard, Hist. de I’Imprimerie des Aldes.

[461] The grammar of Urbano Valeriano was first printed in 1497. It is

in Greek and Latin, and of extreme rarity. Roscoe (Leo X., ch. xi.)

says, “it was received with such avidity that Erasmus, on inquiring

for it in the year 1499, found that not a copy of this impression

remained unsold.” I have given, a little below, a different

construction to these words of Erasmus.

[462] Renouard. Roscoe’s Leo X., ch. xi.

|Decline of learning in Italy.|

115. The state of Italy was not so favourable as it had been to the

advancement of philosophy. After the expulsion of the Medici from

Florence, in 1494, the Platonic academy was broken up; and that

philosophy never found again a friendly soil in Italy, though Ficinus

had endeavoured to keep it up by a Latin translation of Plotinus.

Aristotle and his followers began now to regain the ascendant. Perhaps

it may be thought that even polite letters were not so flourishing as

they had been; no one, at least, yet appeared to fill the place of

Hermolaus Barbarus, who died in 1493, or Politian, who followed him the

next year.

|Hermolaus Barbarus.|

116. Hermolaus Barbarus was a noble Venetian, whom Europe agreed to

place next to Politian in critical learning, and to draw a line between

them and any third name. “No time, no accident, no destiny,” says an

enthusiastic scholar of the next age, “will ever efface their

remembrance from the hearts of the learned.”[463] Erasmus calls him a

truly great and divine man. He filled many honourable offices for the

republic; but lamented that they drew him away from that learning for

which he says he was born, and to which alone he was devoted.[464] Yet

Hermolaus is but faintly kept in mind at the present day. In his Latin

style, with the same fault as Politian, an affectation of obsolete

words, he is less flexible and elegant. But his chief merit was in the

restoration of the text of ancient writers. He boasts that he had

corrected about five thousand passages in Pliny’s natural history, and

more than three hundred in the very brief geography of Pomponius Mela.

Hardouin, however, charges him with extreme rashness in altering

passages he did not understand. The pope had nominated Hermolaus to the

greatest post in the Venetian church, the patriarchate of Aquileia; but

his mortification at finding that the senate refused to concur in the

appointment is said to have hastened his death.[465]

[463] Habuit nostra hæc ætas bonarum literarum proceres duos,

Hermolaum Barbarum atque Angelum Politianum: Deum immortalem!

quam acri judicio, quanta facundia, quanta linguarum, quanta

disciplinarum omnium scientia præditos! Hi Latinam linguam

jampridem squalentem et multa barbariei rubigine exesam, ad

pristinum revocare nitorem conati sunt, atque illis suus profecto

conatus non infeliciter cessit, suntque illi de Latina lingua tam

bene meriti, quam qui ante cos optimi meriti fuere. Itaque

immortalem sibi gloriam, immortale decus paraverunt, manebitque

semper in omnium eruditorum pectoribus consecrata Hermolai et

Politiani memoria, nullo ævo, nullo casu, nullo fato abolenda.

Brixeus Erasmo in Erasm. Epist. ccxii.

[464] Meiners, ii. 200.

[465] Bayle. Niceron, vol. xiv. Tiraboschi, vii. 152. Corniani, iii.

197. Heeren, p. 274.

|Mantuan.|

117. A Latin poet once of great celebrity, Baptista Mantuan, seems to

fall within this period as fitly as any other, though several of his

poems had been separately printed before, and their collective

publication was not till 1513. Editions recur very frequently in the

bibliography of Italy and Germany. He was, and long continued to be, the

poet of school-rooms. Erasmus says that he would be placed by posterity

not much below Virgil;[466] and the marquis of Mantua, anticipating this

suffrage, erected their statues side by side. Such is the security of

contemporary compliments! Mantuan has long been utterly neglected, and

does not find a place in most selections of Latin poetry. His Eclogues

and Silvæ are said to be the least bad of his numerous works. He was

among the many assailants of the church, or at least the court of Rome;

and this animosity inspired him with some bitter, or rather vigorous,

invectives. But he became afterwards a Carmelite friar.[467] Marullus, a

Greek by birth, has obtained a certain reputation for his Latin poems,

which are of no great value.

[466] Et nisi me fallit augurium, erit, erit aliquando Baptista suo

concive gloriâ celebritateque non ita multo inferior, simul

invidiam anni detraxerint. Append. ad Erasm. Epist. cccxcv. (edit.

Lugd.) It is not conceivable that Erasmus meant this literally; but

the drift of the letter is to encourage the reading of Christian

poets.

[467] Corniani, iii. 148. Niceron, vol. xxvii. Such of Mantuan’s

eclogues as are printed in Carmina Illustrium Poetarum Italorum,

Florent. 1719, are but indifferent. I doubt, however, whether that

voluminous collection has been made with much taste; and his satire

on the see of Rome would certainly be excluded, whatever might be

its merit. Corniani has given an extract, better than what I had

seen of Mantuan.

|Pontanus.|

118. A far superior name is that of Pontanus, to whom, if we attend to

some critics, we must award the palm, above all Latin poets of the

fifteenth century. If I might venture to set my own taste against

theirs, I should not agree to his superiority over Politian. His

hexameters are by no means deficient in harmony, and may, perhaps, be

more correct than those of his rival, but appears to me less pleasing

and poetical. His lyric poems are like too much modern Latin, in a tone

of languid voluptuousness, and ring changes on the various beauties of

his mistress, and the sweetness of her kisses. The few elegies of

Pontanus, among which that addressed to his wife, on the prospect of

peace, is the best known, fall very short of the admirable lines of

Politian on the death of Ovid. Pontanus wrote some moral and political

essays in prose, which are said to be full of just observations

and sharp satire on the court of Rome, and written in a style which his

contemporaries regarded with admiration. They were published in 1490.

Erasmus, though a parsimonious distributor of praise to the Italians,

has acknowledged their merit in the Ciceronianus.[468]

[468] Roscoe, Leo X., ch. ii. and xx. Niceron, vol. viii. Corniani.

Tiraboschi. Pantanus cum illa quatuor complecti summa cura conatus

sit nervum dico, numeros, candorem, venustatem, profecto est omnia

consecutus. Quintum autem illud quod est horum omnium veluti vita

quædam, modum intelligo, penitus ignoravit. Aiunt Virgilium cum

multos versus matutino calore effudisset, pomeridianis horis novo

judicio solitum ad paucorum numerum revocare. Contra quidem Pontano

evenisse arbitror. Quæ prima quaque inventione arrisissent, isis

plura postea, dum recognosceret, addita atque ipsis potius

carminibus, quam sibi pepercisse. Scaliger de Re Poetica (apud

Blount).

|Neapolitan academy.|