dignity which he had attained upon the death of Beccatelli, in 1471.
This was after the decline of the Roman and the Florentine, by far the
most eminent reunion of literary men in Italy; and though it was long
conspicuous, seems to have reached its highest point in the last years
of this century, under the patronage of the mild Frederic of Aragon, and
during that transient calm which Naples was permitted to enjoy between
the invasions of Charles VIII. and Louis XII. That city and kingdom
afforded many lovers of learning and poetry; some of them in the class
of its nobles; each district being, as it were, represented in this
academy by one or more of its distinguished residents. But other members
were associated from different parts of Italy; and the whole
constellation of names is still brilliant, though some have grown dim by
time. The house of Este, at Ferrara, were still the liberal patrons of
genius; none more eminently than their reigning marquis, Hercules I. And
not less praise is due to the families who held the principalities of
Urbino and Mantua.[469]
[469] Roscoe’s Leo. X., ch. ii. This contains an excellent account of
the state of literature in Italy about the close of the century.
|Boiardo.|
120. A poem now appeared in Italy, well deserving of attention for its
own sake, but still more so on account of the excitement and direction
it gave to one of the most famous poets that ever lived. Matteo Maria
Boiardo, count of Scandiano, a man esteemed and trusted at the court of
Ferrara, amused his leisure in the publication of a romantic poem, for
which the stories of Charlemagne and his paladins, related by one who
assumed the name of Turpin, and already woven into long metrical
narrations, current at the end of the fourteenth and during the
fifteenth century in Italy, supplied materials, which are almost lost in
the original inventions of the author. The first edition of this poem is
without date, but probably in 1495. The author, who died the year
before, left it unfinished at the ninth canto of the third book.
Agostini, in 1516, published a continuation, indifferently executed, in
three more books; but the real complement of the Innamorato is the
Furioso.[470] The Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo has hitherto not
received that share of renown which seems to be its due; overpowered by
the splendour of Ariosto’s poem, and almost set aside in its original
form by the improved edition or remaking (rifaccimento), which Berni
afterwards gave, it has rarely been sought or quoted, even in
Italy.[471]
The style is uncouth and hard; but without style, which is the source of
perpetual delight, no long poem will be read; and it has been observed
by Ginguéné with some justice, that Boiardo’s name is better remembered,
though his original poem may have been more completely neglected,
through the process to which Berni has subjected it. In point of novel
invention and just keeping of character, especially the latter, he has
not been surpassed by his illustrious follower Ariosto; and whatever of
this we find in the Orlando Innamorato, is due to Boiardo alone; for
Berni has preserved the sense of almost every stanza. The imposing
appearance of Angelica at the court of Charlemagne, in the first canto,
opens the poem with a splendour rarely equalled, with a luxuriant
fertility of invention, and with admirable art; judiciously presenting
the subject in so much singleness, that amidst all the intricacies and
episodes of the story, the reader never forgets the incomparable
princess of Albracca. The latter city, placed in that remote Cathay
which Marco Polo had laid open to the range of fancy, and its
siege by Agrican’s innumerable cavalry, are creations of Boiardo’s most
inventive mind. Nothing in Ariosto is conceived so nobly, or so much in
the true genius of romance. Castelvetro asserts that the names Gradasso,
Mandricardo, Sobrino, and others which Boiardo has given to his
imaginary characters, belonged to his own peasants of Scandiano; and
some have improved upon this by assuring us, that those who take the
pains to ascertain the fact may still find the representatives of these
sonorous heroes at the plough, which, if the story were true, ought to
be the case.[472] But we may give him credit for talent enough to invent
those appellations; he hardly found an Albracca on his domains; and
those who grudge him the rest acknowledge that, in a moment of
inspiration, while hunting, the name of Rodomont occurred to his mind.
We know how finely Milton, whose ear pursued, almost to excess, the
pleasure of harmonious names, and who loved to expatiate in these
imaginary regions, has alluded to Boiardo’s poem in the Paradise
Regained. The lines are perhaps the most musical he has ever produced.
Such forces met not, nor so wide a camp,
When Agrican with all his northern powers
Besieged Albracca, as romances tell,
The city of Gallaphron, from thence to win
The fairest of her sex, Angelica,
His daughter, sought by many prowest knights,
Both paynim and the peers of Charlemagne.[473]
[470] Fontanini, dell’Eloquenza Italiana, edit. di Zeno, p. 270.
[471] See my friend Mr. Panizzi’s excellent introduction to his edition
of the Orlando Innamorato. This poem had never been reprinted since
1544; so much was Roscoe deceived in fancying that “the simplicity
of the original has caused it to be preferred to the same work, as
altered or reformed by Francesco Berni.” Life of Leo X., ch. ii.
[472] Camillo Pellegrino, in his famous controversy with the Academy of
Florence on the respective merits of Ariosto and Tasso, having
asserted this, they do not deny the fact, but say it stands on the
authority of Castelvetro. Opere di Tasso, 4to, ii. 94. The critics
held rather a pedantic doctrine; that though the names of private
men may be feigned, the poet has no right to introduce kings
unknown to history, as this destroys the probability required for
his fiction.
[473] Book iii.
|Francesco Bello.|
121. The Mambriano of Francesco Bello, sirnamed il Cieco, another poem
of the same romantic class, was published posthumously in 1497. Apostolo
Zeno, as quoted by Roscoe, attributes the neglect of the Mambriano to
its wanting an Ariosto to continue its subject, or a Berni to reform its
style.[474] But this seems a capricious opinion. Bello composed it at
intervals to amuse the courtiers of the marquis of Mantua. The poem,
therefore, wants unity. “It is a reunion,” says Mr. Panizzi, “of
detached tales, without any relation to each other, except in so far as
most of the same actors are before us.”[475] We may perceive by this,
how little a series of rhapsodies, not directed by a controlling unity
of purpose, even though the work of a single man, are likely to fall
into a connected poem. But that a long poem, of singular coherence and
subordination of parts to an end, should be framed from the random and
insulated songs of a great number of persons, is almost as incredible as
that the annals of Ennius, to use Cicero’s argument against the
fortuitous origin of the world, should be formed by shaking together the
letters of the alphabet.
[474] Leo X., ch. ii.
[475] Panizzi’s Introduction to Boiardo, p. 360. He does not highly
praise the poem, of which he gives an analysis with extracts. See
too Ginguéné, vol. iv.
|Italian poetry near the end of the century.|
122. Near the close of the fifteenth century we find a great increase of
Italian poetry, to which the patronage and example of Lorenzo had given
encouragement. It is not easy to place within such narrow limits as a
decennial period, the names of writers whose productions were frequently
not published, at least collectively, during their lives. Serafino
d’Aquila, born in 1466, seems to fall, as a poet, within this decade;
and the same may be said of Tibaldeo and Benivieni. Of these the first
is perhaps the best known; his verses are not destitute of spirit, but
extravagance and bad taste deform the greater part.[476] Tibaldeo unites
false thoughts with rudeness and poverty of diction. Benivieni, superior
to either of these, is reckoned by Corniani a link between the harshness
of the fifteenth and the polish of the ensuing century. The style of
this age was far from the grace and sweetness of Petrach; forced in
sentiment, low in choice of words, deficient in harmony, it has been
condemned by the voice of all Italian critics.[477]
[476] Bouterwek, Gesch. der Ital. Poesie, i. 321. Corniani.
[477] Corniani. Muratori, della perfetta Poesia. Crescimbeni, Storia
della volgar poesia.
|Progress of learning in France and Germany.|
123. A greater activity than before was now perceptible in the literary
spirit of France and Germany. It was also regularly progressive. The
press of Paris gave twenty-six editions of ancient Latin authors, nine
of which were in the year 1500. Twelve were published at Lyons. Deventer
and Leipsic, especially the latter, which now took a lead in the German
press, bore a part in this honourable labour; a proof of the rapid and
extensive influence of Conrad Celtes on that part of Germany. It is to
be understood that a very large proportion, or nearly the whole,
of the Latin editions printed in Germany were for the use of
schools.[478] We should be warranted in drawing an inference as to the
progress in literary instruction in these countries from the increase in
the number of publications, small as that number still is, and trifling
as some of them may appear. It may be accounted for by the gradual
working of the schools at Munster and other places, which had now sent
out a race of pupils well fitted to impart knowledge in their turn to
others; and by the patronage of some powerful men, among whom the first
place, on all accounts, is due to the emperor Maximilian. Nothing was so
likely to contribute to the intellectual improvement of Germany as the
public peace of 1495, which put an end to the barbarous customs of the
middle ages, not unaccompanied by generous virtues, but certainly as
incompatible with the steady cultivation of literature as with riches
and repose. Yet there seems to be no proof that the Greek language had
obtained much more attention; no book connected with it is recorded to
have been printed, and I do not find mention that it was taught, even
superficially, in any university or school, at this time, though it
might be conjectured without improbability. Reuchlin had now devoted his
whole thoughts to cabbalistic philosophy, and the study of Hebrew; and
Eichhorn, though not unwilling to make the most of early German
learning, owns that, at the end of the century, no other person had
become remarkable for a skill in Greek.[479]
[478] A proof of this may be found in the books printed at Deventer
from 1491 to 1500. They consisted of Virgil’s Bucolics three times,
Virgil’s Georgics twice, and the eclogues of Calpurnius once, or
perhaps twice. At Leipsic the list is much longer, but in great
measure of the same kind; single treatises of Seneca or Cicero, or
detached parts of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, sometimes very short, as
the Culex or the Ibis, form, with not many exceptions, the
Cisalpine classical bibliography of the fifteenth century.
[479] Eichhorn, iii. 236. This section in Eichhorn is valuable, but
not without some want of precision.
Reuchlin had been very diligent in purchasing Greek manuscripts.
But these were very scarce, even in Italy. A correspondent of his,
Streler by name, one of the young men who went from Germany to
Florence for education, tells him, in 1491, Nullos libros Græcis
hic venales reperio; and again, de Græcis libris coemendis hoc
scias; fui penes omnes hic librarios, nihil horum prorsus reperio.
Epist. ad Reuchl. (1562) fol. 7. In fact, Reuchlin’s own library
was so large as to astonish the Italian scholars when they saw the
catalogue, who plainly owned they could not procure such books
themselves. They had of course been originally purchased in Italy,
unless we suppose some to have been brought by way of Hungary.
It is not to be imagined that the libraries of ordinary scholars
were to be compared with that of Reuchlin, probably more opulent
than most of them. The early printed books of Italy, even the most
indispensable, were very scarce, at least in France. A Greek
grammar was a rarity at Paris in 1499. Grammaticen Græcam, says
Erasmus to a correspondent, summo studio vestigavi, ut emptam tibi
mitterem, sed jam utraque divendita fuerat, et Constantini quæ
dicitur, quæque Urbani. Epist. lix. See too Epist. lxxiii.
|Erasmus.|
|His diligence.|
124. Two men, however, were devoting incessant labour to the acquisition
of that language at Paris, for whom was reserved the glory of raising
the knowledge of it in Cisalpine Europe to a height which Italy could
not attain. These were Erasmus and Budæus. The former, who had acquired
as a boy the mere rudiments of Greek under Hegius at Deventer, set
himself in good earnest to that study about 1499, hiring a teacher at
Paris, old Hermonymus of Sparta, of whose extortion he complains; but he
was little able to pay anything; and his noble endurance of privations
for the sake of knowledge deserves the high reward of glory it received.
“I have given my whole soul,” he says, “to Greek learning, and as soon
as I get any money I shall first buy Greek books, and then
clothes.”[480] “If any new Greek book comes to hand, I would rather
pledge my cloak than not obtain it; especially if it be religious, such
as a psalter or a gospel.”[481] It will be remembered that the books of
which he speaks must have been frequently manuscripts.
[480] Epist. xxix.
[481] Epist. lviii.
|Budæus; his early studies.|
125. Budæus, in his proper name Budé, nearly of the same age as Erasmus,
had relinquished every occupation for intense labour in literature. In
an interesting letter, addressed to Cuthbert Tunstall in 1517, giving an
account of his own early studies, he says that he learned Greek very ill
from a bad master at Paris, in 1491. This was certainly Hermonymus, of
whom Reuchlin speaks more favourably; but he was not quite so competent
a judge.[482] Some years afterwards Budæus got much better instruction;
“ancient literature having derived within a few years great improvement
in France by our intercourse with Italy, and by the importation of books
in both the learned languages.” Lascaris, who now lived at the court of
Charles VIII., having returned with him from the Neapolitan expedition,
gave Budæus some assistance, though not, according to the latter’s
biographer, to any great extent.
[482] Hody (de Græcis Illustribus, p. 238) thinks that the master of
Budæus could not have been Hermonymus; probably because the praise
of Reuchlin seemed to him incompatible with the contemptuous
language of Budæus. But Erasmus is very explicit on this subject,
Ad Græcas literas utcunque puero degustatas jam grandior redii; hoc
est, annos natus plus minus triginta, sed turn cum apud nos nulla
Græcorum codicum esset copia, neque minor penuria doctorum. Lutetiæ
tantum unus Georgius Hermonymus Græce balbutiebat; sed talis, ut
neque potuisset docere si voluisset, neque voluisset si potuisset.
Itaque coactus ipse mihi præceptor esse, &c. (A.D. 1524.) I
transcribe from Jortin, ii. 419. Of Hermonymus it is said by Beatus
Rhenanus in a letter to Reuchlin, that he was non tam doctrina quam
patria clarus. (Epist. ad Reuchl. fol. 52.) Roy, in his Life of
Budæus, says, that the latter, having paid Hermonymus 500 gold
pieces, and read Homer and other books with him, nihilo doctior est
factus.
|Latin not well written in France.|
126. France had as yet no writer of Latin, who could be endured in
comparison with those of Italy. Robert Gaguin praises Fichet, rector of
the Sorbonne, as learned and eloquent, and the first who had taught many
to employ good language in Latin. The more certain glory of Fichet is to
have introduced the art of printing into France. Gaguin himself enjoyed
a certain reputation for his style, and his epistles have been printed.
He possessed at least, what is most important, a love of knowledge, and
an elevated way of thinking. But Erasmus says of him, that “whatever he
might have been in his own age, he would now scarcely be reckoned to
write Latin at all.” If we could rely on a panegyrist of Faustus
Andrelinus, an Italian who came about 1489 to Paris, and was authorised,
in conjunction with one Balbi, and with Cornelio Vitelli, to teach in
the university,[483] he was the man who brought polite literature into
France, and changed its barbarism for classical purity. But Andrelinus,
who is best known as a Latin poet of by no means a high rank, seems not
to merit his commendation. Whatever his capacities of teaching may have
been, we have little evidence of his success. Yet the number of editions
of Latin authors published in France during this decade proves some
diffusion of classical learning; and we must admit the circumstance to
be quite decisive of the inferiority of England.
[483] This I find quoted in Bettinelli, Risorgimento d’ltalia, i. 250.
See also Bayle, and Biogr. Univ., art. Andrelini. They were only
allowed to teach for one hour in the evening; the jealousy of the
logicians not having subsided. Crevier, iv. 439.
|Dawn of Greek learning in England.|
127. A gleam of light, however, now broke out there. We have seen
already that a few, even in the last years of Henry VI., had overcome
all obstacles in order to drink at the fountain-head of pure learning in
Italy. One or two more names might be added for the intervening period;
Milling, abbot of Westminister, and Selling, prior of a convent at
Canterbury.[484] It is reported by Polydore Virgil, and is proved by
Wood, that Cornelio Vitelli, an Italian, came to Oxford about 1488, in
order to give that most barbarous university some notion of what was
going forward on the other side of the Alps; and it has been probably
conjectured, or rather may be assumed, that he there imparted the
rudiments of Greek to William Grocyn.[485] It is certain, at least, that
Grocyn had acquired some insight into that language, before he took a
better course, and, travelling into Italy, became the disciple of
Chalcondyles and Politian. He returned home in 1491, and began to
communicate his acquisitions, though chiefly to deaf ears, teaching in
Exeter College at Oxford. A diligent emulator of Grocyn, but
some years younger, and, like him, a pupil of Politian and Hermolaus,
was Thomas Linacre, a physician; but though a first edition of his
translation of Galen has been supposed to have been printed at Venice in
1498, it seems to be ascertained that none preceded that of Cambridge in
1521. His only contribution to literature in the fifteenth century was a
translation of the very short mathematical treatise of Proclus on the
sphere, published in a volume of ancient writers on astronomy, by Aldus
Manutius, in 1499.[486]
[484] Warton, iii. 247. Johnson’s Life of Linacre, p. 5. This is
mentioned on Selling’s monument now remaining in Canterbury
cathedral.
Doctor theologus Selling Græca atque Latina Lingua perdoctus.
Selling, however, did not go to Italy till after 1480, far from
returning in 1460, as Warton has said, with his usual indifference
to anachronisms.
[485] Polydore says nothing about Vitelli’s teaching Greek, though
Knight, in his Life of Colet, translates bonæ literæ, “Greek and
Latin.” But the following passages seem decisive as to Grocyn’s
early studies in the Greek language. Grocinus, qui prima Græcaæ et
Latinæ linguæ, rudimenta in Britannia hausit, mox solidiorem iisdem
operam sub Demetrio Chalcondyle et Politiano præceptoribus in
Italia hausit. Lilly, Elogia virorum doctorum, in Knight’s Life of
Colet, p. 24. Erasmus as positively: Ipse Grocinus, cujus exemplum
affers, nonne primum in Anglia Græcæ linguæ rudimenta didicit? Post
in Italiam profectus audivit summos viros, sed interim lucro fuit
ilia prius a qualibuscunque didicisse. Epist. ccclxiii. Whether the
_qualescunque_ were Vitelli or any one else, this can leave no
doubt as to the existence of some Greek instruction in England
before Grocyn; and as no one can be suggested, so far as appears,
except Vitelli, it seems reasonable to fix upon him as the first
preceptor of Grocyn. Vitelli had returned to Paris in 1489, and
taught in the university, as has just been mentioned; so that he
could have little time, if Polydore’s date of 1488 be right, for
giving much instruction at Oxford.
[486] Johnson’s Life of Linacre, p. 152.
|Erasmus comes to England.|
128. Erasmus paid his first visit to England in 1497, and was delighted
with everything that he found, especially at Oxford. In an epistle dated
Dec. 5th, after praising Grocyn, Colet, and Linacre to the skies, he
says of Thomas More, who could not then have been eighteen years old,
“What mind was ever framed by nature more gentle, more pleasing, more
gifted?--It is incredible, what a treasure of old books is found here
far and wide.--There is so much erudition, not of a vulgar and ordinary
kind, but recondite, accurate, ancient, both Latin and Greek, that you
would seek nothing in Italy but the pleasure of travelling.”[487] But
this letter is addressed to an Englishman, and the praise is evidently
much exaggerated; the scholars were few, and not more than three or four
could be found, or at least could now be mentioned, who had any tincture
of Greek,--Grocyn, Linacre, William Latimer, who, though an excellent
scholar, never published anything, and More, who had learned at Oxford
under Grocyn.[488] It should here be added, that, in 1497, Terence was
printed by Pynson, being the first edition of a strictly classical
author in England; though Boethius had already appeared with Latin and
English on opposite pages.
[487] Thomæ Mori ingenio quid unquam finxit natura vel mollius, vel
dulcius, vel felicius?... Mirum est dictu, quam hic passim, quam
dense veterum librorum seges efflorescat ... tantum eruditionis non
illius protritæ ac trivialis, sed reconditæ, exactæ, antiquæ,
Latinæ Græcæque, ut jam Italiam nisi visendi gratia non multum
desideres. Epist. xiv.
[488] A letter of Colet to Erasmus from Oxford in 1497, is written in
the style of a man who was conversant with the best Latin authors.
Sir Thomas More’s birth has not been placed by any biographer
earlier than 1480.
It has been sometimes asserted, on the authority of Antony Wood,
that Erasmus taught Greek at Oxford; but there is no foundation for
this, and in fact he did not know enough of the language. Knight,
on the other hand, maintains that he learned it there under Grocyn
and Linacre; but this rests on no evidence; and we have seen that
he gives a different account of his studies in Greek. Life of
Erasmus, p. 22.
|He publishes his Adages.|
129. In 1500 was printed at Paris the first edition of Erasmus’s Adages,
doubtless the chief prose work of this century beyond the limits of
Italy; but this edition should, if possible, be procured, in order to
judge with chronological exactness of the state of literature; for as
his general knowledge of antiquity, and particularly of Greek, which was
now very slender, increased, he made vast additions. The Adages, which
were now about eight hundred, amounted in his last edition to 4151; not
that he could find so many which properly deserve that name, but the
number is made up by explanations of Latin and Greek idioms, or even of
single words. He declares himself, as early as 1504, ashamed of the
first edition of his Adages, which already seemed meagre and
imperfect.[489] Erasmus had been preceded in some measure by Polydore
Virgil, best known as the historian of this country, where he resided
many years as collector of papal dues. He published a book of adages,
which must have been rather a juvenile, and is a superficial production,
at Venice in 1498.
[489] Epist. cii., jejunum atque inops videri cœpit, posteoquam Græcos
colui auctores.
|Romantic ballads of Spain.|
130. The Castilian poets of the fifteenth century have been collectively
mentioned on a former occasion. Bouterwek refers to the latter part of
this age most of the romances, which turn upon Saracen story, and the
adventures of “knights of Granada, gentlemen, though Moors.” Sismondi
follows him without, perhaps, much reflection, and endeavours to explain
what he might have doubted. Fear having long ceased in the bosoms of the
Castilian Christians, even before conquest had set its seal to their
security, hate, the child of fear, had grown feebler; and the romancers
felt themselves at liberty to expatiate in the rich field of Mohammedan
customs and manners. These had already exercised a considerable
influence over Spain. But this opinion seems hard to be supported; nor
do I find that the Spanish critics claim so much antiquity for the
Moorish class of romantic ballads. Most of them, it is acknowledged,
belong to the sixteenth, and some to the seventeenth century; and the
internal evidence is against their having been written before the
Moorish wars had become matter of distant tradition. We shall therefore
take no notice of the Spanish romance-ballads till we come to
the age of Philip II., to which they principally belong.[490]
[490] Bouterwek, p. 121. Sismondi, iii. 222. Romances Moriscos, Madr.
1828.
|Pastoral romances.|
131. Bouterwek places in this decade the first specimens of the pastoral
romance which the Castilian language affords.[491] But the style is
borrowed from a neighbouring part of the peninsula, where this species
of fiction seems to have been indigenous. The Portuguese nation
cultivated poetry as early as the Castilian; and we have seen that some
remains of a date anterior to the fourteenth century. But to the heroic
romance they seem to have paid no regard; we do not find that it ever
existed among them. Love chiefly occupied the Lusitanian muse; and to
trace that passion through all its labyrinths, to display its troubles
in a strain of languid melancholy, was the great aim of every poet. This
led to the invention of pastoral romances, founded on the ancient
traditions as to the felicity of shepherds and their proneness to love,
and rendered sometimes more interesting for the time by the introduction
of real characters and events under a slight disguise.[492] This
artificial and effeminate sort of composition, which, if it may now and
then be not unpleasing, cannot fail to weary the modern reader by its
monotony, is due to Portugal, and having been adopted in languages
better known, became for a long time highly popular in Europe.
[491] P. 123.
[492] Bouterwek’s Hist. of Portuguese Literature, p. 43.
|Portuguese lyric poetry.|
132. The lyrical poems of Portugal were collected by Garcia de Resende,
in the Cancioneiro Geral, published in 1516. Some few of these are of
the fourteenth century, for we find the name of King Pedro, who died in
1369. Others are by the Infante Don Pedro, son of John I., in the
earlier part of the fifteenth. But a greater number belong nearly to the
present or preceding decade, or even to the ensuing age, commemorating
the victories of the Portuguese in Asia. This collection is of extreme
scarcity; none of the historians of Portuguese literature have seen it.
Bouterwek and Sismondi declare that they have caused search to be made
in various libraries of Europe without success. There is, however, a
copy in the British Museum; and M. Raynouard has given a short account
of one that he had seen in the Journal des Savans for 1826. In this
article he observes, that the Cancioneiro is a mixture of Portuguese and
Spanish pieces. I believe, however, that very little Spanish will be
found, with the exception of the poems of the Infante Pedro, which
occupy some leaves. The whole number of poets is but one hundred and
thirty-two, even if some names do not occur twice; which I mention,
because it has been erroneously said to exceed considerably that of the
Spanish Cancioneiro. The volume is in folio, and contains two hundred
and twenty-seven leaves. The metres are those usual in Spanish; some
_versos de arte mayor_; but the greater part in trochaic
redondillas. I observed no instance of the assonant rhyme; but there are
several glosses, or, in the Portuguese word, _grosas_.[493] The
chief part is amatory; but there are lines on the death of kings, and
other political events.[494]
[493] Bouterwek, p. 30, has observed, that the Portuguese employ the
glosa, calling it volta. The word in the Cancioneiro is grosa.
[494] A manuscript collection of Portuguese lyric poetry of the
fifteenth century belonged to Mr. Heber, and was sold to Messrs.
Payne and Foss. It would probably be found on comparison to contain
many of the pieces in the Cancioneiro Geral, but it is not a copy
of it.
|German popular books.|
133. The Germans, if they did not as yet excel in the higher department
of typography, were by no means negligent of their own great invention.
The books, if we include the smallest, printed in the empire between
1470 and the close of the century, amount to several thousand editions.
A large proportion of these were in their own language. They had a
literary public, as we may call it, not merely in their courts and
universities, but in their respectable middle class, the burghers of the
free cities, and, perhaps, in the artizans whom they employed. Their
reading was almost always with a serious end; but no people so
successfully cultivated the art of moral and satirical fable. These, in
many instances, spread with great favour through cisalpine Europe. Among
the works of this kind, in the fifteenth century, two deserve mention;
the Eulenspiegel, a book which became popular afterwards in England by
the name of Howleglass, and a superior and better known production, the
Narrenschiff, or Ship of Fools, by Sebastian Brandt of Strasburg, the
first edition of which I do not find referred to any date; but the Latin
translation appeared at Lyons in 1488. It was translated into English by
Barclay, and published early in 1509. It is a metrical satire on the
follies of every class, and may possibly have suggested to Erasmus his
Encomium Moriæ. But the idea was not absolutely new; the theatrical
company established at Paris, under the name of Enfans de San Souci, as
well as the ancient office of jester or fool in our courts and castles,
implied the same principle of satirising mankind with ridicule so
general, that every man should feel more pleasure from the humiliation
of his neighbours, than pain from his own. Brandt does not show much
poetical talent; but his morality is clear and sound; he keeps the pure
and right-minded reader on his side; and in an age when little better
came into competition, his characters of men, though more didactic than
descriptive, did not fail to please. The influence such books of simple
fiction and plain moral would possess over a people, may be judged by
the delight they once gave to children, before we had learned to vitiate
the healthy appetite of ignorance by premature refinements and
stimulating variety.[495]
[495] Bouterwek, ix. 332-354, v. 113. Heinsius, iv. 113. Warton,
iii. 74.
|Historical works.|
|Ph. de Comines.|
134. The historical literature of this century presents very little
deserving of notice. The English writers of this class are absolutely
contemptible; and if some annalists of good sense and tolerable skill in
narration may be found on the Continent, they are not conspicuous enough
to arrest our regard in a work which designedly passes over that
department of literature, so far as it is merely conversant with
particular events. But the memoirs of Philip de Comines, which, though
not published till 1529, must have been written before the close of the
fifteenth century, are not only of a higher value, but almost make an
epoch in historical literature. If Froissart, by his picturesque
descriptions, and fertility of historical _invention_, may be
reckoned the Livy of France, she had her Tacitus in Philip de Comines.
The intermediate writers, Monstrelet and his continuators, have the
merits of neither, certainly not of Comines. He is the first modern
writer, (or, if there had been any approach to an exception among the
Italians, it has escaped my recollection,) who in any degree has
displayed sagacity in reasoning on the characters of men, and the
consequences of their actions, or who has been able to generalise his
observation by comparison and reflection. Nothing of this could have
been found in the cloister; nor were the philologers of Italy equal to a
task which required capacities and pursuits very different from their
own. An acute understanding and much experience of mankind gave Comines
this superiority; his life had not been spent over books; and he is
consequently free from that pedantic application of history, which
became common with those who passed for political reasoners in the next
two centuries. Yet he was not ignorant of former times; and we see the
advantage of those translations from antiquity, made during the last
hundred years in France, by the use to which he turned them.
|Algebra.|
135. The earliest printed treatise of algebra, for that of Leonard
Fibonacci is still in manuscript, was published in 1494, by Luca Pacioli
di Borgo, a Franciscan, who taught mathematics in the university of
Milan. This book is written in Italian, with a mixture of the Venetian
dialect, and with many Latin words. In the first part, he explains the
rules of commercial arithmetic in detail, and is the earliest Italian
writer who shows the principles of Italian book-keeping by double entry.
Algebra he calls l’arte maggiore, detta dal volgo la regola de la cosa,
over alghebra e almacabala, which last he explains by restauratio et
opposito. The known number is called _n_ᵒ or _numero_; _co._ or _cosa_
stands for the unknown quantity; whence algebra was sometimes called the
cossic art. In the early Latin treatises _Res_ is used, or _R._, which
is an approach to literal expression. The square is called _censo_ or
_ce._; the cube, _cubo_ or _cu._; _p._ and _m._ stand for _plus_ and
_minus_. Thus, _3co. p. 4ce. m. 5cu. p. 2ce. ce. m. 6nᵒ_ would have been
written for what would now be expressed 3_x_ + 4_x_² - 5_x_³ + 2_x_⁴ - 6.
Luca di Borgo’s algebra goes as far as quadratic equations; but though
he had very good notions on the subject, it does not appear that he
carried the science much beyond the point where Leonard Fibonacci had
left it three centuries before. And its principles were already familiar
to mathematicians; for Regiomontanus, having stated a trigonometrical
solution in the form of a quadratic equation, adds, quod restat,
præcepta artis edocebunt. Luca di Borgo perceived, in a certain sense,
the application of algebra to geometry, observing, that the rules as to
surd roots are referrible to incommensurable magnitudes.[496]
[496] Montucla. Kästner. Cossali. Hutton’s Mathem. Dict., art. Algebra.
The last writer, and perhaps the first, had never seen the book of
Luca Pacioli.
Mr. Colebrooke, in his Indian Algebra, has shown that the Hindoos
carried that science considerably farther than either the Greeks or
the Arabians (though he thinks they may probably have derived their
notions of the science from the former), anticipating some of the
discoveries of the sixteenth century.
|Events from 1490 to 1500.|
136. This period of ten years from 1490 to 1500, will ever be memorable
in the history of mankind. It is here that we usually close the long
interval between the Roman world and this our modern Europe, denominated
the Middle Ages. The conquest of Granada, which rendered Spain a
Christian kingdom; the annexation of the last great fief of the French
crown, Britany, which made France an entire and absolute monarchy; the
public peace of Germany; the invasion of Naples by Charles VIII., which
revealed the weakness of Italy, while it communicated her arts and
manners to the cisalpine nations, and opened the scene of warfare and
alliances which may be deduced to the present day; the discovery of two
worlds by Columbus and Vasco de Gama, all belong to this decade. But it
is not, as we have seen, so marked an era in the progression of
literature.
|Close of fifteenth century.|
137. In taking leave of the fifteenth century, to which we have been
used to attach many associations of reverence, and during which the
desire of knowledge was, in one part of Europe, more enthusiastic and
universal than perhaps it has since ever been, it is natural to ask
ourselves what harvest had already rewarded their zeal and labour, what
monuments of genius and erudition still receive the homage of mankind?
|Its literature nearly neglected.|
138. No very triumphant answer can be given to this interrogation. Of
the books then written how few are read! Of the men then famous how few
are familiar in our recollection! Let us consider what Italy itself
produced of any effective tendency to enlarge the boundaries of
knowledge, or to delight the taste and fancy. The treatise of Valla on
Latin grammar, the miscellaneous observations of Politian on ancient
authors, the commentaries of Landino and some other editors, the
Platonic theology of Ficinus, the Latin poetry of Politian and Pontanus,
the light Italian poetry of the same Politian and Lorenzo de’ Medici,
the epic romances of Pulci and Boiardo. Of these, Pulci alone, in an
original shape, is still read in Italy, and by some lovers of that
literature in other countries, and the Latin poets by a smaller number.
If we look on the other side of the Alps, the catalogue is much shorter,
or rather does not contain a single book, except Philip de Comines, that
enters into the usual studies of a literary man. Froissart hardly
belongs to the fifteenth century, his history terminating about 1400.
The first undated edition, with a continuation by some one to 1498, was
printed between that time and 1509, when the second appeared.
|Summary of its acquisitions.|
139. If we come to inquire, what acquisitions had been made between the
years 1400 and 1500, we shall find that, in Italy, the Latin language
was now written by some with elegance, and by most with tolerable
exactness and fluency; while, out of Italy, there had been, perhaps, a
corresponding improvement, relatively to the point from which they
started; the flagrant barbarisms of the fourteenth century having
yielded before the close of the next to a more respectable, though not
an elegant or exact kind of style. Many Italians had now some
acquaintance with Greek, which in 1400 had been hardly the case with any
one; and the knowledge of it was of late beginning to make a little
progress in cisalpine Europe. The French and English languages were
become what we call more polished, though the difference in the former
seems not to be very considerable. In mathematical science, and in
natural history, the ancient writers had been more brought to light, and
a certain progress had been made by diligent, if not very inventive
philosophers. We cannot say that metaphysical or moral philosophy stood
higher than it had done in the time of the schoolmen. The history of
Greece and Rome, and the antiquities of the latter, were, of course,
more distinctly known after so many years of attentive study bestowed on
their principal authors; yet the acquaintance of the learned with those
subjects was by no means exact or critical enough to save them from
gross errors, or from becoming the dupes of any forgery. A proof of this
was furnished by the impostures of Annius of Viterbo, who, having
published large fragments of Megasthenes, Berosus, Manetho, and a great
many more lost historians, as having been discovered by himself,
obtained full credence at the time, which was not generally withheld for
too long a period afterwards, though the forgeries were palpable to
those who had made themselves masters of genuine history.[497]
[497] Annius of Viterbo did not cease to have believers after this
time. See Blount, Niceron, vol. ii., Corniani, iii. 131, and his
article in Biographie Universelle. Apostolo Zeno and Tiraboschi
have imputed less fraud than credulity to Annius, but most have
been of another opinion; and it is unimportant for the purpose of
the text.
|Their imperfection.|
140. We should, therefore, if we mean to judge accurately, not
over-value the fifteenth century, as one in which the human mind
advanced with giant strides in the kingdom of knowledge. General
historians of literature are apt to speak rather hyperbolically in
respect of men who rose above their contemporaries; language frequently
just, in relation to the vigorous intellects and ardent industry of such
men, but tending to produce an exaggerated estimate of their absolute
qualities. But the question is at present not so much of men, as of the
average or general proficiency of nations. The catalogues of printed
books in the common bibliographical collections afford, not quite a
gauge of the learning of any particular period, but a reasonable
presumption, which it requires contrary evidence to rebut. If these
present us very few and imperfect editions of books necessary to the
progress of knowledge, if the works most in request appear to have been
trifling and ignorant productions, it seems as reasonable to draw an
inference one way from these scanty and discreditable lists, as on the
other hand we hail the progressive state of any branch of knowledge from
the redoubled labours of the press, and the multiplication of useful
editions. It is true that the deficiency of one country might be
supplied by importation from another; and some cities, especially Paris,
had acquired a typographical reputation somewhat disproportioned to the
local demand for books; a considerable increase of readers would but
naturally have created a press, or multiplied its operations, in any
country of Europe.
|Number of books printed.|
141. The bibliographies, indeed, even the best and latest, are always
imperfect; but the omissions, after the immense pains bestowed on the
subject, can hardly be such as to affect our general conclusions. We
will therefore illustrate the literary history of the fifteenth century
by a few numbers taken from the typographical annals of Panzer, which
might be corrected in two ways; first, by adding editions since brought
to light, or secondly, by striking out some inserted on defective
authority; a kind of mistake which tends to compensate the former. The
books printed at Florence down to 1500 are 300; at Milan, 629; at
Bologna, 298; at Rome, 925; at Venice, 2835; fifty other Italian cities
had printing presses in the fifteenth century.[498] At Paris, the number
of books is 751; at Cologne, 530; at Nuremberg, 382; at Leipsic, 351; at
Basle, 320; at Strasburg, 526; at Augsburg, 256; at Louvain, 116; at
Mentz, 134; at Deventer, 169. The whole number printed in England
appears to be 141; whereof 130 at London and Westminster; seven at
Oxford; four at St. Albans. Cicero’s works were first printed entire by
Minutianus, at Milan, in 1498; but no less than 291 editions of
different portions appeared in the century. Thirty-seven of these bear
date on this side of the Alps; and forty-five have no place named. Of
ninety-five editions of Virgil, seventy are complete; twenty-seven are
cisalpine, and four bear no date. On the other hand, only eleven out of
fifty-seven editions of Horace contain all his works. It has been
already shown, that most editions of classics printed in France and
Germany are in the last decennium of the century.
[498] I find this in Heeren, p. 127, for I have not counted the number
of cities in Panzer.
142. The editions of the vulgate registered in Panzer are ninety-one,
exclusive of some spurious or suspected. Next to theology, no science
furnished so much occupation to the press as the civil and canon laws.
The editions of the digest and decretals, or other parts of those
systems of jurisprudence, must amount to some hundreds.
|Advantages already reaped from printing.|
143. But while we avoid, for the sake of truth, any undue exaggeration
of the literary state of Europe at the close of the fifteenth century,
we must even more earnestly deprecate the hasty prejudice, that no good
had been already done by the culture of classical learning, and by the
invention of printing. Both were of inestimable value, even where their
immediate fruits were not clustering in ripe abundance. It is certain
that much more than ten thousand editions of books or pamphlets (a late
writer says fifteen thousand)[499] were printed from 1470 to 1500. More
than half the number appeared in Italy. All the Latin authors, hitherto
painfully copied by the scholar, or purchased by him at inconvenient
cost, or borrowed for a time from friends, became readily accessible,
and were printed, for the most part, if not correctly, according to our
improved criticism, yet without the gross blunders of the ordinary
manuscripts. The saving of time which the art of printing has
occasioned, can hardly be too highly appreciated. Nor was the cisalpine
press unserviceable in this century, though it did not pour forth so
much from the stores of ancient learning. It gave useful food, and such
as the reader could better relish and digest. The historical records of
his own nation, the precepts of moral wisdom, the regular metre, that
pleased the ear and supplied the memory, the fictions that warmed the
imagination, and sometimes ennobled or purified the heart, the
repertories of natural phenomena, mingled as truth was on these
subjects, and on all the rest, with error, the rules of civil and canon
law, that guided the determinations of private right, the subtle
philosophy of the scholastics, were laid open to his choice; while his
religious feelings might find their gratification in many a treatise of
learned doctrine, according to the received creed of the church, in many
a legend on which a pious credulity delighted to rely, in the devout
aspirations of holy ascetic men; but, above all, in the Scriptures
themselves, either in the Vulgate Latin, which had by use acquired the
authority of an original text, or in most of the living languages of
Europe.
[499] Santander, Dict. Bibliogr. du 15me siècle. I do not think so many
would be found in Panzer. I have read somewhere that the library of
Munich claims to possess 20,000 Incunabula, or books of the
fifteenth century: a word lately so applied in Germany. But unless
this comprehends many duplicates, it seems a little questionable.
Books were not in general so voluminous in that age as at present.
|Trade of bookselling.|
144. We shall conclude this portion of literary history with a few
illustrations of what a German writer calls “the exterior being of
books,”[500] for which I do not find an equivalent in English idiom. The
trade of bookselling seems to have been established at Paris and at
Bologna in the twelfth century; the lawyers and universities called it
into life.[501] It is very improbable that it existed in what we
properly call the dark ages. Peter of Blois mentions a book which he had
bought of a public dealer (a quodam publico mangone librorum). But we do
not find, I believe, many distinct accounts of them till the next age.
These dealers were denominated Stationarii, perhaps from the open stalls
at which they carried on their business, though statio is a general word
for a shop, in low Latin.[502] They appear, by the old statutes of the
university of Paris, and by those of Bologna, to have sold books upon
commission; and are sometimes, though not uniformly, distinguished from
the Librarii; a word which, having originally been confined to the
copyists of books, was afterwards applied to those who traded in
them.[503] They sold parchment and other materials of writing, which,
with us, though, as far I know, nowhere else, have retained the name of
stationery, and naturally exercised the kindred occupations of binding
and decorating. They probably employed transcribers: we find at least
that there was a profession of copyists in the universities and in large
cities; and by means of these, before the invention of printing, the
necessary books of grammar, law, and theology were multiplied to a great
extent for the use of students; but with much incorrectness, and far
more expense than afterwards. That invention put a sudden stop to their
honest occupation. But whatever hatred they might feel towards the new
art, it was in vain to oppose its reception: no party could be raised in
the public against so manifest and unalloyed a benefit; and the
copyists, grown by habit fond of books, frequently employed themselves
in the somewhat kindred labour of pressmen.[504]
[500] Aüsseres bucher-wesen. Savigny, iii. 532.
[501] Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 142.
[502] Du Cange, in voc.
[503] The librarii were properly those who transcribed new books; the
Antiquarii old ones. This distinction is as old as Cassiodorus; but
doubtless it was not strictly observed in later times. Muratori,
Dissert. 43. Du Cange.
[504] Crevier, ii. 66, 130, et alibi. Du Cange, in voc. Stationarii,
Librarii. Savigny, iii. 532-548. Chevillier, 302. Eichhorn, ii.
531. Meiners, Vergleich der Sitten, ii. 539. Greswell’s Parisian
Press, p. 8.
The parliament of Paris, on the petition of the copyists, ordered
some of the first printed books to be seized. Lambinet calls this
superstition; it was more probably false compassion, and regard for
existing interests, combined with dislike of all innovation. Louis
XI., however, who had the merit of esteeming literature, evoked the
process to the counsel of state, who restored the books. Lambinet,
Hist. de l’Imprimerie, p. 172.
|Books sold by printers.|
145. The first printers were always booksellers, and sold their own
impressions. These occupations were not divided till the early part of
the sixteenth century.[505] But the risks of sale, at a time when
learning was by no means general, combined with the great cost of
production, paper and other materials being very dear, rendered this a
hazardous trade. We have a curious petition of Sweynheim and Pannartz to
Sixtus IV., in 1472, wherein they complain of their poverty, brought on
by printing so many works, which they had not been able to sell. They
state the number of impressions of each edition. Of the classical
authors they had generally printed 275; of Virgil and the philosophical
works of Cicero, twice that number. In theological publications
the usual number of copies had also been 550. The whole number of copies
printed was 12,475.[506] It is possible that experience made other
printers more discreet in their estimation of the public demand.
Notwithstanding the casualties of three centuries, it seems from the
great scarcity of these early editions, which has long existed, that the
original circulation must have been much below the number of copies
printed, as indeed the complaint of Sweynheim and Pannartz shows.[507]
[505] Conversations-Lexicon, art. Buchhandlung.
[506] Maittaire. Lambinet, p. 166. Beckmann, iii. 119, erroneously says
that this was the number of volumes remaining in their warehouses.
[507] Lambinet says, that the number of impressions did not generally
exceed three hundred, p. 197. Even this seems large, compared with
the present scarcity of books unlikely to have been destroyed by
careless use.
|Price of books.|
146. The price of books was diminished by four-fifths after the
invention of printing. Chevillier gives some instances of a fall in this
proportion. But not content with such a reduction, the university of
Paris proceeded to establish a tariff, according to which every edition
was to be sold, and seems to have set the prices very low. This was by
virtue of the prerogatives they exerted, as we shall soon find, over the
book-trade of the capital. The priced catalogues of Colinæus and Robert
Stephens are extant, relating, of course, to a later period than the
present; but we shall not return to the subject. The Greek Testament of
Colinæus was sold for twelve sous, the Latin for six. The folio Latin
Bible, printed by Stephens in 1532, might be had for one hundred sous, a
copy of the Pandacts for forty sous, a Virgil for two sous and six
deniers; a Greek grammar of Clenardus for two sous, Demosthenes and
Æschines, I know not what edition, for five sous. It would of course be
necessary, before we can make any use of these prices, to compare them
with that of corn.[508]
[508] Chevillier, Origines de l’Imprimerie de Paris, p. 370 et seq.
In the preceding pages he mentions what I should perhaps have
introduced before, that a catalogue of the books in the Sorbonne,
in 1292, contains above 1000 volumes, which were collectively
valued at 3,812 livres, 10 sous, 8 deniers. In a modern English
book on literary antiquities, this is set down 3,812_l._ 10_s._
8_d._; which is a happy way of helping the reader.
Lambinet mentions a few prices of early books, which are not
trifling. The Mentz Bible of 1462 was purchased in 1470 by a bishop
of Angers for forty gold crowns. An English gentleman paid eighteen
gold florins, in 1481, for a missal: upon which Lambinet makes a
remark:--Mais on a toujours fait payer plus cher aux Anglais qu’aux
autres nations, p. 198. The florin was worth about four francs of
present money, equivalent perhaps to twenty-four in command of
commodities. The crown was worth rather more.
Instances of an almost incredible price of manuscripts are to be
met with in Robertson and other common authors. It is to be
remembered that a particular book might easily bear a monopoly
price; and that this is no test of the cost of those which might be
multiplied by copying.
|Form of books.|
147. The more usual form of books printed in the fifteenth century is in
folio. But the Psalter of 1457, and the Donatus of the same year, are in
quarto; and this size is not uncommon in the early Italian editions of
classics. The disputed Oxford book of 1468, Sancti Jeronymi Expositio,
is in octavo, and would, if genuine, be the earliest specimen of that
size, which may perhaps furnish an additional presumption against the
date. It is at least, however, of 1478, when the octavo form, as we
shall immediately see, was of the rarest occurrence. Maittaire, in whom
alone I have had the curiosity to make this search, which would be more
troublesome in Panzer’s arrangement, mentions a book printed in octavo
at Milan in 1470; but the existence of this, and of one or two more that
follow, seems equivocal; and the first on which we can rely is the
Sallust, printed at Valencia in 1475. Another book of that form, at
Treviso, occurs in the same year, and an edition of Pliny’s epistles at
Florence in 1478. They become from this time gradually more common; but
even at the end of the century form rather a small proportion of
editions. I have not observed that the duodecimo division of the sheet
was adopted in any instance. But it is highly probable that the volumes
of Panzer furnish means of correcting these little notices, which I
offer as suggestions to persons more erudite in such matters. The price
and convenience of books are evidently not unconnected with their size.
|Exclusive privileges.|
148. Nothing could be less unreasonable than that the printer should
have a better chance of indemnifying himself and the author, if in those
days the author, as probably he did, hoped for some lucrative return
after his exhausting drudgery, by means of an exclusive privilege. The
senate of Venice granted an exclusive privilege for five years to John
of Spire in 1469, for the first book printed in the city, his edition of
Cicero’s epistles.[509] But I am not aware that this extended to
any other work. And this seems to have escaped the learned Beckmann, who
says that the earliest instance of protected copyright on record appears
to be in favour of a book insignificant enough, a missal for the church
of Bamberg, printed in 1490. It is probable that other privileges of an
older date have not been found. In 1491, one occurs at the end of a book
printed at Venice, and five more at the same place within the century;
the Aristotle of Aldus being one of the books: one also is found at
Milan. These privileges are always recited at the end of the volume.
They are, however, very rare in comparison with the number of books
published, and seem not accorded by preference to the most important
editions.[510]
[509] Tiraboschi, vi. 139. I have a recollection of some more decisive
authority than this passage, but cannot find it.
[510] Beckmann’s Hist. of Inventions, iii. 109.
|Power of universities over bookselling.|
149. In these exclusive privileges, the printer was forced to call in
the magistrate for his own benefit. But there was often a different sort
of interference by the civil power with the press. The destruction of
books, and the prohibition of their sale, had not been unknown to
antiquity; instances of it occur in the free republics of Athens and
Rome; but it was naturally more frequent under suspicious despotisms,
especially when to the jealousy of the state was superadded that of the
church, and novelty, even in speculation, became a crime.[511] Ignorance
came on with the fall of the empire, and it was unnecessary to guard
against the abuse of an art which very few possessed at all. With the
first revival of letters in the eleventh and twelfth centuries sprang up
the reviving shoots of heretical freedom; but with Berenger and Abelard
came also the jealousy of the church, and the usual exertion of the
right of the strongest. Abelard was censured by the council of Soissons
in 1121, for suffering copies of his book to be taken without the
approbation of his superiors, and the delinquent volumes were given to
the flames. It does not appear, however, that any regulation on this
subject had been made.[512] But when the sale of books became the
occupation of a class of traders, it was deemed necessary to place them
under restraint. Those of Paris and Bologna, the cities, doubtless,
where the greatest business of this kind was carried on, came altogether
into the power of the universities. It is proved by various statutes of
the university of Paris, originating, no doubt, in some authority
conferred by the crown, and bearing date from the year 1275 to 1403,
that booksellers were appointed by the university, and considered as its
officers, probably matriculated by entry on her roll; that they took an
oath, renewable at her pleasure, to observe her statutes and
regulations; that they were admitted upon security, and testimonials to
their moral conduct; that no one could sell books in Paris without this
permission; and that they could expose no book to sale without
communication with the university, and without its approbation; that the
university fixed the prices, according to the tariff of four sworn
booksellers, at which books should be sold, or lent to the scholars;
that a fine might be imposed for incorrect copies; that the sellers were
bound to fix up in their shops a priced catalogue of their books,
besides other regulations of less importance. Books, deemed by the
university unfit for perusal were sometimes burned by its order.[513]
Chevillier gives several prices for lending books (pro exemplari
concesso scholaribus) fixed about 1303. The books mentioned are all of
divinity, philosophy, or canon law; on an average, the charge for about
twenty pages was a sol. The university of Toulouse exercised the same
authority; and Albert III., archduke of Austria, founding the university
of Vienna about 1384, copied the statutes of Paris in this control over
bookselling as well as in other respects.[514] The stationarii of
Bologna were also bound by oath, and gave sureties, to fulfil their
duties towards the university; one of these was, to keep by them copies
of books to the number of one hundred and seventeen, for the hire of
which a price was fixed.[515] By degrees, however, a class of
booksellers grew up at Paris, who took no oath to the university, and
were consequently not admitted to its privileges, being usually poor
scholars, who were tolerated in selling books at a low price. These were
of no importance, till the privileged, or sworn traders, having been
reduced by a royal ordinance of 1488 to twenty-four, this lower class
silently increased, at length the practice of taking an oath to the
university fell into disuse.[516]
[511] Id.
[512] Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 28.
[513] Chevillier, Origines de l’Imprimerie de Paris, p. 302, et seq.
Crevier, ii. 66.
[514] Chevillier, ibid.
[515] Savigny, iii. 540.
[516] Chevillier, 334-351.
|Restraints on sale of printed books.|
150. The vast and sudden extension of the means of communicating and
influencing opinion which the discovery of printing afforded, did not
long remain unnoticed. Few have temper and comprehensive views
enough not to desire the prevention by force of that which they reckon
detrimental to truth and right. Hermolaus Barbarus, in a letter to
Merula, recommends that, on account of the many trifling publications
which took men off from reading the best authors, nothing should be
printed without the approbation of competent judges.[517] The
governments of Europe cared little for what seemed an evil to Hermolaus.
But they perceived that, especially in Germany, a country where the
principles that were to burst out in the Reformation were evidently
germinating in this century, where a deep sense of the corruptions of
the church pervaded every class, that incredible host of popular
religious tracts, which the Rhine and Neckar poured forth like their
waters, were of no slight danger to the two powers, or at least the
union of the two, whom the people had so long obeyed. We find,
therefore, an instance, in 1480, of a book called Nosce Teipsum, printed
at Heidelberg with the approving testimonies of four persons, who may be
presumed, though it is not stated, to have been appointed censors on
that occasion.[518] Two others, one of which is a Bible, have been found
printed at Cologne in 1479; in the subscription to which, the language
of public approbation by the university is more express. The first known
instance, however, of the regular appointment of a censor on books is in
the mandate of Berthold, archbishop of Mentz, in 1486. “Notwithstanding,”
he begins, “the facility given to the acquisition of science by the
divine art of printing, it has been found that some abuse this
invention, and convert that which was designed for the instruction of
mankind to their injury. For books on the duties and doctrines of
religion are translated from Latin into German, and circulated among the
people, to the disgrace of religion itself; and some have even had the
rashness to make faulty versions of the canons of the church into the
vulgar tongue, which belong to a science so difficult, that it is enough
to occupy the life of the wisest man. Can such men assert, that our
German language is capable of expressing what great authors have written
in Greek and Latin on the high mysteries of the Christian faith, and on
general science? Certainly it is not; and hence they either invent new
words, or use old ones in erroneous senses; a thing especially dangerous
in sacred Scripture. For who will admit that men without learning, or
women, into whose hands these translations may fall, can find the true
sense of the gospels, or of the epistles of St. Paul? much less can they
enter on questions which, even among catholic writers, are open to
subtle discussion. But since this art was first discovered in this city
of Mentz, and we may truly say by divine aid, and is to be maintained by
us in all its honour, we strictly forbid all persons to translate, or
circulate when translated, any books upon any subject whatever from the
Greek, Latin, or any other tongue, into German, until, before printing,
and again before their sale, such translations shall be approved by four
doctors herein named, under penalty of excommunication, and of
forfeiture of the books, and of one hundred golden florins to the use of
our exchequer.”[519]
[517] Beckmann, iii. 98.
[518] Beckmann, 99.
[519] Beckmann, 101, from the fourth volume of Guden’s Codex
Diplomaticus. The Latin will be found in Beckmann.
|Effect of printing on the Reformation.|
151. I have given the substance of this mandate rather at length,
because it has a considerable bearing on the preliminary history of the
Reformation, and yet has never, to my knowledge, been produced with that
view. For it is obvious that it was on account of religious
translations, and especially those of the Scripture, which had been very
early printed in Germany, that this alarm was taken by the worthy
archbishop. A bull of Alexander VI., in 1501, reciting that many
pernicious books had been printed in various parts of the world, and
especially in the provinces of Cologne, Mentz, Treves, and Magdeburg,
forbids all printers in these provinces to publish any books without the
licence of the archbishops or their officials.[520] We here perceive the
distinction made between these parts of Germany and the rest of Europe,
and can understand their ripeness for the ensuing revolution. We
perceive, also, the vast influence of the art of printing upon the
Reformation. Among those who have been sometimes enumerated as its
precursors, a place should be left for Schœffer and Gutenberg; nor has
this always been forgotten.[521]
[520] Id. 106.
[521] Gerdes, in his Hist. Evangel. Reformati, who has gone very
laboriously into this subject, justly dwells on the influence of
the art of printing.
CHAPTER IV.
ON THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM 1500 TO 1520.
SECT. I. 1501-1510.
_Classical Learning of Italy in this Period--Of France, Germany, and
England--Works of Polite Literature in Languages of Italy, Spain, and
England._
|Decline of learning in Italy.|
1. The new century did not begin very auspiciously for the literary
credit of Italy. We may, indeed, consider the whole period between the
death of Lorenzo in 1492, and the pontificate of his son in 1513, as
less brilliant than the two ages which we connect with their names. But
when measured by the labours of the press, the last ten years of the
fifteenth century were considerably more productive than any which had
gone before. In the present decade a striking decline was perceptible.
Thus, in comparing the numbers of books printed in the chief towns of
Italy, we find--
1491-1500 1501-1510
Florence 179 47
Rome 460 41
Milan 228 99
Venice 1491 536[522]
Such were the fruits of the ambition of Ferdinand and of Louis XII., and
the first interference of strangers with the liberties of Italy. Wars so
protracted within the bosom of a country, if they do not prevent the
growth of original genius, must yet be unfavourable to that secondary,
but more diffused excellence, which is nourished by the wealth of
patrons and the tranquillity of universities. Thus the gymnasium of
Rome, founded by Eugenius IV., but lately endowed and regulated by
Alexander VI., who had established it in a handsome edifice on the
Quirinal hill, was despoiled of its revenues by Julius II., who, with
some liberality towards painters, had no regard for learning; and this
will greatly account for the remarkable decline in the typography of
Rome. Thus, too, the Platonic school at Florence soon went to decay
after the fall of the Medici, who had fostered it; and even the rival
philosophy which rose upon its ruins, and was taught at the beginning of
this century with much success at Padua by Pomponatius, according to the
original principles of Aristotle, and by two other professors of great
eminence in their time, Nifo and Achillini, according to the system of
Averroes, could not resist the calamities of war: the students of that
university were dispersed in 1509, after the unfortunate defeat of
Ghiaradadda.
[522] Panzer.
|Press of Aldus.|
2. Aldus himself left Venice in 1506, his effects in the territory
having been plundered, and did not open his press again till 1512, when
he entered into partnership with his father-in-law, Andrew Asola. He had
been actively employed during the first years of the century. He
published Sophocles, Herodotus, and Thucydides in 1502, Euripides and
Herodian in 1503, Demosthenes in 1504. These were important accessions
to Greek learning, though so much remained behind. A circumstance may be
here mentioned, which had so much influence in facilitating the
acquisition of knowledge, that it renders the year 1501 a sort of epoch
in literary history. He that year not only introduced a new Italic
character, called Aldine, more easily read perhaps than his Roman
letters, which are somewhat rude; but, what was of more importance,
began to print in a small octavo or duodecimo form, instead of the
cumbrous and expensive folios that had been principally in use. Whatever
the great of ages past might seem to lose by this indignity, was more
than compensated in the diffused love and admiration of their writings.
“With what pleasure,” says M. Renouard, “must the studious man, the
lover of letters, have beheld these benevolent octavos, these Virgils
and Horaces contained in one little volume, which he might carry in his
pocket while travelling or in a walk; which besides cost him hardly more
than two of our francs, so that he could get a dozen of them for the
price of one of those folios, that had hitherto been the sole furniture
of his library. The appearance of these correct and well printed octavos
ought to be as much remarked as the substitution of printed books for
manuscripts itself.”[523] We have seen above, that not only quartos,
nearly as portable perhaps as octavos, but the latter form also, had
been coming into use towards the close of the fifteenth century, though,
I believe, it was sparingly employed for classical authors.
[523] Renouard, Hist. de l’Imprimerie des Aldes. Roscoe’s Leo. X.
ch. ii.
|His academy.|
3. It was about 1500, that Aldus drew together a few scholars into a
literary association, called Aldi Neacademia. Not only amicable
discussions, but the choice of books to be printed, of manuscripts and
various readings, occupied their time, so that they may be considered as
literary partners of the noble-minded printer. This academy was
dispersed by the retirement of Aldus from Venice, and never met
again.[524]
[524] Tiraboschi. Roscoe. Renouard. Scipio Forteguerra, who latinized
his name into Carteromachus, was secretary to this society, and
among its most distinguished members. He was celebrated in his time
for a discourse, De Laudibus Literarum Græcarum, reprinted by Henry
Stephens in his Thesaurus. Biogr. Univ., Forteguerra.
|Dictionary of Calepio.|
4. The first edition of Calepio’s Latin Dictionary, which, though far
better than one or two obscure books that preceded it, and enriched by
plundering the stores of Valla and Perotti, was very defective, appeared
at Reggio in 1502.[525] It was so greatly augmented by subsequent
improvers, that calepin has become a name in French for any voluminous
compilation. This dictionary was not only of Latin and Italian, but
several other languages; and these were extended in the Basle edition of
1581 to eleven. It is still, if not the best, the most complete
polyglott lexicon for the European languages. Calepio, however moderate
might be his erudition, has just claim to be esteemed one of the most
effective instruments in the restoration of the Latin language in its
purity to general use; for though some had by great acuteness and
diligence attained a good style in the fifteenth century, that age was
looked upon in Italy itself as far below the subsequent period.[526]
[525] Brunet. Tiraboschi (x. 383) gives some reason to suspect that
there may have been an earlier edition.
[526] Calepio is said by Morhof and Baillet to have copied Perotti’s
Cornucopia almost entire. Sir John Elyot long before had remarked:
“Calepin nothing amended, but rather appaired that which Perottus
had studiously gathered.” But the Cornucopia was not a complete
dictionary. It is generally agreed, that Calepio was an indifferent
scholar, and that the first editions of his dictionary are of no
great value. Nor have those who have enlarged it done so with
exactness, or with selection of good latinity. Even Passerat, the
most learned of them, has not extirpated the unauthorised words of
Calepio. Baillet, Jugemens des Savans, ii. 44.
Several bad dictionaries, abridged from the Catholicon, appeared
near the end of the fifteenth century, and at the beginning of the
next. Du Cange, præfat in Glossar, p. 47.
|Books printed in Germany.|
5. We may read in Panzer the titles of 325 books printed during these
ten years at Leipsic, 60 of which are classical, but chiefly, as before,
small school-books; 14 out of 214 at Cologne; 10 out of 208 at
Strasburg; 1 out of 84 at Basle; but scarcely any books whatever appear
at Louvain. One printed at Erfurt in 1501 deserves some attention. The
title runs “Εισαγωγη προς των γραμματων Ελληνων [Eisagôgê pros tôn
grammatôn Ellênôn], Elementale Introductorium in idioma Græcanicum,”
with some more words. Panzer observes: “This Greek grammar, published by
some unknown person, is undoubtedly the first which was published in
Germany since the invention of printing.” In this, however, as has
already been shown, he is mistaken; unless we deny to the book printed
at Deventer the name of a grammar. But Panzer was not acquainted with
it. This seems to be the only attempt at Greek that occurs in Germany
during this decade; and it is unnecessary to comment on the ignorance,
which the gross solecism in the title displays.[527]
[527] Panzer, vi. 494. We find, however, a tract by Hegius, De
Utilitate Linguæ Græcæ printed at Deventer in 1501; but whether it
contains Greek characters or not, must be left to conjecture.
Lambinet says, that Martens, a Flemish printer, employed Greek
types in quotations as early as 1501 or 1502.
|First Greek press at Paris.|
6. Paris contributed in ten years 430 editions, thirty-two being of
Latin classics. And in 1507 Giles Gourmont, a printer of that city,
assisted by the purse of Francis Tissard, had the honour of introducing
the Greek language on this side, as we may say, of the Alps; for the
trifling exceptions we have mentioned scarcely affect his priority.
Greek types had been used in a few words by Badius Ascensius, a learned
and meritorious Parisian printer, whose publications began about 1498.
They occur in his edition (1505) of Villa’s Annotations on the Greek
Testament.[528] Four little books, namely, a small miscellaneous
volume preceded by an alphabet, the Works and Days of Hesiod, the Frogs
and Mice of Homer, and the Erotemata or Greek grammar of Chrysoloras, to
which four a late writer has added an edition of Musæus, were the first
fruits of Gourmont’s press. Aleander, a learned Italian, who played
afterwards no inconsiderable part in the earlier period of the
Reformation, came to Paris in 1508, and received a pension from Louis
XII.[529] He taught Greek there, and perhaps Hebrew. Through his care,
besides a Hebrew and Greek alphabet in 1508, Gourmont printed some of
the moral works of Plutarch in 1509.
[528] Chevillier, Origines de l’Imprimerie de Paris, p. 246. Greswell’s
View of early Parisian Greek Press, i. 15. Panzer, according to Mr.
Greswell, has recorded nearly 400 editions from the press of
Badius. They include almost every Latin classic, usually with
notes. He also printed a few Greek authors. See also Bayle and
Biogr. Univ. The latter refers the first works from the Parisian
press of Badius to 1511, but probably by misprint. Badius had
learned Greek at Ferrara. If Bayle is correct, he taught it at
Lyons before he set up his press at Paris, which is worthy of
notice; but he gives no authority, except for the fact of his
teaching in the former city, which might not be the Greek language.
It is said, however, that he came to Paris in order to give
instruction in Greek about 1499. Bayle, art. Badius, note H. It is
said in the Biographie Universelle, that Denys le Fevre taught
Greek at Paris in 1504, when only sixteen years old; but the story
seems apocryphal.
[529] Aleander was no favourite with Erasmus, and Luther utters many
invectives against him. He was a strenuous supporter of all things
as they were in the church, and would have presided in the council
of Trent, as legate of Paul III., who had given him a cardinal’s
hat, if he had not been prevented by death. His epitaph on himself
may be mentioned, as the best Greek verses by a Frank that I
remember to have read before the middle of the eighteenth century,
though the reader may not think much of them.
κάτθανον οὐκ ἀέκων, ὅτι πάυσομαι ὣν ἐπιμάρτθς
πόλλων, ὥνπερ ἰδεῖν ἀλγίον ἤν θανάτου.
[katthanon ouk aekôn, hoti pausomai hôn epimartus
pollôn, hônper idein algion ên thanatou.]
It is fair to say of Aleander, that he was the friend of Sadolet.
In a letter of that excellent person to Paul III., he praises
Aleander very highly, and requests for him the hat, which the Pope
in consequence bestowed. Sadolet. Epist. l. xii. See, for Aleander,
Bayle; Sleidan, Hist. de la Réformation, l. ii. and iii.; Roscoe’s
Leo X., ch. xxi.; Jortin’s Erasmus, passim.
|Early studies of Melanchthon.|
7. We learn from a writer of the most respectable authority, Camerarius,
that the elements of Greek were already taught to some boys in parts of
Germany.[530] About 1508, Reuchlin, on a visit to George Simler, a
schoolmaster in Hesse, found a relation of his own, little more than ten
years old, who, uniting extraordinary quickness with thirst for
learning, had already acquired the rudiments of that language; and
presenting him with a lexicon and grammar, precious gifts in those
times, changed his German name, Schwartzerd, to one of equivalent
meaning and more classical sound, Melanchthon. He had himself set the
example of assuming a name of Greek derivation, being almost as much
known by the name of Capnio as by his own. And this pedantry, which
continued to prevail for a century and a half afterwards, might be
excused by the great uncouthness of many German, not to say French and
English, surnames in their latinised forms. Melanchthon, the precocity
of his youth being followed by a splendid maturity, became not only one
of the greatest lights of the Reformation, but, far above all others,
the founder of general learning in Germany.[531]
[530] Jam enim pluribus in locis melius quam dudum pueritia institui
et doctrina in scholis usurpari politior, quod et bonorum autorum
scripta in manus tenerentur, et elementa quoque linguæ Græcæ
alicubi proponerentur ad discendum, cum seniorum admiratione
maxima, et ardentissima cupiditate juniorum, cujus utriusque tum
non tam judicium quam novitas causa fuit. Similerus, qui postea ex
primario grammatico eximius jurisconsultus factus est, initio hanc
doctrinam non vulgandam aliquantisper, arbitrabatur. Itaque
Græcarum literarum scholam explicabat aliquot discipulis suis
privatim, quibus debat hanc operam peculiarem, ut quos summopere
diligeret. Camerarius, Vita Melanchthonis. I find also in one of
Melanchthon’s own epistles, that he learned the Greek grammar from
George Simler. Epist. Melanchthon, p. 351 (edit. 1647.)
[531] Camerarius. Meiners, i. 73. The Biographie Universelle, art.
Melanchthon, calls him nephew of Reuchlin: but this seems not to be
the case; Camerarius only says, that their families were connected
quadam cognationis necessitudine.
|Learning in England.|
8. England seems to have been nearly stationary in academical learning
during the unpropitious reign of Henry VII.[532] But just hopes were
entertained from the accession of his son in 1509, who had received in
some degree a learned education. And the small knot of excellent men,
united by zeal for improvement, Grocyn, Linacre, Latimer, Fisher, Colet,
More, succeeded in bringing over their friend Erasmus to teach Greek at
Cambridge in 1510. The students, he says, were too poor to pay him
anything; nor had he many scholars.[533] His instruction was
confined to the grammar. In the same year, Colet, dean of St. Paul’s,
founded there a school, and published a Latin grammar; five or six
little works of the kind had already appeared in England.[534] These
trifling things are mentioned to let the reader take notice that there
is nothing more worthy to be named. Twenty-six books were printed at
London during this decade; among these Terence in 1504; but no other
Latin author of classical name. The difference in point of learning
between Italy and England was at least that of a century; that is, the
former was more advanced in knowledge of ancient literature in 1400 than
the latter was in 1500.
[532] “The schools were much frequented with quirks and sophistry. All
things, whether taught or written, seemed to be trite and inane. No
pleasant streams of humanity or mythology were gliding among us,
and the Greek language, from whence the greater part of knowledge
is derived, was at a very low ebb, or in a manner forgotten.”
Wood’s Annals of Oxford, A.D. 1508. The word “forgotten” is
improperly applied to Greek, which had never been known. In this
reign, but in what part of it does not appear, the university of
Oxford hired an Italian, one Caius Auberinus, to compose the public
orations and epistles, and to explain Terence in the schools.
Warton, ii. 420, from MS. authority.
[533] Hactenus prælegimus Chrysoloræ grammaticam, sed paucis; fortassis
frequentiori auditorio Theodori grammaticam auspicabimur. Ep.
cxxiii. (16th Oct. 1511.)
[534] Wood talks of Holt’s Lac Puerorum, published in 1497, as if it
had made an epoch in literature. It might be superior to any
grammar we already possessed.
|Erasmus and Budæus.|
9. It is plain, however, that on the continent of Europe, though no very
remarkable advances were made in these ten years, learning was slowly
progressive, and the men were living who were to bear fruit in due
season. Erasmus republished his Adages with such great additions as
rendered them almost a new work; while Budæus, in his Observations upon
the Pandects, gave the first example of applying philological and
historical literature to the illustration of Roman law, by which others,
with more knowledge of jurisprudence than he possessed, were in the next
generation signally to change the face of that science.
|Study of eastern languages.|
10. The eastern languages began now to be studied, though with very
imperfect means. Hebrew had been cultivated in the Franciscan
monasteries of Tubingen and Basle before the end of the last century.
The first grammar was published by Conrad Pellican in 1503. Eichhorn
calls it an evidence of the deficiencies of his knowledge, though it
cost him incredible pains. Reuchlin gave a better, with a dictionary, in
1506; which, enlarged by Munster, long continued to be a standard book.
A Hebrew psalter, with three Latin translations, and one French, was
published in 1509 by Henry Stephens, the progenitor of a race
illustrious in typographical and literary history. Petrus de Alcala, in
1506, attempted an Arabic vocabulary, printing the words in Roman
letter.[535]
[535] Eichhorn, ii. 562, 563; v. 609. Meiners’s Life of Reuchlin, in
Lebensbeschreibungen berühmter Männer, i. 68. A very few instances
of Hebrew scholars in the fifteenth century might be found, besides
Reuchlin and Picus of Mirandola. Tiraboschi gives the chief place
among these to Giannozzo Manetti, vii. 123.
|Dramatic works.|
|Calisto and Melibœa.|
11. If we could trust an article in the Biographie Universelle, a
Portuguese, Gil Vicente, deserves the high praise of having introduced
the regular drama into Europe; the first of his pieces having been
represented at Lisbon in 1504.[536] But, according to the much superior
authority of Bouterwek, Gil Vicente was a writer in the old national
style of Spain and Portugal; and his early compositions are Autos, or
spiritual dramas, totally unlike any regular plays, and rude both in
design and execution. He became, however, a comic writer of great
reputation among his countrymen at a later period, but in the same vein
of uncultivated genius, and not before Machiavel and Ariosto had
established their dramatic renown. The Calandra of Bibbiena, afterwards
a cardinal, was represented at Venice in 1508, though not published till
1524. An analysis of this play will be found in Ginguéné; it bears only
a general resemblance to the Menæchmi of Plautus. Perhaps the Calandra
may be considered as the earliest modern comedy, or at least the
earliest that is known to be extant; for its five acts and intricate
plot exclude the competition of Maitre Patelin.[537] But there is a more
celebrated piece in the Spanish language, of which it is probably
impossible to determine the date; the tragi-comedy, as it has been
called, of Calisto and Melibœa. This is the work of two authors; one
generally supposed to be Rodrigo Cota, who planned the story, and wrote
the first act; the other, Fernando de Rojas, who added twenty more acts
to complete the drama. This alarming number does not render the play
altogether so prolix as might be supposed, the acts being only what with
us are commonly denominated scenes. It is, however, much beyond the
limits of representation. Some have supposed Calisto and Melibœa to
have been commenced by Juan de la Mena before the middle of the
fifteenth century. But this, Antonio tells us, shows ignorance of the
style belonging to that author and to his age. It is far more probably
of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella; and as an Italian translation
appears to have been published in 1514, we may presume that it was
finished and printed in Spain about the present decade.[538]
[536] Biogr. Univ., art. Gil Vicente. Another Life of the same
dramatist in a later volume, under the title Vicente, seems
designed to retract this claim. Bouterwek adverts to this supposed
drama of 1504, which is an Auto on the festival of Corpus Christi,
and of the simplest kind.
[537] Ginguéné, vi. 171. An earlier writer on the Italian theatre is in
raptures with this play. “The Greeks, Latins, and moderns have
never made, and perhaps never will make, so perfect a comedy as the
Calandra. It is, in my opinion, the model of good comedy.”
Riccoboni, Hist. du Théátre Italien, i. 148. This is much to say,
and shows an odd taste, for the Calandra neither displays character
nor excites interest.
[538] Antonio. Bibl. Hisp. Nova. Andrès, v. 125. La Celestina, says the
later, certo contiene un fatto bene svolto, e spiegato con episodj
verisimili e naturali, dipinge con verità i caratteri, ed esprime
talora con calore gli affetti; e tutto questo à mio giudizio potrà
bastare per darli il vanto d’essere stata la prima composizione
teatrale scritta con eleganza e regolarità.
|Its character.|
12. Bouterwek and Sismondi have given some account of this rather
remarkable dramatic work. But they hardly do it justice, especially the
former, who would lead the reader to expect something very anomalous and
extravagant. It appears to me, that it is as regular and well-contrived
as the old comedies generally were: the action is simple and
uninterrupted; nor can it be reckoned very extraordinary, that what
Bouterwek calls the unities of time and place should be transgressed,
when for the next two centuries they were never observed. Calisto and
Melibœa was at least deemed so original and important an accession to
literature, that it was naturalised in several languages. A very early
imitation, rather than version, in English, appears to have been printed
in 1530.[539] A real translation, with the title Celestina (the name of
a procuress who plays the chief part in the drama, and by which it has
been frequently known), is mentioned by Herbert under the year 1598. And
there is another translation, or second edition, in 1631, with the same
title, from which all my acquaintance with this play is derived.
Gaspar Barthius gave it in Latin, 1624, with the title,
Pornobosco-didascalus.[540] It was extolled by some as a salutary
exposition of the effects of vice--
Quo modo adolescentulæ
Lenarum ingenia et mores possent noscere,--
and condemned by others as too open a display of it. Bouterwek has
rather exaggerated the indecency of this drama, which is much less
offensive, unless softened in the translation, than in most of our old
comedies. The style of the first author is said to be more elegant than
that of his continuator; but this is not very apparent in the English
version. The chief characters throughout are pretty well drawn, and
there is a vein of humour in some of the comic parts.
[539] Dibdin’s Typographical Antiquities. Mr. Collier (Hist. of Dramatic
Poetry, ii. 408) has given a short account of this production,
which he says “is not long enough for play, and could only have
been acted as an interlude.” It must therefore be very different
from the original.
[540] Clement, Bibliothèque Curieuse. This translation is sometimes
erroneously named Pornodidascalus; the title of a very different
book.
|Juan de la Enzina.|
13. The first edition of the works of a Spanish poet, Juan de la Enzina,
appeared in 1501, though they were probably written in the preceding
century. Some of these are comedies, as one biographer calls them, or
rather, perhaps, as Bouterwek expresses it, “sacred and profane
eclogues, in the form of dialogues, represented before distinguished
persons on festivals.” Enzina wrote also a treatise on Castilian poetry,
which, according to Bouterwek, is but a short essay on the rules of
metre.[541]
[541] Bouterwek, Biogr. Univ., art. Enzina. The latter praises this
work of Enzina more highly, but whether from equal knowledge I
cannot say. The dramatic compositions above mentioned are most
scarce.
|Arcadia of Sannazzaro.|
14. The pastoral romance, as was before mentioned, began a little before
this time in Portugal. An Italian writer of fine genius, Sannazzaro,
adopted it in his Arcadia, of which the first edition was in 1502.
Harmonious prose intermingled with graceful poetry, and with a fable
just capable of keeping awake the attention, though it could never
excite emotion, communicate a tone of pleasing sweetness to this volume.
But we have been so much used to fictions of more passionate interest,
that we hardly know how to accommodate ourselves to the mild languor of
these early romances. A recent writer places the Arcadia at the head of
Italian prose in that age. “With a less embarrassed construction,” he
says, “than Boccaccio, and less of a servile mannerism than Bembo, the
style of Sannazzaro is simple, flowing, rapid, harmonious; if it should
seem now and then too florid and diffuse, this may be pardoned in a
romance. It is to him, in short, rather than to Bembo, that we owe the
revival of correctness and elegance in the Italian prose of the
sixteenth century; and his style in the Arcadia would have been far more
relished than that of the Asolani, if the originality of his poetry had
not engrossed our attention.” He was the first who employed in any
considerable degree the sdrucciolo verse, though it occurs before;
but the difficulty of finding rhymes for it drives him frequently upon
unauthorised phrases. He may also be reckoned the first who restored the
polished style of Petrarch, which no writer of the fifteenth century had
successfully emulated.[542]
[542] Salfi, Continuation de Ginguéné, x. 92. Corniani, iv. 12. Roscoe
speaks of the Arcadia with less admiration, but perhaps more
according to the feelings of the general reader. But I cannot
altogether concur in his sweeping denunciation of poetical prose,
“that hermaphrodite of literature.” In many styles of composition,
and none more than such as the Arcadia, it may be read with
delight, and without wounding a rational taste. The French
language, which is not well adapted to poetry, would have lost some
of its most imaginative passages, with which Buffon, St. Pierre,
and others now living have enriched it, if a highly ornamented
prose had been wholly proscribed; and we may say the same with
equal truth of our own. It is another thing to condemn the peculiar
style of poetry in writings that from their subject demand a very
different tone.
|Asolani of Bembo.|
15. The Asolani of Peter Bembo, a dialogue, the scene of which is laid
at Asola in the Venetian territory, were published in 1505. They are
disquisitions on love, tedious enough to our present apprehension, but
in a style so pure and polite, that they became the favourite reading
among the superior ranks in Italy, where the coldness and pedantry of
such dissertations were forgiven for their classical dignity and moral
truth. The Asolani has been thought to make an epoch in Italian
literature, though the Arcadia is certainly a more original and striking
work of genius.
|Dunbar.|
16. I do not find at what time the poems in the Scottish dialect by
William Dunbar were published; but the Thistle and the Rose, on the
marriage of James IV. with Margaret of England in 1503, must be presumed
to have been written very little after that time. Dunbar, therefore, has
the honour of leading the vanguard of British poetry in the sixteenth
century. His allegorical poem, The Golden Targe, is of a more extended
range, and displays more creative power. The versification of Dunbar is
remarkably harmonious and exact for his age; and his descriptions are
often very lively and picturesque. But it must be confessed that there
is too much of sunrise and singing-birds in all our mediæval poetry; a
note caught from the French and Provençal writers, and repeated to
satiety by our own. The allegorical characters of Dunbar are derived
from the same source. He belongs, as a poet, to the school of Chaucer
and Lydgate.[543]
[543] Warton, iii. 90. Ellis (Specimens, i. 377) strangely calls Dunbar
“the greatest poet that Scotland has produced.” Pinkerton places
him above Chaucer and Lydgate. Chalmers’s Biogr. Dict.
|Anatomy of Zerbi.|
17. The first book upon anatomy, since that of Mundinus, was by Zerbi of
Verona, who taught in the university of Padua in 1495. The title is,
Liber Anatomiæ Corporis Humani et singulorum Membrorum illius, 1503. He
follows in general the plan of Mundinus; and his language is obscure, as
well as full of inconvenient abbreviations; yet the germ of discoveries
that have crowned later anatomists with glory is sometimes perceptible
in Zerbi; among others that of the Fallopian tubes.[544]
[544] Portal, Hist. de l’Anatomie. Biogr. Univ., art. Zerbi.
|Voyages of Cadamosto.|
18. We now, for the first time, take relations of voyages into our
literary catalogue. During the fifteenth century, though the old travels
of Marco Polo had been printed several times, and in different
languages, and even those of Sir John Mandeville once; though the
Cosmography of Ptolemy had appeared in not less than seven editions, and
generally with maps, few, if any, original descriptions of the kingdoms
of the world had gratified the curiosity of modern Europe. But the
stupendous discoveries that signalised the last years of that age could
not long remain untold. We may, however, give perhaps the first place to
the voyages of Cadamosto, a Venetian, who, in 1455, under the protection
of prince Henry of Portugal, explored the western coast of Africa, and
bore a part in discovering its two great rivers, as well as the Cape de
Verde islands. “The relation of his voyages,” says a late writer, “the
earliest of modern travels, is truly a model, and would lose nothing by
comparison with those of our best navigators. Its arrangement is
admirable, its details are interesting, its descriptions clear and
precise.”[545] These voyages of Cadamosto do not occupy more than thirty
pages in the collection of Ramusio, where they are reprinted. They are
said to have first appeared at Vicenza in 1507, with the title Prima
Navigazione per l’Oceano alle Terre de’ Negri della Bassa Ethiopia di
Luigi Cadamosto. It is asserted, however, by Brunet, that no edition
exists earlier than 1519, and that this of 1507 is a confusion with the
next book. This was a still more important production, announcing the
great discoveries that Americo Vespucci was suffered to wrest, at least
in name, from a more illustrious though ill-requited Italian: Mondo
Nuovo, e Paeso nuovamente ritrovati da Alberico Vesputio Florentino
intitolati. Vicenza, 1507. It does not appear that any earlier work on
America had been published; but an epistle of Columbus himself, de
Insulis Indiæ nuper inventis, was twice printed about 1493 in Germany,
and probably in other countries; and a few other brief notices of the
recent discovery are to be traced. We find also in 1508 an account of
the Portuguese in the East, which, being announced as a translation from
the native language into Latin, may be presumed to have appeared
before.[546]
[545] Biogr. Univ., art. Cadamosto.
[546] See Brunet, art. Itinerarium, &c.
SECT. II. 1511-1520.
_Age of Leo X.--Italian Dramatic Poetry--Classical Learning,
especially Greek, in France, Germany, and England--Utopia of
More--Erasmus--His Adages--Political Satire contained in them--
Opposition of the Monks to Learning--Antipathy of Erasmus to
them--Their attack on Reuchlin--Origin of Reformation--Luther--
Ariosto--Character of the Orlando Furioso--Various Works of Amusement
in modern Languages--English Poetry--Pomponatius--Raymond Lully._
|Leo X., his patronage of letters.|
19. Leo X. became pope in 1513. His chief distinction, no doubt, is
owing to his encouragement of the arts, or, more strictly, to the
completion of those splendid labours of Raffaelle, under his
pontificate, which had been commenced by his predecessor. We have here
only to do with literature; and in the promotion of this he certainly
deserves a much higher name than any former pope, except Nicolas V.,
who, considering the difference of the times, and the greater solidity
of his own character, as certainly stands far above him. Leo began by
placing men of letters in the most honourable stations of his court.
There were two, Bembo and Sadolet, who had by common confession reached
a consummate elegance of style, in comparison of which the best
productions of the last age seemed very imperfect. They were made
apostolical secretaries. Beroaldo, second of the name, whose father,
though a more fertile author, was inferior to him in taste, was
intrusted with the Vatican library. John Lascaris and Marcus Musurus
were invited to reside at Rome;[547] and the pope, considering it, he
says, no small part of his pontifical duty to promote the Latin
literature, caused search to be made everywhere for manuscripts. This
expression sounds rather oddly in his mouth; and the less religious
character of transalpine literature is visible in this as in everything
else.
[547] John Lascaris, who is not to be confounded with Constantine
Lascaris, by some thought to be his father, and to whom we owe a
Greek Grammar, after continuing for several years under the
patronage of Lorenzo at Florence, where he was editor of the
Anthologia, or collection of epigrams, printed in 1494, on the fall
of the Medici family entered the service of Charles VIII., and
lived many years at Paris. He was afterwards employed by Louis XII.
as minister at Venice. After a residence of some duration at Rome,
he was induced by Francis I., in 1518, to organise the literary
institutions designed by the king to be established at Paris. But
these being postponed, Lascaris spent the remainder of his life
partly in Paris, partly in Rome, and died in the latter city in
1535. Hody de Græcis Illustribus.
|Roman gymnasium.|
20. The personal taste of Leo was almost entirely directed towards
poetry and the beauties of style. This, Tiraboschi seems to hint, might
cause the more serious learning of antiquity to be rather neglected. But
there does not seem to be much ground for this charge. We owe to Leo the
publication, by Beroaldo, of the first five books of the Annals of
Tacitus, which had lately been found in a German monastery. It appears
that in 1514 above one hundred professors received salaries in the Roman
university, or gymnasium, restored by the pope to its alienated
revenues.[548] Leo seems to have founded a seminary distinct
from the former, under the superintendence of Lascaris, for the sole
study of Greek, and to have brought over young men as teachers from
Greece. In this academy a Greek press was established, where the
scholiasts on Homer were printed in 1517.[549]
[548] We are indebted to Roscoe for publishing this list. But as the
number of one hundred professors might lead us to expect a most
comprehensive scheme, it may be mentioned that they consisted of
four for theology, eleven for canon law, twenty for civil law,
sixteen for medicine, two for metaphysics, five for philosophy
(probably physics), two for ethics, four for logic, one for
astrology (probably astronomy), two for mathematics, eighteen for
rhetoric, three for Greek, and thirteen for grammar, in all a
hundred and one. The salaries are subjoined in every instance; the
highest are among the medical professors; the Greek are also high.
Roscoe, ii. 333, and Append. No. 89.
Roscoe remarks that medical botany was one of the sciences taught,
and that it was the earliest instance. If this be right, Bonafede
of Padua cannot have been the first botanical professor in Europe,
as we read that he died in 1533. But in the roll of these Roman
professors we only find that one was appointed ad declarationem
simplicium medicinæ. I do not think this means more than the
materia medica; we cannot infer that he lectured upon the plants
themselves.
[549] Tiraboschi. Hody, p. 247. Roscoe, ch. 11. Leo was anticipated in
his Greek editions by Chigi, a private Roman, who, with the
assistance of Cornelio Benigno, and with Calliergus, a Cretan, for
his printer, gave to the world two good editions of Pindar and
Theocritus in 1515 and 1516.
|Latin Poetry.|
21. Leo was a great admirer of Latin poetry; and in his time the chief
poets of Italy seem to have written several of their works, though not
published till afterwards. The poems of Pontanus, which naturally belong
to the fifteenth century, were first printed in 1513 and 1518; and those
of Mantuan, in a collective form, about the same time.
|Italian tragedy.|
|Sophonisba of Trissino.|
22. The Rosmunda of Rucellai, a tragedy in the Italian language, on the
ancient regular model, was represented before Leo at Florence in 1515.
It was the earliest known trial of blank verse; but it is acknowledged
by Rucellai himself, that the Sophonisba of his friend Trissino, which
is dedicated to Leo in the same year, though not published till 1524,
preceded and suggested his own tragedy.[550] The Sophonisba is strictly
on the Greek model, divided only by the odes of the chorus, but not into
five portions or acts. The speeches in this tragedy are sometimes too
long, the style unadorned, the descriptions now and then trivial. But in
general there is a classical dignity about the sentiments, which are
natural, though not novel; and the latter part, which we should call the
fifth act, is truly noble, simple, and pathetic. Trissino was thoroughly
conversant with the Greek drama, and had imbibed its spirit; seldom has
Euripides written with more tenderness, or chosen a subject more fitted
to his genius; for that of Sophonisba, in which many have followed
Trissino with inferior success, is wholly for the Greek school; it
admits, with no great difficulty, of the chorus, and consequently of the
unities of time and place. It must, however, always chiefly depend on
Sophonisba herself; for it is not easy to make Masinissa respectable,
nor has Trissino succeeded in attempting it. The long continuance of
alternate speeches in single lines, frequent in this tragedy, will not
displease those to whom old associations are recalled by it.
[550] This dedication, with a sort of apology for writing tragedies in
Italian, will be found in Roscoe’s Appendix, vol. vi. Roscoe quotes
a few words from Rucellai’s dedication of his poem, L’Api, to
Trissino, acknowledging the latter as the inventor of blank verse.
Voi foste il primo, che questo modo di scrivere, in versi materni,
liberi delle rime, poneste in luce. Life of Leo X. ch. 16. See also
Ginguéné, vol. vi. and Walker’s Memoir on Italian Tragedy, as well
as Tiraboschi. The earliest Italian tragedy, which is also on the
subject of Sophonisba, by Galeotto del Carretto, was presented to
the Marchioness of Mantua in 1502. But we do not find that it was
brought on the stage; nor is it clear that it was printed so early
as the present decade. But an edition of the Pamphila, a tragedy on
the story of Sigismunda, by Antonio da Pistoja, was printed at
Venice in 1508. Walker, p. 11. Ginguéné has been ignorant of this
very curious piece, from which Walker had given a few extracts, in
rhymed measures of different kinds. Ginguéné indeed had never seen
Walker’s book, and his own is the worse for it. Walker was not a
man of much vigour of mind, but had some taste, and great knowledge
of his subject. This tragedy is mentioned by Quadrio, iv. 58, with
the title Il Filostrato e Panfila, due Amanti.
It may be observed, that, notwithstanding the testimony of Rucellai
himself above quoted, it is shown by Walker (Appendix, No. 3), that
blank verse had been occasionally employed before Trissino.
|Rosmunda of Rucellai.|
23. The Rosmunda falls in my opinion below the Sophonisba, though it is
the work of a better poet; and perhaps, in language and description it
is superior. What is told in narration, according to the ancient
inartificial form of tragedy, is finely told; but the emotions are less
represented than in the Sophonisba; the principal character is less
interesting, and the story is unpleasing. Rucellai led the way to those
accumulations of horrible and disgusting circumstances which deformed
the European stage for a century afterwards. The Rosmunda is divided
into five acts, but preserves the chorus. It contains imitations of the
Greek tragedies, especially the Antigone, as the Sophonisba does of the
Ajax and the Medea. Some lines in the latter, extolled by modern
critics, are simply translated from the ancient tragedians.
|Comedies of Ariosto.|
24. Two comedies by Ariosto seem to have been acted about 1512, and were
written as early as 1495, when he was but twenty-one years old, which
entitles him to the praise of having first conceived and carried into
effect the idea of regular comedies, in imitation of the ancient, though
Bibbiena had the advantage of first occupying the stage with his
Calandra. The Cassaria and Suppositi of Ariosto are, like the Calandra,
free imitations of the manner of Plautus, in a spirited and natural
dialogue, and with that graceful flow of language which appears
spontaneous in all his writings.[551]
[551] Ginguéné, vi. 183, 218, has given a full analysis of these
celebrated comedies. They are placed next to those of Machiavel by
most Italian critics.
|Books printed in Italy.|
|Cælius Rhodiginus.|
25. The north of Italy still endured the warfare of stranger armies:
Ravenna, Novara, Marignan, attest the well-fought contention. Aldus,
however, returning to Venice in 1512, published many editions before his
death in 1516. Pindar, Plato, and Lysias first appeared in 1513,
Athenæus in 1514, Xenophon, Strabo, and Pausanias in 1516, Plutarch’s
Lives in 1517. The Aldine press then continued under his father-in-law,
Andrew Asola, but with rather diminished credit. It appears that the
works printed during this period, from 1511 to 1520, were, at Rome 116,
at Milan 91, at Florence 133, and at Venice 511. This is, perhaps, less
than from the general renown of Leo’s age we should have expected. We
may select, among the original publications, the Lectiones Antiquæ of
Cælius Rhodiginus (1516), and a little treatise on Italian grammar by
Fortunio, which has no claim to notice but as the earliest book on the
subject.[552] The former, though not the first, appears to have been by
far the best and most extensive collection hitherto made from the stores
of antiquity. It is now hardly remembered; but obtained almost universal
praise, even from severe critics, for the deep erudition of its author,
who, in a somewhat rude style, pours forth explanations of obscure, and
emendations of corrupted passages, with profuse display of knowledge in
the customs and even philosophy of the ancients, but more especially in
medicine and botany. Yet he seems to have inserted much without
discrimination of its value, and often without authority. A more perfect
edition was published in 1550, extending to thirty books instead of
sixteen.[553]
[552] Regole Grammaticali delle Volgar Lingua. (Ancona, 1516.) Questo
libro fuor di dubbio è stato il primo che si videsse stampato, a
darne insegnamenti d’Italiana, eon già eloquenza, ma lingua.
Fontanini dell’Eloquenza Italiana, p. 5. Fifteen editions were
printed within six years; a decisive proof of the importance
attached to the subject.
[553] Blount. Biogr. Univ., art. Rhodiginus.
|Greek printed in France and Germany.|
26. It may be seen, that Italy, with all the lustre of Leo’s reputation,
was not distinguished by any very remarkable advance in learning during
his pontificate; and I believe it is generally admitted, that the
elegant biography of Roscoe, in making the public more familiar with the
subject, did not raise the previous estimation of its hero and of its
times. Meanwhile the cisalpine regions were gaining ground upon their
brilliant neighbour. From the Parisian press issued in these ten years
eight hundred books; among which were a Greek Lexicon by Aleander, in
1512, and four more little grammatical works, with a short romance in
Greek. This is trifling indeed; but in the cities on the Rhine something
more was done in that language. A Greek grammar, probably quite
elementary, was published at Wittenberg in 1511; one at Strasburg in
1512,--thrice reprinted in the next three years. These were succeeded by
a translation of Theodore Gaza’s grammar by Erasmus in 1516, by the
Progymnasmata Græcæ Literaturæ of Luscinius, in 1517, and by the
Introductiones in Linguam Græcam of Croke, in 1520. Isocrates and Lucian
appeared at Strasburg in 1515; the first book of the Iliad next year,
besides four smaller tracts;[554] several more followed before the end
of the decade. At Basle the excellent printer Frobenius, an intimate
friend of Erasmus, had established himself as early as 1491.[555]
Besides the great edition of the New Testament by Erasmus, which issued
from his press, we find, before the close of 1520, the Works and Days of
Hesiod, the Greek Lexicon of Aldus, the Rhetoric and Poetics of
Aristotle, the first two books of the Odyssey, and several grammatical
treatises. At Cologne two or three small Greek pieces were printed in
1517. And Louvain, besides the Plutus of Aristophanes in 1518, and three
or four others about the same time, sent forth in the year 1520 six
Greek editions, among which were Lucian, Theocritus, and two tragedies
of Euripides.[556] We may hence perceive, that the Greek
language now first became generally known and taught in Germany and in
the Low Countries.
[554] These were published by Luscinius (Nachtigall), a native of
Strasburg, and one of the chief members of the literary academy,
established by Wimpheling in that city. Biogr. Univ.
[555] Biogr. Univ.
[556] The whole number of books, according to Panzer printed from
1511 to 1520 at Strasburg, was 373; at Basle, 289; at Cologne, 120;
at Leipsic, 462; at Louvain, 57. It may be worth while to remind
the reader once more that these lists must be very defective as to
the slighter class of publications, which have often perished to a
single copy. Panzer is reckoned more imperfect after 1500 than
before. Biogr. Universelle. In England, we find thirty-six by
Pynson, and sixty-six by Wynkyn de Worde within these ten years.
|Greek scholars in these countries.|
27. It is evident that these works were chiefly designed for students in
the universities. But it is to be observed, that Greek literature was
now much more cultivated than before. In France there were, indeed, not
many names that could be brought forward; but Lefevre of Etaples,
commonly called Faber Stapulensis, was equal to writing criticism on the
Greek Testament of Erasmus. He bears a high character among contemporary
critics for his other writings, which are chiefly on theological and
philosophical subjects; but it appears by his age that he must have come
late to the study of Greek.[557] That difficult language was more easily
mastered by younger men. Germany had already produced some deserving of
remembrance. A correspondent of Erasmus, in 1515, writes to recommend
Œcolampadius as “not unlearned in Greek literature.”[558] Melanchthon
was, even in his early youth, deemed competent to criticise Erasmus
himself. At the age of sixteen, he lectured on the Greek and Latin
authors of antiquity. He was the first who printed Terence as
verse.[559] The library of this great scholar was in 1835 sold in
London, and was proved to be his own by innumerable marginal notes of
illustration and correction. Beatus Rhenanus stands perhaps next to him
as a scholar; and we may add the names of Luscinius, of Bilibald
Pirckheimer, a learned senator of Nuremberg, who made several
translations, and of Petrus Mosellanus, who became about 1518 lecturer
in Greek at Leipsic.[560] He succeeded our distinguished countryman,
Richard Croke, a pupil of Grocyn, who had been invited to Leipsic in
1514, with the petty salary of 15 guilders, but with the privilege of
receiving other remuneration from his scholars, and had the signal
honour of first imbuing the students of northern Germany with a
knowledge of that language.[561] One or two trifling works on Greek
grammar were published by Croke during this decennium. Ceratinus, who
took his name, in the fanciful style of the times, from his birthplace,
Horn in Holland, was now professor of Greek at Louvain; and in 1525, on
the recommendation of Erasmus, became the successor of Mosellanus at
Leipsic.[562] William Cop, a native of Basle, and physician to Francis
I., published in this period some translations from Hippocrates and
Galen.
[557] Jortin’s Erasmus, i. 92. Bayle, Fevre d’Etaples. Blount. Biogr.
Univ., Febure d’Etaples.
[558] Erasmus himself says afterwards, Œcolampadius satis novit Græcè,
Latini sermonis rudior; quanquam ille magis peccat indiligentia
quam imperitia.
[559] Cox’s Life of Melanchthon, p. 19. Melanchthon wrote Greek verse
indifferently and incorrectly, but Latin with spirit and elegance:
specimens of both are given in Dr. Cox’s valuable biography.
[560] The lives and characters of Rhenanus, Pirckheimer, and Mosellanus,
will be found in Blount, Niceron, and the Biographie Universelle;
also in Gerdes’s Historia Evangel. Renov., Melchior Adam, and other
less common books.
[561] Crocus regnat in Academia Lipsiensi, publicitus Græcas docens
litteras. Erasm. Epist. clvii. 5th June 1514. Eichhorn says, that
Conrad Celtes and others had taught Latin only, iii. 272.
Camerarius, who studied for three years under Croke, gives him a
very high character; qui primus putabatur ita docuisse Græcam
linguam in Germania, ut plane perdisci illam posse, et quid momenti
ad omnem doctrinæ eruditionem atque cultum hujus cognitio allatura
esse videretur, nostri homines sese intelligere arbitrarentur. Vita
Melanchthonis, p. 27; and Vita Eobani Hessi, p. 4. He was received
at Leipsic “like a heavenly messenger:” every one was proud of
knowing him, of paying whatever he demanded, of attending him at
any hour of the day or night. Melanchthon apud Meiners, i. 165. A
pretty good life of Croke is in Chalmers’s Biographical Dictionary.
Bayle does not mention him. Croke was educated at King’s College,
Cambridge, to which he went from Eton in 1506 and is said to have
learned Greek at Oxford from Grocyn, while still a scholar of
King’s.
[562] Erasmus gives a very high character of Ceratinus. Græcæ linguæ
peritia superat vel tres Mosellanos, nec inferior ut arbitror,
Romanæ linguæ facundia. Epist. Dccxxxvii. Ceratinus Græcanicæ
literaturæs tam exacte callens, ut vix unum aut alteram habeat
Italia quicum dubitem hanc committere. Magnæ doctrinæ erat
Mosellanus, spei majoris, et amaban unicè hominis ingenium, nec
falso dicunt odiosas esse comparationes; sed hoc ipsa causa me
compellit dicere, longe alia res est. Epist. Dccxxxviii.
|Colleges at Alcala and Louvain.|
28. Cardinal Ximenes, about the beginning of the century, founded a
college at Alcala, his favourite university, for the three learned
languages. This example was followed by Jerome Busleiden, who by his
last testament, in 1516 or 1517, established a similar foundation at
Louvain.[563] From this source proceeded many men of conspicuous
erudition and ability; and Louvain, through its Collegium
trilingue, became in a still higher degree than Deventer had been in the
fifteenth century not only the chief seat of Belgian learning, but the
means of diffusing it over parts of Germany. Its institution was
resisted by the monks and theologians, unyielding though beaten
adversaries of literature.[564]
[563] Bayle, Busleiden.
[564] Von der Hardt, Hist. Litt. Reformat.
|Latin style in France.|
29. It cannot be said, that many yet on this side of the Alps wrote
Latin well. Budæus is harsh and unpolished; Erasmus fluent, spirited,
and never at a loss to express his meaning; nor is his style much
defaced by barbarous words, though by no means exempt from them; yet it
seldom reaches a point of classical elegance. Francis Sylvius (probably
Dubois), brother of a celebrated physician, endeavoured to inspire a
taste for purity of style in the university of Paris. He had, however,
acquired it himself late, for some of his writings are barbarous. The
favourable influence of Sylvius was hardly earlier than 1520.[565] The
writer most solicitous about his diction was Longolius (Christopher de
Longueil), a native of Malines, the only true Ciceronian out of Italy;
in which country, however, he passed so much time, that he is hardly to
be accounted a mere cisalpine. Like others of that denomination, he was
more ambitious of saying common things well, than of producing what was
well worthy of being remembered.
[565] Bayle, art. Sylvius.
|Greek scholars in England.|