30. We have the imposing testimony of Erasmus himself, that neither

France nor Germany stood so high about this period as England. That

country, he says, so distant from Italy, stands next to it in the esteem

of the learned. This, however, is written in 1524. About the end of the

present decennial period we can produce a not very small number of

persons possessing a competent acquaintance with the Greek tongue, more,

perhaps, than could be traced in France, though all together might not

weigh as heavy as Budæus alone. Such were Grocyn, the patriarch of

English learning, who died in 1519; Linacre, whose translation of Galen,

first printed in 1521, is one of the few in that age that escape censure

for inelegance or incorrectness; Latimer, beloved and admired by his

friends, but of whom we have no memorial in any writings of his own;

More, known as a scholar by Greek epigrams of some merit;[566] Lilly,

master of St. Paul’s school, who had acquired Greek at Rhodes, but whose

reputation is better preserved by the grammars that bear his name;

Lupsett, who is said to have learned from Lilly, and who taught some

time at Oxford; Richard Croke, already named; Gerard Lister, a

physician, to whom Erasmus gives credit for skill in the three

languages; Pace and Tunstall, both men well known in the history of

those times; Lee and Stokesley, afterwards bishops, the former of whom

published Annotations on the Greek Testament of Erasmus at Basle in

1520;[567] and probably Gardiner; Clement, one of Wolsey’s first

lecturers at Oxford;[568] Brian, Wakefield, Bullock, and a few more,

whose names appear in Pits and Wood, or even who are not recorded; for

we could not without presumption attempt to enumerate every person who

at this time was not wholly unacquainted with the Greek language. Yet it

would be an error, on the other hand, to make a large allowance for

omissions; much less to conclude that every man who might enjoy some

reputation in a learned profession could in a later generation have

passed for a scholar. Colet, for example, and Fisher, men as

distinguished as almost any of that age, were unacquainted with the

Greek tongue, and both made some efforts to attain it at an advanced

age.[569] It was not till the year 1517 that the first Greek lecture was

established at Oxford by Fox, bishop of Hereford, in his new foundation

of Corpus Christi College. Wolsey, in 1519, endowed a regular

professorship in the university. It was about the same year that Fisher,

chancellor of the university of Cambridge, sent down Richard Croke,

lately returned from Leipsic, to tread in the footsteps of Erasmus as

teacher of Greek.[570] But this was in advance of our neighbours; for no

public instruction in that language was yet given in France.

[566] The Greek verses of More and Lilly, Progymnasmata Mori et Lilii,

were published at Basle, 1518. It is in this volume that the

distich, about which some curiosity has been shown, is found:

Inveni portum, spes et fortuna valete, &c. But it is a translation

from the Greek.

Quid tandem non præstitisset admirabilis ista naturæ felicitas, si

hoc ingenium instituisset Italia? si totum Musarum sacris vacasset?

si ad justam frugem ac velut autumnum suum maturuisset? Epigrammata

lusit adolescens admodum, ac pleraque puer; Britanniam suam nunquam

egressus est, nisi semel atque iterum principis sui nomine

legatione functus apud Flandros. Præter rem uxoriam, præter curas

domesticas, præter publici muneris functionem et causarum undas,

tot tantisque regni negotiis distrahitur, ut mireris esse otium vel

cogitandi de libris. Epist. clxix. Aug. 1517. In the Ciceronianus

he speaks of More with more discriminating praise, and the passage

is illustrative of that just quoted.

[567] Erasmus does not spare Lee. Epist. ccxlviii. Quo uno nihil unquam

adhuc terra produxit, nec arrogantius, nec virulentius, nec

stultius. This was the tone of the age towards any adversary, who

was not absolutely out of reach of such epithets. In another place,

he speaks of Lee as nuper Græcæ linguæ rudimentis initiatus. Ep.

cccclxxxxi.

[568] Knight says (apud Jortin, i. 45) that Clement was the first

lecturer at Oxford in Greek after Linacre, and that he was

succeeded by Lupsett. And this seems, as to the fact that they did

successively teach, to be confirmed by More. Jortin, ii. 396. But

the Biographia Britannica, art. Wolsey, asserts that they were

appointed to the chair of rhetoric or humanity; and that

Calpurnius, a native of Greece, was the first professor of the

language. No authority is quoted by the editors; but I have found

it confirmed by Caius in a little treatise De Pronuntiatione Græcæ

et Latinæ Linguæ. Novit, he says, Oxoniensis schola, quemadmodum

ipsa Græcia pronuntiavit. ex Matthæo Calpurnio Græco, quem ex

Græciâ Oxoniam Græcarum literarum gratia perduxerat Thomas Wolseus,

de bonis literis optime meritus cardinalis, cum non alia ratione

pronuntiant illi, quam quâ nos jam profitemur. Caius de Pronunt.

Græc. et Lat. Linguæ, edit. Jebb, p. 228.

[569] Nunc dolor me tenet, says Colet in 1516, quod non didicerim

Græcum sermonem, sine cujus peritia nihil sumus. From a later

epistle of Erasmus, where he says, Coletus strenue Græcatur, it

seems likely that he actually made some progress; but at his age it

would not be very considerable. Latimer dissuaded Fisher from the

attempt, unless he could procure a master from Italy, which Erasmus

thought needless. Epist. ccclxiii. In an edition of his Adages, he

says, Joannes Fischerus tres linguas ætate jam vergente non vulgari

studio amplectitur, Chil. iv. Cent. v. 1.

[570] Greek had not been neglected at Cambridge during the interval,

according to a letter of Bullock (in Latin Bovillus) to Erasmus in

1516 from thence. Hic acriter incumbunt literis Græcis, optanque

non mediocritur tuum adventum, et hi magnopere favent tuæ huic in

Novum Testamentum editioni. It is probable that Cranmer was a pupil

of Croke: for in the deposition of the latter before Mary’s

commissioners in 1555, he says that he had known the archbishop

thirty-six years, which brings us to his own first lectures at

Cambridge. Todd’s Life of Cranmer, ii. 449. But Cranmer may have

known something of the language before, and is, not improbably, one

of those to whom Bullock alludes.

|Mode of teaching in schools.|

31. By the statutes of St. Paul’s school, dated in 1518, the master is

to be “lerned in good and clene Latin literature, and also in Greke, iff

such may be gotten.” Of the boys he says, “I wolde they were taught

always in good literature both Latin and Greke.” But it does not follow

from hence that Greek was actually taught; and considering the want of

lexicons and grammars, none of which, as we shall see, were published in

England for many years afterwards, we shall be apt to think that little

instruction could have been given.[571] This, however, is not

conclusive, and would lead us to bring down the date of philological

learning in our public seminaries much too low. The process of learning

without books was tedious and difficult, but not impracticable for the

diligent. The teacher provided himself with a lexicon which was in

common use among his pupils, and with one of the grammars published on

the Continent, from which he gave oral lectures, and portions of which

were transcribed by each student. The books read in the lecture-room

were probably copied out in the same manner, the abbreviations giving

some facility to a cursive hand; and thus the deficiency of impressions

was in some degree supplied, just as before the invention of printing.

The labour of acquiring knowledge strengthened, as it always does, the

memory; it excited an industry which surmounted every obstacle, and

yielded to no fatigue; and we may thus account for that copiousness of

verbal learning which sometimes astonishes us in the scholars of the

sixteenth century, and in which they seem to surpass the more

exact philologers of later ages.

[571] In a letter of Erasmus on the death of Colet in 1522, Epist.

ccccxxxv (and in Jortin’s App., ii. 315), though he describes the

course of education at St. Paul’s school rather diffusely, and in a

strain of high panegyric, there is not a syllable of allusion to

the study of Greek. Pits, however, in an account of one William

Horman, tells us, that he was ad collegium Etonense studiorum causa

missus, ubi avide haustis litteris humanioribus, _perceptisque

Græcæ linguæ rudimentis_, dignus habitus est qui Cantabrigiam ad

altiores disciplinas destinaretur. Horman became Græcæ linguæ

peritissimus, and returned, as head master, to Eton: quo tempore in

litteris humanioribus scholares illic insigniter erudivit. He wrote

several works, partly grammatical, of which Pits gives the titles,

and died, _plenus dierum_, in 1535.

If we could depend on the accuracy of all this, we must suppose

that Greek was taught at Eton so early, that one who acquired the

rudiments of it in that school might die at an advanced age in

1535. But this is not to be received on Pits’s authority. And I

find, in Harwood’s Alumni Etonenses, that Horman became head master

as early as 1485: no one will readily believe, that he could have

learned Greek while at school: and the fact is, that he was not

educated at Eton, but at Winchester.

The Latin grammar which bears the name of Lilly was compiled partly

by Colet, partly by Erasmus.

|Few classical works printed here.|

32. It is to be observed, that we rather extol a small number of men who

have struggled against difficulties, than put in a claim for any

diffusion of literature in England, which would be very far from the

truth. No classical works were printed except four editions of Virgil’s

Bucolics, a small treatise of Seneca, the first book of Cicero’s

Epistles (the latter at Oxford in 1519), all merely of course for

learners. We do not reckon Latin grammars. And as yet no Greek types had

been employed. In the spirit of truth, we cannot quite take to ourselves

the compliment of Erasmus; there must evidently have been a far greater

diffusion of sound learning in Germany; where professors of Greek had

for some time been established in all the universities, and where a long

list of men ardent in the cultivation of letters could be adduced.[572]

Erasmus had a panegyrical humour towards his friends, of whom there were

many in England.

[572] Such a list is given by Meiners, i. 154, of the supporters of

Reuchlin; who comprised all the real scholars of Germany: he

enumerates sixty-seven, which might doubtless be enlarged.

|State of learning in Scotland.|

33. Scotland had, as might naturally be expected, partaken still less of

Italian light than the south of Britain. But the reigning king,

contemporary with Henry VII., gave proofs of greater good-will towards

letters. A statute of James IV., in 1496, enacts that gentlemen’s sons

should be sent to school in order to learn Latin. Such provisions were

too indefinite for execution, even if the royal authority had been

greater than it was; but it serves to display the temper of the

sovereign. His natural son, Alexander, on whom, at a very early age, he

conferred the archbishopric of St. Andrews, was the pupil of Erasmus in

the Greek language. The latter speaks very highly of this promising

scion of the house of Stuart in one of his adages.[573] But, at the age

of twenty, he perished with his royal father on the disastrous day of

Flodden Field. Learning had made no sensible progress in Scotland; and

the untoward circumstances of the next twenty years were far from giving

it encouragement. The translation of the Æneid by Gawin Douglas, bishop

of Dunkeld, though we are not at present on the subject of poetry, may

be here mentioned in connection with Scottish literature. It was

completed about 1513, though the earliest edition is not till 1553.

“This translation,” says Warton, “is executed with equal spirit and

fidelity; and is a proof that the Lowland Scotch and English languages

were now nearly the same. I mean the style of composition, more

especially in the glaring affectation of anglicising Latin words. The

several books are introduced with metrical prologues, which are often

highly poetical, and show that Douglas’s proper walk was original

poetry.” Warton did well to explain his rather startling expression,

that the Lowland Scotch and English languages were then nearly the same:

for I will venture to say, that no Englishman, without guessing at every

other word, could understand the long passage he proceeds to quote from

Gawin Douglas. It is true that the differences consisted mainly in

pronunciation, and consequently in orthography; but this is the great

cause of diversity in dialect. The character of Douglas’s original

poetry seems to be that of the middle ages in general,--prolix, though

sometimes animated, description of sensible objects.[574]

[573] Chil. ii. cent. v. 1.

[574] Warton, iii 111.

|Utopia of More.|

34. We must not leave England without mention of the only work of genius

that she can boast in this age; the Utopia[575] of Sir Thomas More.

Perhaps we scarcely appreciate highly enough the spirit and originality

of this fiction, which ought to be considered with regard to the

barbarism of the times, and the meagreness of preceding inventions. The

Republic of Plato no doubt furnished More with the germ of his perfect

society; but it would be unreasonable to deny him the merit of having

struck out the fiction of its real existence from his own fertile

imagination; and it is manifest, that some of his most distinguished

successors in the same walk of romance, especially Swift, were largely

indebted to his reasoning, as well as inventive talents. Those who read

the Utopia in Burnet’s translation, may believe that they are in

Brobdignag; so similar is the vein of satirical humour and easy

language. If false and impracticable theories are found in the Utopia

(and perhaps he knew them to be such), this is in a much greater degree

true of the Platonic Republic; and they are more than compensated by the

sense of justice and humanity that pervades it, and his bold censures on

the vices of power. These are remarkable in a courtier of Henry VIII.;

but, in the first year of Nero, the voice of Seneca was heard

without resentment. Nor had Henry much to take to himself in the

reprehension of parsimonious accumulation of wealth, which was meant for

his father’s course of government.

[575] Utopia is named from a King Utopus. I mention this, because some

have shown their learning by changing the word to Eutopia.

|His inconsistency with his opinions.|

35. It is possible that some passages in the Utopia, which are neither

philosophical nor reconcilable with just principles of morals, were

thrown out as mere paradoxes of a playful mind; nor is it easy to

reconcile his language as to the free toleration of religious worship

with those acts of persecution which have raised the only dark cloud on

the memory of this great man. He positively indeed declares for

punishing those who insult the religion of others, which might be an

excuse for his severity towards the early reformers. But his latitude as

to the acceptability of all religions with God, as to their identity in

essential principles, and as to the union of all sects in a common

worship, could no more be made compatible with his later writings or

conduct, than his sharp satire against the court of Rome for breach of

faith, or against the monks and friars for laziness and beggary. Such

changes, however, are very common, as we may have abundantly observed,

in all seasons of revolutionary commotions. Men provoke these, sometimes

in the gaiety of their hearts with little design, sometimes with more

deliberate intention, but without calculation of the entire

consequences, or of their own courage to encounter them. And when such

men, like More, are of very quick parts, and, what is the usual

attendant of quick parts, not very retentive of their opinions, they

have little difficulty in abandoning any speculative notion, especially

when, like those in the Utopia, it can never have had the least

influence upon their behaviour. We may acknowledge, after all, that the

Utopia gives us the impression of its having proceeded rather from a

very ingenious than a profound mind; and this apparently, is what we

ought to think of Sir Thomas More. The Utopia is said to have been first

printed at Louvain in 1516;[576] it certainly appeared at the close of

the preceding year; but the edition of Basle in 1518, under the care of

Erasmus, is the earliest that bears a date. It was greatly admired on

the Continent; indeed there had been little or nothing of equal spirit

and originality in Latin since the revival of letters.

[576] Of an undated edition, to which Panzer gives the name of editio

princeps, there is a copy in the British Museum, and another was in

Mr. Heber’s library. Dibdin’s Utopia, 1808, preface, cxi. It

appears from a letter of Montjoy to Erasmus, dated 4th Jan. 1516,

that he had received the Utopia, which must therefore have been

printed in 1515; and it was reprinted once at least in 1516 or

1517. Erasm. Epist. cciii. ccv. Append. Ep. xliv. lxxix. ccli, et

alibi. Panzer mentions one at Louvain in December 1516. This volume

by Dr. Dibdin is a reprint of Robinson’s early and almost

contemporary translation. That by Burnet, 1685, is more known, and

I think it good. Burnet, and I believe some of the Latin editions,

omit a specimen of the Utopian language, and some Utopian poetry;

which probably was thought too puerile.

|Learning restored in France.|

36. The French themselves give Francis I. the credit of having been the

father of learning in that country. Galland, in a funeral panegyric on

that prince, asks if at his accession (in 1513) any one man in France

could read Greek or write Latin? Now this is an absurd question, when we

recollect the names of Budæus, Longolius, and Faber Stapulensis; yet it

shows that there could have been very slender pretensions to classical

learning in the kingdom. Erasmus, in his Ciceronianus, enumerates among

French scholars, not only Budæus, Faber, and the eminent printer,

Jodocus Badius (a Fleming by birth), whom, in point of style, he seems

to put above Budæus, but John Pin, Nicolas Berald, Francis Deloin,

Lazarus Baif, and Ruel. This was however in 1529, and the list assuredly

is not long. But as his object was to show that few men of letters were

worthy of being reckoned fine writers, he does not mention Longueil, who

was one; or whom, perhaps, he might omit, as being then dead.

|Jealousy of Erasmus and Budæus.|

37. Budæus and Erasmus were now at the head of the literary world; and

as the friends of each behaved rather too much like partizans, a kind of

rivalry in public reputation began, which soon extended to themselves,

and lessened their friendship. Erasmus seems to have been, in a certain

degree, the aggressor; at least, some of his letters to Budæus indicate

an irritability, which the other, as far as appears, had not provoked.

Budæus had published in 1514 an excellent treatise, De Asse, the first

which explained the denominations and values of Roman money in all

periods of history.[577] Erasmus sometimes alludes to this with covert

jealousy. It was set up by a party against his Adages, which he

justly considered more full of original thoughts and extensive learning.

But Budæus understood Greek better; he had learned it with prodigious

labour, and probably about the same time with Erasmus, so that the

comparison between them was not unnatural. The name of one is at present

only retained by scholars, and that of the other by all mankind; so

different is contemporary and posthumous reputation. It is just to add

that, although Erasmus had written to Budæus in far too sarcastic a

tone,[578] under the smart of that literary sensitiveness which was very

strong in his temper, yet when the other began to take serious offence,

and to threaten a discontinuance of their correspondence, he made amends

by an affectionate letter, which ought to have restored their good

understanding. Budæus, however, who seems to have kept his resentments

longer than his quick-minded rival, continued to write peevish letters;

and fresh circumstances arose afterwards to keep up his jealousy.[579]

[577] Quod opus ejus, says Vives, in a letter to Erasmus (Ep. Dcx.),

Hermolaos omnes, Picos, Politianos, Gazas, Vallas, cunctam Italiam

pudefecit.

[578] Epist. cc. I quote the numeration of the Leyden edition.

[579] Erasmi Epistolæ, passim. The publication of his Ciceronianus in

1528, renewed the irritation; in this he gave a sort of preference

to Badius over Budæus, in respect to style alone; observing that

the latter had great excellences of another kind. The French

scholars made this a national quarrel, pretending that Erasmus was

prejudiced against their country. He defends himself in his

epistles so prolixly and elaborately, as to confirm the suspicion,

not of this absurdly imputed dislike to the French, but of some

little desire to pique Budæus. Epigrams in Greek were written at

Paris against him by Lascaris and Toussain; and thus Erasmus, by an

unlucky inability to restrain his pen from sly sarcasm, multiplied

the enemies, whom an opposite part of his character, its spirit of

temporising and timidity, was always raising up. Erasm. Epist.

Mvxi. et alibi.

This rather unpleasing correspondence between two great men,

professing friendship, yet covertly jealous of each other, is not

ill described by Von der Hardt, in the Historia Litteraria

Reformationis. Mirum dictu, qui undique aculei, sub mellitissima

oratione, inter blandimenta continua. Genius utriusque

argutissimus, qui vellendo et acerbe pungendo nullibi videretur

referre sanguinem aut vulnus inferre. Possint profecto hæ literæ

Budæum inter et Erasmum illustre esse et incomparabile exemplar

delicatissimæ sed et perquam aculeatæ concertationis, quæ videretur

suavissimo absolvi risu et velut familiarissimo palpo. De

alterutrius integritate neuter visus dubitare; uterque tamen semper

anceps, tot annis commercio frequentissimo. Dissimulandi artificium

inexplicabile, quod attenti lectoris admirationem vehat, eumque præ

dissertationum dulcedine subamara in stuporem vertat. p. 46.

|Character of Erasmus.|

38. Erasmus diffuses a lustre over his age which no other name among the

learned supplies. The qualities which gave him this superiority were his

quickness of apprehension, united with much industry, his liveliness of

fancy, his wit and good sense. He is not a very profound thinker, but an

acute observer: and the age for original thinking was hardly come. What

there was of it in More produced little fruit. In extent of learning, no

one perhaps was altogether his equal. Budæus, with more accurate

scholarship, knew little of theology, and might be less ready perhaps in

general literature than Erasmus. Longolius, Sadolet, and several others,

wrote Latin far more elegantly; but they were of comparatively

superficial erudition, and had neither his keen wit, nor his vigour of

intellect. As to theological learning, the great Lutheran divines must

have been at least his equals in respect of scriptural knowledge, and

some of them possessed an acquaintance with Hebrew, of which Erasmus

knew nothing; but he had probably the advantage in the study of the

fathers. It is to be observed, that by far the greater part of his

writings are theological. The rest either belong to philology and

ancient learning, as the Adages, the Ciceronianus, and the various

grammatical treatises, or may be reckoned effusions of his wit, as the

Colloquies and the Encomium Moriæ.

|His Adages severe on kings.|

39. Erasmus, about 1517, published a very enlarged edition of his

Adages, which had already grown with the growth of his own erudition. It

is impossible to distinguish the progressive accessions they received

without a comparison of editions; and some probably belong to a later

period than the present. The Adages, as we read them, display a

surprising extent of intimacy with Greek and Roman literature.[580] Far

the greater portion is illustrative; but Erasmus not unfrequently

sprinkles his explanations of ancient phrase with moral or literary

remarks of some poignancy. The most remarkable, in every sense, are

those which reflect with excessive bitterness and freedom on kings and

priests. Jortin has slightly alluded to some of these; but they

may deserve more particular notice, as displaying the character of the

man, and perhaps the secret opinions of his age.

[580] In one passage, under the proverb, Herculei labores, he

expatiates on the immense labour with which this work, his

Adages, had been compiled; mentioning, among other difficulties,

the prodigious corruption of the text in all Latin and Greek

manuscripts, so that it scarce ever happened that a passage could

be quoted from them, without a certainty or suspicion of some

erroneous reading.

|Instances in illustration.|

40. Upon the adage, Frons occipitio prior, meaning, that every one

should do his own business, Erasmus takes the opportunity to observe,

that no one requires more attention to this than a prince, if he will

act as a real prince, and not as a robber. But at present our kings and

bishops are only the hands, eyes, and ears of others, careless of the

state, and of everything but their own pleasure.[581] This, however, is

a trifle. In another proverb, he bursts out: “Let any one turn over the

pages of ancient or modern history, scarcely in several generations will

you find one or two princes, whose folly has not inflicted the greatest

misery on mankind.” And after much more of the same kind: “I know not

whether much of this is not to be imputed to ourselves. We trust the

rudder of a vessel, where a few sailors and some goods alone are in

jeopardy, to none but skilful pilots; but the state, wherein the safety

of so many thousands is concerned, we put into any hands. A charioteer

must learn, reflect upon, and practise his art; a prince need only be

born. Yet government, as it is the most honourable, so is it the most

difficult of all sciences. And shall we choose the master of a ship, and

not choose him, who is to have the care of many cities, and so many

souls? But the usage is too long established for us to subvert. Do we

not see that noble cities are erected by the people; that they are

destroyed by princes? that the community grows rich by the industry of

its citizens, is plundered by the rapacity of its princes? that good

laws are enacted by popular magistrates, are violated by these princes?

that the people love peace; that princes excite war?”[582]

[581] Chil. i. cent. ii. 19.

[582] Quin omnes et veterum et neotericorum annales

evolve, nimirum ita comperies, vix sæculis aliquot unum aut alterum

extitisse principem, qui non insigni stultitiâ maximam perniciem

invexerit rebus humanis.... Et haud scio, an nonnulla hujus mali

pars nobis ipsis sit imputanda. Clavum navis non committimus nisi

ejus rei perito, quod quatuor vectorum aut paucarum mercium sit

periculum; et rempublicam, in qua tot hominum millia periclitantur,

cuivis committimus. Ut auriga fiat aliquis discit artem, exercet,

meditatur; at ut princeps sit aliquis, satis esse putamus natum

esse. Atqui rectè gerere principatum, ut est munus omnium longe

pulcherrimum, ita est omnium etiam multo difficillimum. Deligis,

cui navem committas, non deligis cui tot urbes, tot hominum capita

credas? Sed istud receptius est, quam ut convelli possit.

An non videmus egregia oppida a populo condi, a principibus

subverti? rempublicam civium industria ditescere, principum

rapacitate spoliari? bonas leges ferri a plebeiis magistratibus, a

principibus violari? populum studere paci, principes excitare

bellum?

41. “It is the aim of the guardians of a prince,” he exclaims in another

passage, “that he may never become a man. The nobility, who fatten on

public calamity, endeavour to plunge him into pleasures, that he may

never learn what is his duty. Towns are burned, lands are wasted,

temples are plundered, innocent citizens are slaughtered, while the

prince is playing at dice, or dancing, or amusing himself with puppets,

or hunting, or drinking. O race of the Bruti, long since extinct! O

blind and blunted thunderbolts of Jupiter! We know indeed that those

corrupters of princes will render account to Heaven, but not easily to

us.” He passes soon afterwards to bitter invective against the clergy,

especially the regular orders.[583]

[583] Miro studio curant tutores, ne unquam vir sit princeps.

Adnituntur optimates, ii qui publicis malis saginantur, ut

voluptatibus sit quam effæminatissimus, ne quid eorum sciat, quæ

maxime decet scire principem. Exuruntur vici, vastantur agri,

diripiuntur templa, trucidantur immeriti cives, sacra profanaque

miscentur, dum princeps interim otiosus ludit aleam, dum saltit,

dum oblectat se morionibus, dum venatur, dum amat, dum potat. O

Brutorum genus jam olim extinctum! o fulmen Jovis aut cæcum aut

obtusum! Neque dubium est, quin isti principum corruptores pœnas

Deo daturi sint, sed sero nobis.

42. In explaining the adage, Sileni Alcibiadis, referring to things

which, appearing mean and trifling, are really precious, he has many

good remarks on persons and things, of which the secret worth is not

understood at first sight. But thence passing over to what he calls

inversi Sileni, those who seem great to the vulgar, and are really

despicable, he expatiates on kings and priests, whom he seems to hate

with the fury of a modern philosopher. It must be owned he is very

prolix and declamatory. He here attacks the temporal power of the church

with much plainness; we cannot wonder that his Adages required

mutilation at Rome.

43. But by much the most amusing and singular of the Adages is Scarabæus

aquilam quærit; the meaning of which, in allusion to a fable that the

beetle, in revenge for an injury, destroyed the eggs of the eagle, is

explained to be, that the most powerful may be liable to the resentment

of the weakest. Erasmus here returns to the attack upon kings

still more bitterly and pointed than before. There is nothing in the

Contre un of La Boetie, nothing, we may say, in the most seditious libel

of our own time, more indignant and cutting against regal government

than this long declamation: “Let any physiognomist, not a blunderer in

his trade, consider the look and features of an eagle, those rapacious

and wicked eyes, that threatening curve of the beak, those cruel cheeks,

that stern front, will he not at once recognise the image of a king, a

magnificent and majestic king? Add to these a dark, ill-omened colour,

an unpleasing, dreadful, appalling voice, and that threatening scream,

at which every kind of animal trembles. Every one will acknowledge this

type, who has learned how terrible are the threats of princes, even

uttered in jest. At this scream of the eagle the people tremble, the

senate shrinks, the nobility cringes, the judges concur, the divines are

dumb, the lawyers assent, the laws and constitutions give way; neither

right nor religion, neither justice nor humanity avail. And thus, while

there are so many birds of sweet and melodious song, the unpleasant and

unmusical scream of the eagle alone has more power than all the

rest.”[584]

[584] Age si quis mihi physiognomon non omnino malus vultum ipsum et

os aquilæ diligentius contempletur, oculos avidos atque improbos,

rictum minacem, genas truculentas, frontem torvam, denique illud,

quod Cyrum Persarum regem tantopere delectavit in principe γρυπὸν

[grypon], nonne plane regium quoddam simulacrum agnoscet,

magnificum et majestatis plenum? Accedit huc et color ipse

funestus, teter èt inauspicatus, fusco squalore nigricans. Unde

etiam quod fuscum est et subnigrum, aquilum vocamus. Tum vox

inamœna, terribilis, exanimatrix, ac minax ille querulusque

clangor, quem nullum animantium genus non expavescit. Jam hoc

symbolum protinus agnoscit, qui modo periculum fecerit, aut viderit

certè, quam sint formidandæ principum minæ, vel joco prolatæ.... Ad

hanc, inquam, aquilæ stridorem illico pavitat omne vulgus,

contrahit sese senatus, observit nobilitas, obsecundant judices,

silent theologi, assentantur jurisconsulti, cedunt leges, cedunt

instituta; nihil valet fas nec pietas, nec æquitas nec humanitas.

Cumque tam multæ sint aves non ineloquentes, tam multæ canoræ,

tamque variæ sint voces ac modulatus qui vel saxa possint flectere,

plus tamen omnibus valet insuavis ille et minime musicus unius

aquilæ stridor.

44. Erasmus now gives the rein still more to his fancy. He imagines

different animals, emblematic no doubt of mankind, in relation to his

eagle. “There is no agreement between the eagle and the fox, not without

great disadvantage to the vulpine race; in which however they are

perhaps worthy of their fate, for having refused aid to the hares when

they sought an alliance against the eagle, as is related in the Annals

of Quadrupeds, from which Homer borrowed his Battle of the Frogs and

Mice.”[585] I suppose that the foxes mean the nobility, and the hares

the people. Some allusions to animals that follow I do not well

understand. Another is more pleasing: “It is not surprising,” he says,

“that the eagle agrees ill with the swans, those poetic birds; we may

wonder more, that so warlike an animal is often overcome by them.” He

sums up all thus: “Of all birds the eagle alone has seemed to wise men

the apt type of royalty; not beautiful, not musical, not fit for food;

but carnivorous, greedy, plundering, destroying, combating, solitary,

hateful to all, the curse of all, and with its great powers of doing

harm, surpassing them in its desire of doing it.”[586]

[585] Nihil omnino convenit inter aquilam et vulpem, quanquam id sane

non mediocri vulpinæ gentis malo; quo tamen haud scio an dignæ

videri debeant, quæ quondam leporibus συμμαχιαν [symmachian]

adversus aquilam petentibus auxilium negarint, ut refertur in

Annalibus Quadrupedum, a quibus Homerus Βατραχομυομαχιαν

[Batrachomyomachian] mutuatus est.... Neque vero mirum quod illi

parum convenit cum oloribus, ave nimirum poetica; illud mirum, ab

iis sæpenumero vinci tam pugnacem belluam.

[586] Ex universis avibus una aquila viris tam sapientibus idonea visa

est, quæ regis imaginem repræsentet, nec formosa, nec canora, nec

esculenta, sed carnivora, rapax, prædatrix, populatrix, bellatrix,

solitaria, invisa omnibus, pestis omnium; quæ cum plurimum nocere

possit, plus tamen velit quam possit.

45. But the eagle is only one of the animals in the proverb. After all

this bile against those the royal bird represents, he does not forget

the beetles. These of course are the monks, whose picture he draws with

equal bitterness and more contempt. Here, however, it becomes difficult

to follow the analogy, as he runs a little wildly into mythological

tales of the Scarabæus, not easily reduced to his purpose. This he

discloses at length: “There are a wretched class of men, of low degree,

yet full of malice; not less dingy, nor less filthy, nor less vile than

beetles; who nevertheless by a certain obstinate malignity of

disposition, though they can never do good to any mortal, become

frequently troublesome to the great. They frighten by their ugliness,

they molest by their noise, they offend by their stench; they buzz round

us, they cling to us, they lie in ambush for us, so that it is

often better to be at enmity with powerful men than to attack those

beetles, whom it is a disgrace even to overcome, and whom no one can

either shake off, or encounter, without some pollution.”[587]

[587] Sunt homunculi quidam, infimæ quidem sortis, sed tamen malitiosi,

non minus atri quam scarabæi, neque minus putidi, neque minus

abjecti; qui tamen pertinaci quadam ingenii malitia, cum nulli

omnino mortalium prodesse possint, magnis etiam sæpenumero viris

facessunt negotium. Territant nigrore, obstrepunt stridore,

obturbant fœtore; circumvolitant, hærent, insidiantur, ut non paulo

satius sit cum magnis aliquando viris simultatem suscipere, quam

hos lacessere scarabæos, quos pudeat etiam vicisse, quosque nec

excutere possis, neque conflictari cum illis queas, nisi discedas

contaminatior. Chil. iii. cent. vii. 1.

In a letter to Budæus, Ep. ccli., Erasmus boasts of his παρρησια

[parrêsia] in the Adages, naming the most poignant of them; but

says, in proverbio αετον κανθαρος μαιευεται [aeton kantharos

maieuetai], plane lusimus ingenio. This proverb, and that entitled

Sileni Alcibiadis, had appeared before 1515; for they were

reprinted in that year by Frobenius, separately from the other

Adages, as appears by a letter of Beatus Rhenanus in Appendice ad

Erasm. Epist. Ep. xxviii. Zasius, a famous jurist, alludes to them

in another letter, Ep. xxvii., praising “fluminosas disserendi

undas amplificationis immensam ubertatem.” And this, in truth, is

the character of Erasmus’s style. The Sileni Alcibiadis were also

translated into English, and published by John Gough; see Dibdin’s

Typographical Antiquities, article 1433.

There is not a little severity in the remarks Erasmus makes on

princes and nobles in the Moriæ Encomium. But with them he seems

through life to have been a privileged person.

46. It must be admitted, that this was not the language to conciliate;

and we might almost commiserate the sufferance of the poor beetles thus

trod upon; but Erasmus knew that the regular clergy were not to be

conciliated, and resolved to throw away the scabbard. With respect to

his invectives against kings, they proceeded undoubtedly, like those,

less intemperately expressed, of his friend More in the Utopia, from a

just sense of the oppression of Europe in that age by ambitious and

selfish rulers. Yet the very freedom of his animadversions seems to

plead a little in favour of these tyrants, who, if they had been as

thorough birds of prey as he represents them, might easily have torn to

pieces the author of this somewhat outrageous declamation, whom on the

contrary they honoured and maintained. In one of the passages above

quoted, he has introduced, certainly in a later edition, a limitation of

his tyrannicidal doctrine, if not a palinodia, in an altered key.

“Princes,” he says, “must be endured, lest tyranny should give way to

anarchy, a still greater evil. This has been demonstrated by the

experience of many states; and lately the insurrection of the German

boors has taught us, that the cruelty of princes is better to be borne

than the universal confusion of anarchy.” I have quoted these political

ebullitions rather diffusely, as they are, I believe, very little known,

and have given the original in my notes, that I may be proved to have no

way over-coloured the translation, and also that a fair specimen may be

presented of the eloquence of Erasmus, who has seldom an opportunity of

expressing himself with so much elevation, but whose rapid, fertile, and

lively, though not very polished style, is hardly more exhibited in

these paragraphs, than in the general character of his writings.

|His Greek Testament.|

47. The whole thoughts of Erasmus began now to be occupied with his

great undertaking, an edition of the Greek Testament with explanatory

annotations and a continued paraphrase. Valla, indeed, had led the

inquiry as a commentator; and the Greek text without notes was already

printed at Alcala by direction of Cardinal Ximenes; though this edition,

commonly styled the Complutensian, did not appear till 1522. That of

Erasmus was published at Basle in 1516. It is strictly therefore the

princeps editio. He employed the press of Frobenius, with whom he lived

in friendship. Many years of his life were spent at Basle.

|Patrons of letters in Germany.|

48. The public, in a general sense of the word, was hardly yet recovered

enough from its prejudices to give encouragement to letters. But there

were not wanting noble patrons who, besides the immediate advantages of

their favour, bestowed a much greater indirect benefit on literature, by

making it honourable in the eyes of mankind. Learning, which is held

pusillanimous by the soldier, unprofitable by the merchant, and pedantic

by the courtier, stands in need of some countenance from those before

whom all three bow down; wherever at least, which is too commonly the

case, a conscious self-respect does not sustain the scholar against the

indifference or scorn of the prosperous vulgar. Italy was then, and

perhaps has been ever since, the soil where literature, if it has not

always most flourished, has stood highest in general estimation. But in

Germany also, at this time, the emperor Maximilian, whose character is

neither to be estimated by the sarcastic humour of the Italians, nor by

the fond partiality of his countrymen, and especially his own, in his

self-delineation of Der Weisse König, the Wise King, but really a brave

and generous man of lively talents, Frederic, justly denominated the

Wise, elector of Saxony, Joachim elector of Brandeburg, Albert

archbishop of Mentz, were prominent among the friends of genuine

learning. The university of Wittenberg, founded by the second of these

princes in 1502, rose in this decade to great eminence, not only as the

birthplace of the Reformation, but as the chief school of philological

and philosophical literature. That of Frankfort on the Oder was

established by the elector of Brandeburg in 1506.

|Resistance to learning.|

49. The progress of learning, however, was not to be a march through a

submissive country. Ignorance, which had much to lose, and was proud as

well as rich, ignorance in high places, which is always incurable,

because it never seeks for a cure, set itself sullenly and stubbornly

against the new teachers. The Latin language, taught most barbarously

through books whose very titles, Floresta, Mammotrectus, Doctrinale

Puerorum, Gemma Gemmarum, bespeak their style,[588] with the scholastic

logic and divinity in wretched compends, had been held sufficient for

all education. Those who had learned nothing else could of course teach

nothing else, and saw their reputation and emoluments gone all at once

by the introduction of philological literature and real science. Through

all the palaces of Ignorance went forth a cry of terror at the coming

light--“A voice of weeping heard and loud lament.” The aged giant was

roused from his sleep, and sent his dark hosts of owls and bats to the

war. One man above all the rest, Erasmus, cut them to pieces with irony

or invective. They stood in the way of his noble zeal for the

restoration of letters.[589] He began his attack in his Encomium Moriæ,

the praise of folly. This was addressed to Sir Thomas More, and

published in 1511. Eighteen hundred copies were printed, and speedily

sold; though the book wanted the attraction that some later editions

possess, the curious and amusing engravings from designs of Holbein. It

is a poignant satire against all professions of men and even against

princes and peers; but the chief objects are the mendicant orders of

monks. “Though this sort of men,” he says, “are so detested by everyone,

that it is reckoned unlucky so much as to meet them by accident, they

think nothing equal to themselves, and hold it a proof of their

consummate piety, if they are so illiterate as not to be able to read.

And when their asinine voices bray out in the churches their psalms,

which they can count, but not understand,[590] then it is they fancy

that the ears of the saints above are enraptured with the harmony;” and

so forth.

[588] Eichhorn, iii. 273, gives a curious list of names of these early

grammars: they were driven out of the schools about this time.

Mammotrectus, after all, is a learned word: it means, μαμμοθρεπτος

[mammothreptos], that is, a boy taught by his grandmother; and a

boy taught by his grandmother means one taught gently.

Erasmus gives a lamentable account of the state of education when

he was a boy, and probably later: Deum immortalem! quale sæculum

erat hoc, cum magno apparatu disticha Joannis Garlandini

adolescentibus operosis et prolixis commentariis enarrabantur! cum

ineptis versiculis dictandis, repetendis et exigendis magna pars

temporis absumeretur; cum disceretur; Floresta et Floretus; nam

Alexandrum iter tolerabiles numerandum arbitror.

I will take this opportunity of mentioning, that Erasmus was

certainly born in 1465, not in 1467, as Bayle asserts, whom Le

Clerc and Jortin have followed. Burigni perceived this; and it may

be proved by many passages in the Epistles of Erasmus. Bayle quotes

a letter of Feb. 1516, wherein Erasmus says, as he transcribes it:

Ago annum undequinquagesimum. But in the Leyden edition, which is

the best, I find, Ego jam annum ago primum et quinquagesimum.

Epist. cc. Thus he says also, 15th March, 1528: Arbitror me nunc

ætatem agere, in quo M. Tullius decessit. Some other places I have

not taken down. His epitaph at Basle calls him, jam septuagenarius,

and he died in 1536. Bayle’s proofs of the birth of Erasmus in 1467

are so unsatisfactory, that I wonder how Le Clerc should have so

easily acquiesced in them. The Biographie Universelle sets down

1467 without remark.

[589] When the first lectures in Greek were given at Oxford about 1519,

a party of students arrayed themselves, by the name of Trojans, to

withstand the innovators by dint of clamour and violence, till the

king interfered to support the learned side. See a letter of More

giving an account of this in Jortin’s Appendix, p. 662. Cambridge,

it is to be observed, was very peaceable at this time, and suffered

those who liked it to learn something worth knowing. The whole is

so shortly expressed by Erasmus that his words may be quoted.

Anglia duas habet Academias.... In utraque traduntur Græcæ litteræ,

sed Cantabrigiæ tranquillè, quod ejus scholæ princeps sit Johannes

Fischerus, episcopus Roffensis, non eruditione tantum sed et vitâ

theologicâ. Verum Oxoniæ cum juvenis quidam non vulgariter doctus

satis feliciter Græcè profiteretur, barbarus quispiam in populari

concione magnis et atrocibus convitiis debacchari cœpit in Græcas

literas. At Rex, ut non indoctus ipse, ita bonis literis favens,

qui tum forte in propinquo erat, re per Morum et Pacœum cognitâ,

denunciavit ut volentes ac lubentes Græcanicam literaturam

amplecterentur. Ita rabulis impositum est silentium. Id. p. 667.

See also Erasm. Epist. ccclxxx.

Antony Wood, with rather an excess of academical prejudice,

insinuates that the Trojans, who waged war against Oxonian Greek,

were “Cambridge men, as it is reported.” He endeavours to

exaggerate the deficiencies of Cambridge in literature at this

time, as if “all things were full of rudeness and barbarousness;”

which the above letters of More and Erasmus show not to have been

altogether the case. On the contrary, More says that even those who

did not learn Greek contributed to pay the lecturer.

It may be worth while to lay before the reader part of two orations

by Richard Croke, who had been sent down to Cambridge by Bishop

Fisher, chancellor of the university. As Croke seems to have left

Leipsic in 1518, they may be referred to that, or perhaps more

probably the following year. It is evident that Greek was now just

incipient at Cambridge.

Maittaire says of these two orations of Richard Croke: Editio

rarissima, cujusque unum duntaxat exemplar inspexisse mihi

contigit. The British Museum has a copy, which belonged to Dr.

Farmer; but he must have seen another copy, for the last page of

this being imperfect, he has filled it up with his own hand. The

book is printed at Paris by Colinæus in 1520.

The subject of Croke’s orations, which seem not very correctly

printed, is the praise of Greece and of Greek literature, addressed

to those who already knew and valued that of Rome, which he shows

to be derived from the other. Quin ipsæ quoque voculationes Romanæ

Græcis longe in suaviores, minusque concitatæ sunt, cum ultima

semper syllaba rigeat in gravem, contraque apud Græcos et

inflectatur nonnunquam et acuatur. Croke of course spoke Greek

accentually. Greek words, in bad types, frequently occur through

this oration.

Croke dwells on the barbarous state of the sciences, in consequence

of the ignorance of Greek. Euclid’s definition of a line was so ill

translated, that it puzzled all the geometers till the Greek was

consulted. Medicine was in an equally bad condition; had it not

been for the labours of learned men, Linacre, Cop, Ruel, quorum

opera felicissime loquantur Latinè Hippocrates, Galenus et

Dioscorides, cum summa ipsorum invidia, qui, quod canis in præsepi,

nec Græcam linguam discere ipsi voluerunt, nec aliis ut discerent

permiserunt. He then urges the necessity of Greek studies for the

theologian, and seems to have no respect for the Vulgate above the

original.

Turpe sanè erit, cum mercator sermonem Gallicum, Illyricum,

Hispanicum, Germanicum, vel solius lucri causa avide ediscat, vos

studiosos Græcum in manus vobis traditum rejicere, quo et divitiæ

et eloquentia et sapientia comparari possunt. Imo perpendite rogo

viri Cantabrigienses, quo nunc in loco vestræ res sita sunt.

Oxonienses quos ante hæc in omni scientiarum genere vicistis, ad

literas Græcas pertugere, vigilant, jejunant, sudant et algent;

nihil non faciunt ut eas occupent. Quod si contingat, actum est de

fama vestra. Erigent enim de vobis tropæum nunquam succumbuturi.

Habent duces præter cardinalem Cantuariensem, Wintoniensem, cæteros

omnes Angliæ episcopos, excepto uno Roffensir summo semper fautore

vestro, et Eliensi, &c.

Favet præterea ipsis sancta Grocini et theologo digna severitas,

Linacri πολυμαθεια [polumatheia] et acre judicium, Tunstali non

legibus magis quam utrique linguæ familiaris facundia, Stopleii

triplex lingua, Mori candida et eloquentissima urbanitas, Pacei

mores doctrina et ingenium, ab ipso Erasmo, optimo eruditionis

censore, commendati; quem vos olim habuistis Græcarum literarum

professorum, utinamque potuissetis retinere. Succedo in Erasmi

locum ego, bone Deus, quam infra illum, et doctriná et famâ,

quamquam me, ne omnino nihili fiam, principes viri, theologici

doctores, jurium etiam et medicinæ, artium præterea professores

innumeri, et præceptorem agnovere, et quod plus est, a scholis ad

ædes, ab ædibus ad scholas honorificentissime comitati perduxere.

Dii me perdant, viri Cantabrigienses, si ipsi Oxonienses stipendio

multorum nobilium præter victum me non invitavere. Sed ego pro mea

in hanc academiam et fide et observantia, &c.

In his second oration, Croke exhorts the Cantabrigians not to give

up the study of Greek. Si quisquam omnium sit qui vestræ reipublicæ

bene consulere debeat, is ego sum, viri Cantabrigienses. Optime

enim vobis esse cupio, et id nisi facerem, essem profecto longe

ingratissimus. Ubi enim jacta literarum mearum fundamenta, quibus

tantum tum apud nostrates, tum vero apud exteros quoque principes,

favoris mihi comparatum est; quibus ea fortuna, ut licet jam olim

consanguineorum iniquitate paterna hæreditate sim spoliatus, ita

tamen adhuc vivam, ut quibusvis meorum majorum imaginibus videar

non indignus. He was probably of the ancient family of Croke. Peter

Mosellanus calls him, in a letter among those of Erasmus, juvenis

cum imaginibus.

Audio ego plerosque vos a litteris Græcis dehortatos esse. Sed vos

diligenter expendite, qui sint et plane non alios fore comperitis,

quam qui igitur linguam oderunt Græcam quia Romanam non norunt.

Cæterum jam deprehendo quid facturi sint, qui nostras literas odio

prosequuntur, confugiunt videlicet ad religionem, cui uni dicent

omnia postponenda. Sentio ego cum illis, sed unde quæso orta

religio, nisi è Græciâ? quid enim novum testamentum, excepto

Matthæo? quid enim vetus? nunquid Deo auspice a septuaginta Græcè

redditum? Oxonia est colonia vestra; uti olim non sine summa laude

a Cantabrigia deducta, ita non sine summo vestro nunc dedecore, si

doctrina ab ipsis vos vinci patiamini. Fuerunt olim illi discipuli

vestri, nunc erunt præceptores? Utinam quo animo hæc a me dicta

sunt, eo vos dicta interpretemini; crederetisque, quod est

verissimum, si quoslibet alios, certe Cantabrigienses minime decere

literarum Græcarum esse desertores.

The great scarcity of this tract will serve as an apology for the

length of these extracts, illustrating, as they do, the

commencement of classical literature in England.

[590] Numeratos illos quidem, sed non intellectos. I am not quite sure

of this meaning.

|Unpopularity of The monks.|

50. In this sentence Erasmus intimates, what is abundantly confirmed by

other testimony, that the mendicant orders had lost their ancient hold

upon the people. There was a growing sense of the abuses prevailing in

the church, and a desire for a more scriptural and spiritual religion.

We have seen already that this was the case seventy years before. And in

the intermediate period the exertions of a few eminent men, especially

Wessel of Groningen, had not been wanting to purify the doctrines and

discipline of the clergy. More popular writers assailed them with

satire. Thus everything was prepared for the blow to be struck by

Luther; better indeed than he was himself; for it is well known that he

began his attack on indulgences with no expectation or desire of the

total breach with the see of Rome which ensued.[591]

[591] Seckendorf, Hist. Lutheranismi, p. 226. Gerdes, Hist. Evang.

sæc. xvi. renovat. vols. i. and iii. Milner’s Church History, vol.

iv. Mosheim, sæc. xv. et xvi. Bayle, art. Wessel. For Wessel’s

character as a philosopher, who boldly opposed the scholastics of

his age, see Brucker, iii. 859.

|The book excites odium.|

51. The Encomium Moriæ was received with applause by all who loved

merriment, and all who hated the monks; but grave men, as usual, could

not bear to see ridicule employed against grave folly and hypocrisy. A

letter of one Dorpius, a man, it is said, of some merit, which may be

read in Jortin’s Life of Erasmus,[592] amusingly complains, that while

the most eminent divines and lawyers were admiring Erasmus, his unlucky

Moria had spoiled all, by letting them see that he was mischievously

fitting asses’ ears to their heads. The same Dorpius, who seems, though

not an old man, to have been a sworn vassal of the giant Ignorance,

objects to anything in Erasmus’s intended edition of the Greek

Testament, which might throw a slur on the accuracy of the Vulgate.

[592] ii. 336.

|Erasmus attacks the monks.|

52. Erasmus was soon in a state of war with the monks; and in his second

edition of the New Testament printed in 1518, the notes, it is said, are

full of invectives against them. It must be confessed that he had begun

the attack, without any motive of provocation, unless zeal for learning

and religion is to count for such, which the parties assailed could not

be expected to admit, and they could hardly thank him for “spitting on

their gaberdine.” No one, however, knew better how to pay his court; and

he wrote to Leo X. in a style rather too adulatory, which in truth was

his custom in addressing the great, and contrasts with his free language

in writing about them. The custom of the time affords some excuse for

this panegyrical tone of correspondence, as well as for the opposite

extreme of severity.

|Their contention with Reuchlin.|

53. The famous contention between Reuchlin and the German monks, though

it began in the preceding decennial period, belongs chiefly to the

present. In the year 1509, one Pfeffercorn, a converted Jew, induced the

inquisition at Cologne to obtain an order from the emperor for burning

all Hebrew books except the Bible, upon the pretext of their being full

of blasphemies against the Christian religion. The Jews made complaints

of this injury; but before it could take place, Reuchlin, who had been

consulted by the emperor, remonstrated against the destruction of works

so curious and important, which, from his partiality to Cabbalistic

theories, he rated above their real value. The order was accordingly

superseded, to the great indignation of the Cologne inquisitors, and of

all that party throughout Germany which resisted the intellectual and

religious progress of mankind. Reuchlin had offended the monks by

satirising them in a comedy which he permitted to be printed in 1506.

But the struggle was soon perceived to be a general one; a struggle

between what had been and what was to be. Meiners has gone so far as to

suppose a real confederacy to have been formed by the friends of truth

and learning through Germany and France, to support Reuchlin against the

mendicant orders, and to overthrow, by means of this controversy, the

embattled legions of ignorance.[593] But perhaps the passages he adduces

do not prove more than their unanimity and zeal in the cause. The

attention of the world was first called to it about 1513; that is, it

assumed about that time the character of a war of opinions, extending,

in its principle and consequences, beyond the immediate dispute.[594]

Several books were published on both sides; and the party in power

employed its usual argument of burning what was written by its

adversaries. One of these writings is still known, the Epistolæ

Obscurorum Virorum; the production, it is said, of three authors, the

principal of whom was Ulric von Hutten, a turbulent hotheaded man, of

noble birth and quick parts, and a certain degree of learning, whose

early death seems more likely to have spared the reformers some degree

of shame, than to have deprived them of a useful supporter.[595] Few

books have been more eagerly received than these epistles at their first

appearance in 1516,[596] which surely proceeded rather from their

suitableness to the time, than from much intrinsic merit; though it must

be owned that the spirit of many temporary allusions, which delighted or

offended that age, is now lost in a mass of vapid nonsense and bad

grammar, which the imaginary writers pour out. Erasmus, though not

intimately acquainted with Reuchlin, could not but sympathise in a

quarrel with their common enemies in a common cause. In the end the

controversy was referred to the pope; but the pope was Leo; and it was

hoped that a proposal to burn books, or to disgrace an illustrious

scholar, would not sound well in his ears. But Reuchlin was

disappointed, when he expected acquittal, by a mandate to supersede, or

suspend, the process commenced against him by the inquisition of

Cologne, which might be taken up at a more favourable time.[597] This

dispute has always been reckoned of high importance; the victory in

public opinion, though not in judicature, over the adherents to the old

system, prostrated them so utterly, that from this time the study of

Greek and Hebrew became general among the German youth; and the cause of

the Reformation was identified in their minds with that of classical

literature.[598]

[593] Lebensbeschreib. i. 144. et seq.

[594] Meiners brings many proofs of the interest taken in Reuchlin, as

the champion, if not the martyr, of the good cause.

[595] Herder, in his Zerstreute Blätter, v. 329, speaks with

unreasonable partiality of Ulric von Hutten; and Meiners has

written his life with an enthusiasm which seems to me quite

extravagant. Seckendorf, p. 130, more judiciously observes that he

was of little use to the Reformation. And Luther wrote about him in

June, 1521: Quid Huttenus petat vides. Nollem vi et cæde pro

evangelio certari, ita scripsi ad hominem. Melanchthon of course

disliked such friends. Epist. Melanchth., p. 45 (1647), and

Camerarius, Vita Melanchth. Erasmus could not endure Hutten; and

Hutten, when he found this out, wrote virulently against Erasmus.

Jortin, as biographer of Erasmus, treats Hutten perhaps with too

much contempt; but this is nearer justice than the veneration of

the modern Germans. Hutten wrote Latin pretty well, and had a good

deal of wit; his satirical libels, consequently, had great

circulation and popularity, which, in respect of such writings, is

apt, in all ages, to produce an exaggeration of their real

influence. In the mighty movement of the Reformation, the Epistolæ

Obscurorum Virorum had about as much effect as the Mariage de

Figaro in the French Revolution. A dialogue severely reflecting on

pope Julius II., called Julius exclusus, of which Jortin suspects

Erasmus, in spite of his denial, ii. 595, is given by Meiners to

Hutten.

[596] Meiners, in his Life of Hutten, Lebensbesch. iii. 73, inclines to

fix the publication of the first part of the Epistles in the

beginning of 1517; though he admits an earlier date to be not

impossible.

[597] Meiners, i. 197.

[598] Sleidan, Hist. de la Réformat. l. ii. Brucker, iv. 366. Mosheim.

Eichhorn, iii. 238, vi. 16. Bayle, art. Hochstrat. None of these

authorities are equal in fulness to Meiners, Lebensbeschreibungen

berühmter Männer, i. 98-212; which I did not consult so early as

the rest. But there is also a very copious account of the

Reuchlinian controversy, including many original documents, in the

second part of Von der Hardt’s Historia Litteraria Reformationis.

|Origin of the Reformation.|

54. We are now brought, insensibly perhaps, but by necessary steps, to

the great religious revolution which has just been named. I approach

this subject with some hesitation, well aware that impartiality is no

protection against unreasonable cavilling; but neither the history of

literature, nor of human opinion upon the most important subjects, can

dispense altogether with so extensive a portion of its materials. It is

not required, however, in a work of this nature, to do much more than

state shortly the grounds of dispute, and the changes wrought in the

public mind.

55. The proximate cause of the Reformation is well known. Indulgences,

or dispensations granted by the pope from the heavy penances imposed on

penitents after absolution by the old canons, and also, at least in

later ages, from the pains of purgatory, were sold by the papal

retailers with the most indecent extortion, and eagerly purchased by the

superstitious multitude, for their own sake, or that of their deceased

friends. Luther, in his celebrated theses, propounded at Wittenberg, in

November 1517, inveighed against the erroneous views inculcated as to

the efficacy of indulgences, and especially against the notion of the

pope’s power over souls in purgatory. He seems to have believed, that

the dealers had exceeded their commission, and would be disavowed by the

pope. This, however, was very far from being the case; and the

determination of Leo to persevere in defending all the abusive

prerogatives of his see, drew Luther on to levy war against many

other prevailing usages of the church, against several tenets maintained

by the most celebrated doctors, against the divine right of the papal

supremacy, and finally to renounce all communion with a power which he

now deemed an antichristian tyranny. This absolute separation did not

take place till he publicly burned the pope’s bull against him, and the

volumes of the canon law, at Wittenberg, in November 1520.

|Popularity of Luther.|

56. In all this dispute Luther was sustained by a prodigious force of

popular opinion. It was perhaps in the power of his sovereign, Frederic

elector of Saxony, to have sent him to Rome, in the summer of 1518,

according to the pope’s direction. But it would have been an odious step

in the people’s eyes, and a little later would have been impossible.

Miltitz, an envoy despatched by Leo in 1519, upon a conciliatory errand,

told Luther that 25,000 armed men would not suffice to make him a

prisoner, so favourable was the impression of his doctrine upon Germany.

And Frederic himself, not long afterwards, wrote plainly to Rome, that a

change had taken place in his country; the German people were not what

they had been; there were many men of great talents and considerable

learning among them, and the laity were beginning to be anxious about a

knowledge of Scripture; so that unless Luther’s doctrine, which had

already taken root in the minds of a great many both in Germany and

other countries, could be refuted by better argument than mere

ecclesiastical fulminations, the consequence must be so much disturbance

in the empire, as would by no means redound to the benefit of the Holy

See.[599] In fact, the university of Wittenberg was crowded with

students and others, who came to hear Luther and Melanchthon. The latter

had at the very beginning embraced his new master’s opinions with a

conviction he did not in all respects afterwards preserve. And though no

overt attempts to innovate on the established ceremonies had begun in

this period, before the end of 1520 several preached against them, and

the whole north of Germany was full of expectation.

[599] Seckendorf. This remarkable letter will be found also in Roscoe’s

Leo X., Appendix No. 185. It bears date April 1520. See also a

letter of Petrus Mosellanus, in Jortin’s Erasmus, ii. 353; and

Luther’s own letter to Leo, of March 1519.

|Simultaneous reform by Zwingle.|

57. A counterpart to the reformation that Luther was thus effecting in

Saxony might be found at the same instant in Switzerland, under the

guidance of Zwingle. It has been disputed between the advocates of these

leaders, to which the priority in the race of reform belongs. Zwingle

himself declares, that in 1516, before he had heard of Luther, he began

to preach the gospel at Zurich, and to warn the people against relying

upon human authority.[600] But that is rather ambiguous, and hardly

enough to substantiate his claim. In 1518, which of course is after

Luther’s appearance on the scene, the Swiss reformer was engaged in

combating the venders of indulgences, though with less attention from

the court of Rome. Like Luther, he had the support of the temporal

magistrate, the council of Zurich. Upon the whole, they proceeded so

nearly with equal steps, and were so little connected with each other,

that it seems difficult to award either any honour of precedence.[601]

[600] Zwingle apud Gerdes, i. 103.

[601] Milner, who is extremely partial in the whole of this history,

labours to extenuate the claims of Zwingle to independence in the

preaching of reformation; and even pretends that he had not

separated from the church of Rome in 1523, when Adrian VI. sent him

a civil letter. But Gerdes shows at length that the rupture was

complete in 1520. See also the article Zwingle in Biogr.

Universelle.

The prejudice of Milner against Zwingle throughout is striking, and

leads him into much unfairness. Thus he asserts him, v. 510, to

have been consenting to the capital punishment of some Anabaptists

at Zurich. But, not to mention that their case was not one of mere

religious dissidence, it does not by any means appear that he

approved their punishment, which he merely relates as a fact. A

still more gross misrepresentation occurs in p. 526.

|Reformation prepared beforehand.|

58. The German nation was, in fact, so fully awakened to the abuses of

the church, the disclaimer of papal sovereignty in the councils of

Constance and Basle had been so effectual in its influence on the public

mind, though not on the external policy of church and state, that, if

neither Luther nor Zwingle had ever been born, there can be little

question that a great religious schism was near at hand. These councils

were to the Reformation what the parliament of Paris was to the French

Revolution. Their leaders never meant to sacrifice one article of

received faith; but the little success they had in redressing what they

denounced as abuses, convinced the laity that they must go much farther

for themselves. What effect the invention of printing, which in Italy

was not much felt in this direction, exerted upon the serious minds of

the Teutonic nations, has been already intimated, and must appear to

every reflecting person. And when this was followed by a more extensive

acquaintance with the New Testament in the Greek language, nothing could

be more natural than that inquisitive men should throw away much of what

seemed the novel superstructure of religion, and, what in other times

such men had rarely ventured should be encouraged by the obvious change

in the temper of the multitude to declare themselves. We find that

Pellican and Capito, two of the most learned scholars in western

Germany, had come, as early as 1512, to reject altogether the doctrine

of the real presence. We find also that Œcolampadius had begun to preach

some of the protestant doctrines in 1514.[602] And Erasmus, who had so

manifestly prepared the way for the new Reformers, continued, as it is

easy to show from the uniform current of his letters, beyond the year

1520, favourable to their cause. His enemies were theirs, and he

concurred in much that they preached, especially as to the exterior

practices of religion. Some, however, of Luther’s tenets he did not and

could not approve; and he was already disgusted by that intemperance of

language and conduct, which, not long afterwards, led him to recede

entirely from the Protestant side.[603]

[602] Gerdes, i. 117, 124, et post. In fact the precursors of the

Reformation were very numerous, and are collected by Gerdes in his

first and third volumes, though he has greatly exaggerated the

truth, by reckoning as such Dante and Petrarch, and all opponents

of the temporal power of the papacy. Wessel may, upon the whole, be

fairly reckoned among the Reformers.

[603] In 1519 and 1520, even in his letters to Albert archbishop of

Mentz, and others by no means partial to Luther, he speaks of him

very handsomely, and with little or no disapprobation, except on

account of his intemperance, though professing only a slight

acquaintance with his writings. The proofs are too numerous to be

cited. He says, in a letter to Zwingle, as late as 1521, Videor

mihi fere omnia docuisse, quæ docet Lutherus, nisi quod non tam

atrociter, quodque abstinui a quibusdam ænigmatis et paradoxis.

This is quoted by Gerdes, i. 153, from a collection of letters of

Erasmus, published by Hottinger, but not contained in the Leyden

edition. Jortin seems not to have seen them.

|Dangerous tenets of Luther.|

59. It would not be just, probably, to give Bossuet credit in every part

of that powerful delineation of Luther’s theological tenets, with which

he begins the History of the Variations of Protestant churches. Nothing,

perhaps, in polemical eloquence is so splendid as this chapter. The

eagle of Meaux is there truly seen, lordly of form, fierce of eye,

terrible in his beak and claws. But he is too determined a partizan to

be trusted by those who seek the truth without regard to persons and

denominations. His quotations from Luther are short, and in French; I

have failed in several attempts to verify the references. Yet we are not

to follow the Reformer’s partizans in dissembling altogether, like Isaac

Milner, or in slightly censuring, as others have done, the enormous

paradoxes which deform his writings, especially such as fall within the

present period. In maintaining salvation to depend on faith as a single

condition, he not only denied the importance, in a religious sense, of a

virtuous life, but asserted that every one who felt within himself a

full assurance that his sins were remitted (which, according to Luther,

is the proper meaning of Christian faith), became incapable of sinning

at all, or at least of forfeiting the favour of God, so long, but so

long only, as that assurance should continue. Such expressions are

sometimes said by Seckendorf and Mosheim to have been thrown out

hastily, and without precision; but I fear it will be found on

examination that they are very definite and clear, the want of precision

and perspicuity being rather in those which are alleged as inconsistent

with them, and as more consonant to the general doctrine of the

Christian church.[604] It must not be supposed for a moment that Luther,

whose soul was penetrated with a fervent piety, and whose integrity as

well as purity of life are unquestioned, could mean to give any

encouragement to a licentious disregard of moral virtue; which he

valued, as in itself lovely before God as well as man, though in

the technical style of his theology, he might deny its proper

obligation. But his temper led him to follow up any proposition of

Scripture to every consequence that might seem to result from its

literal meaning; and he fancied that to represent a future state as the

motive of virtuous action, or as any way connected with human conduct,

for better or worse, was derogatory to the free grace of God, and the

omnipotent agency of the Spirit in converting the soul.[605]

[604] See in proof of this Luther’s works, vol. i. passim (edit. 1554).

The first work of Melanchthon, his Loci Communes, published in

1521, when he followed Luther more obsequiously in his opinions

than he did in after-life, is equally replete with the strongest

Calvinism. This word is a little awkward in this place; but I am

compelled to use it, as most intelligible to the reader; and I

conceive that these two reformers went much beyond the language of

Augustin, which the schoolmen thought themselves bound to recognise

as authority, though they might elude its spirit. I find the first

edition of Melanchthon’s Loci Communes in Von der Hardt, Historia

Litteraria Reformationis, a work which contains a great deal of

curious matter. It is called by him, opus rarissimum, not being in

the edition of Melanchthon’s theological works; which some have

ascribed to the art of Peucer, whose tenets were widely different.

[605] I am unwilling to give these pages too theological a cast by

proving this statement, as I have the means of doing, by extracts

from Luther’s own early writings. Milner’s very prolix history of

this period is rendered less valuable by his disingenuous trick of

suppressing all passages in these treatises of Luther, which

display his Antinomian paradoxes in a strong light. Whoever has

read the writings of Luther up to the year 1520 inclusive, must

find it impossible to contradict my assertion. In treating of an

author so full of unlimited propositions as Luther, no positive

proof as to his tenets can be refuted by the production of

inconsistent passages.

60. Whatever may be the bias of our minds as to the truth of Luther’s

doctrines, we should be careful, in considering the Reformation as a

part of the history of mankind, not to be misled by the superficial and

ungrounded representations which we sometimes find in modern writers.

Such is this, that Luther, struck by the absurdity of the prevailing

superstitions, was desirous of introducing a more rational system of

religion; or, that he contended for freedom of inquiry, and the

boundless privileges of individual judgment; or, what others have been

pleased to suggest, that his zeal for learning and ancient philosophy

led him to attack the ignorance of the monks, and the crafty policy of

the church, which withstood all liberal studies.

|Real explanation of them.|

61. These notions are merely fallacious refinements, as every man of

plain understanding, who is acquainted with the writings of the early

reformers, or has considered their history, must acknowledge. The

doctrines of Luther, taken altogether, are not more rational, that is,

more conformable to what men, à priori, would expect to find in

religion, than those of the church of Rome; nor did he ever pretend that

they were so. As to the privilege of free inquiry, it was of course

exercised by those who deserted their ancient altars, but certainly not

upon any latitudinarian theory of a right to judge amiss. Nor, again, is

there any foundation for imagining that Luther was concerned for the

interests of literature. None had he himself, save theological; nor are

there, as I apprehend, many allusions to profane studies, or any proof

of his regard to them, in all his works. On the contrary, it is probable

that both the principles of this great founder of the Reformation, and

the natural tendency of so intense an application to theological

controversy, checked for a time the progress of philological and

philosophical literature on this side of the Alps.[606] Every solution

of the conduct of the reformers must be nugatory, except one, that they

were men absorbed by the conviction that they were fighting the battle

of God. But among the population of Germany or Switzerland, there was

undoubtedly another predominant feeling; the sense of ecclesiastical

oppression, and scorn for the worthless swarm of monks and friars. This

may be said to have divided the propagators of the Reformation into such

as merely pulled down, and such as built upon the ruins. Ulric von

Hutten may pass for the type of the one, and Luther himself of the

other. And yet it is hardly correct to say of Luther, that he erected

his system on the ruins of popery. For it was rather the growth and

expansion in his mind of one positive dogma, justification by faith, in

the sense he took it (which can be easily shown to have preceded the

dispute about indulgences[607]), that broke down and crushed

successively the various doctrines of the Romish church; not because he

had originally much objection to them, but because there was no longer

room for them in a consistent system of theology.[608]

[606] Erasmus, after he had become exasperated with the reformers,

repeatedly charges them with ruining literature. Ubicunque regnat

Lutheranismus, ibi literarum est interitus. Epist. Mvi. (1528).

Evangelicos istos, cum multis aliis, tum hoc nomine præcipue odi,

quod per eos ubique languent, frigent, jacent, intereunt bonæ

literæ, sine quibus quid est hominum vita? Amant viaticum et

uxorem, cætera pili non faciunt. Hos fucos longissime arcendos

censeo a vestro contubernio. Ep. Dccccxlvi. (eod. an.) There were

however at this time, as well as afterwards, more learned men on

the side of the Reformation than on that of the church.

[607] See his disputations at Wittenberg, 1516; and the sermons

preached in the same and the subsequent year.

[608] The best authorities for the early history of the Reformation

are Seckendorf, Hist. Lutheranismi, and Sleidan, Hist. de la

Réformation, in Courayer’s French translation; the former being

chiefly useful for the ecclesiastical, the latter for political

history. But as these confine themselves to Germany, Gerdes (Hist.

Evangel. Reformat.) is necessary for the Zuinglian history, as well

as for that of the northern kingdoms. The first sections of Father

Paul’s History of the Council of Trent are also valuable. Schmidt,

Histoire des Allemands, vols. vi. and vii., has told the story on

the side of Rome speciously and with some fairness; and Roscoe has

vindicated Leo X. from the imputation of unnecessary violence in

his proceeding against Luther. Mosheim is always good, but concise;

Milner far from concise, but highly prejudiced, and in the habit of

giving his quotations in English, which is not quite satisfactory

to a lover of truth.

The essay on the influence of the Reformation by Villers, which

obtained a prize from the French Institute, and has been extolled

by a very friendly, but better-informed writer in the Biographie

Universelle, appears to me the work of a man who had not taken the

pains to read any one contemporary work, or even any compilation

which contains many extracts. No wonder that it does not represent,

in the slightest degree, the real spirit of the times, or the

tenets of the reformers. Thus, e. gr., “Luther,” he says, “exposed

the abuse of the traffic of indulgences, and the danger of

believing that heaven and the remission of all crimes could be

bought with money; while a sincere repentance and an amended life

were the only means of appeasing the divine justice.” (p. 65 Engl.

Transl.) This at least is not very like Luther’s antinomian

contempt for repentance and amendment of life; it might come near

to the notions of Erasmus.

|Orlando Furioso.|

62. The laws of synchronism, which we have hitherto obeyed, bring

strange partners together, and we may pass at once from Luther to

Ariosto. The Orlando Furioso was first printed at Ferrara in 1516. This

edition contained forty cantos, to which the last six were added in

1532. Many stanzas, chiefly of circumstance, were interpolated by the

author from time to time.

|Its popularity.|

63. Ariosto has been, after Homer, the favourite poet of Europe. His

grace and facility, his clear and rapid stream of language, his variety

and beauty of invention, his very transitions of subject, so frequently

censured by critics, but artfully devised to spare the tediousness that

hangs on a protracted story, left him no rival in general popularity.

Above sixty editions of the Orlando Furioso were published in the

sixteenth century. There was not one, says Bernardo Tasso, of any age,

or sex, or rank, who was satisfied after more than a single perusal. If

the change of manners and sentiments have already in some degree

impaired this attraction, if we cease to take interest in the prowess of

Paladins, and find their combats a little monotonous, this is perhaps

the necessary lot of all poetry, which, as it can only reach posterity

through the medium of contemporary reputation, must accommodate itself

to the fleeting character of its own time. This character is strongly

impressed on the Orlando Furioso; it well suited an age of war and pomp,

and gallantry; an age when chivalry was still recent in actual life, and

was reflected in concentrated brightness from the mirror of romance.

|Want of seriousness.|

64. It has been sometimes hinted as an objection to Ariosto, that he is

not sufficiently in earnest, and leaves a little suspicion of laughing

at his subject. I do not perceive that he does this in a greater degree

than good sense and taste permit. The poets of knight-errantry might in

this respect be arranged in a scale, of which Pulci and Spenser would

stand at the extreme points; the one mocking the absurdities he coolly

invents, the other, by intense strength of conception, full of love and

faith in his own creations. Between these Boiardo, Ariosto, and Berni

take successively their places; none so deeply serious as Spenser, none

so ironical as Pulci. It was not easy in Italy, especially after the

Morgante Maggiore had roused the sense of ridicule, to keep up at every

moment the solemn tone which Spain endured in the romances of the

sixteenth century; nor was this consonant to the gaiety of Ariosto. It

is the light carelessness of his manner which constitutes a great part

of its charm.

|A continuation of Boiardo.|

65. Castelvetro has blamed Ariosto for building on the foundations of

Boiardo.[609] He seems to have had originally no other design than to

carry onward, a little better than Agostini, that very attractive story;

having written, it is said, at first, only a few cantos to please his

friends.[610] Certainly it is rather singular that so great and renowned

a poet should have been little more than the continuator of one who had

so lately preceded him; though Salviati defends him by the example of

Homer; and other critics, with whom we shall perhaps not agree, have

thought this the best apology for writing a romantic instead of an

heroic poem. The story of the Orlando Innamorato must be known before we

can well understand that of the Furioso. But this is nearly what

we find in Homer; for who can reckon the Iliad anything but a fragment

of the tale of Troy? It was indeed less felt by the compatriots of

Homer, already familiar with that legendary cyclus of heroic song, than

it is by the readers of Ariosto, who are not in general very well

acquainted with the poem of his precursor. Yet experience has even here

shown that the popular voice does not echo the complaint of the critic.

This is chiefly owing to the want of a predominant unity in the Orlando

Furioso, which we commonly read in detached parcels. The unity it does

possess, distinct from the story of Boiardo, consists in the loves and

announced nuptials of Rogero and Bradamante, the imaginary progenitors

of the house of Este; but Ariosto does not gain by this condescension to

the vanity of a petty sovereign.

[609] Poetica d’Aristotele (1570). It violates, he says, the rule of

Aristotle, αρχη εστιν, ὁ εξ αναγκης μη μετ' αλλο εστι [archê estin,

ho ex anankês mê met' allo esti]. Camillo Pellegrini, in his famous

controversy with the Academicians of Florence, repeats the same

censure. Salviati, under the disguised name l’Infarinato (Opere di

Tasso, ii. 130), defends Ariosto by the example of Homer, which

Castelvetro had already observed to be inapplicable.

[610] Quadrio, Storia d’ogni Poesia, vi. 606.

|In some points inferior.|

66. The inventions of Ariosto are less original than those of Boiardo,

but they are more pleasing and various. The tales of old mythology and

of modern romance furnished him with those delightful episodes we all

admire, with his Olimpia and Bireno, his Ariodante and Geneura, his

Cloridan and Medoro, his Zerbino and Isabella. He is more conversant

with the Latin poets, or has turned them to better account, than his

predecessor. For the sudden transitions in the middle of a canto or even

a stanza, with which every reader of Ariosto is familiar, he is indebted

to Boiardo, who had himself imitated in them the metrical romancers of

the preceding age. From them also, that justice may be rendered to those

nameless rhymers, Boiardo drew the individuality of character, by which

their heroes were distinguished, and which Ariosto has not been so

careful to preserve. His Orlando has less of the honest simplicity, and

his Astolfo less of the gay boastfulness, that had been assigned to them

in the cyclus.

|Beauties of its style.|

67. Corniani observes of the style of Ariosto, what we may all perceive

on attending to it to be true, that he is sparing in the use of

metaphors, contenting himself generally with the plainest expression; by

which, if he loses something in dignity, he gains in perspicuity. It may

be added, that he is not very successful in figurative language, which

is sometimes forced and exaggerated. Doubtless this transparency of

phrase, so eminent in Ariosto, is the cause that he is read and

delighted in by the multitude, as well as by the few; and it seems also

to be the cause that he can never be satisfactorily rendered into any

language less musical, and consequently less independent upon an

ornamental dress in poetry, than his own, or one which wants the

peculiar advantages, by which conventional variances in the form of

words, and the liberty of inversion, as well as the frequent recurrence

of the richest and most euphonious rhymes, elevate the simplest

expression in Italian verse above the level of discourse. Galileo, being

asked by what means he had acquired the remarkable talent of giving

perspicuity and grace to his philosophical writings, referred it to the

continual study of Ariosto. His similes are conspicuous for their

elaborate beauty; they are familiar to every reader of this great poet;

imitated, as they usually are, from the ancients, they maintain an equal

strife with their models, and occasionally surpass them. But even the

general strain of Ariosto, natural as it seems, was not unpremeditated,

or left to its own felicity; his manuscript at Ferrara, part of which is

shown to strangers, bears numerous alterations, the _pentimenti_,

if I may borrow a word from a kindred art, of creative genius.

|Accompanied with faults.|

68. The Italian critics love to expatiate in his praise, though they are

often keenly sensible to his defects. The variety of style and of rhythm

in Ariosto, it is remarked by Gravina, is convenient to that of his

subject. His rhymes, the same author observes, seem to spring from the

thoughts, and not from the necessities of metre. He describes minutely,

but with much felicity, and gives a clear idea of every part; like the

Farnesian Hercules, which seems greater by the distinctness of every

vein and muscle.[611] Quadrio praises the correspondence of the sound to

the sense. Yet neither of these critics is blindly partial. It is

acknowledged indeed by his warmest advocates, that he falls sometimes

below his subject, and that trifling and feeble lines intrude too

frequently in the Orlando Furioso. I can hardly regret, however, that in

the passages of flattery towards the house of Este, such as that long

genealogy which he deduces in the third canto, his genius has deserted

him, and he degenerates, as it were wilfully, into prosaic tediousness.

In other allusions to contemporary history, he is little better. I am

hazarding a deviation from the judgment of good critics when I add, that

in the opening stanzas of each canto, where the poet appears in his own

person, I find generally a deficiency of vigour and originality,

a poverty of thought and of emotion, which is also very far from unusual

in the speeches of his characters. But these introductions have been

greatly admired.

[611] Ragion Poetica, p. 104.

|Its place as a poem.|

69. Many faults of language in Ariosto are observed by his countrymen.

They justly blame also his inobservance of propriety, his hyperbolical

extravagance, his harsh metaphors, his affected thoughts. These are

sufficiently obvious to a reader of reflecting taste; but the

enchantment of his pencil redeems every failing, and his rapidity, like

that of Homer, leaves us little time to censure before we are hurried

forward to admire. The Orlando Furioso, as a great single poem, has been

very rarely surpassed in the living records of poetry. He must yield to

three, and only three, of his predecessors. He has not the force,

simplicity, and truth to nature of Homer, the exquisite style and

sustained majesty of Virgil, nor the originality and boldness of Dante.

The most obvious parallel is Ovid, whose Metamorphoses, however, are far

excelled by the Orlando Furioso, not in fertility of invention, or

variety of images and sentiments, but in purity of taste, in grace of

language, and harmony of versification.

|Amadis de Gaul.|

70. No edition of Amadis de Gaul has been proved to exist before that

printed at Seville in 1519, which yet is suspected of not being the

first.[612] This famous romance, which in its day was almost as popular

as the Orlando Furioso itself, was translated into French by Herberay

between 1540 and 1557, and into English by Munday in 1619. The four

books by Vasco de Lobeyra grew to twenty by successive additions, which

have been held by lovers of romance far inferior to the original. They

deserve at least the blame, or praise, of making the entire work

unreadable by the most patient or the most idle of mankind. Amadis de

Gaul can still perhaps impart pleasure to the susceptible imagination of

youth; but the want of deep or permanent sympathy leaves a naked sense

of unprofitableness in the perusal, which must, it should seem, alienate

a reader of mature years. Amadis at least obtained the laurel at the

hands of Cervantes, speaking through the barber and curate, while so

many of Lobeyra’s unworthy imitators were condemned to the flames.

[612] Brunet, Man. du Libraire.

|Gringore.|

71. A curious dramatic performance, if it may deserve such an

appellation, was represented at Paris in 1511, and published in 1516. It

is entitled Le Prince des Sots et la Mère sotte, by one Peter Gringore,

who had before produced some other pieces of less note, and bordering

more closely on the moralities. In the general idea there was nothing

original. A prince of fools had long ruled his many-coloured subjects on

the theatre of a joyous company, les Enfans sans souci, who had diverted

the citizens of Paris with their buffoonery, under the name, perhaps, of

moralities, while their graver brethren represented the mysteries of

scripture and legend. But the chief aim of La Mère sotte was to turn the

pope and court of Rome into ridicule during the sharp contest of Louis

XII. with Julius II. It consists of four parts, all in verse. The first

of these is called The Cry, and serves as a sort of prologue, summoning

all fools of both sexes to see the prince of fools play on Shrove

Tuesday. The second is The Folly. This is an irregular dramatic piece,

full of poignant satire on the clergy, but especially on the pope. A

third part is entitled The Morality of the Obstinate Man; a dialogue in

allusion to the same dispute. Finally comes an indecent farce,

unconnected with the preceding subject. Gringore, who represented the

character of La Mère sotte, was generally known by that name, and

assumed it in his subsequent publications.[613]

[613] Beauchamps, Recherches sur le Théâtre Français. Goujet, Bibl.

Française, xi. 212. Niceron, vol. xxxiv. Bouterwek, Gesch. der

Französen Poesie, v. 113. Biogr. Univers. The works of Gringore,

says the last authority, are rare, and sought by the lovers of our

old poetry, because they display the state of manners at the

beginning of the sixteenth century.

|Hans Sachs.|

72. Gringore was certainly at a great distance from the Italian stage,

which had successfully adapted the plots of Latin comedies to modern

stories. But, among the _barbarians_, a dramatic writer, somewhat

younger than he, was now beginning to earn a respectable celebrity,

though limited to a yet uncultivated language, and to the inferior class

of society. Hans Sachs, a shoemaker of Nuremberg, born in 1494, is said

to have produced his first carnival play (Fast nacht spiel) in 1517. He

belonged to the fraternity of poetical artizans, the meister-singers of

Germany, who, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, had a

succession of mechanical (in every sense of the word) rhymers to boast,

to whom their countrymen attached as much reverence as might have

sufficed for more genuine bards. In a spirit which might naturally be

expected from artizans, they required a punctual observance of

certain arbitrary canons, the by-laws of the corporation Muses, to which

the poet must conform. These, however, did not diminish the fecundity,

if they repressed the excursiveness, of our meister-singers, and least

of all that of Hans Sachs himself, who poured forth, in about forty

years, fifty-three sacred and seventy-eight profane plays, sixty-four

farces, fifty-nine fables, and a large assortment of other poetry. These

dramatic works are now scarce, even in Germany; they appear to be ranged

in the same class as the early fruits of the French and English

theatres. We shall mention Hans Sachs again in another chapter.[614]

[614] Biogr. Univ. Eichhorn, iii. 948. Bouterwek, ix. 381. Heinsius,

iv. 150. Retrospective Review, vol. x.

|Stephen Hawes.|

73. No English poet, since the death of Lydgate, had arisen whom it

could be thought worth while to mention.[615] Many, perhaps, will not

admit that Stephen Hawes, who now meets us, should be reckoned in that

honourable list. His “Pastime of Pleasure, or the Historie of Graunde

Amour and La bel Pucel,” finished in 1506, was printed by Wynkyn de

Worde in 1517. From this title we might hardly expect a moral and

learned allegory, in which the seven sciences of the trivium and

quadrivium, besides a host of abstract virtues and qualities, play their

parts in living personality, through a poem of about six thousand lines.

Those who require the ardent words or the harmonious grace of poetical

diction, will not frequently be content with Hawes. Unlike many of our

older versifiers, he would be judged more unfavourably by extracts than

by a general view of his long work. He is rude, obscure, full of

pedantic latinisms, and probably has been disfigured in the press; but

learned and philosophical, reminding us frequently of the school of

James I. The best, though probably an unexpected, parallel for Hawes is

John Bunyan; their inventions are of the same class, various and novel,

though with no remarkable pertinence to the leading subject, or

naturally consecutive order; their characters, though abstract in name,

have a personal truth about them, in which Phineas Fletcher, a century

after Hawes, fell much below him; they render the general allegory

subservient to inculcating a system, the one of philosophy, the other of

religion. I do not mean that the Pastime of Pleasure is equal in merit,

as it certainly has not been in success, to the Pilgrim’s Progress.

Bunyan is powerful and picturesque from his concise simplicity; Hawes

has the common failings of our old writers, a tedious and languid

diffuseness, an expatiating on themes of pedantry in which the reader

takes no interest, a weakening of every feature and every reflection by

ignorance of the touches that give effect. But if we consider the

Historie of Graunde Amour less as a poem to be read than as a measure of

the author’s mental power, we shall not look down upon so long and

well-sustained an allegory. In this style of poetry much was required,

that no mind ill stored with reflection, or incapable of novel

combination, could supply; a clear conception of abstract modes, a

familiarity with the human mind, and with the effects of its qualities

on human life, a power of justly perceiving and vividly representing the

analogies of sensible and rational objects. Few that preceded Hawes have

possessed more of these gifts than himself.

[615] I have adverted in another place to Alexander Barclay’s

translation of the Ship of Fools from Sebastian Brandt; and I may

here observe, that he has added many original strokes on his own

countrymen, especially on the clergy.

74. This poem has been little known till Mr. Southey reprinted it in

1831; the original edition is very rare. Warton had given several

extracts, which, as I have observed, are disadvantageous to Hawes, and

an analysis of the whole;[616] but though he praises the author for

imagination, and admits that the poem has been unjustly neglected, he

has not dwelt enough on the erudition and reflection it displays. Hawes

appears to have been educated at Oxford, and to have travelled much on

the Continent. He held also an office in the court of Henry VII. We may

reckon him therefore among the earliest of our learned and accomplished

gentlemen; and his poem is the first-fruits of that gradual ripening of

the English mind, which must have been the process of the laboratory of

time, in the silence and darkness of the fifteenth century. It augured a

generation of grave and stern thinkers, and the omen was not vain.

[616] Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iii. 54.

|Change in English language.|

75. Another poem, the Temple of Glass, which Warton had given to Hawes,

is now by general consent restored to Lydgate. Independently of external

proof, which is decisive,[617] it will appear that the Temple of Glass

is not written in the English of Henry VII.’s reign. I mention

this only for the sake of observing, that in following the line of our

writers in verse and prose, we find the old obsolete English to have

gone out of use about the accession of Edward IV. Lydgate and bishop

Pecock, especially the latter, are not easily understood by a reader not

habituated to their language; he requires a glossary, or must help

himself out by conjecture. In the Paston Letters, on the contrary, in

Harding, the metrical chronicler, or in Sir John Fortescue’s discourse

on the difference between an absolute and limited monarchy, he finds

scarce any difficulty; antiquated words and forms of termination

frequently occur; but he is hardly sensible that he reads these books

much less fluently than those of modern times. These were written about

1470. But in Sir Thomas More’s History of Edward V., written about 1509,

or in the beautiful ballad of the Nut-brown Maid, which we cannot place

very far from the year 1500, but which, if nothing can be brought to

contradict the internal evidence, I should incline to refer to this

decennium, there is not only a diminution of obsolete phraseology, but a

certain modern turn and structure, both in the verse and prose, which

denotes the commencement of a new æra, and the establishment of new

rules of taste and polite literature. Every one will understand, that a

broad line cannot be traced for the beginning of this change: Hawes,

though his English is very different from that of Lydgate, seems to have

had a great veneration for him, and has imitated the manner of that

school, to which, in a marshalling of our poets, he unquestionably

belongs. Skelton, on the contrary, though ready enough to coin words,

has comparatively few that are obsolete.

[617] See note in Price’s edition of Warton, ubi suprà: to which I add,

that the Temple of Glass is mentioned in the Paston Letters, ii.

90, long before the time of Hawes.

|Skelton.|

76. The strange writer, whom we have just mentioned, seems to fall well

enough within this decade; though his poetical life was long, if it be

true that he received the laureate crown at Oxford in 1483, and was also

the author of a libel on Sir Thomas More, ascribed to him by Ellis,

which, alluding to the Nun of Kent, could hardly be written before

1533.[618] But though this piece is somewhat in Skelton’s manner, we

find it said that he died in 1529, and it is probably the work of an

imitator. Skelton is certainly not a poet, unless some degree of comic

humour, and a torrent-like volubility of words in doggrel rhyme, can

make one; but this uncommon fertility, in a language so little copious

as ours was at that time, bespeaks a mind of some original vigour. Few

English writers come nearer in this respect to Rabelais, whom Skelton

preceded. His attempts in serious poetry are utterly contemptible; but

the satirical lines on Cardinal Wolsey were probably not ineffective. It

is impossible to determine whether they were written before 1520. Though

these are better known than any poem of Skelton’s, his dirge on Philip

Sparrow is the most comic and imaginative.[619]

[618] Ellis’s Specimens, vol. ii.

[619] This last poem is reprinted in Southey’s Selections from the

older Poets. Extracts from Skelton occur also in Warton, and one in

the first volume of the Somers Tracts. Mr. Dyce has it, I believe,

in contemplation to publish a collective edition.

|Oriental languages.|

77. We must now take a short survey of some other departments of

literature during this second decade of the sixteenth century. The

oriental languages become a little more visible in bibliography than

before. An Æthiopic, that is, Abyssinian grammar, with the Psalms in the

same language, was published at Rome by Potken in 1513; a short treatise

in Arabic at Fanno in 1514, being the first time those characters had

been used in type; a psalter in 1516, by Giustiniani at Genoa, in

Hebrew, Chaldee, Arabic, and Greek;[620] and a Hebrew Bible, with the

Chaldee paraphrase and other aids, by Felice di Prato, at Venice in

1519. The book of Job in Hebrew appeared at Paris in 1516. Meantime the

magnificent polyglott Bible of Alcala proceeded under the patronage of

Cardinal Ximenes, and was published in five volumes folio, between the

years 1514 and 1517. It contains in triple columns the Hebrew, the

Septuagint Greek, and Latin Vulgate; the Chaldee paraphrase of the

Pentateuch by Onkelos being also printed at the foot of the page.[621]

Spain, therefore, had found men equal to superintend this

arduous labour. Lebrixa was still living, though much advanced in years;

Stunica and a few other now obscure names were his coadjutors. But that

of Demetrius Cretensis appears among these in the title-page, to whom

the principal care of the Greek was doubtless intrusted; and it is

highly probable, that all the early Hebrew and Chaldee publications

demanded the assistance of Jewish rabbis.

[620] It is printed in eight columns, which Gesner, apud Bayle,

Justiniani, Note D., thus describes; Quarum prima habet Hebræam

editionem, secunda Latinam interpretationem respondentem Hebrææ de

verbo in verbum, tertia Latinam communem, quarta Græcam, quinta

Arabicam, sexta paraphrasim, sermone quidem Chaldæo, sed literis

Hebraicis conscriptam; septima Latinam respondentem Chaldeæ, ultima

vero, id est octava, continet scholia, hoc est, annotationes

sparsas et intercisas.

[621] Andrès, xix. 35. An observation in the preface to the

Complutensian edition has been often animadverted upon, that

they print the Vulgate between the Hebrew and the Greek, like

Christ between two thieves. The expression, however it may have

been introduced, is not to be wholly defended; but at that time it

was generally believed, that the Hebrew text had been corrupted by

the Jews.

|Pomponatius.|

78. The school of Padua, renowned already for its medical science, as

well as for the cultivation of the Aristotelian philosophy, laboured

under a suspicion of infidelity, which was considerably heightened by

the work of Pomponatius, its most renowned professor, on the immortality

of the soul, published in 1516. This book met with several answerers,

and was publicly burned at Venice; but the patronage of Bembo sustained

Pomponatius at the court of Leo; and he was permitted by the inquisition

to reprint his treatise with some corrections. He defended himself by

declaring that he merely denied the validity of philosophical arguments

for the soul’s immortality, without doubting in the least the authority

of revelation, to which, and to that of the church, he had expressly

submitted. This, however, is the current language of philosophy in the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which must be judged by other

presumptions. Brucker and Ginguéné are clear as to the real disbelief of

Pomponatius in the doctrine, and bring some proofs from his other

writings, which seem more unequivocal than any that the treatise De

Immortalitate affords. It is certainly possible, and not uncommon, for

men to deem the arguments on that subject inconclusive, so far as

derived from reason, while they assent to those that rest on revelation.

It is on the other hand impossible for a man to believe inconsistent

propositions when he perceives them to be so. The question therefore can

only be, as Buhle seems to have seen, whether Pomponatius maintained the

rational arguments for a future state to be repugnant to known truths,

or merely insufficient for conviction; and this a superficial perusal of

his treatise hardly enables me to determine; though there is a

presumption, on the whole, that he had no more religion than the

philosophers of Padua generally kept for a cloak. That university was

for more than a century the focus of atheism in Italy.[622]

[622] Tiraboschi, vol. viii. Corniani. Ginguéné. Brucker. Buhle.

Niceron. Biogr. Universelle. The two last of these are more

favourable than the rest to the intentions of the Paduan

philosopher.

Pomponatius, or Peretto, as he was sometimes called, on account of

his diminutive stature, which he had in common with his predecessor

in philosophy, Marsilius Ficinus, was ignorant of Greek, though he

read lectures on Aristotle. In one of Sperone’s dialogues (p. 120

edit. 1596) he is made to argue, that if all books were read in

translations, the time now consumed in learning languages might be

better employed.

|Raymond Lully.|

|His method.|

79. We may enumerate among the philosophical writings of this period, as

being first published in 1516, a treatise full two hundred years older,

by Raymond Lully, a native of Majorca; one of those innovators in

philosophy, who, by much boasting of their original discoveries in the

secrets of truth, are taken by many at their word, and gain credit for

systems of science, which those who believe in them seldom trouble

themselves to examine, or even understand. Lully’s principal treatise is

his Ars Magna, being, as it professes, a new method of reasoning on all

subjects. But this method appears to be only an artificial disposition,

readily obvious to the eye, of subjects and predicables, according to

certain distinctions; which, if it were meant for anything more than a

topical arrangement, such as the ancient orators employed to aid their

invention, could only be compared to the similar scheme of using

machinery instead of mental labour, devised by the philosophers of

Laputa. Leibnitz is of opinion that the method might be convenient in

extemporary speaking; which is the utmost limit that can be assigned to

its usefulness. Lord Bacon has truly said of this, and of such idle or

fraudulent attempts to substitute trick for science, that they are “not

a lawful method, but a method of imposture, which is to deliver

knowledges in such manner, as men may speedily come to make a show of

learning, who have it not;” and that they are “nothing but a mass of

words of all arts, to give men countenance, that those which use the

terms might be thought to understand them.”

80. The writings of Lully are admitted to be very obscure; and those of

his commentators and admirers, among whom the meteors of philosophy,

Cornelius Agrippa and Jordano Bruno, were enrolled, are hardly less so.

But, as is usual with such empiric medicines, it obtained a great deal

of celebrity, and much ungrounded praise, not only for the two centuries

which intervened between the author’s age and that of its appearance

from the press, but for a considerable time afterwards, till the

Cartesian philosophy drove that to which the art of Lully was

accommodated from the field; and even Morhof, near the end of the

seventeenth century, avows that, though he had been led to reckon it a

frivolous method, he had very much changed his opinion on fuller

examination.[623] The few pages which Brucker has given to Lully do not

render his art very intelligible;[624] but they seem sufficient to show

its uselessness for the discovery of truth. It is utterly impossible,

even for those who have taken much pains to comprehend this method,

which is not the case with me, to give a precise notion of it in a few

words, even with the help of diagrams, which are indispensably

required.[625]

[623] Morhof, Polyhistor. l. ii. c. 5. But if I understand the ground

on which Morhof rests his favourable opinion of Lully’s art, it is

merely for its usefulness in suggesting middle terms to a

syllogistic disputant.

[624] Brucker, iv. 9-21. Ginguéné, who observes that Brucker’s analysis,

à sa manière accoutumée, may be understood by those who have

learned Lully’s method, but must be very confused to others, has

made the matter a great deal more unintelligible by his own attempt

to explain it Hist. Litt. de l’Italie, vii. 497. I have found a

better development of the method in Alstedius, Clavis Artis

Lullianæ (Argentor. 1633), a staunch admirer of Lully. But his

praise of the art, when examined, is merely as an aid to the

memory, and to disputation, de quavis quæstione utramque in partem

disputandi. This is rather an evil than a good; and though

mnemonical contrivances are not without utility, it is probable

that much better could be found than that of Lully.

[625] Buhle has observed that the favourable reception of Lully’s

method is not surprising, since it really is useful in the

association of ideas, like all other topical contrivances, and may

be applied to any subject, though often not very appropriately,

suggesting materials in extemporary speaking, and notwithstanding

its shortness, professing to be a complete system of topics; but

whosoever should try it must be convinced of its inefficacy in

reasoning. Hence he thinks that such men as Agrippa and Bruno kept

only the general principle of Lully’s scheme, enlarging it by new

contrivances of their own. Hist. de Philos. ii. 612. See also an

article on Lully in the Biographie Universelle. Tennemann calls the

Ars Magna a logical machine to let men reason about everything

without study or reflection. Manuel de la Philos. i. 380. But this

seems to have been much what Lully reckoned its merit.

|Peter Martyr’s epistles.|

81. The only geographical publication which occurs in this period is, an

account of the recent discoveries in America, by Peter Martyr of

Anghieria, a Milanese, who passed great part of his life in the court of

Madrid. The title is, De Rebus Oceanicis Decades tres; but it is, in

fact, a series of epistles, thirty in number, written, or feigned to be

written, at different times as fresh information was received; the first

bearing date a few days only after the departure of Columbus in 1493;

while the two last decades are addressed to Leo X. An edition is said to

have appeared in 1516, which is certainly the date of the author’s

dedication to Charles V.; yet this edition seems not to have been seen

by bibliographers. Though Peter Martyr’s own account has been implicitly

believed by Robertson and many others, there seems strong internal

persumption, or rather irresistible demonstration, against the

authenticity of these epistles in the character they assume. It appears

to me evident that he threw the intelligence obtained into that form

many years after the time. Whoever will take the trouble of comparing

the two first letters in the decades of Peter Martyr with any authentic

history, will perceive that they are a negligent and palpable imposture,

every date being falsified, even that of the year in which Columbus made

his great discovery. It is a strange instance of oversight in Robertson

that he has uniformly quoted them as written at the time, for the least

attention must have shown him the contrary. And it may here be

mentioned, that a similar suspicion has been very reasonably entertained

with respect to another collection of epistles by the same author,

rather better known than the present. There is a folio volume with which

those who have much attended to the history of the sixteenth century are

well acquainted, purporting to be a series of letters from Anghiera to

various friends between the years 1488 and 1522. They are full of

interesting facts, and would be still more valuable than they are, could

we put our trust in their genuineness as strictly contemporary

documents. But, though Robertson has almost wholly relied upon them in

his account of the Castilian insurrection, and even in the Biographie

Universelle no doubt is raised as to their being written at their

several dates, yet La Monnoye (if I remember right, certainly some one)

long since charged the author with imposture, on the ground that the

letters, into which he wove the history of his times, are so full of

anachronisms as to render it evident that they were fabricated

afterwards. It is several years since I read these epistles; but I was

certainly struck with some palpable errors in chronology, which

led me to suspect that several of them were wrongly dated, the solution

of their being feigned not occurring to my mind, as the book is of

considerable reputation.[626] A ground of suspicion hardly less striking

is, that the letters of Peter Martyr are too exact for verisimilitude;

he announces events with just the importance they ought to have,

predicts nothing but what comes to pass, and must in fact be either an

impostor (in an innocent sense of the word), or one of the most

sagacious men of his time. But, if not exactly what they profess to be,

both these works of Anghiera are valuable as contemporary history; and

the first mentioned in particular, De Rebus Oceanicis, is the earliest

account we possess of the settlement of the Spaniards in Darien, and of

the whole period between Columbus and Cortes.

[626] The following are specimens of anachronism, which seem fatal to

the genuineness of these epistles, and are only selected from

others. In the year 1489 he writes to a friend: In peculiarem te

nostræ tempestatis morbum, qui appellatione Hispanâ Bubarum

dicitur, ab Italis morbus Gallicus, medicorum Elephantiam alii,

alii aliter appellant, incidisse præcipitem, libero ad me scribis

pede. Epist. 68. Now if we should even believe that this disease

was known some years before the discovery of America and the siege

of Naples, is it probable that it could have obtained the name of

morbus Gallicus before the latter æra? In February 1511, he

communicates the absolution of the Venetians by Julius II., which

took place in February 1510. Epist. 451. In a letter dated at

Brussels, 31st Aug. 1520, (Epist. 689) he mentions the burning of

the canon law at Wittenberg by Luther, which is well known to have

happened in the ensuing November.

82. It would be embarrassing to the reader were we to pursue any longer

that rigidly chronological division by short decennial periods, which

has hitherto served to display the regular progress of European

literature, and especially of classical learning. Many other provinces

were now cultivated, and the history of each is to be traced separately

from the rest, though frequently with mutual reference, and with regard,

as far as possible, to their common unity. In the period immediately

before us, that unity was chiefly preserved by the diligent study of the

Latin and Greek languages; it was to the writers in those languages that

the theologian, the civil lawyer, the physician, the geometer and

philosopher, even the poet, for the most part, and dramatist, repaired

for the materials of their knowledge, and the nourishment of their

minds. We shall begin, therefore, by following the further advances of

philological literature; and some readers must here, as in other places,

pardon what they will think unnecessary minuteness in so general a work

as the present, for the sake of others who set a value on precise

information.

CHAPTER V.

HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1520 TO 1550.

_Classical Taste of the Italians--Ciceronians--Erasmus attacks

them--Writings on Roman Antiquity--Learning in France--Commentaries

of Budæus--Progress of Learning in Spain, Germany, England--State of

Cambridge and Oxford--Advance of Learning still slow--Encyclopædic

Works._

|Superiority of Italy in taste.|

1. Italy, the genial soil where the literature of antiquity had been

first cultivated, still retained her superiority in the fine perception

of its beauties, and in the power of retracing them by spirited

imitation. It was the land of taste and sensibility; never surely more

so than in the age of Raffaelle as well as Ariosto. Far from the

clownish ignorance so long predominant in the transalpine aristocracy,

the nobles of Italy, accustomed to a city life, and to social festivity,

more than to war or the chase, were always conspicuous for their

patronage, and, what is more important than mere patronage, their

critical skill in matters of art and elegant learning. Among the

ecclesiastical order this was naturally still more frequent. If the

successors of Leo X. did not attain so splendid a name, they were

perhaps, after the short reign of Adrian VI., which, if we may believe

the Italian writers, seemed to threaten an absolute return of

barbarism,[627] not less munificent or sedulous in encouraging

polite and useful letters. The first part indeed of this period of

thirty years was very adverse to the progress of learning; especially in

that disastrous hour when the lawless mercenaries of Bourbon’s army were

led on to the sack of Rome. In this, and in other calamities of the same

kind, it happened that universities and literary academies were broken

up, that libraries were destroyed or dispersed. That of Sadolet, having

been with difficulty saved in the pillage of Rome, was dispersed, in

consequence of shipwreck during its transport to France.[628] A better

æra commenced with the pacification of Italy in 1531. The subsequent

wars were either transient, or partial in their effects. The very

extinction of all hope for civil freedom, which characterised the new

period, turned the intellectual energies of an acute and ardent people

towards those tranquil pursuits, which their rulers would both permit

and encourage.

[627] Valerianus, in his treatise De Infelicitate Litteratorum, a

melancholy series of unfortunate authors, in the manner, though not

quite with the spirit and interest, of M. D’Israeli, speaks of

Adrian VI. as of another Paul II. in hatred of literature. Ecce

adest musarum et eloquentiæ, totiusque nitoris hostis acerrimus,

qui literatis omnibus inimicitias minitatur, quoniam, ut ipse

dictitabat, Terentiani essent, quos cum odisse atque etiam persequi

cœpisset, voluntarium alii exilium, alias atque alias alii latebras

quærentes, tamdiu latuere, quoad Dei beneficio, altero imperii anno

decessit, qui si aliquanto diutius vixissit, Gotica illa tempora

adversus bonas literas videbatur suscitaturus. Lib. ii. p. 34. It

is but fair to add, that Erasmus ascribes to Adrian the protection

of letters in the Low Countries. Vix nostra phalanx sustinuisset

hostium conjurationem, ni Adrianus tum Cardinalis, postea Romanus

pontifex, hoc edidisset oraculum: Bonus literas non damno, hæreses

et schismata damno. Epist. Mclxxvi. There is not indeed much in

this; but the Biographie Universelle (Suppl. art. Busleiden)

informs us that this pope was compelled to interfere in order to

remove the impediments to the foundation of Busleiden’s Collegium

Trilingue at Louvain. It is well known that Adrian VI. was inclined

to reform some abuses in the church; enough to set the Italians

against him. See his life, in Bayle, Note D.

[628] Cum enim direptis rebus cæteris, libri soli superstites ab

hostium injuria intacti, in navim conjecti, ad Galliæ littus jam

pervecti essent, incidit in vectores, et in ipsos familiares meos

pestilentia. Quo metu ii permoti, quorum ad littora navis appulsa

fuerat, onera in terram exponi non permisere. Ita asportati sunt in

alienas et ignotas terras; exceptisque voluminibus paucis, quæ

deportavi mecum huc proficiscens, mei reliqui illi tot labores quos

impenderamus, Græcis præsertim codicibus conquirendis undique et

colligendis, mei tanti sumptus meæ curæ, omnes iterum jam ad

nihilum reciderunt. Sadolet. Epist. lib. i. p. 23. (Colon. 1554.)

|Admiration of Antiquity.|

2. The real excellence of the ancients in literature as well as art gave

rise to an enthusiastic and exclusive admiration of antiquity, not

unusual indeed in other parts of Europe, but in Italy a sort of national

pride which all partook. They went back to the memory of past ages for

consolation in their declining fortunes, and conquered their barbarian

masters of the north in imagination with Cæsar and Marius. Everything

that reminded them of the slow decay of Rome, sometimes even their

religion itself, sounded ill in their fastidious ears. Nothing was so

much at heart with the Italian scholars, as to write a Latin style, not

only free from barbarism, but conformable to the standard of what is

sometimes called the Augustan age, that is of the period from Cicero to

Augustus. Several of them affected to be exclusively Ciceronian.

|Sadolet.|

|Bembo.|

3. Sadolet, one of the apostolic secretaries under Leo X. and Clement

VII., and raised afterwards to the purple by Paul III., stood in as high

a rank as any for purity of language without affectation, though he

seems to have been reckoned of the Ciceronian school. Except his

epistles, however, none of Sadolet’s works are now read, or even appear

to have been very conspicuous in his own age; though Corniani has given

an analysis of a treatise on education.[629] A greater name, in point of

general literary reputation, was Peter Bembo, a noble Venetian,

secretary with Sadolet to Leo, and raised, like him, to the dignity of a

cardinal by Paul III. Bembo was known in Latin and in Italian

literature; and in each language both as a prose writer and a poet. We

shall thus have to regard four claims he prefers to a niche in the

temple of fame, and we shall find none of them ungrounded. In pure Latin

style he was not perhaps superior to Sadolet, but would not have yielded

to any competitor in Europe. It has been told, in proof of Bembo’s

scrupulous care to give his compositions the utmost finish, that he kept

forty portfolios, into which every sheet entered successively, and was

only taken out to undergo his corrections, before it entered into the

next limbo of this purgatory. Though this may not be quite true, it is

but an exaggeration of the laborious diligence by which he must often

have reduced his sense to feebleness and vacuity. He was one of those

exclusive Ciceronians who, keenly feeling the beauties of their master’s

eloquence, and aware of the corruption which after the age of Augustus

came rapidly over the purity of style, rejected with scrupulous care not

only every word or phrase which could not be justified by the practice

of what was called the golden age, but even insisted on that of Cicero

himself, as the only model they thought absolutely perfect. Paulus

Manutius, one of the most rigorous, though of the most eminent among

these, would not employ the words of Cicero’s correspondents, though as

highly accomplished and polite as himself. This fastidiousness was of

course highly inconvenient in a language constantly applicable to the

daily occurrences of life in epistles or in narration, and it has driven

Bembo, according to one of his severest critics, into strange

affectation and circuity in his Venetian history. It produced also, what

was very offensive to the more serious reader, and is otherwise frigid

and tasteless, an adaptation of heathen phrases to the usages and even

the characters of Christianity.[630] It has been remarked also, that in

his great solicitude about the choice of words, he was indifferent

enough to the value of his meaning; a very common failing of elegant

scholars, when they write in a foreign language. But if some praise is

due, as surely it is, to the art of reviving that consummate grace and

richness which enchants every successive generation in the periods of

Cicero, we must place Bembo, had we nothing more than this to say of

him, among the ornaments of literature in the sixteenth century.

[629] Niceron says of Sadolet’s Epistles, which form a very thick

volume: Il y a plusieurs choses dignes d’être remarquées dans les

lettres de Sadolet; mais elles sont quelquefois trop diffuses, et

par conséquent ennuyeuses à lire. I concur in this: yet it may be

added, that the epistles of Cicero would sometimes be tedious, if

we took as little interest in their subjects as we commonly do in

those of Sadolet. His style is uniformly pure and good; but he is

less fastidious than Bembo, and does not use circuity to avoid a

theological expression. They are much more interesting, at least,

than the ordinary Latin letters of his contemporaries, such as

those of Paulus Manutius. A uniform goodness of heart, and love of

right, prevail in the epistles of Sadolet. His desire of

ecclesiastical reformation in respect of morals has caused him to

be suspected of a bias towards protestantism, and a letter he wrote

to Melanchthon, which that learned man did not answer, has been

brought in corroboration of this; but the general tenor of his

letters refutes this surmise. His theology, which was wholly

semi-pelagian, must have led him to look with disgust on the

Lutheran school (Epist. l. iii. p. 121, and l. ix. p. 410); and

after Paul III. bestowed on him the purple, he became a staunch

friend of the court of Rome, though never losing his wish to see a

reform of its abuses. This will be admitted by every one who takes

the trouble to run over Sadolet’s epistles.

[630] This affectation had begun in the preceding century, and was

carried by Campano in his Life of Braccio di Montone to as great an

extreme as by Bembo, or any Ciceronian of his age. Bayle (Bembus,

Note B.) gives some odd instances of it in the latter.

Notwithstanding his laborious scrupulosity as to language, Bembo is

reproached by Lipsius, and others of a more advanced stage of

critical knowledge, with many faults of Latin, especially in his

letters. Ibid. Sturm says of the letters of Bembo: Ejus epistolæ

scriptæ mihi magis quam missæ esse videntur. Indicia sunt hominis

otiosi et imitatoris speciem magis rerum quam res ipsas

consectantis. Ascham, Epist. cccxci.

|Ciceronianus of Erasmus.|