his Art of Poesie, “sprung up a new company of courtly makers, of whom
Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder, and Henry, Earl of Surrey, were the two
chieftains, who, having travailed into Italy, and there tasted the sweet
and stately measures and stile of the Italian poesie, as novices newly
crept out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, they greatly
polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesie, from that it had
bene before, and for that cause may justly be sayd the first reformers
of our English meeter and stile. In the same time or not long after was
the Lord Nicolas Vaux, a man of much facilitie in vulgar makings.”[785]
The poems of Sir John Wyatt, who died in 1544, and of the Earl of
Surrey, executed in 1547, were published in 1557, with a few by other
hands, in a scarce little book called Tottel’s Miscellanies. They were,
however, in all probability known before; and it seems necessary to
mention them in this period, as they mark an important epoch in English
literature.
[785] Puttenham, book i. ch. 31.
19. Wyatt and Surrey, for we may best name them in the order of time,
rather than of civil or poetical rank, have had recently the good
fortune to be recommended by an editor of extensive acquaintance with
literature, and of still superior taste. It will be a gratification to
read the following comparison of the two poets, which I extract the more
willingly that it is found in a publication somewhat bulky and expensive
for the mass of readers.
|Dr. Nott’s character of them.|
20. “They were men whose minds may be said to have been cast in the same
mould; for they differ only in those minuter shades of character which
always must exist in human nature; shades of difference so infinitely
varied, that there never were and never will be two persons in all
respects alike. In their love of virtue and their instinctive hatred and
contempt of vice, in their freedom from personal jealousy, in their
thirst after knowledge and intellectual improvement, in nice observation
of nature, promptitude to action, intrepidity and fondness for romantic
enterprise, in magnificence and liberality, in generous support of
others and high-spirited neglect of themselves, in constancy in
friendship, and tender susceptibility of affections of a still warmer
nature, and in everything connected with sentiment and principle, they
were one and the same; but when those qualities branch out into
particulars, they will be found in some respects to differ.
21. “Wyatt had a deeper and more accurate penetration into the
characters of men than Surrey had; hence arises the difference in their
satires. Surrey, in his satire against the citizens of London, deals
only in reproach; Wyatt, in his, abounds with irony, and those nice
touches of ridicule which make us ashamed of our faults, and therefore
often silently effect amendment.[786] Surrey’s observation of nature was
minute; but he directed it towards the works of nature in general, and
the movements of the passions, rather than to the foibles and characters
of men; hence it is that he excels in the description of rural objects,
and is always tender and pathetic. In Wyatt’s Complaint we hear a strain
of manly grief which commands attention, and we listen to it with
respect for the sake of him that suffers. Surrey’s distress is painted
in such natural terms, that we make it our own, and recognise in his
sorrows emotions which we are conscious of having felt ourselves.
[786] Wyatt’s best poem, in this style, the Epistle to John Poins, is
a very close imitation of the tenth satire of Alamanni; it is
abridged, but every thought and every verse in the English is taken
from the Italian. Dr. Nott has been aware of this; but it certainly
detracts a leaf from the laurel of Wyatt, though he has translated
well.
The lighter poems of Wyatt are more unequal than those of Surrey;
but his ode to his lute does not seem inferior to any production of
his noble competitor. The sonnet in which he intimates his secret
passion for Anne Boleyn, whom he describes under the allegory of a
doe, bearing on her collar--
Noli me tangere: I Cæsar’s am,
is remarkable for more than the poetry, though that is pleasing. It
may be doubtful whether Anne were yet queen: but in one of Wyatt’s
latest poems, he seems to allude penitentially to his passion for
her.
22. “In point of taste and perception of propriety in composition,
Surrey is more accurate and just than Wyatt; he therefore seldom either
offends with conceits, or wearies with repetition, and when he imitates
other poets, he is original as well as pleasing. In his numerous
translations from Petrarch, he is seldom inferior to his master; and he
seldom improves upon him. Wyatt is almost always below the Italian, and
frequently degrades a good thought by expressing it so that it is hardly
recognizable. Had Wyatt attempted a translation of Virgil, as Surrey
did, he would have exposed himself to unavoidable failure.”[787]
[787] Nott’s edition of Wyatt and Surrey, ii. 156.
|Perhaps rather exaggerated.|
23. To remarks so delicate in taste and so founded in knowledge, I
should not venture to add much of my own. Something, however, may
generally be admitted to modify the ardent panegyrics of an editor.
Those who, after reading this brilliant passage, should turn for the
first time to the poems either of Wyatt or of Surrey, might think the
praise too unbounded, and, in some respects perhaps, not appropriate. It
seems to be now ascertained, after sweeping away a host of foolish
legends and traditionary prejudices, that the Geraldine of Surrey, Lady
Elizabeth Fitzgerald, was a child of thirteen, for whom his passion, if
such it is to be called, began several years after his own
marriage.[788] But in fact there is more of the conventional tone of
amorous song, than of real emotion, in Surrey’s poetry. The
“Easy sighs, such as men draw in love,”
are not like the deep sorrows of Petrarch, or the fiery transports of
the Castilians.
[788] Surrey was born about 1518, married Lady Frances Vere 1535,
fell in love, if so it was, in 1541, with Geraldine, who was born
in 1528.
|Surrey improves our versification.|
24. The taste of this accomplished man is more striking than his
poetical genius. He did much for his own country and his native
language. The versification of Surrey differs very considerably from
that of his predecessors. He introduced, as Dr. Nott says, a sort of
involution into his style, which gives an air of dignity and remoteness
from common life. It was in fact borrowed from the licence of Italian
poetry, which our own idiom has rejected. He avoids pedantic words,
forcibly obtruded from the Latin, of which our earlier poets, both
English and Scots, had been ridiculously fond. The absurd epithets of
Hoccleve, Lydgate, Dunbar, and Douglas are applied equally to the most
different things, so as to show that they annexed no meaning to them.
Surrey rarely lays an unnatural stress on final syllables, merely as
such, which they would not receive in ordinary pronunciation; another
usual trick of the school of Chaucer. His words are well chosen and well
arranged.
|Introduces blank verse.|
25. Surrey is the first who introduced blank verse into our English
poetry. It has been doubted whether it had been previously employed in
Italian, save in tragedy; for the poems of Alamanni and Rucellai were
not published before many of our noble poet’s compositions had been
written. Dr. Nott, however, admits that Boscan and other Spanish poets
had used it. The translation by Surrey of the second book of the Æneid,
in blank verse, is among the chief of his productions. No one had,
before his time, known how to translate or imitate with appropriate
expression. But the structure of his verse is not very harmonious, and
the sense is rarely carried beyond the line.
|Dr. Nott’s hypothesis as to his metre.|
26. If we could rely on a theory, advanced and ably supported by his
editor, Surrey deserves the still more conspicuous praise of having
brought about a great revolution in our poetical numbers. It had been
supposed to be proved by Tyrwhitt, that Chaucer’s lines are to be read
metrically, in ten or eleven syllables, like the Italian, and, as I
apprehend, the French of his time. For this purpose, it is necessary
to presume that many terminations, now mute, were syllabically
pronounced; and where verses prove refractory after all our endeavours,
Tyrwhitt has no scruple in declaring them corrupt. It may be added, that
Gray, before the appearance of Tyrwhitt’s essay on the versification of
Chaucer, had adopted without hesitation the same hypothesis.[789] But,
according to Dr. Nott, the verses of Chaucer, and of all his successors
down to Surrey, are merely rhythmical, to be read by cadence, and
admitting of considerable variety in the number of syllables, though ten
may be the more frequent. In the manuscripts of Chaucer, the line is
always broken by a cæsura in the middle, which is pointed out by a
virgule; and this is preserved in the early editions down to that of
1532. They come near, therefore, to the short Saxon line, differing
chiefly by the alternate rhyme, which converts two verses into one. He
maintains that a great many lines of Chaucer cannot be read metrically,
though harmonious as verses of cadence. This rhythmical measure he
proceeds to show in Hoccleve, Lydgate, Hawes, Barclay, Skelton, and even
Wyatt; and thus concludes, that it was first abandoned by Surrey, in
whom it very rarely occurs.[790]
[789] Gray’s Works (edit. Mathias), ii. 1.
[790] Nott’s Dissertation, subjoined to second volume of his Wyatt
and Surrey.
27. This hypothesis, it should be observed, derives some additional
plausibility from a passage in Gascoyne’s “Notes of Instruction
concerning the making of Verse or Rhyme in English,” printed in 1575.
“Whosoever do peruse and well consider his (Chaucer’s) works, he shall
find that, although his lines are not always of one self-same number of
syllables, yet being read by one that hath understanding, the longest
verse, and that which hath most syllables in it, will fall (to the ear)
correspondent unto that which hath fewest syllables; and likewise that
which hath fewest syllables shall be found yet to consist of words that
have such natural sound, as may seem equal in length to a verse which
hath many more syllables of lighter accents.”
|But seems too extensive.|
28. A theory so ingeniously maintained, and with so much induction of
examples, has naturally gained a good deal of credit. I cannot, however,
by any means concur in the extension given to it. Pages may be read in
Chaucer, and still more in Dunbar, where every line is regularly and
harmoniously decasyllabic; and though the cæsura may perhaps fall rather
more uniformly than it does in modern verse, it would be very easy to
find exceptions, which could not acquire a rhythmical cadence by any
artifice of the reader.[791] The deviations from the normal type, or
decasyllable line, were they more numerous than, after allowance for the
licence of pronunciation, as well as the probable corruption of the
text, they appear to be, would not, I conceive, justify us in concluding
that it was disregarded. These aberrant lines are much more common in
the dramatic blank verse of the seventeenth century. They are,
doubtless, vestiges of the old rhythmical forms; and we may readily
allow that English versification had not, in the fifteenth or even
sixteenth centuries, the numerical regularity of classical or Italian
metre. In the ancient ballads, Scots and English, the substitution of
the anapæst for the iambic foot is of perpetual recurrence, and gives
them a remarkable elasticity and animation; but we never fail to
recognise a uniformity of measure, which the use of nearly equipollent
feet cannot, on the strictest metrical principles, be thought to impair.
[791] Such as these, among multitudes more:--
A lover, and a lusty bachelor.
Chaucer.
But reason, with the shield of gold so shene.
Dunbar.
The rock, again the river resplendent.
Id.
Lydgate apologises for his own lines,--
Because I know the verse therein is wrong,
As being some too short, and some too long,--
in Gray, ii. 4. This seems at once to exclude the rhythmical
system, and to account for the imperfection of the metrical.
Lydgate has perhaps on the whole more aberrations from the
decasyllable standard than Chaucer.
Puttenham, in his Art of Poesie (1586), book ii. ch. 3, 4, though
he admits the licentiousness of Chaucer, Lydgate, and other poets
in occasionally disregarding the cæsura, does not seem to doubt
that they wrote by metrical rules; which indeed is implied in the
other. Dr. Nott’s theory cannot allow a want of cæsura.
|Politeness of Wyatt and Surrey.|
29. If we compare the poetry of Wyatt and Surrey with that of Barclay or
Skelton, about thirty or forty years before, the difference must appear
wonderful. But we should not, with Dr. Nott, attribute this wholly to
superiority of genius. It is to be remembered that the later poets wrote
in a court, and in one which, besides the aristocratic manners of
chivalry, had not only imbibed a great deal of refinement from France
and Italy, but a considerable tinge of ancient literature. Their
predecessors were less educated men, and they addressed a more vulgar
class of readers. Nor was this polish of language peculiar to
Surrey and his friend. In the short poems of Lord Vaux, and of others
about the same time, even in those of Nicolas Grimoald, a lecturer at
Oxford, who was no courtier, but had acquired a classical taste, we find
a rejection of obsolete and trivial phrases, and the beginnings of what
we now call the style of our older poetry.
|Latin poetry.|
|Sannazarius.|
30. No period since the revival of letters has been so conspicuous for
Latin poetry as the present. Three names of great reputation adorn it,
Sannazarius, Vida, Fracastorius. The first of these, Sannazarius, or San
Nazaro, or Actius Sincerus, was a Neapolitan, attached to the fortunes
of the Aragonese line of kings; and following the last of their number
Frederic, after his unjust spoliation, into France, remained there till
his master’s death. Much of his poetry was written under this reign,
before 1503; but his principal work, De Partu Virginis, did not appear
till 1522. This has incurred not unjust blame for the intermixture of
classical mythology, at least in language, with the Gospel story; nor is
the latter very skilfully managed. But it would be difficult to find its
equal for purity, elegance, and harmony of versification. The
unauthorised word, the doubtful idiom, the modern turn of thought, so
common in Latin verse, scarce ever appear in Sannazarius; a pure taste
enabled him to diffuse a Virgilian hue over his language; and a just
ear, united with facility in command of words, rendered his
versification melodious and varied beyond any competitor. The Piscatory
Eclogues of Sannazarius, which are perhaps better known, deserve at
least equal praise; they seem to breathe the beauty and sweetness of
that fair bay they describe. His elegies are such as may compete with
Tibullus. If Sannazarius does not affect sublimity, he never sinks below
his aim; the sense is sometimes inferior to the style, as he is not
wholly free from conceits;[792] but it would probably be more difficult
to find cold and prosaic passages in his works than in those of any
other Latin poet in modern times.
[792] The following lines, on the constellation Taurus, are more
puerile than any I have seen in this elegant poet:
Torva bovi facies; sed qua non altera cœlo
Dignior, imbriferum quæ cornibus inchoet annum,
Nec _quæ tam claris mugitibus astra lacessat_.
|Vida.|
31. Vida of Cremona is not by any means less celebrated than Sannazarius;
his poem on the Art of Poetry, and that on the Game of Chess, were
printed in 1527; the Christiad, an epic poem, as perhaps it deserves to
be called, in 1535; and that on silk worms in 1537. Vida’s precepts are
clear and judicious, and we admire in his Game of Chess especially, and
the poem on Silk worms, the skill with which the dry rules of art, and
descriptions the most apparently irreducible to poetical conditions,
fall into his elegant and classical language. It has been observed, that
he is the first who laid down rules for imitative harmony, illustrating
them by his own example. The Christiad shows not so much, I think, of
Vida’s great talents, at least in poetical language; but the subject is
better managed than by Sannazarius. Yet, notwithstanding some brilliant
passages, among which the conclusion of the second book De Arte Poetica
is prominent, Vida appears to me far inferior to the Neapolitan poet.
His versification is often hard and spondaic, the elisions too frequent,
and the cæsura too much neglected. The language, even where the subject
best admits of it, is not so elevated as we should desire.
|Fracastorius.|
32. Fracastorius has obtained his reputation by the Syphilis, published
in 1530; and certainly, as he thought to make choice of the subject,
there is no reader but must admire the beauty and variety of his
digressions, the vigour and nobleness of his style. Once only has it
been the praise of genius, to have delivered the rules of practical art
in all the graces of the most delicious poetry, without inflation,
without obscurity, without affectation, and generally perhaps with the
precision of truth. Fracastorius, not emulous in this of the author of
the Georgics, seems to have made Manilius rather, I think, than
Lucretius, his model in the didactic portion of his poem.
|Latin verse not to be disdained.|
33. Upon a fair comparison we should not err much, in my opinion, by
deciding that Fracastorius is the greater poet, and Sannazarius the
better author of Latin verses. In the present age it is easy to
anticipate the supercilious disdain of those who believe it ridiculous
to write Latin poetry at all, because it cannot, as they imagine, be
written well. I must be content to answer, that those who do not know
when such poetry is good, should be as slow to contradict those who do,
as the ignorant in music to set themselves against competent judges. No
one pretends that Sannazarius was equal to Ariosto. But it may be truly
said, that his poetry, and a great deal more that has been written in
Latin, beyond comparison excels most of the contemporary
Italian; we may add, that its reputation has been more extended and
European.
|Other Latin poets in Italy.|
34. After this famous triumvirate, we might reckon several in different
degrees of merit. Bembo comes forward again in these lists. His Latin
poems are not numerous; that upon the lake Benacus is the best known. He
shone more however in elegiac than hexameter verse. This is a common
case in modern Latin, and might be naturally expected of Bembo, who had
more of elegance than of vigour. Castiglione has left a few poems, among
which the best is in the archaic lapidary style, on the statue of
Cleopatra in the Vatican. Molza wrote much in Latin; he is the author of
the epistle to Henry VIII., in the name of Catherine, which has been
ascribed to Joannes Secundus. It is very spirited and Ovidian. These
poets were perhaps surpassed by Naugerius and Flaminius; both, but
especially the latter, for sweetness and purity of style, to be placed
in the first rank of lyric and elegiac poets in the Latin language. In
their best passages, they fall not by any means short of Tibullus or
Catullus. Aonius Palearius, though his poem on the Immortality of the
Soul is equalled by Sadolet himself to those of Vida and Sannazarius,
seems not entitled to anything like such an eulogy. He became afterwards
suspected of Lutheranism, and lost his life on the scaffold at Rome. We
have in another place mentioned the Zodiacus Vitæ of Palingenius
Stellatus, whose true name was Manzolli. The Deliciæ Poetarum Italorum
present a crowd of inferior imitations of classical models; but I must
repeat that the volumes selected by Pope, and entitled Poemata Italorum,
are the best evidences of the beauties of these poets.
|In Germany.|
35. The cisalpine nations, though at a vast distance from Italy, cannot
be reckoned destitute, in this age, of respectable Latin poets. Of these
the best known, and perhaps upon the whole the best, is Joannes
Secundus, who found the doves of Venus in the dab-chicks of Dutch
marshes. The Basia, however, are far from being superior to his elegies,
many of which, though not correct, and often sinning by false quantity,
a fault pretty general with these early Latin poets, especially on this
side of the Alps, are generally harmonious, spirited, and elegant. Among
the Germans, Eobanus Hessus, Micyllus, professor at Heidelberg, and
Melanchthon, have obtained considerable praise.
SECT. II. 1520-1550.
_State of Dramatic Representation in Italy--Spain and
Portugal--France--Germany--England._
|Italian comedy.|
|Machiavel.|
|Aretin.|
36. We have already seen the beginnings of Italian comedy, founded in
its style, and frequently in its subjects, upon Plautus. Two of
Ariosto’s comedies have been mentioned, and two more belong to this
period. Some difference of opinion has existed with respect to their
dramatic merit. But few have hesitated to place above them the
Mandragola and Clitia of a great contemporary genius, Machiavel. The
Mandragola was probably written before 1520, but certainly in the fallen
fortunes of its author, as he intimates in the prologue. Ginguéné,
therefore, forgot his chronology, when he supposes Leo X. to have been
present, as cardinal, at its representation.[793] It seems however to
have been acted before this pope at Rome. The story of the Mandragola
which hardly bears to be told, though Ginguéné has done it, is said to
be founded on a real and recent event at Florence, one of its striking
resemblances to the Athenian comedy. It is admirable for its comic
delineations of character, the management of the plot, and the
liveliness of its idiomatic dialogue. Peter Aretin, with little of the
former qualities, and inferior in all respects to Machiavel, has enough
of humorous extravagance to amuse the reader. The licentiousness of the
Italian stage in its contempt of morality, and even, in the comedies of
Peter Aretin, its bold satire on the great, remind us rather of Athens
than of Rome; it is more the effrontery of Aristophanes than the
pleasant freedom of Plautus. But the depravity which had long been
increasing in Italy, gained in this first part of the sixteenth century
a zenith which it could not surpass, and from which it has very
gradually receded. These comedies are often very satirical on the
clergy; the bold strokes of Machiavel surprise us at present; but the
Italian stage had something like the licence of a masquerade; it was a
tacit agreement that men should laugh at things sacred within those
walls, but resume their veneration for them at the door.[794]
[793] Ginguéné, vi. 222.
[794] Besides the plays themselves, see Ginguéné, vol. vi., who gives
more than a hundred pages to the Calandra, and the comedies of
Ariosto, Machiavel, and Aretin. Many of the old comedies are
reprinted in the great Milan collection of Classici Italiani. Those
of Machiavel and Ariosto are found in most editions of their works.
|Tragedy.|
|Sperone. Cinthio.|
37. Those who attempted the serious tone of tragedy were less happy in
their model; Seneca generally represented to them the ancient buskin.
The Canace of Sperone Speroni, the Tullia of Martelli, and the Orbecche
of Giraldo Cinthio, esteemed the best of nine tragedies he has written,
are within the present period. They are all works of genius. But
Ginguéné observes how little advantage the first of these plays afforded
for dramatic effect, most of the action passing in narration. It is true
that he could hardly have avoided this without aggravating the censures
of those who, as Crescimbeni tells us, thought the subject itself unfit
for tragedy.[795] The story of the Orbecche is taken by Cinthio from a
novel of his own invention, and is remarkable for its sanguinary and
disgusting circumstances. This became the characteristic of tragedy in
the sixteenth century; not by any means peculiarly in England, as some
half-informed critics of the French school used to pretend. The
Orbecche, notwithstanding its passages in the manner of Titus
Andronicus, is in many parts an impassioned and poetical tragedy.
Riccoboni, though he censures the general poverty of style, prefers one
scene in the third act to any thing on the stage: “If one scene were
sufficient to decide the question, the Orbecche would be the finest play
in the world.”[796] Walker observes, that this is the first tragedy
wherein the prologue is separated from the play, of which, as is very
well known, it made a part on the ancient theatre. But in Cinthio, and
in other tragic writers long afterwards, the prologue continued to
explain and announce the story.[797]
[795] Della volgar Poesia, ii 391. Alfieri went still farther than
Sperone in his Mirra. Objections of a somewhat similar kind were
made to the Tullia of Martelli.
[796] Hist. du Théâtre Italian, vol. i.
[797] Walker, Essay on Italian Tragedy. Ginguéné, vi. 61, 69.
|Spanish drama.|
|Torres Naharro.|
38. Meantime, a people very celebrated in dramatic literature was
forming its national theatre. A few attempts were made in Spain to copy
the classical model. But these seem not to have gone beyond translation,
and had little effect on the public taste. Others in imitation of the
Celestina, which passed for a moral example, produced tedious scenes, by
way of mirrors, of vice and virtue, without reaching the fame of their
original. But a third class was far more popular, and ultimately put an
end to competition. The founders of this were Torres Naharro, in the
first years of Charles, and Lope de Rueda, a little later. “There is
very little doubt,” says Bouterwek, “that Torres Naharro was the real
inventor of the Spanish comedy. He not only wrote his eight comedies in
redondillas in the romance style, but he also endeavoured to establish
the dramatic interest solely on an ingenious combination of intrigues,
without attaching much importance to the development of character, or
the moral tendency of the story. It is besides probable, that he was the
first who divided plays into three acts, which, being regarded as three
days’ labour in the dramatic field, were called jornadas. It must
therefore be unreservedly admitted, that these dramas, considered both
with respect to their spirit and their form, deserve to be ranked as the
first in the history of the Spanish national drama; for in the same path
which Torres Naharro first trod, the dramatic genius of Spain advanced
to the point attained by Calderon, and the nation tolerated no dramas
except those which belonged to the style which had thus been
created.”[798]
[798] P. 285. Andrès thinks Naharro low, insipid, and unworthy of the
praise of Cervantes. v. 136.
|Lope de Rueda.|
39. Lope de Rueda, who is rather better known than his predecessor, was
at the head of a company of players, and was limited in his inventions
by the capacity of his troop and of the stage upon which they were to
appear. Cervantes calls him the great Lope de Rueda, even when a greater
Lope was before the world. “He was not,” to quote again from Bouterwek,
“inattentive to general character, as is proved by his delineation of
old men, clowns, &c., in which he was particularly successful. But his
principal aim was to interweave in his dramas a succession of intrigues;
and as he seems to have been a stranger to the art of producing stage
effect by striking situations, he made complication the great object of
his plots. Thus mistakes, arising from personal resemblances, exchanges
of children, and such like commonplace subjects of intrigue, form the
groundwork of his stories, none of which are remarkable for ingenuity of
invention. There is usually a multitude of characters in his dramas, and
jests and witticisms are freely introduced, but these in general consist
of burlesque disputes in which some clown is engaged.”[799]
[799] P. 282.
|Gil Vicente.|
40. The Portuguese Gil Vicente may perhaps compete with Torres Naharro
for the honour of leading the dramatists of the peninsula. His Autos
indeed, as has been observed, do not, so far as we can perceive, differ
from the mysteries, the religious dramas of France and England.
Bouterwek, strangely forgetful of these, seems to have assigned a
character of originality, and given a precedence, to the Spanish and
Portuguese Autos which they do not deserve. The specimen of one of these
by Gil Vicente in the History of Portuguese Literature, is far more
extravagant and less theatrical than our John Parfre’s contemporary
mystery of Candlemas Day. But a few comedies, or, as they are more
justly styled, farces, remain; one of which, mentioned by the same
author, is superior in choice and management of the fable to most of the
rude productions of that time. Its date is unknown: Gil Vicente’s
dramatic compositions of various kinds were collectively published in
1562; he had died in 1557, at a very advanced age.
41. “These works,” says Bouterwek of the dramatic productions of Gil
Vicente in general, “display a true poetic spirit, which however
accommodated itself entirely to the age of the poet, and which disdained
cultivation. The dramatic genius of Gil Vicente is equally manifest from
his power of invention, and from the natural turn and facility of his
imitative talent. Even the rudest of these dramas is tinged with a
certain degree of poetic feeling.”[800] The want of complex intrigue,
such as we find afterwards in the Castilian drama, ought not to surprise
us in these early compositions.
[800] Hist. of Portuguese Lit. p. 83-111. It would be vain to look
elsewhere for so copious an account of Gil Vicente, and very
difficult probably to find his works. See too Sismondi, Hist. de la
Litt. du Midi, iv. 448.
|Mysteries and moralities in France.|
42. We have no record of any original dramatic composition belonging to
this age in France, with the exception of mysteries and moralities,
which are very abundant. These were considered, and perhaps justly, as
types of the regular drama. “The French morality,” says an author of
that age, “represents in some degree the tragedy of the Greeks and
Romans; particularly because it treats of serious and important
subjects; and if it were contrived in French that the conclusion of the
morality should be always unfortunate, it would become a tragedy. In the
morality, we treat of noble and virtuous actions, either true, or at
least probable; and choose what makes for our instruction in life.”[801]
It is evident from this passage and the whole context, that neither
tragedy nor comedy were yet known. The circumstance is rather
remarkable, when we consider the genius of the nation, and the
politeness of the court. But from about the year 1540 we find
translations from Latin and Italian comedies into French. These probably
were not represented. Les Amours d’Erostrate, by Jacques Bourgeois,
published in 1545, is taken from the Suppositi of Ariosto. Sibilet
translated the Iphigenia of Euripedes in 1549, and Bouchetel the Hecuba
in 1550; Lazarus Baif, two plays about the same time. But a great
dramatic revolution was now prepared by the strong arm of the state. The
first theatre had been established at Paris about 1400 by the Confrairie
de la Passion de N. S., for the representation of scriptural mysteries.
This was suppressed by the parliament in 1547, on account of the scandal
which this devout buffoonery had begun to give. The company of actors
purchased next year the Hotel de la Bourgogne, and were authorised by
the parliament to represent profane subjects, “lawful and decent”
(licites et honnêtes), but enjoined to abstain from “all mysteries of
the passion, or other sacred mysteries.”[802]
[801] Sibilat, Art Poëtique (1548), apud Beauchamps, Recherches sur le
Théâtre Français, i. 82.
In the Jardin de Plaisance, an anonymous undated poem, printed at
Lyons probably before the end of the fifteenth century, we have
rules given for composing moralities. Beauchamps (p. 86) extracts
some of these; but they seem not worth copying.
[802] Beauchamps, i. 91.
|German theatre.|
|Hans Sachs.|
43. In Germany, meantime, the pride of the meister-singers, Hans Sachs,
was alone sufficient to pour forth a plenteous stream for the stage. His
works, collectively printed at Nuremberg in five folio volumes, 1578,
and reprinted in five quartos at Kempten, 1606, contain 197 dramas among
the rest. Many of his comedies in one act, called Schwanken, are coarse
satires on the times. Invention, expression, and enthusiasm, if we may
trust his admirers, are all united in Hans Sachs.[803]
[803] Hans Sachs has met with a very laudatory critic in the
Retrospective Review, x. 113, who even ventures to assert that
Goethe has imitated the old shoemaker in Faust.
The Germans had many plays in this age. Gesner says, in his
Pandectæ Universales: Germanicæ fabulæ multæ extant. Fabula decem
ætatum et Fusio stultorum Colmariæ actæ sunt. Fusio edita est 1537,
chartis quatuor. Qui volet hoc loco plures ascribat in vulgaribus
linguis, nos ad alia festinamus.
|Moralities and similar plays in England.|
44. The mysteries founded upon scriptural or legendary histories, as
well as the moralities, or allegorical dramas, which, though there might
be an intermixture of human character with abstract personification, did
not aim at that illusion which a possible fable affords, continued to
amuse the English public. Nor were they confined, as perhaps they were
before, to churches and monasteries. We find a company of players in the
establishment of Richard III. while Duke of Gloucester; and in the
subsequent reigns, especially under Henry VIII., this seems to have been
one of the luxuries of the great. The frugal Henry VII. maintained two
distinct sets of players; and his son was prodigally sumptuous in every
sort of court-exhibition, bearing the general name of revels, and
superintended by a high priest of jollity, styled the abbot of misrule.
The dramatic allegories, or moral plays, found a place among them. It
may be presumed that from their occasionality, or want of merit, far the
greater part have perished.[804] Three or four, which we may place
before 1550, are published in Hawkins’s Ancient Drama, and Dodsley’s Old
Plays; one is extant, written by Skelton, the earliest of a known
author.[805] A late writer, whose diligence seems to have almost
exhausted our early dramatic history, has retrieved the names of a few
more. The most ancient of these moral plays he traces to the reign of
Henry VI. They became gradually more complicated, and approached nearer
to a regular form. It may be observed that a line is not easily defined
between the scriptural mysteries and the legitimate drama; the choice of
the story, the succession of incidents, are those of tragedy; even the
intermixture of buffoonery belongs to all our ancient stage; and it is
only by the meanness of the sentiments and diction that we exclude the
Candlemas-Day, which is one of the most perfect of the mysteries, or
even those of the fifteenth century, from our tragic series.[806] Nor
were the moralities, such as we find them in the reign of Henry VIII.,
at a prodigious distance from the regular stage; deviations from the
original structure of these, as Mr. Collier has well observed, “by the
relinquishment of abstract for individual character, paved the way, by a
natural and easy gradation, for tragedy and comedy, the representations
of real life and manners.”[807]
[804] Collier’s Annals of the Stage, i. 34, &c.
[805] Warton, iii. 188.
[806] Candlemas-Day, a mystery, on the murder of the Innocents, is
published in Hawkins’s Early English Drama. It is by John Parffre,
and may be referred to the first years of Henry VIII.
[807] Hist. of English Dramatic Poetry, ii. 260. This I quote by its
proper title; but it is in fact the same work as the Annals of the
Stage, so far as being incorporated, and sold together, renders it
the same.
|They are turned to religious satire.|
45. The moralities were, in this age, distinguished by the constant
introduction of a witty, mischievous, and profligate character,
denominated the Vice. This seems originally to have been an allegorical
representation of what the word denotes; but the vice gradually acquired
a human individuality, in which he came very near to our well-known
Punch. The devil was generally introduced in company with the vice, and
had to endure many blows from him. But the moralities had another
striking characteristic in this period. They had always been religious,
but they now became theological. In the crisis of that great revolution
then in progress, the stage was found a ready and impartial instrument
for the old or the new faith. Luther and his wife were satirised in a
Latin morality represented at Gray’s Inn in 1529. It was easy to turn
the tables on the clergy. Sir David Lyndsay’s satire of the Three
Estatis, a direct attack upon them, was played before James V. and his
queen at Linlithgow in 1539;[808] and in 1543 an English statute was
made, prohibiting all plays and interludes, which meddle with the
interpretation of Scripture. In 1549, the council of Edward VI. put a
stop by proclamation to all kinds of stage-plays.[809]
[808] Warton, iv. 23.
[809] Collier, i. 144.
|Latin Plays.|
|First English Comedy.|
46. Great indulgence, or a strong antiquarian prejudice, is required to
discover much genius in these moralities and mysteries. There was,
however, a class of dramatic productions that appealed to a more
instructed audience. The custom of acting Latin plays prevailed in our
universities at this time, as it did long afterwards. Whether it were
older than the fifteenth century seems not to be proved; and the
presumption is certainly against it. “In an original draught,” says
Warton, “of the statutes of Trinity College at Cambridge, founded in
1456, one of the chapters is entitled, “De Præfecto ludorum qui
imperator dicitur,” under whose direction and authority Latin comedies
and tragedies are to be exhibited in the hall at Christmas.”[810] It is
probable that Christopherson’s tragedy of Jephthah, and another by
Grimoald on John the Baptist, both older than the middle of the century,
were written for academical representation. Nor was this confined to the
universities. Nicolas Udal, head master of Eton, wrote several plays in
Latin to be acted in the long nights of winter by his boys.[811] And if
we had to stop here, it might seem an unnecessary minuteness to take
notice of the diversions of schoolboys, especially as the same is
recorded of other teachers besides Udal. But there is something more in
this. Udal has lately become known in a new and more brilliant light, as
the father of English comedy. It was mentioned by Warton, but without
any comment, that Nicolas Udal wrote some English plays to be
represented by his scholars, a passage from one of which is quoted by
Wilson in his Art of Logic dedicated to Edward VI.[812] It might have
been conjectured, by the help of this quotation, that these plays were
neither of the class of moralities or mysteries, nor mere translations
from Plautus and Terence, as it would not have been unnatural at first
to suppose. Within a few years, however, the comedy from which Wilson
took his extract has been discovered. It was printed in 1565, but
probably written not later than 1540. The title of this comedy is Ralph
Roister Doister, a name uncouth enough, and from which we should expect
a very barbarous farce. But Udal, an eminent scholar, knew how to
preserve comic spirit and humour without degenerating into licentious
buffoonery. Ralph Roister Doister, in spite of its title, is a play of
some merit, though the wit may seem designed for the purpose of natural
merriment rather than critical glory. We find in it, what is of no
slight value, the earliest lively picture of London manners among the
gallants and citizens, who furnished so much for the stage down to the
civil wars. And perhaps there is no striking difference in this respect
between the dramatic manners under Henry VIII. and James I. This comedy,
for there seems no kind of reason why it should be refused that
honourable name, is much superior to Gammar Gurton’s Needle, written
twenty years afterwards, from which it has wrested a long-established
precedence in our dramatic annals.[813]
[810] Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iii. 205.
[811] Udal was not the first, if we could trust Harwood’s Alumni
Etonenses, who established an Eton theatre. Of Rightwise, who
succeeded Lily as master of St. Paul’s, it is said by him, that he
was “a most eminent grammarian, and wrote the tragedy of Dido from
Virgil, which was acted before Cardinal Wolsey with great applause
by himself and other scholars of Eton.” But as Rightwise left Eton
for King’s College in 1508, this cannot be true, at least so far as
Wolsey is concerned. It is said afterwards in the same book of one
Hallewill, who went to Cambridge in 1532, that he wrote “the
tragedy of Dido.” Which should we believe, or were there two Didos?
But Harwood’s book is not reckoned of much authority beyond the
mere records which he copied.
[812] Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iii. 213.
[813] See an analysis with extracts of Ralph Roister Doister, in
Collier’s Hist. of Dram. Poetry, ii. 445-460.
SECT. III.
_Romances and Novels--Rabelais._
|Romances of chivalry.|
47. The popularity of Amadis de Gaul gave rise to a class of romances,
the delight of the multitude in the sixteenth century, though since
chiefly remembered by the ridicule and ignominy that has attached itself
to their name, those of knight-errantry. Most of these belong to Spanish
or Portuguese literature. Palmerin of Oliva, one of the earliest, was
published in 1525. Palmerin, less fortunate than his namesake of
England, did not escape the penal flame to which the barber and curate
consigned many also of his younger brethren. It has been observed by
Bouterwek that every respectable Spanish writer, as well as Cervantes,
resisted the contagion of bad taste which kept the prolix mediocrity of
these romances in fashion.[814]
|Novels.|
48. A far better style was that of the short novel, which the Italian
writers, especially Boccaccio, had rendered popular in Europe. But,
though many of these were probably written within this period of thirty
years, none of much distinction come within it, as the date of their
earliest publication, except the celebrated Belphegor of Machiavel.[815]
The amusing story of Lazarillo de Tormes was certainly written
by Mendoza in his youth. But it did not appear in print till 1586. This
is the first known specimen in Spain of the picaresque, or rogue style,
in which the adventures of the low and rather dishonest part of the
community are made to furnish amusement for the great. The Italian
novelists are by no means without earlier instances; but it became the
favourite, and almost peculiar class of novel with the Spanish writers
about the end of the century.
[814] Hist. of Spanish Literature, p. 304. Dunlop’s Hist. of Fiction,
vol. ii.
[815] I cannot make another exception for Il Pellegrino by Caviceo of
Parma, the first known edition of which, published at Venice in
1526, evidently alludes to one earlier; diligentemente in lingua
tosca corretto, e nuovamente stampato et historiato. The editor
speaks of the book as obsolete in orthography and style. It is
probably, however, not older than the last years of the fifteenth
century, being dedicated to Lucrezia Borgia. It is a very prolix
and tedious romance, in three books and two hundred and nineteen
chapters, written in a semi-poetical diffuse style, and much in the
usual manner of love stories. Ginguéné and Tiraboschi do not
mention it; the Biographie Universelle does.
Mr. Dunlop has given a short account of a French novel, entitled
Les Aventures de Lycidas et de Cleorithe, which he considers as the
earliest and best specimen of what he calls the spiritual romance,
unmixed with chivalry or allegory, iii. 51. It was written in 1529,
by Basire, archdeacon of Sens. I should suspect that there had been
some of this class already in Germany; they certainly became common
in that country afterwards.
|Rabelais.|
49. But the most celebrated, and certainly the most brilliant performance
in the path of fiction, that belongs to this age, is that of Rabelais.
Few books are less likely to obtain the praise of a rigorous critic; but
few have more the stamp of originality, or show a more redundant
fertility, always of language, and sometimes of imagination. He bears a
slight resemblance to Lucian, and a considerable one to Aristophanes.
His reading is large, but always rendered subservient to ridicule; he is
never serious in a single page, and seems to have had little other aim,
in his first two volumes, than to pour out the exuberance of his animal
gaiety. In the latter part of Pantagruel’s history, that is, the fourth
and fifth books, one published in 1552, the other, after the author’s
death, in 1561, a dislike to the church of Rome, which had been slightly
perceived in the first volumes, is not at all disguised; but the vein of
merriment becomes gradually less fertile, and weariness anticipates the
close of a work which had long amused while it disgusted us. Allusions
to particular characters are frequent, and, in general, transparent
enough with the aid of a little information about contemporaneous
history, in several parts of Rabelais; but much of what has been taken
for political and religious satire cannot, as far as I perceive, be
satisfactorily traced beyond the capricious imagination of the author.
Those who have found Montluc, the famous bishop of Valence, in Panurge,
or Antony of Bourbon, father of Henry IV., in Pantagruel, keep no
measures with chronology. Panurge is so admirably conceived, that we may
fairly reckon him original; but the germ of the character is in the
gracioso, or clown, of the extemporaneous stage; the roguish, selfish,
cowardly, cunning attendant, who became Panurge in the plastic hands of
Rabelais, and Sancho in those of Cervantes. The French critics have not
in general done justice to Rabelais, whose manner was not that of the
age of Louis XIV. The Tale of a Tub appears to me by far the closest
imitation of it, and to be conceived altogether in a kindred spirit; but
in general those who have had reading enough to rival the copiousness of
Rabelais have wanted his invention and humour, or the riotousness of his
animal spirits.
SECT. IV.
_Struggle between Latin and Italian Languages--Italian and Spanish
polite Writers--Criticism in Italy--In France and England._
|Contest of Latin and Italian languages.|
50. Among the polished writers of Italy, we meet on every side the name
of Bembo; great in Italian as well as in Latin literature, in prose as
in verse. It is now the fourth time that it occurs to us; and in no
instance has he merited more of his country. Since the fourteenth
century, to repeat what has been said before, so absorbing had become
the love of ancient learning, that the natural language, beautiful and
copious as it really was, and polished as it had been under the hands of
Boccaccio, seemed to a very false-judging pedantry scarce worthy of the
higher kinds of composition. Those too who with enthusiastic diligence
had acquired the power of writing Latin well, did not brook so much as
the equality of their native language. In an oration delivered at
Bologna in 1529 before the emperor and pope, by Romolo Amaseo, one of
the good writers of the sixteenth century, he not only pronounced a
panegyric upon the Latin tongue, but contended that the Italian should
be reserved for shops and markets, and the conversation of the
vulgar;[816] nor was this doctrine, probably in rather a less degree,
uncommon during that age. A dialogue of Sperone relates to this debated
question, whether the Latin or Italian language should be preferred; one
of the interlocutors (probably Lazaro Buonamici, an eminent scholar)
disdaining the latter as a mere corruption. It is a very ingenious
performance, well conducted on both sides, and may be read with
pleasure. The Italians of that age are as clever in criticism as they
are wearisome on the commonplaces of ethics. It purports to have been
written the year after the oration of Romolo Amaseo, to which it
alludes.
[816] Tiraboschi, x. 389.
|Influence of Bembo in this.|
51. It is an evidence of the more liberal spirit that generally
accompanies the greatest abilities, that Bembo, much superior to Amaseo
in fame as a Latin writer, should have been among the first to retrieve
the honour of his native language by infusing into it that elegance and
selection of phrase which his taste had taught him in Latin, and for
which the Italian is scarcely less adapted. In the dialogue of Sperone
quoted above, it is said that “it was the general opinion no one would
write Italian who could write Latin; a prejudice in some measure
lightened by the poem of Politian on the tournament of Julian de’
Medici, but not taken away till Bembo, a Venetian gentleman, as learned
in the ancient languages as Politian, showed that he did not disdain his
maternal tongue.”[817]
[817] P. 430. (edit. 1596).
|Apology for Latinists.|
52. It is common in the present age to show as indiscriminating a
disdain of those who wrote in Latin as they seem to have felt towards
their own literature. But the taste and imagination of Bembo are not
given to every one; and we must remember, in justice to such men as
Amaseo, who, though they imitate well, are yet but imitators in style,
that there was really scarce a book in Italian prose written with any
elegance, except the Decamerone of Boccaccio; the manner of which, as
Tiraboschi justly observes, however suitable to those sportive fictions,
was not very well adapted to serious eloquence.[818] Nor has the Italian
language, we may add, in its very best models, attained so much energy
and condensation as will satisfy the ear or the understanding of a good
Latin scholar; and there can be neither pedantry nor absurdity in
saying, that it is an inferior organ of human thought. The most valid
objection to the employment of Latin in public discourses or in moral
treatises, is its exclusion of those whose advantage we are supposed to
seek, and whose sympathy we ought to excite. But this objection, though
not much less powerful in reality than at present, struck men less
sensibly in that age, when long use of the ancient language, in which
even the sermons of the clergy were frequently delivered, had taken away
the sense of its impropriety.[819]
[818] x. 402.
[819] Sadolet himself had rather discouraged Bembo from writing Italian,
as appears from one of his epistles, thanking his friend for the
present of a book, perhaps Le Prose. Sed tu fortasse conjicis ex
eo, illa mihi non placere, quod te avocare solebam ab illis
literis. Faciebam ego id quidem, sed consilio, ut videbar, bono.
Cum enim in Latinis major multo inesset dignitas, tuque in ea
facultate princeps mihi longe viderere, non tam abstrahebam te
illinc, quam huc vocabam. Nec studium reprehendebam in illis tuum,
sed te majora quædam spectare debere arbitrabar. Epist. lib. ii. p.
55.
|Character of the controversy.|
53. This controversy points out some degree of change in public opinion,
and the first stage of that struggle against the aristocracy of
erudition, which lasted more or less for nearly two centuries, till,
like other struggles of still more importance, it ended in the victory
of the many. In the days of Poggio and Politian, the native Italian no
more claimed an equality, than the plebeians of Rome demanded the
consulship in the first years of the republic. These are the revolutions
of human opinion, bearing some analogy and parallelism to those of civil
society, which it is the business of an historian of literature to
indicate.
|Life of Bembo.|
54. The life of Bembo was spent, after the loss of his great patron Leo
X., in literary elegance at Padua. Here he formed an extensive library
and collection of medals: and here he enjoyed the society of the
learned, whom that university supplied, or who visited him from other
parts of Italy and Europe. Far below Sadolet in the solid virtues of his
character, and not probably his superior in learning, he has certainly
left a greater name, and contributed more to the literary progress of
his native country. He died at an advanced age in 1547; having a few
years before obtained a cardinal’s hat on the recommendation of
Sadolet.[820]
[820] Tiraboschi, ix. 296. Corniani, iv. 99. Sadolet. Epist. lib. xii.
p. 555.
|Character of Italian and Spanish style.|
55. The style of some other Italian and Spanish writers, Castiglione,
Sperone, Machiavel, Guevara, Oliva, has been already adverted to
when the subject of their writings was before us; and it would be
tedious to dwell upon them again in this point of view. The Italians
have been accustomed to associate almost every kind of excellence with
the word cinquecento. They extol the elegant style and fine taste of
those writers. But Andrès has remarked with no injustice, that if we
find purity, correctness, and elegance of expression in the chief prose
writers of this century, we cannot but also acknowledge an empty
prolixity of periods, a harsh involution of words and clauses, a jejune
and wearisome circuity of sentences, with a striking deficiency of
thought. “Let us admit the graces of mere language in the famous authors
of this period; but we must own them to be far from models of eloquence,
so tedious and languid as they are.”[821] The Spanish writers of the
same century, he says afterwards, nourished as well as the Italian with
the milk of antiquity, transfused the spirit and vigour of these
ancients into their own compositions, not with the servile imitation of
the others, nor seeking to arrange their phrases and round their
periods, the source of languor and emptiness, so that the best Spanish
prose is more flowing and harmonious than the contemporary Italian.[822]
[821] Andrès, vii. 68.
[822] Id. 72.
|English writers.|
|More.|
|Ascham.|
56. The French do not claim, I believe, to have produced at the middle
of the sixteenth century any prose writer of a polished or vigorous
style, Calvin excepted, the dedication of whose Institutes to Francis I.
is a model of purity and elegance for the age.[823] Sir Thomas More’s
Life of Edward V., written about 1509, appears to me the first example
of good English language; pure and perspicuous, well-chosen, without
vulgarisms or pedantry.[824] His polemical tracts are inferior, but not
ill-written. We have seen that Sir Thomas Elyot had some vigour of
style. Ascham, whose Toxophilus, or dialogue on archery, came out in
1544, does not excel him. But his works have been reprinted in modern
times, and are consequently better known than those of Elyot. The early
English writers are seldom select enough in their phrases to bear such a
critical judgment as the academicians of Italy were wont to exercise.
[823] Neufchâteau, Essai sur les Meilleurs Ouvrages dans la langue
Française, p. 135.
[8244] This has been reprinted entire in Holingshed’s Chronicle; and
the reader may find a long extract in the preface to Todd’s edition
of Johnson’s Dictionary. I should name the account of Jane Shore as
a model of elegant narration.
|Italian criticism.|
|Bembo.|
57. Next to the models of style, we may place those writings which, are
designed to form them. In all sorts of criticism, whether it confines
itself to the idioms of a single language, or rises to something like a
general principle of taste, the Italian writers had a decided priority
in order of time as well as of merit. We have already mentioned the
earliest work, that of Fortunio, on Italian grammar. Liburnio, at
Venice, in 1521, followed with his Volgari Eleganzie. But this was
speedily eclipsed by a work of Bembo, published in 1525, with the rather
singular title, Le Prose. These observations of the native language,
commenced more than twenty years before, are written in dialogue,
supposed to originate in the great controversy of that age, whether it
were worthy of a man of letters to employ his mother-tongue instead of
Latin. Bembo well defended the national cause; and by judicious
criticism on the language itself, and the best writers in it, put an end
to the most specious argument under which the advocates of Latin
sheltered themselves,--that the Italian, being a mere congeries of
independent dialects, varying not only in pronunciation and orthography,
but in their words and idioms, and having been written with unbounded
irregularity and constant adoption of vulgar phrases, could afford no
certain test of grammatical purity or graceful ornament. It was thought
necessary by Bembo to meet this objection by the choice of a single
dialect; and though a Venetian, he had no hesitation to recognise the
superiority of that spoken in Florence. The Tuscan writers of that
century proudly make use of his testimony in aid of their pretensions to
dictate the laws of Italian idiom. Varchi says, “The Italians cannot be
sufficiently thankful to Bembo, for having not only purified their
language from the rust of past ages, but given it such regularity and
clearness, that it has become what we now see.” This early work,
however, as might be expected, has not wholly escaped the censure of a
school of subtle and fastidious critics, in whom Italy became
fertile.[825]
[825] Ginguéné, vii. 390. Corniani, iv. 111.
58. Several other treatises on the Italian language appeared even before
the middle of the century; though few comparatively with the more
celebrated and elaborate labours of criticism in its latter portion.
None seem to deserve mention, unless it be the Observations of Ludovico
Dolce (Venice 1550), which were much improved in subsequent editions. Of
the higher kind of criticism which endeavours to excite and guide our
perceptions of literary excellence, we find few or no specimens, even in
Italy, within this period, except so far as the dialogues of Bembo
furnish instances.
|Grammarians and critics in France.|
59. France was not destitute of a few obscure treatises at this time,
enough to lay the foundations of her critical literature. The complex
rules of French metre were to be laid down; and the language was
irregular in pronunciation, accent, and orthography. These meaner, but
necessary, elements of correctness occupied three or four writers, of
whom Goujet has made brief mention; Sylvius, or Du Bois, who seems to
have been the earliest writer on grammar; Stephen Dolet, better known by
his unfortunate fate, than by his essay on French punctuation;[826] and
though Goujet does not name him, we may add an Englishman, Palsgrave,
who published a French grammar in English as early as 1530.[827] An
earlier production than any of these is the Art de Plaine Rhétorique, by
Peter Fabry, 1521; in which, with the help of some knowledge of Cicero,
he attempted, but with little correctness, and often in absurd
expressions, to establish the principles of oratory. If his work is no
better than Goujet represents it to be, its popularity must denote a low
condition of literature in France.[828] The first who aspired to lay
down anything like laws of taste in poetry, was Thomas Sibilet, whose
Art Poétique appeared in 1548. This is in two books; the former relating
to the metrical rules of French verse, the latter giving precepts, short
and judicious, for different kinds of composition. It is not, however, a
work of much importance.[829]
[826] Goujet, Bibliothèque Française, i. 42, 81.
[827] Biogr. Univ., Palsgrave.
[828] Goujet, i. 361.
[829] Goujet, iii. 92.
|Orthography of Meigret.|
60. A more remarkable grammarian of this time was Louis Meigret, who
endeavoured to reform orthography by adapting it to pronunciation. In a
language where these had come to differ so prodigiously as they did in
French, something of this kind would be silently effected by the
printers; but the bold scheme of Meigret went beyond their ideas of
reformation; and he complains that he could not prevail to have his
words given to the public in the form he preferred. They were ultimately
less rigid; and the new orthography appears in some grammatical
treatises of Meigret, published about 1550. It was not, as we know, very
successful; but he has credit given him for some improvements which have
been retained in French printing. Meigret’s French grammar, it has been
said, is the first that contains any rational or proper principles of
the language. It has been observed, I know not how correctly, that he
was the first who denied the name of case to those modifications of
sense in nouns which are not marked by inflexion; and the writer to whom
I am indebted for this adds, what is more worth attention, that this
limited meaning of the word case, which the modern grammars generally
adopt, is rather an arbitrary deviation from their predecessors.[830]
[830] Biogr. Univ., Meigret, a good article. Goujet, i. 83.
|Cox’s Art of Rhetoric.|
61. It would have been strange, if we could exhibit a list of English
writers on the subject of our language in the reign of Henry VIII., when
it has, at all times, been the most neglected department of our
literature. The English have ever been as indocile in acknowledging the
rules of criticism, even those which determine the most ordinary
questions of grammar, as the Italians and French have been voluntarily
obedient. Nor had they as yet drunk deep enough of classical learning to
discriminate, by any steady principle, the general beauties of
composition. Yet among the scanty rivulets that the English press
furnished, we find “The Art or Craft of Rhetoryke,” dedicated by Leonard
Cox to Hugh Faringdon, abbot of Reading. This book, which, though now
very scarce, was translated into Latin, and twice printed at Cracow in
the year 1526,[831] is the work of a schoolmaster and man of reputed
learning. The English edition has no date, but was probably published
about 1524. Cox says: “I have partly translated out of a work of
rhetoric written in the Latin tongue, and partly compiled of my own, and
so made a little treatise in manner of an introduction into this
aforesaid science, and that in the English tongue, remembering that
every good thing, after the saying of the philosopher, the more common
the better it is.” His Art of Rhetoric follows the usual distribution of
the ancients, both as to the kinds of oration and their parts; with
examples, chiefly from Roman history, to direct the choice of
arguments. It is hard to say how much may be considered as his own. The
book is in duodecimo, and contains but eighty-five pages; it would of
course be unworthy of notice in a later period.
[831] Panzer.
CHAPTER IX.
ON THE SCIENTIFIC AND MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM
1520 to 1550.
SECT. I.
_On Mathematical and Physical Science._
|Geometrical treatises.|
1. The first translation of Euclid from the Greek text was made by
Zamberti of Venice, and appeared in 1505. It was republished at Basle in
1537. The Spherics of Theodosius and the Conics of Apollonius were
translated by men, it is said, more conversant with Greek than with
geometry. A higher praise is due to Werner of Nuremberg, the first who
aspired to restore the geometrical analysis of the ancients. The
treatise of Regiomontanus on triangles was first published in 1533. It
may be presumed that its more important contents were already known to
geometers. Montucla hints that the editor Schæner may have introduced
some algebraic solutions which appear in this work; but there seems no
reason to doubt, that Regiomontanus was sufficiently acquainted with
that science. The treatise of Vitello on optics, which belongs to the
thirteenth century, was first printed in 1533.[832]
[832] Montucla, Kästner.
|Fernel.|
|Rhœticus.|
2. Oronce Finée, with some reputation in his own times, has, according
to Montucla, no pretension to the name of a geometer; and another
Frenchman, Fernel, better known as a physician, who published a
Cosmotheoria in 1527, though he first gave the length of a degree of the
meridian, and came not far from the truth, arrived at it by so
unscientific a method, being in fact no other than counting the
revolutions of a wheel along the main road, that he cannot be reckoned
much higher.[833] These are obscure names in comparison with Joachim,
surnamed Rhœticus from his native country. After the publication of
the work of Regiomontanus on trigonometry, he conceived the project of
carrying those labours still further; and calculated the sines,
tangents, and secants, the last of which he first reduced to tables, for
every minute of the quadrant, to a radius of unity followed by fifteen
cyphers; one of the most remarkable monuments, says Montucla, of human
patience, or rather of a devotion to science, the more meritorious that
it could not be attended with much glory. But this work was not
published till 1594, and then not so complete as Rhœticus had left
it.[834]
[833] Montucla, ii. 316. Kästner, ii. 329.
[834] Montucla, i. 582. Biogr. Univ., art. Joachim Kästner, i. 561.
|Cardan and Tartaglia.|
|Cubic equations.|
3. Jerome Cardan is, as it were, the founder of the higher algebra; for,
whatever he may have borrowed from others, we derive the science from
his Ars Magna, published in 1545. It contains many valuable discoveries;
but that which has been most celebrated is the rule for the solution of
cubic equations, generally known by Cardan’s name, though he had
obtained it from a man of equal genius in algebraic science, Nicolas
Tartaglia. The original inventor appears to have been Scipio Ferreo,
who, about 1505, by some unknown process, discovered the solution of a
single case; that of _x_³ + _p_ _x_ = _q_. Ferreo imparted the secret to
one Fiore, or Floridus, who challenged Tartaglia to a public trial of
skill, not unusual in that age. Before he heard of this, Tartaglia, as
he assures us himself, had found out the solution of two other forms of
cubic equation; _x_³ + _p_ _x_² = _q_; and _x_³ - _p_ _x_² = _q_. When
the day of trial arrived, Tartaglia was able not only to solve the
problems offered by Fiore, but to baffle him entirely by others which
resulted in the forms of equation, the solution of which had been
discovered by himself. This was in 1535; and four years afterwards
Cardan obtained the secret from Tartaglia under an oath of secrecy. In
his Ars Magna, he did not hesitate to violate this engagement; and
though he gave Tartaglia the credit of the discovery, revealed the
process to the world.[835] He has said himself, that by the help of
Ferrari, a very good mathematician, he extended his rule to some cases
not comprehended in that of Tartaglia; but the best historian of early
algebra seems not to allow this claim.[836]
[835] Playfair, in his second dissertation in the Encyclopædia
Britannica, though he cannot but condemn Cardan, seems to think
Tartaglia rightly treated for having concealed his discovery; and
others have echoed this strain. Tartaglia himself says in a passage
I have read in Cossali, that he meant to have divulged it
ultimately; but in that age money as well as credit was to be got
by keeping the secret; and those who censure him wholly forget,
that the solution of cubic equations was, in the actual state of
algebra, perfectly devoid of any utility to the world.
[836] Cossali, Storia Critica d’Algebra (1797), ii. 96, &c. Hutton’s
Mathematical Dictionary-Montucla, i. 591. Kästner, i. 152.
|Beauty of the discovery.|
4. This writer, Cossali, has ingeniously attempted to trace the process
by which Tartaglia arrived at this discovery;[837] one which, when
compared with the other leading rules of algebra, where the invention,
however useful, has generally lain much nearer the surface, seems an
astonishing effort of sagacity. Even Harriott’s beautiful generalisation
of the composition of equations was prepared by what Cardan and Vieta
had done before, or might have been suggested by observation in the less
complex cases.[838]
[837] Ibid. p. 145. Tartaglia boasts of having discovered that the cube
of _p_ + _q_ = _p_³ + _p_² _q_ + _p_ _q_² + _q_³. Such was the
ignorance of literal algebra; yet in this state of the science he
solved cubic equations.
[838] Cardan strongly expresses his sense of this recondite discovery.
And as the passage in which he retraces the early progress of
algebra is short, and is quoted from Cardan’s works, which are
scarce in England, by Kästner, who is himself not very commonly
known here, I shall transcribe the whole passage, as a curiosity
for our philomaths. Hæc ars olim a Mahomete Mosis Arabis filio
initium sumpsit. Etenim hujus rei locuples testis Leonardus
Pisanus. Reliquit autem capitula quatuor, cum suis demonstrationibus
quas nos locis suis ascribemus. Post multa vero temporum intervalla
tria capitula derivativa addita illis sunt, incerto autore, quæ
tamen cum principalibus a Luca Paciolo posita sunt. Demum etiam ex
primis, alia tria derivativa, a quodam ignoto viro inventa legi,
hæc tamen minimè in lucem prodierant, cum essent aliis longe
utiliora, nam cubi et numeri et cubi quadrati æstimationem
docebant. Verum temporibus nostris Scipio Ferreus Bononiensis,
capitulum cubi et rerum numero æqualium [_x_³ + _p_ _x_ = _q_]
invenit, rem sane pulchram et admirabilem: _cum omnem humanam
subtilitatem, omnis ingenii mortalis claritatem ars hæc superet,
donum profecto cœleste, experimentum autem virtutis animorum, atque
adeo illustre, ut qui hæc attigerit nihil non intelligere posse se
credat_. Hujus æmulatione Nicolaus Tartalea Brixellensis, amicus
noster, cum in certamen cum illius discipulo Antonio Maria Florido
venisset, capitulum idem ne vinceretur invenit, qui mihi ipsum
multis precibus exoratus tradidit. Deceptus enim ego verbis Lucæ
Pacioli, qui ultra sua capitula generale ullum aliud esse posse
negat (quanquam tot jam antea rebus a me inventis sub manibus
esset, desperabam) tamen [et?] invenire _q._ quærere non audebam.
[sic, sed perperam nonnihil scribi liquet]. Inde autem illo habito
demonstrationem venatus, intellexi complura alia posse haberi. Ac
eo studio, auctaque jam confidentia, per me partim, ac etiam aliqua
per Ludovicum Ferrarium, olim alumnum nostrum, inveni. Porro quæ ab
his inventa sunt, illorum nominibus decorabuntur, cætera quæ nomine
carent nostra sunt. At etiam demonstrationes, præter tres
Mahometis, et duas Ludovici, omnes nostræ sunt, singulæque
capitibus suis præponentur, inde regula addita, subjicietur
experimentum. Kästner, p. 152. The passage in Italics is also
quoted by Cossali, p. 159.
|Cardan’s other discoveries.|
5. Cardan, though not entitled to the honour of this discovery, nor even
equal, perhaps, in mathematical genius to Tartaglia, made a great epoch
in the science of algebra; and, according to Cossali and Hutton, has a
claim to much that Montucla has unfairly or carelessly attributed to his
favourite Vieta. “It appears,” says Dr. Hutton, “from this short chapter
(lib. x. cap. 1. of the Ars Magna), that he had discovered most of the
principal properties of the roots of equations, and could point out the
number and nature of the roots, partly from the signs of the terms, and
partly from the magnitudes and relations of the coefficients.” Cossali
has given the larger part of a quarto volume to the algebra of Cardan;
his object being to establish the priority of the Italian’s claim to
most of the discoveries ascribed by Montucla to others, and especially
to Vieta. Cardan knew how to transform a complete cubic equation into
one wanting the second term; one of the flowers which Montucla has
placed on the head of Vieta; and this he explains so fully, that Cossali
charges the French historian of mathematics with having never read the
Ars Magna.[839] Leonard of Pisa had been aware that quadratic equations
might have two positive roots; but Cardan first perceived, or at least
first noticed, the negative roots, which he calls “fictæ radices.”[840]
In this perhaps there is nothing extraordinary; the algebraic language
must early have been perceived by such acute men as exercised themselves
in problems to give a double solution of every quadratic equation; but,
in fact, the conditions of these problems, being always numerical, were
such as to render a negative result practically false, and impertinent
to the solution. It is therefore, perhaps, without much cause that
Cossali triumphs in the ignorance shown of negative values by Vieta,
Bachet, and even Harriott, though Cardan had pointed them out;[841]
since we may better say, that they did not trouble themselves with what,
in the actual application of algebra, could be of no utility. Cardan
also discovered that every cubic equation has one or three real roots;
and that there are as many positive or true roots as changes of signs in
the equation; that the coefficient of the second term is equal to the
sum of the roots, so that where it is wanting, the positive and negative
values must compensate each other;[842] and that the known term is the
product of all the roots. Nor was he ignorant of a method of extracting
roots by approximation; but in this again the definiteness of solution,
which numerical problems admit and require, would prevent any great
progress from being made.[843] The rules are not perhaps all laid down
by him very clearly; and it is to be observed that he confined himself
chiefly to equations not above the third power; though he first
published the method of solving biquadratics, invented by his coadjutor
Ferrari. Cossali has also shown that the application of algebra to
geometry, and even to the geometrical construction of problems, was
known in some cases by Tartaglia and Cardan; thus plucking another
feather from the wing of Vieta, or of Descartes. It is a little amusing
to see that, after Montucla had laboured with so much success to despoil
Harriott of the glory which Wallis had, perhaps with too national a
feeling, bestowed upon him for a long list of discoveries contained in
the writings of Vieta, a claimant by an older title started up in Jerome
Cardan, who, by help of his very accomplished advocate, seems to have
established his right at the expense of both.
[839] P. 164.
[840] Montucla gives Cardan the credit due for this; at least in his
second edition (1799), p. 595.
[841] i. 23.
[842] It must, apparently, have been through his knowledge of this
property of the coefficient of the second term, that Cardan
recognised the existence of equal roots, even when affected by the
same sign (Cossali, ii. 362); which, considered in relation to the
numerical problems then in use, would seem a kind of absurdity.
[843] Kästner, p. 161. In one place Cossali shows, that Cardan had
transported all the quantities of an equation on one side, making
the whole equal to zero; which Wallis has ascribed to Harriott, as
his leading discovery, p. 324. Yet in another passage we find
Cossali saying: una somma di quantità uguale al zero avea un’aria
mostruosa, e non sapeasi di equazion si fatta concepire idea, p.
159.
|Imperfections of algebraic language.|
6. These anticipations of Cardan are the more truly wonderful, when we
consider that the symbolical language of algebra, that powerful
instrument not only in expediting the processes of thought, but in
suggesting general truths to the mind, was nearly unknown in his age.
Diophantus, Fra Luca, and Cardan make use occasionally of letters to
express indefinite quantities, besides the _res_ or _cosa_,
sometimes written shortly, for the assumed unknown number, of an
equation. But letters were not yet substituted for known quantities; and
it has been seen in a note, that Tartaglia first discovered, and that by
a geometrical construction, what appears so very simple as the equation
between the cube of a line and that of any two parts into which it may
be divided. Michael Stifel, in his Arithmetica Integra, Nuremberg, 1544,
is said to have first used the signs + and -, and numeral exponents of
powers.[844] It is very singular that discoveries of the greatest
convenience, and not above the ingenuity of a parish schoolmaster,
should have been overlooked by men of extraordinary acuteness, like
Tartaglia, Cardan, and Ferrari, and hardly less so, that by dint of this
acuteness, they dispensed with the aid of these contrivances in which we
almost fancy the utility of algebraic expression consists.
[844] Hutton, Kästner.
|Copernicus.|
7. But the great boast of science during this period is the treatise of
Copernicus on the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in six books,
published at Nuremberg, in 1543.[845] This founder of modern astronomy
was born at Thorn, of a good family, in 1473; and after receiving the
best education his country furnished, spent some years in Italy,
rendering himself master of all the mathematical and astronomical
science at that time attainable. He became possessed afterwards
of an ecclesiastical benefice in his own country. It appears to have
been about 1507, that after meditating on various schemes besides the
Ptolemaic, he began to adopt and confirm in writing that of Pythagoras,
as alone capable of explaining the planetary motions with that
simplicity which gives a presumption of truth in the works of
nature.[846] Many years of exact observation confirmed his mind in the
persuasion that he had solved the grandest problem which can occupy the
astronomer. He seems to have completed his treatise about 1530; but
perhaps dreaded the bigoted prejudices which afterwards oppressed
Galileo. Hence he is careful to propound his theory as an hypothesis;
though it is sufficiently manifest that he did not doubt of its truth.
It was first publicly announced by his disciple Joachim Rhœticus,
already mentioned for his trigonometry, in the Narratio de Revolutionibus
Copernici, printed at Dantzic, in 1540. The treatise of Copernicus
himself, three years afterwards, is dedicated to the pope, Paul III., as
if to shield himself under that sacred mantle. But he was better
protected by the common safeguard against oppression. The book reached
him on the day of his death; and he just touched with his hands the
great legacy he was to bequeath to mankind. But many years were to
elapse before they availed themselves of the wisdom of Copernicus. The
progress of his system, even among astronomers, as we shall hereafter
see, was exceedingly slow.[847] We may just mention here, that no kind
of progress was made in mechanical or optical science during the first
part of the sixteenth century.
[845] The title-page and advertisement of so famous a work, and which
so few of my readers will have seen, are worth copying from
Kästner, ii. 595. Nicolai Copernici Torinensis, de Revolutionibus
Orbium Cœlestium, libri vi.
Habes in hoc opere jam recens nato et edito, studiose lector, motus
stellarum tam fixarum quam erraticarum, cum ex veteribus tum etiam
ex recentibus observationibus restitutos; et novis insuper ac
admirabilibus hypothesibus ornatos. Habes etiam tabulas
expeditissimas, ex quibus eosdem ad quodvis tempus quam facillime
calculare poteris. Igitur eme lege, fruere. Αγεωμετρητος ουδεις
εισιτω [Ageômetrêtos oudeis eisitô]. Noribergæ, apud Joh. Petreium,
anno MDxliii.
[846] This is the proper statement of the Copernican argument, as it
then stood; it rested on what we may call a metaphysical
probability, founded upon its beauty and simplicity; for it is to
be remembered that the Ptolemaic hypothesis explained all the
phenomena then known. Those which are only to be solved by the
supposition of the earth’s motion were discovered long afterwards.
This excuses the slow reception of the new system, interfering as
it did with so many prejudices, and incapable of that kind of proof
which mankind generally demand.
[847] Gassendi, Vita Copernici. Biogr. Univ. Montucla. Kästner.
Playfair. Gassendi, p. 14-22, gives a short analysis of the great
work of Copernicus, de orbium Cœlestium Revolutionibus, p. 22. The
hypothesis is generally laid down in the first of the six books.
One of the most remarkable passages in Copernicus is his conjecture
that gravitation was not a central tendency, as had been supposed,
but an attraction common to matter, and probably extending to the
heavenly bodies, though it does not appear that he surmised their
mutual influences in virtue of it: gravitatem esse affectionem non
terræ totius, sed partium ejus propriam, qualem soli etiam et lunæ
cæterisque astris convenire credibile est. These are the words of
Copernicus himself, quoted by Gassendi, p. 19.
SECT. II.
_On Medicine and Anatomy._
|Revival of Greek medicine.|
8. The revival of classical literature had an extensive influence where
we might not immediately anticipate it, on the science of medicine.
Jurisprudence itself, though nominally and exclusively connected with
the laws of Rome, was hardly more indebted to the restorers of ancient
learning than the art of healing, which seems to own no mistress but
nature, no code of laws but those which regulate the human system. But
the Greeks, among their other vast superiorities above the Arabians, who
borrowed so much, and so much perverted what they borrowed, were not
only the real founders, but the best teachers of medicine; a science
which in their hands seems, more than any other, to have anticipated the
Baconian philosophy; being founded on an induction proceeding by select
experience, always observant, always cautious, and ascending slowly to
the generalities of theory. But instead of Hippocrates and Galen, the
Arabians brought in physicians of their own, men doubtless of
considerable, though inferior merit, and substituted arbitrary or
empirical precepts for the enlarged philosophy of the Greeks. The
scholastic subtilty also obtruded itself even into medicine; and the
writings of the middle ages on these subjects are alike barbarous in
style and useless in substance. Pharmacy owes much to this oriental
school, but it has retained no reputation in physiological or
pathological science.
|Linacre and other physicians.|
9. Nicolas Leonicenus, who became professor at Ferrara before 1470, was
the first restorer of the Hippocratic method of practice. He lived to a
very advanced age, and was the first translator of Galen from the
Greek.[848] Our excellent countryman, Linacre, did almost as much for
medicine. The College of Physicians, founded by Henry VIII. in 1518,
venerates him as its original president. His primary object was to
secure a learned profession, to rescue the art of healing from
mischievous ignorance, and to guide the industrious student in
the path of real knowledge, which at that time lay far more through the
regions of ancient learning than at present. It was important not for
the mere dignity of the profession, but for its proper ends, to
encourage the cultivation of the Greek language, or to supply its want
by accurate versions of the chief medical writers.[849] Linacre himself,
and several eminent physicians on the continent, Cop, Ruel, Gonthier,
Fuchs, by such labours in translation, restored the school of
Hippocrates. That of the Arabians rapidly lost ground, though it
preserved through the sixteenth century an ascendancy in Spain; and some
traces of its influence, especially the precarious empiricism of judging
diseases by the renal secretion, without sight of the patient, which was
very general in that age, continued long afterwards in several parts of
Europe.[850]
[848] Biogr. Univ. Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine (traduit par
Jourdan), vol. ii.
[849] Johnson’s Life of Linacre, p. 207, 279. Biogr. Britann.
[850] Sprengel, vol. iii. passim.
|Medical innovators.|
|Paracelsus.|
10. The study of Hippocrates taught the medical writers of this century
to observe and describe like him. Their works, chiefly indeed after the
period with which we are immediately concerned, are very numerous, and
some of them deserve much praise, though neither the theory of the
science, nor the power of judiciously observing and describing, was yet
in a very advanced state. The besetting sin of all who should have
laboured for truth, an undue respect for authority, made Hippocrates and
Galen, especially the former, as much the idols of the medical world, as
Augustin and Aristotle were of theology and metaphysics. This led to a
pedantic erudition, and contempt of opposite experience, which rendered
the professors of medicine an inexhaustible theme of popular ridicule.
Some, however, even at an early time, broke away from the trammels of
implicit obedience to the Greek masters. Fernel, one of the first
physicians in France, rejecting what he could not approve in their
writings, gave an example of free inquiry. Argentier of Turin tended to
shake the influence of Galen by founding a school which combated many of
his leading theories.[851] But the most successful opponent of the
orthodox creed was Paracelsus. Of his speculative philosophy, or rather
the wild chimæras which he borrowed or devised, enough has been said in
former pages. His reputation was originally founded on a supposed skill
in medicine; and it is probable that, independently of his real merit in
the application of chemistry to medicine, and in the employment of very
powerful agents, such as antimony, the fanaticism of his pretended
philosophy would exercise that potency over the bodily frame, to which
disease has, in recent experience, so often yielded.[852]
[851] Sprengel, iii. 204. “Argentier,” he says, “was the first to lay
down a novel and true principle, that the different faculties of
the soul are not inherent in certain distinct parts of the brain.”
[852] Sprengel, vol. iii.
|Anatomy.|
|Berenger.|
11. The first important advances in anatomical knowledge since the time
of Mundinus were made by Berenger of Carpi, in his commentary upon that
author, printed at Bologna in 1521, which it was thought worth while to
translate into English as late as 1664, and in his Isagogæ Breves in
Anatomiam, Bologna, 1522. He followed the steps of Mundinus in human
dissection, and thus gained an advantage over Galen. Hence we owe to him
the knowledge of several specific differences between the human
structure and that of quadrupeds. Berenger is asserted to have
discovered two of the small bones of the ear, though this is contested
on behalf of Achillini. Portal observes, that though some have regarded
Berenger as the restorer of the science of anatomy, it is hard to strip
one so much superior to him as Vesalius of that honour.[853]
[853] Hist. de l’Anatomie, i. 277. Portal remarks in his preface,
p. xii, that many discoveries supposed to be modern may be detected
in the old anatomists; thus Berenger knew that the thorax is larger
in man, and the pelvis in woman, which a living anatomist, he says,
has assumed as his own. But the Greek sculptors surely knew this as
well as Berenger or Portal.
|Vesalius.|
12. Every early anatomist was left far behind when Vesalius, a native of
Brussels, who acquired in early youth an extraordinary reputation on
this side of the Alps, and in 1540 became professor of the science at
Pavia, published at Basle, in 1543, his great work De Corporis Humani
Fabrica. If Vesalius was not quite to anatomy what Copernicus was to
astronomy, he has yet been said, a little hyperbolically, to have
discovered a new world. A superstitious prejudice against human
dissection had restrained the ancient anatomists in general to pigs and
apes, though Galen, according to Portal, had some experience in the
former. Mundinus and Berenger, by occasionally dissecting the
human body, had thrown much additional light on its structure; and the
superficial muscles, those immediately under the integuments, had been
studied by Da Vinci and others for the purposes of painting and
sculpture. Vesalius first gave a complete description of the human body,
with designs which, at the time, were ascribed to Titian. We have here
therefore a great step made in science; the precise estimation of
Vesalius’s discoveries must be sought, of course, in anatomical
history.[854]
[854] Portal p. 394-433.
|Portal’s account of him.|
13. “Vesalius,” says Portal, in the rapturous strain of one devoted to
his own science, “appears to me one of the greatest men who ever
existed. Let the astronomers vaunt their Copernicus, the natural
philosophers their Galileo and Torricelli, the mathematicians their
Pascal, the geographers their Columbus, I shall always place Vesalius
above all their heroes. The first study for man is man. Vesalius has had
this noble object in view, and has admirably attained it, he has made on
himself and his fellows such discoveries as Columbus could only make by
travelling to the extremity of the world. The discoveries of Vesalius
are of direct importance to man; by acquiring fresh knowledge of his own
structure, man seems to enlarge his existence; while discoveries in
geography or astronomy affect him but in a very indirect manner.” He
proceeds to compare him with Winslow, in order to show how little had
been done in the intermediate time. Vesalius seems not to have known the
osteology of the ear. His account of the teeth is not complete; but he
first clearly described the bones of the feet. He has given a full
account of the muscles, but with some mistakes, and was ignorant of a
very few. In his account of the sanguineous and nervous systems, the
errors seem more numerous. He describes the intestines better than his
predecessors, and the heart very well; the organs of generation not
better than they, and sometimes omits their discoveries; the brain
admirably, little having since been added.
|His human dissections.|
14. The zeal of Vesalius and his fellow-students for anatomical science
led them to strange scenes of adventure. Those services, which have
since been thrown on the refuse of mankind, they voluntarily undertook.
Entire affection scorneth nicer hands.
They prowled by night in charnel-houses, they dug up the dead from the
grave, they climbed the gibbet, in fear and silence, to steal the
mouldering carcase of the murderer; the risk of ignominious punishment,
and the secret stings of superstitious remorse, exalting no doubt the
delight of these useful, but not very enviable pursuits.[855]
[855] Portal, p. 395.
|Fate of Vesalius.|
15. It may be mentioned here, that Vesalius, after living for some years
in the court of Charles and Philip as their physician, met with a
strange reverse, characteristic enough of such a place. Being absurdly
accused of having dissected a Spanish gentleman before he was dead,
Vesalius only escaped capital punishment, at the instance of the
inquisition, by undertaking a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, during which he
was shipwrecked, and died of famine in one of the Greek islands.[856]
[856] Portal, Tiraboschi, ix. 34. Biogr. Univ.
|Other anatomists.|
16. The best anatomists were found in Italy. But Francis I. invited one
of these, Vidus Vidius, to his royal college at Paris; and from that
time France had several of respectable name. Such were Charles Etienne,
one of the great typographical family, Sylvius, and Gonthier.[857] A
French writer about 1540, Levasseur, appears to have known, at least,
the circulation of the blood through the lungs, as well as the valves of
the arteries and veins, and their direction, and its purpose; treading
closely on an anticipation of Harvey.[858] Portal has erroneously
supposed the celebrated passage of Servetus on the circulation of the
blood to be contained in his book de Trinitatis Erroribus, published in
1531,[859] whereas it is really found in the Christianismi Restitutio,
which did not appear till 1553. This gives Levasseur a priority of some
importance in anatomical history.
[857] Portal, i. 330 et post.
[858] Portal p. 373, quotes the passage, which seems to warrant this
inference, but is rather obscurely worded. It contains, to my
apprehension, a much nearer approximation to the theory of a
general circulation than the more famous passage in Servetus; in
which I can only perceive an acquaintance with that through the
lungs.
[859] P. 300.
|Imperfection of the science.|
17. The practice of trusting to animal dissection, from which it was
difficult for anatomists to extricate themselves, led some men of real
merit into errors. They seem also not to have profited sufficiently by
the writings of their predecessors. Massa of Venice, one of the greatest
of this age, is ignorant of some things known to Berenger. Many
proofs occur in Portal, how imperfectly the elder anatomists could yet
demonstrate the more delicate parts of the human body.
SECT. III.
_On Natural History._
|Botany.|
|Botanical gardens.|
18. The progress of natural history, in all its departments, was very
slow, and should of course be estimated by the additions made to the
valuable materials collected by Aristotle, Theophrastus, Dioscorides,
and Pliny. The few botanical treatises that had appeared before this
time were too meagre and imperfect to require mention. Otto Brunfels of
Strasburg was the first who published, in 1530, a superior work,
Herbarum Vivæ Eicones in three volumes folio, with 238 wooden cuts of
plants.[860] Euricius Cordus of Marburg, in his Botanilogicon, or
dialogues on plants, displays, according to the Biographie Universelle,
but little knowledge of Greek, and still less observation of nature.
Cordus has deserved more praise (though this seems better due to Lorenzo
de’ Medici), as the first who established a botanical garden. This was
at Marburg, in 1530.[861] But the fortunes of private physicians were
hardly equal to the cost of an useful collection. The university of Pisa
led the way by establishing a public garden in 1545, according to the
date which Tiraboschi has determined. That of Padua had founded a
professorship of botany in 1533.[862]
[860] Biogr. Univ.
[861] Biogr. Univ. Andrès, xiii. 80. Eichhorn, iii. 304. See too
Roscoe’s Leo. X., iv. 125, for some pleasing notices of the
early studies in natural history. Pontanus was fond of it; and his
poem on the cultivation of the lemon, orange, and citron (de Hortis
Hesperidum) shows an acquaintance with some of the operations of
horticulture. The garden of Bembo was also celebrated. Theophrastus
and Dioscorides were published in Latin before 1500. But it was not
till about the middle of the sixteenth century that botany, through
the commentaries of Matthioli on Dioscorides, began to assume a
distinct form, and to be studied as a separate branch.
[862] ix. 10.
|Ruel.|
19. Ruel, a physician of Soissons, an excellent Greek scholar, had
become known by a translation of Dioscorides in 1516, upon which Huet
has bestowed high praise. His more celebrated treatise de Natura
Stirpium appeared at Paris in 1536, and is one of the handsomest
offsprings of that press. It is a compilation from the Greek and Latin
authors on botany, made with taste and judgment. His knowledge, however,
derived from experience, was not considerable, though he has sometimes
given the French names of species described by the Greeks, so far as his
limited means of observation and the difference of climate enabled him.
Many later writers have borrowed from Ruel their general definitions and
descriptions of plants, which he himself took from Theophrastus.[863]
[863] Biogr. Univ. (by M. du Petit Thouars.)
|Fuchs.|
20. Ruel, however, seems to have been left far behind by Leonard Fuchs,
professor of medicine in more than one German university, who has
secured a verdant immortality in the well-known Fuchsia. Besides many
works on his own art, esteemed in their time, he published at Basle in
1542 his Commentaries on the History of Plants, containing above 500
figures, a botanical treatise frequently reprinted, and translated into
most European languages. “Considered as a naturalist, and especially as
a botanist, Fuchs holds a distinguished place, and he has thrown a
strong light on that science. His chief object is to describe exactly
the plants used in medicine; and his prints, though mere outlines, are
generally faithful. He shows that the plants and vegetable products
mentioned by Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Hippocrates, and Galen had
hitherto been ill known.”[864]
[864] Biogr. Univ. (by M. du Petit Thouars.)
|Matthioli.|
21. Matthioli, an Italian physician, in a peaceful retreat near Trent,
accomplished a laborious repertory of medical botany in his Commentaries
on Dioscorides, published originally, 1544, in Italian, but translated
by himself into Latin, and frequently reprinted throughout Europe.
Notwithstanding a bad arrangement, and the author’s proneness to
credulity, it was of great service at a time when no good work on that
subject was in existence in Italy; and its reputation seems to have been
not only general, but of long duration.[865]
[865] Tiraboschi, ix. 2. Andrès, xiii. 85. Corniani, vi. 5.
|Low state of zoology.|
22. It was not singular that much should have been published, imperfect
as it might be, on the natural history of plants, while that of animal
nature, as a matter of science, lay almost neglected. The importance of
vegetable products in medicine was far more extensive and various; while
the ancient treatises, which formed substantially the chief knowledge of
nature possessed in the sixteenth century, are more copious and minute
on the botanical than the animated kingdom. Hence we find an absolute
dearth of books relating to zoology. P. Jovius de Piscibus Romania is
rather the work of a philologer and a lover of good cheer than a
naturalist, and treats only of the fish eaten at the Roman tables.[866]
Gillius de Vi et Natura Animalium is little else than a compilation from
Ælian and other ancient authors, though Niceron says that the author has
interspersed some observations of his own.[867] No work of the least
importance, even for that time, can perhaps be traced in Europe on any
part of zoology, before the Avium præcipuarum Historia of our countryman
Turner, published at Cologne in 1548, though this is confined to species
described by the ancients. Gesner, in his Pandects, which bear date in
the same year, several times refers to it with commendation.[868]
[866] Andrès, xiii. 143. Roscoe’s Leo X. ubi suprà.
[867] Vol. xxili Biogr. Univ. Andrès, xiii. 144.
[868] Pandect. Univers., lib. 14. Gesner may be said to make great use
of Turner; a high compliment from so illustrious a naturalist. He
quotes also a book on quadrupeds lately printed in German by
Michael Herr. Turner, whom we shall find again as a naturalist,
became afterwards dean of Wells, and was one of the early puritans.
See Chalmers’s Dictionary.
|Agricola.|
23. Agricola, a native of Saxony, acquired a perfect knowledge of the
processes of metallurgy from the miners of Chemnitz, and perceived the
immense resources that might be drawn from the abysses of the earth. “He
is the first mineralogist,” says Cuvier, “who appeared after the revival
of science in Europe. He was to mineralogy what Gesner was to zoology;
the chemical part of metallurgy, and especially what relates to
assaying, is treated with great care, and has been little improved down
to the end of the eighteenth century.” It is plain that he was
acquainted with the classics, the Greek alchemists, and many
manuscripts. Yet he believed in the goblins, to whom miners ascribe the
effects of mephitic exhalations.[869]
[869] Biogr. Univ.
SECT. IV.
_On Oriental Literature._
|Hebrew.|
|Elias Levita.|
|Pellican.|
24. The study of Hebrew was naturally one of those which flourished best
under the influence of protestantism. It was exclusively connected with
scriptural interpretation; and could neither suit the polished
irreligion of the Italians, nor the bigotry of those who owned no other
standard than the Vulgate translation. Sperone observes in one of his
dialogues, that as much as Latin is prized in Italy, so much do the
Germans value the Hebrew language.[870] We have anticipated in another
place the translations of the Old Testament by Luther, Pagninus, and
other Hebraists of this age. Sebastian Munster published the first
grammar and lexicon of the Chaldee dialect in 1527. His Hebrew grammar
had preceded in 1525. The Hebrew lexicon of Pagninus appeared in 1529;
and that of Munster himself in 1543. Elias Levita, the learned Jew who
has been already mentioned, deserves to stand in this his natural
department above even Munster. Among several works that fall within this
period we may notice the Masorah (Venice, 1538, and Basle, 1539),
wherein he excited the attention of the world by denying the authority
and antiquity of vowel points, and a lexicon of the Chaldee and
Rabbinical dialects, in 1541. “Those,” says Simon, “who would thoroughly
understand Hebrew should read the treatises of Elias Levita, which are
full of important observations necessary for the explanation of the
sacred text.”[871] Pellican, one of the first who embraced the
principles of the Zwinglian reform, has merited a warm eulogy from Simon
for his Commentarii Bibliorum, (Zurich, 1531-1536, five volumes in
folio), especially for avoiding that display of rabbinical learning
which the German Hebraists used to affect.[872]
[870] P. 102 (edit. 1596).
[871] Biogr. Univ.
[872] Id.
|Arabic and Oriental literature.|
25. Few endeavours were made in this period towards the cultivation of
the other Oriental languages. Pagnino printed an edition of the Koran at
Venice in 1530; but it was immediately suppressed; a precaution hardly
required, while there was no one able to read it. But it may have been
supposed, that the leaves of some books, like that recorded in the
Arabian Nights, contain an active poison that does not wait for the slow
process of understanding their contents. Two crude attempts at
introducing the Eastern tongues were made soon afterwards. One of these
was by William Postel, a man of some parts and more reading, but chiefly
known, while he was remembered at all, for mad reveries of
fanaticism, and an idolatrous veneration for a saint of his own
manufacture, la mère Jeanne, the Joanna Southcote of the sixteenth
century. We are only concerned at present with his collection of
alphabets, twelve in number, published at Paris in 1538. The greater
part of these are Oriental. An Arabic grammar followed the same year;
but the types are so very imperfect, that it would be difficult to read
them. A polyglott alphabet on a much larger scale appeared at Pavia the
next year, through the care of Teseo Ambrogio, containing forty
languages. Ambrogio gave also an introduction to the Chaldee, Syriac,
and Armenian; but very defective, at least as to the two latter. Such
rude and incorrect publications hardly deserve the name of beginnings.
According to Andrès, Arabic was publicly taught at Paris by Giustiniani,
and at Salamanca by Clenardus. The Æthiopic version of the New Testament
was printed at Rome in 1548.
SECT. V.
_On Geography and History._
|Geography of Grynæus.|
26. The curiosity natural to mankind had been gratified by various
publications since the invention of printing, containing either the
relations of ancient travellers, such as Marco Polo, or of those under
the Spanish or Portuguese flags, who had laid open two new worlds to the
European reader. These were for the first time collected, to the number
of seventeen, by Simon Grynæus, a learned professor at Basle, in Novus
Orbis Regionum et Insularum Veteribus incognitarum, printed at Paris in
1532. We find also in this collection, besides an introduction to
cosmography by Sebastian Munster, a map of the world bearing the date
1531. The cosmography of Apianus, professor at Ingoldstadt, published in
1524, contains also a map of the four quarters of the world. In this of
Grynæus’s collection, a rude notion of the eastern regions of Asia
appears. Sumatra is called Taprobane, and placed in the 150th meridian.
A vague delineation of China and the adjacent sea is given; but Catay is
marked further north. The island of Gilolo, which seems to be Japan, is
about 240° east longitude. This is so far remarkable, that no voyages
had yet been made in that sea. South America is noted as Terra Australis
recenter inventa, sed nondum plane cognita; and there is as much of
North America as Sebastian Cabot had discovered, a little enlarged by
lucky conjecture. Magellan, by circumnavigating the world, had solved a
famous problem. We find accordingly in this map an attempt to divide the
globe by the 360 meridians of longitude. The best account of his voyage,
that by Pigafetta, was not published till 1556; but the first,
Maximilianus de Insulis Moluccis, appeared in 1523.
|Apianus.|
|Munster.|
27. The Cosmography of Apianus, above mentioned, was reprinted with
additions by Gemma Frisius in 1533 and 1550. It is however, as a work of
mere geography, very brief and superficial; though it may exhibit as
much of the astronomical part of the science as the times permitted.
That of Sebastian Munster, published in 1546, notwithstanding its title,
extends only to the German empire.[873] The Isolario of Bordone (Venice,
1528) contains a description of all the islands of the world, with
maps.[874]
[873] Eichhorn, iii. 294.
[874] Tiraboschi, ix. 179.
|Voyages.|
|Oviedo.|
28. A few voyages were printed before the middle of the century, which
have, for the most part, found their way into the collection of Ramusio.
The most considerable is the history of the Indies, that is, of the
Spanish dominions in America, by Gonzalo Hernandez, sometimes called
Oviedo, by which name he is placed in the Biographie Universelle. The
author had resided for some years in St. Domingo. He published a summary
of the general and natural history of the Indies in 1526; and twenty
books of this entire work in 1535. The remaining thirty did not appear
till 1783. In the long list of geographical treatises given by Ortelius,
a small number belong to this earlier period of the century. But it may
be generally said, that the acquaintance of Europe with the rest of the
world could as yet be only obtained orally from Spanish and Portuguese
sailors or adventurers, and was such as their falsehood and blundering
would impart.
|Historical works.|
29. It is not my design to comprehend historical literature, except as
to the chief publications, in these volumes; and it is hitherto but a
barren field; for though Guicciardini died in 1540, his great history
did not appear till 1564. Some other valuable histories, those of Nardi,
Segni, Varchi, were also kept back through political or other causes,
till a comparatively late period. That of Paulus Jovius, which is not in
very high estimation, appeared in 1550, and may be reckoned,
perhaps, after that of Machiavel, the best of this age. Upon this side
of the Alps, several works of this class, to which the historical
student has recourse, might easily be enumerated; but none of a
philosophical character, or remarkable for beauty of style. I should,
however, wish to make an exception for the Memoirs of the Chevalier
Bayard, written by his secretary, and known by the title of Le Loyal
Serviteur; they are full of warmth and simplicity. A chronicle bearing
the name of Carion, but really written by Melanchthon, and published in
the German language, 1532, was afterwards translated into Latin, and
became the popular manual of universal history.[875] But ancient and
mediæval history was as yet very imperfectly made known to those who had
no access to its original sources. Even in Italy little had yet been
done with critical or even extensive erudition.
[875] Bayle, art. Carion. Eichhorn, iii. 285.
* * * * *
|Italian academies.|
30. Italy in the sixteenth century was remarkable for the number of her
literary academies; institutions, which, though by no means peculiar to
her, have in no other country been so general or so conspicuous. We have
already taken notice of that established by Aldus Manutius at Venice
early in this century, and of those of older dates which had enjoyed the
patronage of princes at Florence and Naples, as well as of that which
Pomponius Lætus and his associates, with worse auspices, had endeavoured
to form at Rome. The Roman academy, after a long season of persecution
or neglect, revived in the genial reign of Leo X. “Those were happy
days,” says Sadolet in 1529, writing to Angelo Colocci, a Latin poet of
some reputation, “when in your suburban gardens, or mine on the
Quirinal, or in the Circus, or by the banks of the Tiber, we held those
meetings of learned men, all recommended by their own virtues and by
public reputation. Then it was that after a repast, which the wit of the
guests rendered exquisite, we heard poems or orations recited to our
great delight, productions of the ingenious Casanuova, the sublime Vida,
the elegant and correct Beroaldo, and many others still living or now no
more.”[876] Corycius, a wealthy German, encouraged the good-humoured
emulation of these Roman luminaries.[877] But the miserable reverse,
that not long after the death of Leo befell Rome, put an end to this
academy, which was afterwards replaced by others of less fame.
[876] Sadolet, Epist. p. 225 (edit. 1554). Roscoe has quoted this
interesting letter.
[877] Roscoe, iii. 480.
|They pay regard to the language.|
31. The first academies of Italy had chiefly directed their attention to
classical literature; they compared manuscripts, they suggested new
readings, or new interpretations, they deciphered inscriptions and
coins, they sat in judgment on a Latin ode, or debated the propriety of
a phrase. Their own poetry had, perhaps, never been neglected; but it
was not till the writings of Bembo founded a new code of criticism in
the Italian language, that they began to study it minutely, and judge of
compositions with that fastidious scrupulousness they had been used to
exercise upon modern Latinity. Several academies were established with a
view to this purpose, and became the self-appointed censors of their
native literature. The reader will remember what has been already
mentioned, that there was a peculiar source of verbal criticism in
Italy, from the want of a recognised standard of idiom. The very name of
the language was long in dispute. Bembo maintained that Florentine was
the proper appellation. Varchi and other natives of the city have
adhered to this very restrictive monopoly. Several, with more
plausibility, contended for the name Tuscan; and this, in fact, was so
long adopted, that it is hardly yet altogether out of use. The majority,
however, were not Tuscans, and while it is generally agreed that the
highest purity of their language is to be found in Tuscany, the word
Italian has naturally prevailed as its denomination.
|Their fondness for Petrarch.|
32. The academy of Florence was instituted in 1540 to illustrate and
perfect the _Tuscan_ language, especially by a close attention to
the poetry of Petrarch. Their admiration of Petrarch became an exclusive
idolatry; the critics of this age would acknowledge no defect in him,
nor excellence in any different style. Dissertations and commentaries on
Petrarch, in all the diffuseness characteristic of the age and the
nation, crowd the Italian libraries. We are, however, anticipating a
little in mentioning them; for few belong to so early a period as the
present. But by dint of this superstitious accuracy in style, the
language rapidly acquired a purity and beauty which has given the
writers of the sixteenth century a value in the eyes of their
countrymen, not always so easily admitted by those who, being less able
to perceive the delicacy of expression, are at leisure to yawn
over their frequent tediousness and inanity.
|They become numerous.|
33. The Italian academies, which arose in the first half of the century,
and we shall meet with others hereafter, are too numerous to be reckoned
in these pages. The most famous were the Intronati of Siena, founded in
1525, and devoted, like that of Florence, to the improvement of their
language; the Infiammati of Padua, founded by some men of high
attainments in 1534; and that of Modena, which, after a short career of
brilliancy, fell under such suspicions of heresy, and was subjected to
such inquisitorial jealousy about 1542, that it never again made any
figure in literary history.[878]
[878] Tiraboschi, viii. ch. 4, is my chief authority about the Italian
academies of this period.
|Their distinctions.|
34. Those academies have usually been distinguished by little
peculiarities, which border sometimes on the ridiculous, but serve
probably, at least, in the beginning, to keep up the spirit of such
societies. They took names humorously quaint; they adopted devices and
distinctions, which made them conspicuous, and inspired a vain pleasure
in belonging to them. The Italian nobility, living a good deal in
cities, and restrained from political business, fell willingly into
these literary associations. They have, perhaps, as a body, been better
educated, or, at least, better acquainted with their own literature and
with classical antiquity, than men of equal rank in other countries.
This was more the case in the sixteenth century than at present. Genius
and erudition have been always honoured in Italy; and the more probably
that they have not to stand the competition of overpowering wealth, or
of political influence.
|Evils connected with them.|
35. Academies of the Italian kind do not greatly favour the vigorous
advances in science, and much less the original bursts of genius, for
which men of powerful minds are designed by nature. They form an
oligarchy, pretending to guide the public taste, as they are guided
themselves, by arbitrary maxims and close adherence to precedents. The
spirit of criticism they foster is a salutary barrier against bad taste
and folly, but is too minute and scrupulous in repressing the
individualities which characterise real talents, and ends by producing
an unblemished mediocrity, without the powers of delight or excitement,
for which alone the literature of the imagination is desired.
|They succeed less in Germany.|